We receive information about the outside world through our senses, specifically our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. Specialized nerve cells, which have developed to respond to particular external stimuli, such as light or sound, give rise to the raw material of...
Psychology
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Neural pathways
Neurons are the smallest units of the nervous system. Each neuron contains a cell nucleus (the cell body) surrounded by dendrites and axons. Dendrites receive messages from other neurons and send them back along axons. A single neuron can communicate with thousands of...
Areas of the brain
In the brain, electrical impulses are sent via neurons towards the sensory receptors in order to alert us of an event happening around us. They enter the brain through the olfactory bulb (the nose), through the optic nerve (eyes), and into the thalamus (spinal cord)....
Brain damage and what it can tell us
The first real evidence about localization of function in the brain comes from the study of people with brain injuries. One famous patient was Phineas P. Gage, whose injury changed his personality. With the patient’s severe speech disorder, physiologist Paul Broca...
Consciousness
Knowledge of the physiology and anatomy of the human body should tell us a lot about how our sense data is processed in the brain. Yet, relatively little is known about how the brain processes these sensations, or what it is like to perceive them. Consciousness is...
What’s happening in the conscious brain?
Many of the advances made in neuroscience have come about due to advances in technology. Non-invasive methods of examining brain activity include EEG and MRI. It was soon realized that there are levels of consciousness ranging from fully awake, to daydreaming,...
Waking and sleeping
Humans spend approximately one-third of each day sleeping. In addition to the usual 8 hours, we frequently nap during the day. However, the sleep/wake cycle varies from person to person. Some people go through periods where they get little sleep or take naps...
What happens when we are sleeping?
Our bodies are usually inactive during sleep, so while we may have little awareness of the external world, our brains continue to work. The brain goes deeper into stages of sleep towards low activity. After around 90 minutes, however, our brain activity switches...
Motivation: needs and drives
As well as biological factors such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and basic physiological needs, there also exist psychological forces that drive us. Psychologists Clark Hull (1943) and Walter Cannon (1920) both developed their ideas about the role of these...
Behaviourism
The behaviorist approach emerged from the belief that only observable actions can be studied scientifically. During the early part of the twentieth century, scientists wanted to separate themselves from philosophers who had speculated about the nature of the human...
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Beginnings of experimental psychology
One of the most eminent figures in the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline was the German physiologist, Wilhelm Wundt. Through his research into how people perceive sensations, Wundt developed the first psychological laboratories and became influential in...
Pavlov’s dogs
One of the fundamental theories in the history of psychology was made by a physiologist, not a psychological experimenter. In the early 1890s, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, studying the physical workings of the stomachs of dogs, devised a way of collecting and...
A wide range
During the twentieth century, psychology developed into a broad field of study. Social and Developmental Psychology, Individual Differences, and Clinical Psychology became important areas of research. In the United States, a new generation of Psychologists, inspired...
Biological psychology
Neuroscience — the study of the structure and function of the nervous system — emerged as a separate discipline at about the same time as psychology became a recognized science. At the same time, developments in the physical sciences (including physics) and biology...
The brain and nervous system
Although the heart has been traditionally viewed as the ‘seat of the soul’, the ancient Egyptians recognized that the brain is the home of the mind. Even for mind-body dualists, who believe the immaterial mind and physical body to be quite separate, the brain is where...
Free Course in Semiology
A completely and truly free course on Semiology (Semiotics). Learn about the meaning of signs, how and why did the field emerged. What is the relationship between the street signs and the signs that we use every day - words.
