Biology of Mind

Biology of Mind Modules 4, 5 and 6 * Everything psychological is simultaneously biological * Plato correctly located the mind in the spherical head * Aristotle believed mind was in the heart * Although heart is the symbol for love, psychology has proven that you fall in love using your brain * 1800s Franz Gall (German psychologist) invented phrenology theory that claims that bumps on our skull could reveal our mental ability and character traits * Biological Psychology – the branch of psychology concerned with the links between biology and behaviour * Biological psychologists sometimes called Behavioural neuroscientist, neuropsychologist, behaviour geneticist, psychological psychologist, bio psychologist … * We are a system of substances, that are composed of even smaller substances (tiny cells make up body organs) * Body’s information system is built from billions of tiny interconnected system of neurones * Sensory Neurones – neurons that carry incoming information from the sensory receptor the brain and the spinal cord for processing – “afferent” * Motor Neurons – the neurons that carry outgoing information from the brain to the muscles and the glands – “efferent” * Interneurons – neurons within the brain and the spinal corf that that communicate internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and the motor outputs * Each neuron consists of a: * Cell body and branching fibres (the cell’s life support center) * Dendrite fibres – receive information and conduct it toward the cell body * Axon – passes messages away from the cell body to other neurons, muscles and glands * Can be very long projecting several feet into the body * Myelin sheath – a layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fibres of many neurons * Allows for fast impulse transmission among neurons * If myelin sheath degenerates, communication to muscles