Origins of Behavior 01 19 2011 Explanations Our penchant for explanation right or wrong Non scientific Pseudo scientific o Witchcraft o Mental telepathy o Extra sensory perception o Demons and gods Scientific Philosophical o Observable o Measureable o Repeatable Big Ideas Our understanding has been buttressed by BIG ideas o Copernicus 1473 1543 Heliocentric Theory Sun was center of the universe o Galileo 1564 1642 Spread news about Heliocentric Theory Considered blasphemy by Church Stopped teaching theory o Newton 1643 1727 Came up with the concept of Gravity Bodies with mass have an attraction to each other Ex earth and sun Through careful observation they saw beyond the common knowledge of their local world and developed unifying theories Importance of Theory Andrew Wile s quote o When I first realized that I was heading towards a solution for this problem I thought it was too good to be true But then I realized it was too good to be false That is a theory Ex Gravity is too good to be false Darwin s Delay o Charles Darwin 1809 1882 Voyage of The Beagle 1832 1837 Draft of theory 1842 The Origin of Species 1859 Delay Bodies and Minds are a product of evolution Captain Fitzroy s lament Knew Darwin was very religious and was questioning why Darwin would say we came from monkeys blasphemous Was partly responsible for this theory that he did not agree with because of things he had said to Darwin on the Voyage Slit his own throat Origins of Behavior 01 19 2011 The brain and its functions like the geological record hold the long history of our past Darwin in Perspective Principles of Evolution o Natural vulnerability o Natural selection Because of an earthquake he realized that over the long time that earth was around many changes must have taken place o Therefore animals would have been greatly affected some must be more fit than others Published the Origin of Species Wrote there is a grandeur in this view of life that from so simple an origin through the selection of infinitesimal varieties endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved Darwin s Loss of Mendel s Genetics Addressed Bruenn Society 1865 o Hybridization o Inheritance Snubbed by elitists Did not have information about how natural selection actually worked how traits are transmitted from one generation to another Darwin could have used the information published by Mendel in order to support his theory of Natural Selection Darwin s Loss of Geological Time Evolution requires vastness of time Lord Kelvin arrogantly asserted that the earth was 5000 years old Time in perspective each step 1000 years o Literal biblical 5 k o Lucy 4 million year old remains o Dinosaurs 200 Million years ago o First life 4 billion years ago Darwin s Invisible Characters 1875 Was saying that in addition to the things inside of us that make us look the way we look and that gives us structure and guides development we each have a bunch of stuff that we could pass on to somebody else Twins and schizophrenia o Ex perfectly possible to skip a generation due to genetics o Monozygotic schiz 17 chance of having a child with o MZ normal 17 chance because they are a carrier for the schiz disorder o Dizygotic schiz 17 chance o DZ normal 2 chance Evo Devo new forms can arise not only from mutations but also by tweaks to already existing genes and developmental plans o From a Few Genes Life s Myriad Shapes Decades before Mendel s work was appreciated and 75 years before DNA was discovered Darwin got it right Physical Continuity in Heredity Family photo album o Salient o Where does it stop Ex Peppered moth o Adaptive coloration o Changed with environment and back again when needed Tryon s Rats Maze Bright vs Maze Dull Easily selected but Took the best rats and bred them then trained the offspring and so on Within 6 generations the rats almost always did well in the Took the worst rats and bred them then trained the offspring and so on Within 6 generations the rats almost always did poorly in the maze maze Does not mean that in 6 generations the rats that did well were smarter than the rats that didn t do well The rats that did well were simply just bred for the purpose of being skillful at that certain task maze Complex human behavior o Depression o Personality traits o Schizophrenia o TV watching Some Stupid Human Tricks Based on physical stucture of the brain Detailed genetic characteristics With the Vastness of Time Complexities have accumulated MacLean s Triune Brain o Reptilian o If you look at the brain of a reptile you can find the same brain structures that we have in our brain though the human brain has more structures o Paleomammalian o Neomammalian Each of these sets of additional brain structures came over millions of years adding complexities to the brain structure Freud s Triune Mind o Id o Ego o Superego o Id When an alligator is hungry and sees food it eats o Edo hungry something bigger has food so must find a clever way to get food away from bigger o Superego I m hungry you have food and you re bigger but I know how to trick you out of the food but nice people don t do There exists a fundamental compatibility between the brain and the that lawful universe Frog Hearts and Broken Brains 01 19 2011 Drugs do not possess some essence that magically induces a change in behavior They act through the normal channels of our physiological response to the environment as human organisms in a complex environment we are fortunate that these inter actions are complicated animal electricity Ben Franklin s kite o Discovered a new form of energy o invisible force Galvani s frog legs o Came up with instruments that allowed us to measure and produce electricity o Showed with an experiment that with lightening frog legs can move Shows that electricity is involved in the way we as humans operate and move The Action Potential General features o All or none You either have enough of a stimulus to cause the reaction to occur or you don t Nothing in between Ex gun pull trigger hard enough it will fire Not hard enough wont fire No inbetween o 1 100 m sec Electricity in the nervous system moves at this velocity in the fibers of the body This is a biological process that propogates along the nerves as opposed to moving through them like in an electrical wire Info has to get to the eyes and once it gets to the eyes things slow down and information moves to the back of the head to say you ve seen it goes to a different part of the brain and then tells the
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