Behavioral Neuroscience

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Behavioral Neuroscience

• Course Overview
• Viewpoints to Study Behavior
• Dualism
• Monoism
• Seat of Reason
• Localizationists (Phrenology)
• Modern Era
• Functional Unit of the Nervous System
• Animal Research
• Technological Advances

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Course Overview

• Lecture Format
• Teaching Staff
• Requirements
• Assessment

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5 Viewpoints

• Observation
• Evolution / Adaptation
• Ontogeny
• Physiology / Nervous System
• Applied Research

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Dualism

• Mind / Soul
• Body

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Monoism

• Mind as a Function of Body
• Underlying physiology

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Seat of Reason

• Egyptian
• Greek
• Cardiocentric
• Physiology / Nervous System
• Descartes (hydraulic)
• Cerebrocentric

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Localizationists

• Phrenology
• Wernickes and Brocas (Aphasia)
• Language comprehension Speech (rhyme)
• Speech difficulty (output)
• Does size matter?

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Modern Era

• Psychological Process as a Function of Nervous
  System
• Learning and Memory
• Thorndike
• Pavlov
• Engram
• Neural Plasticity

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Basic Unit of Nervous System

• Anatomical Techniques
• Neuron
• Glial Cells
• Reductionism

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Animal Research

• IACUC
• Extent of Use
• Homologous to Human Conditions?
• Usefulness
• Lack of Alternative Models / Ethics of Human
  Research

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Ongoing Research

• Technological Advances
• View of active brain
• 3-D picture of brain
• Synthetic Substances
• Treatment of psychiatric disorders
• Human Genome Project
• Identifying genetic origin of disease

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Take Home Message

• Long Timeline of Interest in Mind / Body
• 19th Century Focus on Brain
• Functional neuron / glial cells
• Localizationists to neural plasticity
• Research Models
• Advances in Technology
• Progress in Research / More to be Learned