PSYC 1315 1st Edition Lecture 6 Outline of Last Lecture I Pituitary Gland Amygdala II Hypothalamus A James Old s Discovery B Wanting and Liking C Hunger Motivation III Stress and Health A Cortisol IV Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation A Testosterone B Prenatal Effects Outline of Current Lecture I Hippocampus A H M B Clive Wearing C Depression II Amygdala A PTSD B Autism C Psychopaths III Mirror Neurons IV Pruning V Classical Conditioning A Ivan Pavlov B Definition of Acquisition C Definition of Extinction D Definition of Stimulus Generalization E Definition of Stimulus Discrimination F E B Twitmeyer Current Lecture l These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute A The hippocampus controls short term memory we know this because of a man named H M He had horrible seizures so to get rid of them a scientist sucked out his hippocampus The seizures were eliminated but after a few days he had a noticeable memory problem He could remember his past very vividly but anything after his surgery couldn t be remembered for longer than 3 minutes B Clive Wearing was another individual who injured his hippocampus except his case was more extreme because he forgot his past and his present However he would greet his wife with a smile and a hug without knowing why and when he walked in his church and music played he would remember how to conduct the musicians his old job but when the music stopped he would forget his surroundings and not know where he was C Depression can come in all forms and sizes and one form is stress related depression A stress related rise in cortisol can lower cell count in the hippocampus which is related to depression This is why it takes 4 6 weeks for anti depression medicine to kick in ll A The amygdala controls fear and anxiety memory of fearful events recognition of facial fear cues and the display of facial fear PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs when bad memories are very powerful and constantly keep a person stressed It has been discovered that propranolol can block the amygdala so people who ve experienced very high levels of fear in their life cane take this drug to become less fearful B At age 6 autistic kids become very different than normal kids Their amygdala is much larger than normal This causes autistic kids to not look at someone s face especially their eyes because their amygdala says that other person s face is a threat C Psychopaths have very unusual amygdala activity meaning their amygdala is unresponsive to frightening events They are extraordinarily charming exploitive and have a low capacity for guilt and fear because their amygdala does not get scared like other people lll Mirror Neurons give us the ability to learn by observing others This may underlie our ability to empathize with others as well People can watch what others do and just by watching they can do that same thing like smile However in autistic children they have to be taught everything because they cannot learn by observing A new study claims that around age 30 autistic people can start to have mirror neurons but these findings have not been replicated yet lV Pruning is the normal process of losing brain cells during the post natal development of the brain up until the late 20 s People who get schizophrenia at this time have lost a great deal of nerve cells more than usual V A Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who studied digestive physiology in dogs He recognized the importance of a significant event salivation in anticipation of food A dog he had worked with many times had been conditioned to salivate when hearing the footsteps of the person who usually fed him Without the actual food present the dog had learned that he would get food every time they conducted this experiment In classical conditioning we have an unconditioned stimulus an unconditioned response a conditioned response and a conditioned stimulus B The definition of acquisition is when we learn a new response like how the dog learned to salivate when hearing the footsteps C The definition of extinction is the loss of an acquired response like if the dog salivated when hearing footsteps because he knew he was going to be fed and they stopped walking to him to feed him he would lose the association between the footsteps and the food and would no longer salivate when hearing footsteps D A stimulus generalization is when we respond in a similar way to stimuli similar to the conditional stimulus E A stimulus discrimination is when we respond only to the conditional stimulus and not to other similar stimuli F Before Pavlov there was E B Twitmeyer who reported that a warning tone presented before tapping the knee gradually elicits a knee jerk before the tap He reported these findings but everyone ignored him so the fame went to Pavlov