...Module 13 Notes Our Divided Brain • We have known for over 100 years that despite looking alike, each side of the brain has different purposes. -Research collected over this century (about damage to the left hemisphere) proved this hemisphere was for reading, speaking, writing, reasoning, math, etc. -Around 1960, it was discovered that the right hemisphere had its own unique functions. • In 1961, patients suffering from severe epileptic seizures had their corpus callosum (which links both brain hemispheres) cut. Their seizures stopped. • Afterwards, these patients with split brains were experimented on, their personality and intellect were surprisingly unaffected. • One of these experiments involved the phrase "HE.ART" being flashed at them, with the dot being at the center of their vision (therefore "HE" went to the right brain and "ART" went to the left brain). -When the patients were asked what they saw, they said "ART" (using the left brain) but pointed to "HE" (using the right brain). [pic][pic][pic] • As evidenced by this experiment, after split-brain surgery, the two brain hemispheres have different functions. -They struggle to communicate with each other and often think different things. __________________________________________________________________ Right-Left Differences in the Intact Brain • People who have their corpus callosum intact have hemispheres that instantly communicate with...
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...CONS: 00018 a0005 Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness D M Rosenthal, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA ã 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. s0005 Introduction The term ‘consciousness’ is used in several ways: to describe a person or other creature as being awake and sentient, to describe a person or other creature as being ‘aware of ’ something, and to refer to a property of mental states, such as perceiving, feeling, and thinking, that distinguishes those states from unconscious mental states. Distinguishing these different concepts of consciousness is crucial in evaluating the major theories of what it is for a state to be conscious. Among those are first-order theories, on which a mental state is conscious if being in that state results in one’s being conscious of something; global-workspace theories, on which a state is conscious if it’s widely available for mental processing; inner-sense theories, on which a state is conscious if one senses or perceives that state by way of a special inner faculty; and higher-orderthought theories, on which a state is conscious if one is aware of that state by having a thought about it. We will consider the advantages and shortcomings of these theories and variants of them. p0005 s0010 Concepts of Consciousness (I) The ubiquity of consciousness in human life and mental functioning makes it easy to overlook that the term ‘consciousness’ is used for three distinct phenomena. Though related in...
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...Chapter 1 The Dimensions of Psychology Summary: Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors. Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases, and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit society. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist, and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain cognitive functions and behaviors. Structuralism was the first school of psychology and focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection. Wilhelm Wundt, founder of the first psychology lab, was an advocate of this position and is often considered the founder of structuralism, despite the fact that it was his student, Edward B. Titchener who first coined the term to describe this school of thought. Functionalism formed as a reaction to the structuralism and was heavily influenced by the work of William James and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. Functionalists sought to explain the mental processes in a more systematic and accurate...
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