Biology 202 Neurobiology and Behavior Spring 2007

The challenge in general

• Expert Ties Ex-Players Suicide to Brain Damage
• To Fight Stuttering, Doctors Look at the Brain
• An Image of Consciousness Creates a Stir
• Is Hysteria Real? Brain Images Say Yes
• Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain is to Blame
• Are You a Giver? Brain Scan Finds the Truth
• Excape from the Insipid: Our Brains May be Wired for Daydreaming
• Consciousness May Be a Sure Bet
• Knowing the Ingredients Can Change the Taste
• Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
• Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle
• Voices in My Head Say "But It!" Why Argue?
• Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don't

Review of Blink, NY Times Book Review, 16 January, 2005

The response in general

Biology major?
Psychology major?
NBS concentrator?
Other majors
Satisfy science requirement
Interested in biology/nervous system?
Interested in psychology/behavior?
Interested in philosophy/nature of reality/human experience?
Interested in practical problems? medicine, psychiatry, education social activism, etc?
Want to understand who you are? why you/other people behave the way you/they do? What you/they can do about it? Serendip's Brain and Behavior

Neurobiology and BEHAVIOR ... what is "behavior"?

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NEUROBIOLOGY and behavior ... Neurobiology = study of the nervous system ... what is the "nervous system"?

	Image by Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), contemporary of Copernicus, suggested (less than 500 years ago) that nervous system rather than heart was origin of behavior (see Milestones in Neuroscience Research for a time line extending from 4,000 B.C.).		Image by Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Set framework for several centuries (and continuing) discussion: mind and body distinct things or same thing?
	Nervous system is material object, part of body, can be touched, manipulated, measured. What IS the relationship between brain (nervous system) and behavior (broadly defined to include human experience)? Subset of this are questions such as the relation between mind and brain, mind and body, matter and spirit, matter and form ...

The core of the challenge

• Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
• Francis Crick, contemporary: The Astonishing Hypothesis: "a person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells ... and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them".
• Paul Grobstein, contemporary: "Brain = behavior, there isn't anything else." (Descartes' was ... wrong; we are actually nothing more, and nothing less, than organized clumps of matter)
• "let your neurons make up their own damn mind" - NY Times Review of Blink, 16 January 2005 .... ???

Agree with Dickinson et al.
Disagree with Dickinson et al.
Unsure/fence-sitting

Brain = behavior?, from a "scientific" approach:

Issue is not "Truth" but whether there is a good "summary of observations", "working hypothesis", something that contributes to getting it continually "less wrong" is useful for the ongoing generation of new stories in science and in culture at large ...

Start with overview of the "trend of the evidence":

• Behavior can be altered by altering the nervous system
  • Traumatic brain damage
  • Surgery, drugs, and ... ?
  • Epilepsy as an instance
• Lots of aspects have behavior, even quite sophisticated ones, have "material" feel about them
• Surprising and quite sophisticated things can emerge from interactions of simple elements (of which the brain/nervous system is an example, as we'll see).
  • one example
  • another
  • and another
• It isn't that anything "disappears" as one discovers things related to the brain but rather that the Brain gets "wider"
  • Disadvantages?
    • Vulnerability?
    • Amorality?
    • Indifference to the interpersonal?
    • Using MRI's to See Politics on the Brain ???
  • Advantages:
    • ???
    • would make the unobservable observable?
• Brain=behavior "True"? ("perhaps we just do not have the right microscopes yet"?). Good "story"?

Our task for the semester (and beyond?):

Let's roll ... Forum area this weekend: YOUR thoughts on "brain=behavior", on science, on ... ?

• Is "brain = behavior" a good story? What's problematic about it?
  • observations to date?
  • difficulties in extension to additional things?
  • implications for other stories?

To be continued  


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