【公开课】耶鲁大学：心理学导论

心理学导论（耶鲁公开课）

P1: Introduction

[简介]The course is about

:

A comprehensive introduction to the scientific study of the human mind. The topics cover brains, children, language, sex, memory, madness, disgust, racism, love, etc.

[对生活的好处]The general benefit of the course

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The study of scientific psychology has a lot of insights into real-world relevance to real problems. How you study, interact with people, persuade somebody of something else, what sort of therapy works best for what condition, etc.

[学科分类]Traditionally, psychology is often broken up into five sub-areas

:

• Neuroscience (神经科学, the study of the mind by looking at the brain)
• Developmental (发展心理学, the study about how people develop and grow/learn)
• Cognitive (认知心理学, refers to a sort of computational approach to studying the mind. Looking at how people understand language, recognize objects, play games, etc.)
• Social (社会心理学, the study of how people act in groups and act with others)
• Clinical (临床心理学, the study of mental health and mental illness)

[相关学科]Associated disciplines

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We cannot study the mind solely by looking at the discipline of psychology, it is associated with:

• Evolutionary biology
• Economics and Game Theory (essential tools for understanding human thought and behaviour)
• Philosophy
• Computer science
• Anthropology (人类学)
• Literature
• Theology (神学)
• Other domain…

[经典案例与问题]Classic cases and interesting questions

(自此列举众多例子以及心理学中的一些重要疑问,后续课程有详解)

[介绍总结]Conclusion

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By looking at extreme cases, they can help us best understand normal life. It throws into sharp contrast things we naturally take for granted. The issue of psychopathy, of people who either due to brain damage or because they are born that way, have no moral understanding, can help us cope with questions of free will and responsibility; or the relationship of difference between mental illness and evil. Study these abnormal cases, we could get some insight into regular life.

P2: Brain

[灵魂是否具有实体]Different perspectives on body and mind：

• The Astonishing Hypothesis from Francis Crick: "a person's mental activities are entirely due to the behaviour of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”
• Dualism (二元论)(in the context of philosophy) refers to the idea that the mind and the body are separate entities (known as mind-body dualism). This concept suggests that the mind is a non-physical substance or entity, while the body is a physical matter. (The supporting argument comes from 1. language, 2. Personal identity(we can imagine how we would feel in other types of bodies), 3. The survival of the self after the destruction of the body)

Current view: Dualism is wrong (with strong evidence for the role of the brain), it can be considered that Mind = Brain.

[大脑运作的基本单元-神经元]The basic unit of the brain.

• Definition: Neurons are specialized cells in the nervous system that transmit information throughout the body. They are the fundamental units of the nervous system(around a thousand billion in brian, a complicated computing device) and play a crucial role(three types of neurons: 1. sensor, 2. motor, 3. interneurons(for thinking)) in the processing and communication of information.
• Structure: Neurons consist of a cell body, which contains the nucleus and other organelles, as well as processes called dendrites(树突) and an axon(轴突). Dendrites are the branched extensions of the cell body that receive information from other neurons, while the axon is a long, thin extension that carries information away from the cell body to other neurons or to target cells such as muscles or glands(腺体).
• Mechanisms: Neurons communicate with each other through synapses(突触), which are specialized junctions between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of another. When an electrical impulse, or action potential, reaches the end of an axon, it triggers the release of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters(神经递质), which travel across the synapse and bind to receptors on the dendrite of the receiving neuron. This process can either excite or inhibit the activity of the receiving neuron, depending on the specific neurotransmitter involved and the context of the communication. The strength of each neuron is fixed(all or nothing) and the overall sensation strength is determined by the number of neurons responding and the frequency of the response.
• Influencing method (fiddling with neurotransmitters): 1. Agonist, (e.g. Amphetamines increase the amount of arousal, Prozac works on serotonin) increase the effect of it (by making more of it, making fake neurotransmitters or stopping its cleanup) 2. Antagonists,(e.g. Curare blocks motor neurons from affecting muscle fibres causing paralyzes, alcohol) slow down the amount of it (by destroying it, making it hard to create or avoid the connecting process)

[大脑与电脑的对比]What is the advantage of the brain?

• Highly resistant to damage
• Extremely fast (Brains works through massively parallel processing)

[不需要大脑的行为]Actions that don’t need a brain.

• Subcortical structures(皮下层结构) for sucking in newborns, limb flexion in withdrawal from pain, erection of the penis, conditioned reflexes like vomiting, e.g.
• Medulla:(脊髓) certain reflexes, heartbeat, breathing
• Cerebellum(小脑): Complicated skilled motor movements
• Hypothalamus(下丘脑): hunger, thirst, sleep.

[大脑与大脑皮层]Related knowledge of cortex:

• The cortex(大脑皮层) is the most related part of human mental life, it contains 80% of the body of human brains.
• Lobes in the cortex include topological maps of body parts. Its position in the brain corresponds similarly to the real body position, and its size depends on sensory abilities.
• less than 1/4 of the cortex contains projection areas, the rest is involved with language, reasoning, moral thought, etc. From rats, cats, and dogs to monkeys, and humans, the proportion of projection areas decreased.
• Some diseases are associated with cortex damage rather than specific organs: Apraxia, Agnosia, Sensory neglect, Aphasia, Acquired psychopathy, etc.
• Some functions of the brain are lateralized. Some functions are cross-over: two halves are connected.

[P2结语]Conclusions:

We may treat the mind as an information processor as an elaborate computer. We study different problems by figuring out what sort of problem can solve these problems and how could this program be instantiated in a physical brain. There remains a deep puzzle that how things give us consciousness and subjective experience. You should choose your own way to consider different perspectives on body and mind.