Psychology One; What The Brain Does

Psychology with Edwin G boring the Edgar peers professor of psychology and Lowell television lecturer Harvard University. The subject of this program what the brain does. Dr. boring. Now let me say a word about psychology and psychology ones of course. And I think some of you don't fully understand what happens in a courts. We have to talk about things that we explain later are wrong. You can't really wrap up everything in the same session. And I counted up I counted up the time for unless there were things all of which got to be taken up later some of them pretty soon and some of them very much later we talked about freedom and determinism and one of you wanted to know why I didn't say more about freedom when I said I would state some more about freedom when you know enough about determinism so be patient with me. I remember that of course looks ahead to other

things and later on of course it's going to look back on things. And it can be hell. This is the way of course it was all of them together and see the relationship. That said let's go where our way. Last time we talked about this time we talk about the brae the great big. So let's look at the spine. Spinal cord all that and important that the first level above the Final Four are going to the top and then on top is a sterile room with the big cortex means this is the main thing and that's where the connections are made. All right now that there's a

question of level and I want you to see a chart we've got of. This this is the way this thing can be made to give medically this is a receptor in a sense this is coming in what part of the nervous system is out there are fibers that don't end up they go down the muscles. Part of this is the response. We've got a spinal level here that means this all right and we've got that. Here's the sound of the volunteers the car to call them of the cortex up above and you see there can be connections that cut across. Down below are the go up. You can't come in. They can come in the medulla but not this represents just say the simplest thing that could happen.

One of your own hair and a member of the synopses connected with its fibers on each end. Or more likely you get this sort of thing with your own hands just to get one inside the spinal cord. More complicated things you can go up to the level and some of the responses come in that some of the new can come back like this. Like just say Are you going to have these things happen at the level. This is old this is what happens. Cortex is out to get a very angry expression fresh me and dogs that got injured lost part of the cortex. This will then work out in this gentle fashion and this way and then at the very top the most elaborate thing is what you get up to the cortical level you can come across here and down here this is the express elevator to the elevator whenever the day comes on down

in this fashion. Without any stops you say are you can get things up. Come on down and play and come out. They can be short circuiting and you'll find that some of the things that you know best in their simplest don't seem to involve this level recently learned or elaborate. Things do find that animals that often work then have to work a wreck can perceive that general level not in the style of us but at the polemic level. And a man can't perceive visual brightness the brightness of an object unless he has his visual cortex intact. So this is the general picture that we have to keep in mind. With various things. Right. All right that's the sort of thing that we're mainly talking about. Now that now then I want to talk about the centers of the brain. And their projection and we look at the

slide we've seen before. You say this is the schematic. It shows three sensory centers vision this is the back background of the back of your head. This is vision. Man's got to have that in order to see rats not so much can't see patterns or shapes without. Here's the hearing region this is the touch region. I think you've got to learn a new word. We've got to learn so much so much. It means body feelings. So my means but it's like aesthetics you say it means feeling it mightily feeling so much these are covers that touch in the skin the pain pressure one foot cold in the skin and you know no longer a stuffy nose to the air. The heart oppression and dizziness when you weren't around. And what happens when you go up in the elevator

too fast all of us but they all come under body feelings and they're all localized and I hear that there's a fissure in the brain the motor region up here the motor cortex is there. And don't forget the front which is the mysterious front. We're going to talk about some. Well now And now let's get back to some of the thesis that let's say the next slide that comes down on this because this illustrates. How projection operate. Here you've got a diagram of Sinaloan diagram but it's a diagram that shows the scheme of things pretty well. This line down here it's called. What that means really means the outside of the body. This would be really the skin that we're talking about and these and these then straight lines are meant to represent nerves as they go up here. This would be point on the skin you stimulate it a nerve fiber or a chain of nerve fibers a

synopsis would be excited and then you would excite crime up here at that point. Thanks expectation would spread would be a spread of thing like big a doobie it would spread like this. And if you're stimulate both little and it will be together. So you get boats big and big b together. You get the stem of them which is s which is the sum to that means which to me I think two points that are fairly close together but nevertheless feel like one. And if you put them very far apart then these don't overlap at all in the field. Two points and if you put them somewhat in-between then right then you'll get a sort of a dumbbell or two hills with a saddle between them because they like to go on up like that. That thing works out. But. But projection isn't as simple as the diagram shows it. It's what is called here another word now. It's what is called a logical projection. Now the diagram had on a topographical

projection in other words it made it look as if this space shape shapes and distances in the brain were just corresponded to those on the skin that's not true. The nerves was cut out in different ways some places many many nerves come from a small region of the skin and they spread out in the brain and sometimes they come together and the distances are quite different ways. The in-between US stays the same always always if you got a C on the skin in that order I would be in between A and C then in the brain. The correspondence will be A B C and never b b a c. Two things crossing over each other the alters and kept the statement up a logical bijection but not. Now let me show you on this chart more like that. Here is a diagram. Of. A section of the brain. And here are.

This is for sensation. And look and I think. That's a little better right. Something like that. So you see this is much much much. Thanks thanks. Well you know

the thing that you look at. All right that's. All right. The way. Things get projected this is the right front corner from. Their work like camera work like camera images reversed. Its reverse. So it's on the right over here and over here and on the right side sees the left or right after the break and the right side of the cross to the right.

Right right. Across as you understand what I'm saying. You can see it. They all get to get that right so that the right to the left field of vision and look over that this is a very specific projection this projection. An object. You have a look at that's a big thing if you're going to put my brain on the right path my card looks to me with the parties on both laps and that sort of insurance. You lose one half of them. And then everything that you've got.

All right that's the way I think. About it. This is meant to be the same and not meant to be on the same level because it's for the front. This is back in the brain and this one. Here cut down in front of it. Here you go on like. That you got in there. And. Face it. And. You haven't got any. Protection that. All right. That's the way. We're going to talk about intelligence.

To work through a. Potentiality. And math ect. If. Something happens. To the brain of a cat. And it has learned. Oh perhaps So get out of the puzzle box together. To fix the. Problem the front part of the heart of the thing. It may sometimes. Have the recent learning interfered with but very often not. And it becomes very surprising to find out how much of the brain. An animal. Human being that's what happens with accidents can be misleading. And habits are not interfered with or the capacity to learn.

This set is sometimes called function you know vicarious. I mean is the man who works for the director are he works in his place. And so you write. A great deal of vicarious function. One part of the brain will seem to work for another and you can get along then with one part missing because the other part of the brain would take for this is the basic thing. The other hand the more parts the ready to operate. And the thing they say for you are. You've got insurance that so far that you don't see with vision because if you injure one side the other side opposite you can injure one side of the. Brain where the center for hearing is still got a long hearing will not be an intelligent action like learning to run because that's what we're going to talk about mostly

now learning to run. Very well. That's the first part of it that you find that you can take out a part of the rats and it was me but you'll find that it makes more errors when it has some of its brains missing. The higher the maize the more they make. Notion the potential which is called mass action mass action says the money. It doesn't matter what I want $10 ten dollars which $10 in the bank doesn't matter what the function just as well. So you find in the brain that brain are independent things like power.

But if you don't have enough brains operate it's not going to hear. 100 percent 50 percent 60 percent. And this is hard to look at this thing I just want you to be sure. Better draw. Here is you see this is the easy made up. Well this is 50 percent for the rest

on the average 40 earths I learned this when they had only half the brains and that got all of one to 10 percent. I don't know what the numbers. For the hard. Thing Go look at the heart of. This one a. One thousand five. Hundred forty. Talks. Until they can be more brains you have the better you can learn majors if you are a rat but I think the same general principle must hold for a human bean because we find that there is so much of the brain that one can get along with. All right I think that's the main business about mass action. This thing you see happens. In the front of. It happens also in back in the front but the frontal lobes are involved.

And then the great puzzle. What what do they do. What can you say. From there used to be called the Silent. A long time ago think much from seventy years ago there was a man. I think he's name was Phineas Gage. Anyhow that's a good name like that. Let's call him Phineas Gage. Then who was working tamping dynamite in and the dynamite exploded and blew the crowbar he was working with through his head. It went straight through here this is an embarrassing thing to happen but it didn't turn out nearly so badly as everybody would have expected or did you expect. He had had to get well to be fixed up in the hospital. But when that was done he went home. You seem to be pretty nearly all right although you had a crow bar and this.

Bar and I don't remember your name it's finesse and not and you get the skull out of the Harvard Medical School's museum that they were the whole way they just couldn't stand it was interesting one of these. They don't need to be there but they came at the end. They must need to be there what was the use to developing this great big. So for a man to make him better than rat unless you want to and here spending it on a crowbar. Well that's that's the puzzle and now we know it's some thing more about this not too much. You can interrupt the connection. With in the frontal lobes that's called cutting through. Well. You can take some of it out. That's Carlo back to man talk about a

lot of work about the same way that you know back to me and I take some of the tissue can be done with a rat. It can be done when Matt is done to get a great anxiety hospital. He may know. Some about starting up some of them and breaking the connections inside. You think that's just the latest thing operate. If you take. Take out a mole. And remove part of the frontal lobe is what happens. Well I'm already not always so much happen. But one thing that seems to happen is that the animals can plan so well in the sense I'm using those words because they apply to you and that you can see that working in them. Once they had an experiment with the monkey. And the monkeys. Were in a cage. Well it took one monkey at a time. A

monkey would be in a cage and he couldn't reach and they like bananas and they give him a rate. The rake was long enough to reach the banana he would rake the banana in. Not fun. But suppose it was. Well they could give him I no longer use the short to get them a down I went alone with this thing then worked out a long story that it got so the market monkey could learn to take a short break to rake in a longer rake the wood which he raked in along with what you make it along with what you raked in the banana or any degree of complication you want to go on that and that. That's the kind of planning in advance. And that's the kind of thing that doesn't happen when you got. Not enough low. So. It looks. A man with a big bottom.

I didn't plan so much. It was a story out there that had a front of the bottom in gone right out made a million dollars in the stock. Like. I don't know that this is true but I'm sure you know this is not a sure way of making him like it but it could have happened. You know it could have happened because he would take. Chances he wouldn't be so careful about he wouldn't plan so much in advance. And it isn't. Related to our well this isn't satisfactory. Sorry I can tell you more about the front load but this is the kind of thing that happens. The only other thing we know is that activity is somewhat dependent on the frontal lobes so that a frontal lobotomy on a rat makes it more active. And to be on a monkey depresses him for a while then makes him more active. But and they thing and they still remain

silent. Not just time to say a little bit about the evolution of the nervous system what happens next got some words for you and I'm sorry but the big way. Here they are. And separate those ation Kartika those Asian. Pacific projection and you know that Hogan. And specialization. This means that the functions of the nervous system as evolution goes on tend. Toward the head in a direction that had to separate us say. So that well we have an example. The frog doesn't need his head. So much as you do that that's what it comes down to a frog with out.

Head can still scratch yourself way out of spec himself and put a drop of acid on him and with only a piece of spinal cord that he's able to bring up his hind foot and scratch the right place this is very interesting you wouldn't do that to be dead there wouldn't be any scratches. But that's what you brought up. Now then when the functions get when I say when I'm talking about the evolutionary development you see when the functions get up in. The brain they tend to go to the cortex and the more they go to the cortex the bigger partakes get so you see you've got quite a colonization now. Now a good example of this is that the rat the rat can discriminate brightnesses without any terrible cortex visual brightness and he cannot discriminate shapes and patterns you can't tell a triangle from a square but a right triangle from a dark side that you care if your cortex is gone you are just blind you don't

see anything about the thing and then when they get up into the cortex you begin to get specific projections. And the most specific projection of all of the one about the one that we saw about the visual regions because that very very specific you say one half of the figure left the field of vision in the right brain the other in the other and specific spots within. So that's a very considerable development in hearing it isn't quite so specific. It goes to both sides of the brain. And you really got a spare in here you can do without one side right and hear but you can't see the last one side of the area for vision and then this business of unilateral dominance. Well that's. When. Both sides of the brain work different play but one gets more important than the other. The speech isn't saying they're the left side of the brain is especially important for speech you keep saying that this is a speech center left brain that because

it was worked best in speech when that's there if there's injuries or speech defect. And that goes with handedness because most people are right handed and the left side of the brain the nerves crossover that operates and makes them right handed. And there's a body a pretty strong belief that speech center and handedness going together and the people that are left handed must be using the right side of the brain so probably they have their speech centers on the right side of their brain to learn to handedness opposite. So that's essentially what we have to say about the brain now than what it was said. I always said the brain is got the connections in it and it operates in that general fashion that it's mostly the place where there are connections that mass action potential in various ways that mass action works that my brain is you've got the better you are the projection is there a specific play but it's a logical it isn't

exact and quite precise and that's the sort of thing the brain is by. Psychology and windy boring professor of psychology and television lecturer Harvard University. Psychology won is produced by the Lowell Institute. Broadcasting Council in the studios of WGBH TV Boston this is National Educational Television.