Please read chapter 3. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
One of the most interesting topics I read in chapter three was the origin of phrenology. Today in education, we are just told and shown how the brain functions and which parts of the brain contribute to certain human actions and emotions, but in the past that wasn’t thought of at all. Gall and Spurzheim researched and experimented for years and years on the brain and which location of the brain controlled certain “human faculties.” They were the ones who taught the world about themselves and how and why humans function the way they do. To believe that just examining a person’s brain could tell you everything important about a person is a bit far stretched and was tested and proven wrong throughout the years that followed. The second thing I found interesting was Magendie and his study on the spinal chord. The fact that he used a six-week old puppy was just absolutely disturbing to me. He did get criticized for it, but that still was very shocking to read. He was very intelligent, nonetheless, and his research proved that when he concluded that the roots of the spinal cord controlled sensations, while anterior roots controlled motor responses. The third thing I found interesting was the case of Phineas Gage. After having a tamping iron shot through his skull, taking out his left frontal cortex, he still survived. However, he became a completely different person personality wise. He was described as being the polar opposite of who he previously was. His case had helped in research that personality traits were held greatly in the left frontal cortex of the human brain.
The one thing I found least interesting was Helmholtz and his vision and hearing research. Although it is very important, I lost focus while reading about how the eyes pick up different colors due to different fibres and sensitivities.
The study of the nervous system and it’s physiological context is helps to understand psychology more because it introduced the scientific approach that past physiologists and scientists did. They took action and did experiments on actual brains of humans and other species to better understand how and why the brain functions the way it does and how it affects the body. Understanding the brain is what psychology is about anyways, right? If we know how the brain works, we can better understand why brain damage dramatically affects a person.
The research on the nervous systems builds on the previous chapters because it introduced more scientific approaches along with philosophical questioning.
I would like to learn more about which parts of the brain control specific human functions. Since each part of the brain controls specific parts of humans, it’s very interesting in knowing what could inhibit or contribute to making those functions work better, or why they weaken with illnesses or injury.
Ideas I had during this chapter mainly related to my drugs and individual behavior class. We are currently studying the brain also and learning about the past and how scientists discovered neurons and synapses is so amusing to me.
I found the topic of phrenology to be very interesting. I found this topic very interesting because without any further knowledge, other than the basic definition, this concept sounds absolutely ridiculous and almost amusing. However, after reading more about how the theory came about, and what outcomes it did have, especially for the history of American society, it a topic that resulted information derived at that particular point in time, that had attributes that were both logical and correct. Gall was correct in first introducing the topic of localization of the brain, and that different faculties of the brain were responsible for different things. Logically, he believed that if one faculty was bigger or more pronounced than the other than the person flourished in that particular faculty. Continuing with his logic, he then believed that since the skull takes on the shape of the brain, to an extent, also called the “doctrine of the skull”, than certain areas of the brain, or faculties, should protrude through the skull and would be distinguishable to human touch. This theory doesn’t sound near as ridiculous once it is explained and examined, as well as the fact that it had led to the knowledge of brain faculties and functions.
I secondly found the topic of phrenology interesting in terms of how it affected American society during that time. In contrast of Gall’s belief that the brain faculties and their size were “native traits,” Spurzheim believed that our environment could shape our faculties in different ways, thus being able to change our behavior in accordance to the “nurture” aspect of the nature vs. nurture conflict. This theory was influential to American citizens because it backed up the notion that we are capable of many things in our lives, and as the book states “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” (Goodwin pg. 78). Phrenology was also important in exemplifying the concept of individual differences, and with these differences identified then a person will be able to excel in the context of proper career choice relating to their individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as finding a spouse that is best for you. I found this especially interesting, because the topic that was thought to be so ridiculous helped form some of our core beliefs as an American society, that anything is possible and that we are society is composed of all different walks of life, we are all unique.
The last topic I found interesting in this chapter was the case of Phineas Gage. While Gage was working on the railroad, he suffered an accident that resulted in a tamping iron being shot into his head below his eye, and went through the other side of his forehead taking along a good portion of his left frontal cortex. Not only is in interesting to me that he survived, or the fact that he was able to function enough to be able to walk into the doctor’s office, but also the fact that he had recovered enough to be deemed able to live independently! Although he was able to function enough to be able to live, how he had changed from it is mind-boggling, especially in the context of when the accident happened. His personality and demeanor completed a full 360, and was said to be “no longer Gage.” The case was especially important , however, for supporting the cerebral localization belief. Gage was evidence in proving that certain areas of the brain, in his case the left frontal cortex, were responsible for different functions from memory to personality and behavior, such as Gage.
During the sections discussing the neuron theory and synapses, I had to push myself to keep reading through it. Physiological science is not really a topic of interest for me, and I continually find myself getting the terms mixed up as well as finding the material harder to understand. A lot of what’s discussed seems like jibberish to me. Even though I’m not very interested in this topic however, it is one that I would like to learn more about. I feel like if I had a better grasp on the material presented in this section, it would be a lot more interesting to learn about further.
Chapter 3 builds upon previous chapters, especially chapter 2, because it further explains the foundations of 19th century psychology, as well as explaining the different objective methods for studying the mind and the brain. In the last chapter a majority of the material discussed was philosophical issues, theories, and questions; and this chapter builds upon these issues by physiologists using different objective methods to try and answer the questions as well as resolve the issues that philosophers originally brought about.
One idea I had while reading this chapter relates back to one of the topics I found the most interesting, phrenology; and how influential it was to the roots of American society. If this seemingly ridiculous concept had such an impact on our society’s history, what other developments in psychology, whether considered ridiculous or regarded made a contribution of that caliber in some other area? Or maybe even made a contribution in a different way to our society?
The first thing I found interesting was the elightenment period itself. It was a time of true scientific discovery. It is also what we are discussing currently in my humanities class. I think that all of the things that came to be during this period are amazing. People started believing in more scientific means of an answer. I liked how the book explained people like Newton as heros because I do believe that they are often not recognized as heros.
The second thing that I found to be interesting was the issue of the guillotine. I thought it was really cool that someone would go through all the trouble of studying on animals and human severed heads to figure out if the killing of someone was humane or not. Its also amazingly interesting to find out that your body can make movements, voluntary or not, after you have been severed from your brain and the rest of your head.
The final thing I found interesting in this chapter was the thought of vitalism versus materialism. I think it was a true sign of enlightenment and scientific thought when people need to find evidence for every ideals. That instead of using some "vital force" to help support your theory or idea, people actually started needing evidence.
The one thing that I found least interesting is the same thing that I always find least interesting about the study of psychology and that is the study of the eyes and ears. I don't ever quite understand why we need to learn about the eyes and ears in psychology. We don't learn about any other anatomy but we seem to think we need the eyes and ears.
I think the thing that will be most useful to my understanding of the history of psychology is the description of phrenology and how it came to be. I think this would be most useful not because it is still correct (because it is most certainly false now) but because it shows a little bit about how people used to think about what caused mental illnesses and differences between people and their thinking.
This chapter starts to deepen the understanding and continues chronologically on the history of psychology. We have started to learn about what happened and what people came up with when psychology was starting to be considered a real science.
I would really like to learn more about the guillotine idea and how different species and humans act when they have become decapitated. I know it's kind of a morbid subject but I find the reflexes that happen after death very fascinating and I would like to learn more about what other experiments and research have been done since the guillotine time to study the reflexes and twitches after death.
During this chapter I had a lot of ideas about how people saw things as a lot more simply because they didn't have any other resources at the time. I mean at the time it was ingenious to think that you could find out so much about people and their personalities just by using the bumps on their heads. I had the thought about how people using the guillotine as a "humane" way of killing people could think about it that way when it is humiliating to have your head floating in a basket after your death. I feel like a more humane way would have been to have it at least in a private area where no one was there to watch.
The first thing I found interesting in the chapter was the section where it described how Flourens was out to prove phrenologists were wrong. I found this interesting because it sparked an idea to me. What if when people were doing all these experiments and proposing theories (and even today) everyone just assumed they were right and never questioned them? Where would we be today?
The second thing I found interesting was “The Remarkable Phineas Gage”. This story was interesting to me because it amazed me that someone could go through this traumatic of an accident and still survive and function. Yes, his personality and behavior changed but he survived and even had conversation right after it happened. Reading about stories like this just makes me think about how incredible our bodies really are. This case was important in providing support for the phrenologist’s belief in cerebral localization.
The third thing I found interesting in this chapter was the story of the man named Tan. I found this interesting because of what his life was like. He was intelligent in every way, he just simply couldn’t talk because that part of his brain was damaged. This story made me think about our brain and how the rest of the brain can function normally even if one part is damaged or missing. I never thought much about the brain at all and how it worked until I read this chapter. This case was important in concluding that the ability to produce speech was localized in the left frontal lobe.
The beginning of the chapter was the part that I found not interesting. The introductions to the discoveries during the Enlightenment and the introduction to the functioning of the nervous system was just plain boring to me. I like when the book gives real examples and explains the experiments and such and because the beginning of the chapter didn’t, I found it was the part that I was forcing myself to read. It might have been that the wording was to hard for me to understand and that caused me to struggle through it.
I think the part of understanding why psychologists challenge one another and try to prove each others theories wrong is important in understanding the history of psychology. We know that not everyone is right when they make theories and if we never challenged them then where would our society be today? By understanding why different psychologists did the same research and experiments it helps us understand that it was important for them to do this and not question why their doing the same thing someone else already did.
This chapter builds on the previous chapters by furthering and explaining what the 19th century psychologists did. Chapter three builds on the questions asked in the previous chapter and tries to answer them.
I would like to learn more about the brain and exactly what sections of the brain cause us to do certain things. I would also like to learn about what parts of the brain or damages to the brain cause disorders in people.
I have come up with a few questions and ideas after reading this chapter. I understand that the brain causes certain movements in our bodies, but how? How does the brain control our bodies? In the book on page 78 it stated that “phrenology provided a seemingly scientific basis for the traditional American belief that anyone, regardless of heritage, could “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” and accomplish virtually anything in life”. My idea after reading this was, what if no one thought of this. What if we were still in a society that whatever you were born in to was how you lived. There were no opportunities of moving up in life.
After reading chapter 3, one thing I found interesting was the story of Phineas Gage. I have learned about this man several times throughout my course history in psychology, but his story never ceases to amaze me. I find it so incredible that after his accident he was able to function and even speak, let alone be alive! His story posed many questions to scientists about the brain, specifically the left frontal cortex, and the functions that each part has.
The next thing I found interesting in this chapter was the discussion of the guillotine. It blew my mind (no pun intended) that your body can still move and react even AFTER your head has been cut off. I just do not understand how this works, so maybe I will have to research this! I found it interesting, though, that humans were interested in studying severed heads of animals and/or other humans. Surely we have studied stranger topics, but I just found this bit to be interesting to me.
The third thing I found interesting from this chapter was the topic of phrenology. The first time I learned about this topic, I found it to be completely ridiculous. However, this chapter gave a more in-depth description of the history of it and what accomplishments were attributed to phrenology. Gall was actually correct in many of his findings for what certain areas of the brain are responsible for. The part that always throws me off, though, is thinking that we can determine the mental abilities of someone simply by feeling bumps on their head.
A part of the chapter that I found to not keep my attention was the section about synapses and the neuron theory. I have taken a biopsychology course and although this topic does interest me, I felt as though I already knew all the information presented to me, which lost my interest.
The part I found to be most important to understanding the history of psychology would be the section about psychologists challenging each other. More importantly, WHY these psychologists felt it necessary to question each other’s work. As discussed throughout class so far, we must be skeptical when learning anything. By having these psychologists challenge each other’s work and theories, we progressed in a very positive way.
As with most history books, they are written in chronological order. Chapter 3 expands on the first 2 chapters and tries to answer the questions posed in the beginning of the book. It also gives a more detailed description of topics that were previously mentioned, helping the reader to better understand any subject that wasn’t thoroughly discussed.
I would like to learn more about phrenology. Although it is a pseudoscience and most of its findings are not really accurate, before I read this chapter I had just assumed that it was a completely ridiculous topic of psychology. However, I am now much more interested in the different ways that scientists would use phrenology to study the brain. Also, in what ways do they take these findings and interpret them to mean what they think they mean? I have a lot of questions about this topic and I am glad it was discussed in this chapter to refresh my memory of it.
While reading this chapter, I thought about what it would be like to live during this time. People were forced to think about things in the simplest ways because they had no other answers. I tried to imagine myself hearing about scientists studying severed heads for the first time, or having someone tell me that they could predict my personality based on the bumps on my head. Living without the technology we have today is very hard for me to picture, but I liked doing so during this chapter because it helped me better understand the ways that these psychologists were forced to study things for the first time.
I found the basic ideas of phrenology to be very interesting. In it’s most basic definition, phrenology is identifying and locating human “faculties” to specific areas of the brain, and that the brain is the organ of the mind. Where it all goes astray is what makes phrenology a pseudoscience. This discipline created about three dozen abilities or faculties that make up the human brain, and comprised of intangible ideas like of hope, benevolence, and ideality. None of which are entirely measurable. I think that’s what I disliked the most about this chapter, using a scientific discipline (psychology) for anecdotal research.
The research done by Fritsch and Hitzig on mapping motor areas of the brain. By using an electric current, they probed various areas of a dog’s brain. They found five areas that responded to the electrical current, area 1 was the neck, area 2 and 3 controlled the extension and flexion of the anterior leg, area 4 the posterior leg, and 5 the face. While both were physiologists by trade, they both influenced and jumpstarted the idea that the brain was connected to the whole body instead of being a separate entity.
Finally, the introduction of neuron theory in the middle of the 19th century brought around the idea that not only were our brains involved with our entire body, but tiny neurons controlled it. Honestly, it still blows my mind to think that neurons were being researched in the 1800’s , because it seems like a much more modern idea. The invention of high powered microscopes, and techniques to harden, dissect, and observe the brain was the backbone to this research. In 1857, Louis followed the optic nerve from the retina to the occipital lobe. To me that seems like a feat in and of itself, let alone the techniques that made it possible.
I think this chapter, and the prior chapters, really show how interdisciplinary psychology is and has become. Not only do we work with complex ideas like “the mind” but also physiological processes like neurons and nerves.
One thing I found interesting was the material on the Enlightenment period. There were so many different things that were discovered in the scientific field. The founding fathers of America were very passionate about science. Many people believe that the scientific discoveries during this time influenced the Industrial Revolution. The scientific discoveries helped technology flourish, which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. I think it’s crazy that some of the scientific findings during the Enlightenment period could have been a huge influence in the creation of some of the technology we use today. Because of their dedicated work, many of the scientists during this time are considered heroic, which I think is very accurate.
The second thing I found interesting was the information given about phrenology. This states that human faculties can be identified and located in precisely defined areas of the brain. This is the first time I’ve seen or even heard the word phrenology. The idea first came from Franz Josef Gall. His theory about the human brain was actually considered antireligious. Gall identified the fibers that connected the two hemispheres of the brain. He also found that some fibers cross from one side of the brain to the opposite side of the spinal cord. Gall also found that each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body. I was very surprised to see that this information was found so long ago. Gall also did some research by comparing the brain structures of different species. Another big person in the origins of phrenology was Johann Spurzheim. He actually came up with the term phrenology, and he was a big part in making the theory popular in the United States and Europe. Spurzheim was a big believer that skull shape could be correlated with character. Learning about all of this was very interesting. Even though these theories are considered ridiculous by many, information like this is very important and plays an integral role in developing many ideas and theories used today.
Another thing I found interesting was the material on Phineas Gage. While working on a railroad in 1848, he was involved in a very bad accident. He had poured gunpowder and a fuse into a hole drilled into a rock that was going to get blown away. He used a tamping iron to compress the gunpowder. He got distracted for a moment and he scraped the rock. When he did this, it caused there to be a spark which ignited the gunpowder. The tamping iron went flying and landed 30 meters away. However, during the flight, the tamping iron entered just below his left eye and exited from the top left of his forehead, which took a large amount of his left frontal cortex with it. Two months after the accident, he was able to live independently, but he was never able to work productively again. Also, his personality changed dramatically. Before the accident, Gage was dependable, conscientious, and respected community member. After the accident, Gage turned into a stubborn, profane, and irresponsible member of the community. I think it’s just crazy how somebody’s behavior and personality can change that much after an accident like that. I’m sure that was the first time people actually started to believe the theory that different parts of the brain effect different things.
One thing that I had trouble staying focused on while reading was the material about the neuron theory and synapses. It’s just something I didn’t become interested in while I was reading it. The material was just hard for me to understand. It’s something I don’t really know much about, so maybe once I learn more about it, I’ll become more interested. The material I think will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology would have to be the information provided about phrenology. Although it isn’t accepted by many scientists, it still obviously triggered other scientists to research and come up with their own theories about the human brain. It gives me an idea of what other people had for theories and ideas about the brain during this time period.
This chapter builds on the previous two by continuing to answer different questions presented. In this chapter, material about the human brain continued, and it gave more in-depth information. I would like to learn more about phrenology. Reading this chapter was the first time I’d ever even seen this word before. After learning more about the background information, I found myself interested in learning more about the specifics of the study. An idea I had while reading this chapter was if the situation of Phineas Gage could have the opposite effect. I found myself wondering if someone could ever have a dramatic personality change for the better. Another idea I had was wondering what people thought of phrenology when it was first introduced. Now, people think it’s ridiculous, but I wonder what people thought when it was introduced and hadn’t been thoroughly studied yet.
Phrenology was a big focus in this chapter. It has to do with localization of the brain. It was very popular with the public and went along with a lot of our customs about individuality and diversity. I found this interesting because as a psychology major you have to know what parts of the brain control what. The way phrenology tries to figure this out however is incorrect. Proportions of a skull do not prove what someone’s strengths are. I found the case of Phineas Gage very interesting because it is a very common story that most people learn about in introduction to psychology courses. It is amazing to learn that you can survive an injury like that and that it can alter your personality so much. Gage went from a friendly well respect man in the community to someone people wanted to avoid. I found it entertaining to learn about Broca’s. I didn’t know why the Broca’s area of the brain was called what it is called. He was a very smart man to only examine someone one time, then do an autopsy, and already think you have a clear idea that the man is suffering from motor aphasia. Broca realized that speech had something to do with our left cortex, specifically our left frontal lobe. The man, “Tan” had damage in his left cortex, which proved Broca to be right. Lashley’s research with the rat mazes was what I found the least interesting in this chapter. We hear a lot studies about rats and mazes, so I guess that makes it difficult to really get interested in the reading about it. I think understanding Broca and the patient “Tan” with be very useful to knowing the history of psychology. We have to know what areas of the brain affect what and this story will make remember the left frontal lobe a lot easier. Chapter three builds on the other chapter because it shows how we are starting to move through time. We are now looking at the Age of Enlightenment. I am starting to see that gradually we start looking at people more as psychologists then as philosophers. I would like to learn more about Phineas Gage. I remember reading that there was more to the story from some the past students writings that we read the first week of class. They said something about how Gage’s personality didn’t alter as much as what doctors said it did. While reading this chapter I started to think about how much our body affects our brain. It really is amazing to think that anytime something is wrong with us physically there could be multiple reasons why. Sometimes we do not even realize how much we are affected mentally by things like diseases. A disease that is in a different part of your body can still affect you mentally and medication can do this as well. It fascinates me that when our body is sick it isn’t really one part of our body, it is our whole body.
Chapter 3
1. I thought that Flourens ablation experimental approach was very interesting. I remember reading about him in an article a few years ago, and how he experimented on dogs. The textbook also says that he would use animals for his research, and the ablation would take place. The ablation method is unique because it was created from his argument with phrenology. Ablation method is when he would take a chunk out of the brain and observe the effects. Flourens did not want to wait for natural causes of brain injury, so he used his approach to “speed up the process.” I found this to be interesting because it sounds completely ridiculous in today’s society. However, if I had grown up in Flourens era, would I think it was so absurd?
2. The second interesting thing I found was the law of conservation of energy. I vaguely remember learning about this in chemistry in high school, and I remember that Helmholtz had created this law. The conservation of energy is interesting because he argued that heat and muscle force can be explained by chemical energy. Helmholtz also believed/proved that muscle contractions generated measurable amounts of heat. I found this to be interesting because not many people would think about this even in the modern world. I think its fascinating that Helmholtz thought of one of the most important principles in physics.
3. The last interesting factor I found in this chapter was about Phineas Gage, I thought that it was very interesting about his accident that a missile entered just below his left eye and exited from the top left of his forehead. He damaged one of the most important parts of the brain (Frontal cortex) and he was still able to live and walk to the doctors office. I love reading about miracle accidents. I have never even heard of this gunpowder incident until this chapter and thought that many frontal cortex injuries lead to disfunction right away.
The one thing I personally did not enjoy about the chapter, was when Flourens experimented on dogs. I feel like if the procedure was done in today’s society, there would be very many ethical issues concerning testing on dogs. I understand that in the time period there were barely any “limits,” but I kind of cringed when I read that, because he would take sections out of the brain.
I believe this chapter relates to the other chapters by which focuses on the many people that have contributed to psychology. Another similarity of chapter 3 and chapter 2, is that Muller was being challenged by his students on vitalism, just like Descartes was challenged by the church on rationalism. The chapters intertwine by showing how each researcher, physiologist, and mathematicians have all made an impact on aspects of thinking or the brain.
I would like to learn more about the clinical method, because that is something I am very interested in. I would love to go to graduate school for clinical psychology and the textbook did not discuss the clinical method in detail. And I believe that it would be interesting to know more of the brain examinations from the Enlightenment period.
One idea I had was: do psychologists and physiologists really know everything there is about the brain? Could there be sections of the brain that still do not have an answer too that could be discovered in the future?
Whew!...I don’t know how everyone else felt, but I am so glad that this chapter turned out to be more interesting than chapter two. I was scared as I read through chapter two, I really found myself struggling, but it’s good to know that that trend will not continue. Anyway….enough of that.
One thing that I found interesting in chapter three was that of the Renaissance and Enlightenment Periods. These periods are something that has fascinated me in the past and still does when I read about them. It is fascinating to me that there was a point in time when people just took what was said to them with no question (maybe because if they did they were prosecuted for it). However, there came a time when people wanted to know the truth and went of their way to find the real answers to the world around them. For me the book really adds something to its credibility when it states that Newton and other scientists of the age are heroic figures, because I believe that they really are. I mean without them, we may still be living in the dark ages thinking that witches and magic ruled the universe.
Another topic that I found interesting in the reading was the section on phrenology. Phrenology is now considered to be a pseudoscience, which was the first attempt at a scientist to study the brain. It began with Franz Josef Gall attempted to understand the brain by “reading” the bumps on the head to determine that characteristics of a person. The term phrenology was founded by a colleague of Galls, Johann Spurzheim. Problems began to arise later, when it was found that phrenology was founded on anecdotal evidence. This is when information that doesn’t match what the researcher wants it to then it is thrown out. In its heyday phrenology was very popular and not only did people pay to have their head read, but there was also an entire Journal that was written and published regularly on the subject. To me the most interesting part about phrenology is not actually the study itself, but instead it is just the idea that brain research had to start somewhere and even though phrenology may sound crazy now at the time it was innovative. Without people like Gall, then now new knowledge will ever be found.
The last topic that I found interesting was the story of Phineas Gage. Even today, with all the new information that we know and the new medical advances that we have it is hard to imagine this story. In 1848 Phineas Gage was working on the railroad, when he poured some gunpowder into a hole with a fuse and then used a tamping iron to chip into a rock, when the gunpowder went off and it went throw his head and ripped out of piece of his frontal cortex. The tamping rod then landed 30 feet away leaving Phineas unconscious. However, after a short period of time he woke up and walked himself into the doctor’s office. Not only did he survive, but he was able to take care of himself, but with a change in his personality.
The section of the reading that I found to be least interesting was the parts about neuron theory. This had never been something that interested me that much, but I do have to give credit to those who study nerves and neurons so that I can study them and know how my body works. Although I must say that even in that section there was some interesting components, such as the information on Sir Charles Sherrington the discoverer on the synapse.
I am guessing that that most important part of this chapter that will come up later is the basic information on the nervous system. This is because more can be built on what has been said in the text. I know what we know now (the end) of the text and we have not gotten to that point. It will be interesting to hear as the theories are presented and how we know what we do now. In addition to what may happen later in the text this chapter also related to the last chapter on philosophers. In chapter John Stuart Mill was discussed as being a philosopher of the beginnings of psychology and he was tied into this chapter as being the starter of physiological science, which then led to the study of psychology.
When I was reading, the topic on vitalism versus materialism I thought about the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and how before these periods in time people just excepted what they were told and did not second guess what they were told. I know that they were groomed in a way to be this way and mistreated if they thought any differently, but did they ever think about things differently and write them down. If they did is there a possibility that someone came up with these theories sooner, but wasn’t courageous enough to speak up against “the man” and get their work published. Even though there was a large section in the book on phrenology I would like to learn more about that. Some of the stories that go along with it are just fascinating and it would defiantly be interesting to hear some more of those stories.
One thing I found interesting was the neuron theory. The neuron is the basic element of the nervous system. A major reason that this theory was discovered was due to other advances in science like the process of hardening the brain. This was a major breakthrough because before this process was figured out it was impossible to dissect the brain and to trace the paths back to where they originated from. Another development that helped the theory was better microscopes. This helped to view the paths much better than the years before. I never realized that there were several other advancements that took place before the brain was able to be dissected with dyes. Louis Gratiolet was able to trace the optic nerve from the retina to the back of the brain. For this time in history that surprised me they had advanced that far studying the brain. Another thing I found interesting was Gage and the flying missile. I find it astonishing that someone could survive this type of freak accident. After reading more it went on to mention that he only lost consciousness for a little bit and was then able to walk and also talk with his friends. I couldn’t imagine losing a part of my frontal cortex and then still stay conscious let along walk and talk. I’m surprised that he didn’t die of blood loss or head trauma. I’ve briefly heard of this incident in psychology classes before but never got the whole story. It was also beneficial to science because it helped his doctor, John Harlow to record extensive notes on his change in personality. This eventually supported his belief in cerebral localization. This is the process of mapping the brain into areas and determining what areas cause certain brain functions. It doesn’t surprise me that his whole personality changed after this accident but it’s still amazing that he lived for 12 years after the accident. I found Helmholtz and his thoughts on problems of perception and also unconscious inference. It was really interesting to read about his theories since he was a physicist by trade which was also his first love. His ideas reminded me of the chapter two readings on Berkeley because he believed that we are only indirectly aware of the world. He proposed that we make inferences based on past experiences. For example perception, when we judge an object that is in the distance and getting closer we know that they aren’t doubling or tripling in size. This is the concept of unconscious inferring. It reminded me a lot of last chapter and how I also found Berkeley to be interesting for his same concepts of using past experience to help judge the present.
One thing that I didn’t really find interesting was the topic of anecdotal evidence. It didn’t get my interest because it seems that there could be some holes in the overall research because they use examples that don’t support their evidence. It is fine to make broad generalizations on issues when using the whole body of research but if you choose to just look at cases that support your ideas it could be interpreted wrong and give you or the readers misleading information. It was a short broad topic but it didn’t interest me nearly as much as the other topics in the chapter did. This chapter builds on the others by continuing the process of answering more questions in the field of psychology. The book gave more in depth information and also prime examples on how and what was learned in the later years of science and psychology. Instead of discussing certain psychologists it goes more in depth about the finding rather than the history of the person. This is starting to build information on more current things that we know to be true. My ideas on the chapter were scattered. The one thing that stuck out to me was the beam through Gages head and how he continued to walk, talk and be conscious. I just kept imagining something like that happening to me and what I wouldn’t be able to after the incident. I also thought a lot about how important discoveries like the process to solidifying a brain made a huge difference in the advancement of science. It just goes to show that sometimes small steps can really turn out to be breakthrough steps with some hindsight one thing that I would like to learn more about would be certain brain functions. I’ve learned all the parts of the brain and what they have an effect on during regular day to day activities. It would be really interesting to learn more about the different types of damages and the effects that occur in people after it takes place. For example the beam through the frontal cortex and how he didn’t lose his motor skills but he wasn’t close to the same person personality wise after the accident. It would also be interesting to learn what exactly determines the severity of the effects in these particular brain injuries. The brain is such an important organ to humans to functional normally but is also such an important organ for humans that aren’t able to function normally. Why some cases are more severe than others really interests me. The most useful part of the chapter I believe was all the different discoveries of the brain. Even today the brain is still a main functioning organ from our actions, thoughts, feelings, movements, etc. I thought it was very important learning some basic discoveries of the brain that have helped use advance to the technology we have today. Some examples were things like the neurons, synapse, and different parts of the brain like the cortex. Also learning how to retain a brain for long enough to dissect and study was a huge discovery to the study of the brains components.
Chapter 3
The first thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the Enlightenment period when scientists started to be seen as heroes. It is nice to read about the times when science finally stopped having a negative association. When I think of any generation before my own, such as my grandparents, I think about how differently my mind works compared to theirs when it comes to perception of what is ‘moral’ or not. I think that my generation tends to be more ‘liberal’ or ‘open-minded’ when it comes to the issues in our daily lives. I especially find myself being liberal is my study and interest in psychology. I am skeptical about much of what I hear and enjoy pondering different ideas and perspectives and not stressing only one right way and pushing any other thought away. If I would have been alive in the eighteenth century it would have been interesting to see if I would be as open minded depending on how I was raised. This is also interesting to me because it wasn’t until later on in my schooling until I realized psychology was a science. Science has always been my least favorite subject growing up, so when I found out that I really liked psychology classes I assumed they couldn’t be about science. It is reassuring to me that there is a part of science that I enjoy and that would be the psychological side and how the brain goes along with human behavior and personality. The second thing that I found interesting was phrenology and that is mostly because I had never heard of this before. It was strange to me how the idea stuck around was popular when dealing with individuality and self-improvement. It is interesting to think about what all goes on inside a brain when it looks so simple on the outside. I believe that with how complex human beings are, the brain has to be doing many things in many places at once in order function like we do. The third thing that I found interesting was the case of Phineas Gage. I have always wondered how some people can behave in the way they do and that there must be something different going on in their brain. It is neat to me that damage to a person’s frontal lobe can affect their personality and judgment. The brain is so sophisticated and we will probably constantly be finding new information about how it works. I am just glad that I am around during a time where science can provide valuable answers to why human act the way they do.
What I found the least interesting in chapter three was the studies of the nervous system in the early twentieth century. As I talked about before, I normally do not consider myself a fan of science so this part doesn’t keep my interest for long. I enjoy the philosophical side of psychology mostly because it can’t always be explained. To me that is more amusing than learning about that is factual just for peer memorization. ‘Neurons’ is a term that I have been hearing since grade school. Instead of repeating what I have already learned, I am interested in discovering what could be.
When understanding the history of psychology, I think it will be best to know that psychology wasn’t even considered a science until the eighteenth century. The history of psychology is that psychology was not always an appropriate subject to study. It is not even necessarily a subject, but something that can be connected to everything we know because it is the study of our mind. Psychology is not something like accounting which is standardized and consistent, it is fascinating because there isn’t always an answer to every question and our behavior cannot always be explained.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter because continues on throughout history to when researchers weren’t criticized anymore for their study of psychology. The chapters combine to build the fundamental aspects of the human mind from perception to our reflexes and senses. There is a philosophical and a physiological side to psychology so in order to understand the history we must understand each side.
I would like to learn more about the Phineas Gage case and dig deeper into the differences in people’s brain that make them act certain ways. This is an idea that I have many times when I’m learning about psychology. For instance, it is easy for me to say that I could never and would never take another person’s life. This makes me wonder if my brain would look compared to a murderer’s brain. I think that it is so difficult for me to understand how people can do such horrific act that I am even more interested in finding the answer. I think there has to be something abnormal in the brain that can alter the behavior and haze the judgment of people causing them to act irrationally. It is an interesting concept that could be researched for a long time.
While reading chapter 3, I found the section that dealt with localization of brain function very interesting. Even though, at the time, it was based on the false idea of Phrenology; it did have the correct idea that different parts of the brain do different things. Phrenology, itself, was interesting because it was sold or marketed to the public in the same way that today we see various kinds of treatments or ways to “understand yourself” sold or marketed to the mass audience on television.
A second thing from the chapter that I found interesting was the story of Phineas Gage. This was interesting because it brought clinical psychology and the study of the brain together. It showed how we can learn from accidents and natural damages (such as strokes) a lot about how the brain works. This was also interesting because it wasn’t just about how thinking can be changed by damage to the brain, but about how the whole personality can be changed by brain damage. This “technique” of destroying a part of the brain and seeing what it does to behavior is used today in the laboratory.
The third thing from chapter 3 that I found interesting was the Bell-Magendie law (this refers to Sir Charles Bell and Francois Magendie). The law itself, with information of how anterior spinal nerve roots contain only motor fibers and posterior roots only sensory fibers is interesting, but what I found most fascinating was how it demonstrated that people working completely independently of each other can make similar “discoveries” at the same time. This was a great example of the term multiple we read about before, which refers to a case when two or more people make the same discovery independently of each other during the same era. I thought this was interesting because it is a big dilemma: how do you determine who gets the credit or the majority of the credit for these simultaneous discoveries?
I am not as interested in perception as other topics in psychology, so the section on Helmholtz and his theories of vision and hearing was the least interesting from this chapter for me. Though I was impressed with the range of topics about which Helmhotz studied and developed theories.
What I read in the chapter that I think will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is that psychology as a science got started by people studying physiology.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter in that it shows a contrast between those who developed theories about human behavior, by common observation and arguments, and those who tried to be scientific about studying behavior with experiments. This chapter also goes into how philosophers from the last chapter influenced the first psychologist of this chapter.
The topic would I would like to learn more about is localization of function and what we know about it today; as well as the clinical method -- more information on how it got started and how it is looked at today.
While reading the chapter ideas I also found myself wondering about mostly centered on the clinical method of studying human brain function. It is interesting how much the mental and behavioral consequences of brain injury have taught us --- and how much we can learn from studying people identified with some behavioral or mental disorder and then examining their brains for abnormalities after death.
The first thing I found interesting was the feud between Bell and Magendie. Something like that would not likely happen today because of technology. It was interesting that Bell made the similar discovery something like ten years before Magendie. That Magendie had not heard of Bell until Bell got upset with him for trying to “steal” his discovery. It is almost funny to think of how these two must have feuded by letter or some other form of communication. Now if you discovered something big it would get press, published worldwide, on the Internet.
This field of physiology and its earliest researchers is interesting. I am amazed how they came up with these ideas and experiments with no one before them to give them good hints or information. Even though some discoveries have been shown to not be completely true I think these men were very smart and I admire their sort of creativity.
I also thought it was interesting that a lot of the principles of phrenology were smart and close to being right. Localization of different “faculties” is sort of close to localization of various things like language, sight, and emotions. I think it was a good idea even if it did end up a pseudoscience it was a nice effort.
I think a lot in this chapter is useful. I think this was one of the first ways psychology became scientific. We can better understand current neuroscience with this base.
I think this book is sort of starting on a timeline and moving forward. It is building the history of psychology for us.
I would like to learn more about what is going on now in neuropsychology. I like to learn the past and then what is going on now so I can see the growth. I do not ever want to have to read about Phineas Gage again, I have had to many times by now but I would like to learn about other cases where brain injuries have helped learn about the brain. I like Broca’s area and ideas of localization.
I had a lot of ideas. I noticed a reoccurring theme I have seen in previous chapters, here with vitalism and materialism. Basically the scientists wanted to know if they could prove there is anything more to living, to being a human than can be seen. This chapter seemed to be moving away from religion and toward science. It involved the age-old question of what happens after we die. I also thought about how it was kind of sad that a lot of experiment was done on puppies and dogs. I wondered what new insights would have been gained in Phineas Gage had been around now, is there anyone similar to him in more modern times?
The first thing that I found interesting in Chapter 3 was the section about the Reflex Action. I found this interesting because it was mentioned in the last chapter in association with Descartes and how it was first developed by him. Robert Whytt of Scotland was another person that made a considerable effort to the idea of the reflex action as well. Whytt is mostly well known for his research in the physiology of the reflex, but also his studies in pediatric medicine as he was the first person to discover the accurate descriptions of tuberculous meningitis. I found this section interesting because it developed my knowledge of the issue of reflex that Descartes was fumbling with in the previous chapter. It also helped me get a better understanding of the issue of reflex. That these philosophers and other psychologists and scientists were having issues trying to figure out the same things that were being thought about in the earlier times. Whytt was able to display and give a physical presentation as to how the reflex actually works by squeezing the leg of a decapitated frog that showed a reliable muscle contraction.
The second thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the section about Helmholtz and the problem he encountered with perception and being able to understand it. Helmholtz was a physicist that was accustomed to look for precision in nature. Therefore he was perplexed when he developed the problem of perception. He noticed that the human sensory systems for hearing and seeing are fully capable of doing their job but when looking more closely at the anatomy structures designed to deliver these sensations seemed to be flawed in some way. This section was interesting to me because it gave me a bit more of an in-depth look into how these scientists came to what they wanted to look into. Helmholtz was wondering why we are able to hear and see so well but when looking closely at the anatomy of the ear and eye, how can this structure be able to produce what is being produced to us. He then went on to make inferences on the way we judge distance and so on and so forth. By looking deeper into things that we just probably accepted as working, we learned more psychologically and physiologically about humans.
The third thing I found interesting was the section on the clinical method. The clinical method is a way to study the brain by studying behavioral and mental consequences of brain injury, identifying people with some behavioral or mental disorder and examining their brains for abnormalities after death. One of the most interesting cases that was talked about in the book was the case of Phineas Gage. I had heard about this case briefly in my other psychology classes but I was pleased to learn more about him. In a nutshell, the Gage case was about a man that survived a tamping iron being shot into his skull and exiting taking a chunk of his left frontal cortex with it. Gage was miraculously fine, but within months his personality had changed dramatically.
The thing that I found least interesting in the chapter was the section about early twentieth century studies of the nervous system. For some reason I was bored with this section. I think it was because I had known some things about the nervous system taking high school anatomy and knowing some things about it because I took sensation and perception last semester. I am not so sure that it was beneficial for our education to known what the theories were about the early neuron system. I could be wrong though. When it comes to those sorts of things, I would rather learn about what we know as of now and not about what lead up to what we know now. Although it could prove to be important, I became bored with the section.
I think the most beneficial section about helping us learn about this history of psychology was the section about the clinical method of understanding things with the brain even though it went over it a bit briefly. This chapter built off of the last chapter because it mentioned things about the reflex action that was described by Descartes as well in the last chapter. It was building upon what Descartes discovered earlier in the time. It reinforced my thinking during the chapters that we need to start somewhere, and by starting at some particular point, we can build off of that and then continue to learn more. I would like to learn more about the Gage accident because I found it really interesting because of the differences in behaviors and personality before and after the accident.
After reading Ch. 3, three things that I found to be especially interesting were the studying of the Guillotine, how Helmholtz measured the speed of a nerve impulse, and phrenology. Scientists questioned whether or not the brain was the center of consciousness and to the sole controller of voluntary actions. To study this, they looked at how even after people were decapitated by the Guillotine, their arms and legs would still show movement. Even their facial muscles and eyes moved! They wanted to know if there was some level consciousness that remained in the body after the decapitation. I found this interesting, because such a gruesome act can lead to a great discovery in the field of psychology. In the 1850’s it was discovered that nerves used electricity to stimulate movement in muscles, and Helmholtz set out to find out at what speed this was being done at. He stimulated a nerve from the leg of a frog and then timed how long it took for there to be a muscle response. He knew that rate=distance /time, se he just divided the distance from the never to the muscle from the time it took for the muscle to react. This is interesting to me, because other scientists thought the rate was too fast to ever be recorded, but Helmholtz thought of a way to uncover the rate. His research showed evidence to support the idea of materialism, and moved people away from the theory of vitalism. Phrenologists thought the bumps on people’s head revealed many things about a person, such as the type of character they had. The popular phrenologist, Gall, started noticing a relationship between behavior characteristics and a person’s head shape during his school days. One thing he noticed was how his classmates with protruding eyes had the best memories. This observation fueled Gall to find evidence for his theory. I find phrenology interesting, because it is a new topic to me. None of my classes have ever touched upon it, and I find it interesting to learn about such a controversial topic.
I found this entire chapter to be especially interesting, but one thing that I didn’t like was how Flourens removed parts of the brain to discover each parts specific function in the method of ablation. I understand that it was for science, and he wanted to disprove phrenology, but I find it a rather cruel and invasive method. I found the clinical method, of just observing patients with brain injuries to be more moral.
I think studying the nervous system and its electrical functions will help me to understand the history of psychology. I feel that this theory has influenced many studies in the history of psychology, and it will be an important milestone in the discoveries of the brain.
Chapter 3 relates to chapter 2, because ,any of the theories in chapter 3 were influenced by theories that were talked about in chapter 2. For example, Descartes ideas about the nervous system influenced the scientists in chapter three to continue to uncover how it works. Another thing is how concepts in chapter 3 evolved from the philosophical concepts in chapter 3 to create a scientific view of the nervous system.
I would really like to learn more about the mapping of the brain. The brain is such a curious thing, and it is so hard to examine while operating. I find the different methods that people have used to be very interesting, so I would like to learn about more of these that may have not been mentioned in the book.
One idea that I had while reading this chapter was how many of these theorists came up with their ideas. It was so interesting to learn how Gall came up with his first theory of phrenology while he was still in grade school! It makes me wonder what other thoughts and ideas these people had when they were growing up that somehow influenced the field of psychology.
I found the idea and practice of Phrenology to be fascinating. Gall had the beginnings of the right idea that different areas of the brain controlled specific things, the actual theory of Phrenology was very erroneous. We might look and wonder how people could follow this idea, one need only look a the late night infomercials of modern times to realize you can get people to believe or at least try nearly anything. I also thought that Broca’s research on the “tan” patient was very interesting. Understanding how injury/disease affects the brain helps to make a case for the physical causes of mental illnesses. Finally I thought that it was interesting how many of these pioneers of science risked so much in the way of social acceptance and respect in order to research the brain and its workings.
Reading how the enlightenment period gave way for science to be taken seriously was very important in understanding the history. This was a crucial point when finally we were able to make medical advances in the brain and begin to treat people and understand medical issues in the brain.
I would like to learn more about Broca and his research. I think the more people can understand the physical side of mental illnesses the more the stigma surrounding them can and will be erased. This will pave the way for more people having the courage to get real treatment and lead healthier lives.
There was really not anything in the chapter that I found uninteresting. I felt that all of the ideas were woven together and really gave a good picture of the development of the physiological side of Psychology.
The first topic I found interesting was on phrenology and other pseudoscience. To me phrenology seemed to start with all the best intentions. It was trying to logically explain human behavior and then, instead of staying true to science and trying to figure out the truth, practitioners of phrenology turned into magicians where they only accepted information that supported their theory. Once the theory worked once it was never questioned and was just assumed to continue to work. The other reason this topic fascinated me was because the chapter speaks a little of other pseudoscience’s like handwriting analysis to measure personality. I find this interesting because in the latest Sherlock Holmes movie Sherlock Holmes uses this technique to accurately describe Moriarty’s personality.
The second area that fascinated me was the part on Phineas Gage, how could this section not? Here is a man who had an iron stake explode through his head and survived. I have heard of other amazing survival stories from a man falling on a wooded stake that passed through his neck to people surviving skydiving attempts where their parachute’s failed to open, but to have a section of your brain taken out and only losing consciousness for a short period of time is by far the most outstanding story of survival I have ever heard.
The final topic I found most interesting was on the discovery of Broca’s area. I have learned of Broca’s area in many of my other classes, like Biopsychology, and it amazes me that such an accurate theory was made well over 100 years ago. Granted Tan’s brain was majorly damaged in the area we now call Broca’s area, but if you look at pictures of his brain the rest of it does not seem to be in the best shape either. On top of that Tan suffered from more than just the inability to speak, half of his body was paralyzed and yet such an accurate theory was created from the dissection of his brain.
The one section I found least interesting was the part on Helmholtz and color vision. I think it is because I can remember all the way back to when I was being home schooled in 1st grade and every time I played with paint I had to start off with the primary colors: red, green and blue and mix and match until I had all the colors I wanted to paint with. That being said I still held interest on how color played into the discussion of perception.
What helped me to best understand psychologies history was how the chapter was setup. The way it is built almost like a stair case, each step up being built upon further research on the step below. In the chapter the progression is from the Bell-Magendie Law, on two different roots controlling sensory and motor responses, all the way to Sir Charles Sherrington and “The Synapse.” I think it shows a good understanding of how psychology has progressed throughout history.
In this chapter there are references all the way back to chapter 1 talking about “multiple” discoveries, which is where two or more people come up with the same discovery at the same time independently of each other. The chapter uses the Bell-Magendie Law as an example. This chapter also relates to chapter 2 in regards to the argument of materialism and perception. The section on Helmholtz addresses the problem of perception mainly through how flawed our eye and ears seem to be made.
The topic I would like to learn more about is on the area of the Synapse. I would like to look deeper into the experiments that were involved in discovering this theory. My other reason for being interested in this theory is to see if any further research has been done to speed up the synapsis of neurons. Reaction time is very important to competitive sports and it is in competitive sports that my major interests lie, so I feel it would be beneficial for me to look into this topic.
This chapter sparked many ideas in my head. The greatest of which is a want I have had for a long time to work with a cadavers and really see all of the muscle fibers and even hook muscles up to different amounts of electricity to see how they contract. I always feel that there is something missing with human performance. Like there is something very basic that we are forgetting to do that would make us much more efficient at whatever activities we chose to do, sport related or not. I also think that this way is not steroids. There must be a safe effective way to increase human performance, to increase reflex, increase life expectance and increase work productivity without having to battle the nasty side effects that are apart of today’s answers.
After reading chapter three, there were several things that I found pretty interesting. The first thing that really jumped out at me (also the part about psychology I still get queasy reading about) was when Magendie tested sensory and motor movement by severing the front and back of a dog’s spinal cord. He found that the end of the spinal cord effected sensation and that the top effected motor movements. When both ends were severed there was a complete lack of any sensation or movement. Another part of this chapter I found to be interesting, but also already had a little knowledge of, was Phineas Gage. Gage was involved in a terrible accident where his left frontal cortex had a rail driven through it (just below his eye). He appeared to be completely fine after the accident but friends and family soon noticed a drastic and permanent change in his personality. Before the injury Gage was polite and an all around great member of the community, but soon turned angry and hostile. The third thing in this chapter that I found to be interesting was phrenology, which started as a legitimate way of understanding the brain but soon turned to a pseudoscience. Phrenology was the studying of one’s head to explain their personality by feeling the bumps on their scalp. I think it would be fun to try but now that we know so much it would be difficult for me to buy into; however I have heard that many people still practice phrenology, just not as an exact science.
The one thing I didn’t find extremely interesting about the chapter was about the findings of neurons. I fully understand what a major break through this was, but it gets a little too far into biology for me to keep following. I think that understanding how our sensory and motor movements are effected is very important to learning and understanding psychology. I also think the Phineas Gage finding is pretty important as well. This was major in understanding what our left frontal cortex does for our personality.
In this chapter I noticed that it built on with chapter two by going off of Descartes notion on reflexes, although Whytt did coin the term. We got to see a closer look at what Descartes had previously tried to explore. You can actually see the timeline in your head of how everyone starts building off of each other’s research and ideas.
When I was reading the chapter I kept thinking about a 6 week old puppy being severed, but besides that I thought it was pretty amazing how long we’ve known about neurons and what an amazing invention the microscope became for scientists. I’ve always thought how interesting animals are when solving mazes as well. Even when brain damaged they still have motivation to try.
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
This chapter was the hardest to get through so far. To be honest, not a lot was very interesting to me. Don't get me wrong, if I had unlimited time to spend researching whatever I wanted all of the time, Helmholtz' research would be pretty cool to learn more about. The fact that he even questioned the human sensory systems is pretty sweet. My vision is the best vision I can imagine and Helmholtz found flaws! But what interested me more than his life was his death! After showing Americans German progress in science he mysteriously falls down a flight of stairs? Was his vision just that messed up or was something more sinister involved? I wouldn't put it past America to push a leading German scientist down a flight of stairs just saying.
Gall was an interesting cat. Born into a devout Catholic family, this visionary decided to split with the church and put on public flesh sessions complete with blood gore and ripped apart corpses. People would even pay a fee to see these blasphemous spectacles! He had so much confidence in himself and in his work that he freaking toured throughout Europe spreading his ideas like a disease. Knowledge!
The Tan guy's motor aphasia would really suck to have. Normal intelligence, but can't express ideas verbally, I would be bursting with things I would like to share! I will just be sure keep my left frontal lobe safe.
Most of the technical stuff was boring. I liked all of the personal details about the scientists, patients and their lives, but all the mumbo jumbo was just gumbo.
Studying the first ideas and conclusions about the brain is key to understanding what we now conclude about the brain. How do we know this area of the brain does this? Oh yeah because we were wrong the first time!
I want to learn more about the limits of sensory perception. There are so many possibilities out there like multiple dimensions and frequencies that ghosts and who knows what could exist on. Just because we can't perceive something sensually doesn't mean it is non-existent. I want to know if there is a ghost dude next to me.
I was thinking about just going on the road with a laptop and a powerpoint just charging people to hear my ideas. How crazy would that be! Or what if I got a pole through my head? Would I still be the same guy? If we rip open an alien will we conclude the same things these guys did about our brains? How far we would have to come to understand!
The first thing that I found interesting in chapter 3 was Bischoff’s research with conscientiousness and involuntary movements. He used decapitated heads from executed prisoners and tried to see if there were reactions to the head would cause any involuntary movements from the rest of the body. Although he didn’t make a connection between consciousness and the involuntary actions, it left us with the question of why they occurred.
The second thing I liked from this chapter was the research on color matching. Young-Helmholtz found that we have three different kinds of color receptors: red, green, and blue. They concluded that our perception of different colors was based on the wavelengths of light coming through. I think that’s really cool because sometimes I will close one eye and see a color and switch eyes and see it a little differently. Most of the time I experience it when an abundance of light is involved.
The last thing I liked from this chapter was unconscious inference also found by Helmholtz. He found that when a person walks towards us, our eyes don’t think it’s a person getting bigger, but just means a person is coming towards us. He believes we know this from experience unconsciously.
The least interesting thing in this chapter to me was research Magendie did on sensation and the spinal cord relation. I wouldn’t say it isn’t interesting, but knowing he went about it using a 6 week old puppy just kind of freaked me out. I know animal research is done all the time, but knowing he cut its fibers and waited for it to recover was just unsettling to me. Thankfully Magendie got what he wanted from that experiment and realized posterior roots controlled sensation while anterior roots controlled motor responses.
I think the most useful information from this chapter was hearing about how scientists from other sides of the world can be working on the same things and being completely unaware of it. I wonder what it’d be like if Bell and Magendie would’ve gotten together, they wouldn’t have had such a controversy over who discovered what and got credit where credits deserved. It is interesting to see how scientists start off their research in finding something wrong in someone else’s or trying to figure out how to go about another scientist’s research in another way.
Whytt related to Descartes from the previous chapter in relation to reflexes. Descartes talked about ‘animal spirits’ while Whytt focused more on the physiological perspective of it. Although Descartes idea about ‘animal spirits’ might’ve sounded logical at the time, Whytt changed peoples’ opinions. Whytt found that without the spinal cord, involuntary movements from the body after decapitated from the head, wouldn’t occur.
Another topic I’d like to go into more would be phrenology because it didn’t go into why everyone thought his findings were more pseudoscience than science. I like learning more about how our brain functions, but finding out how we came to know this is pretty intriguing.
The only idea that came to mind during this chapter was how big of a part does light play in how we perceive things. I wonder if there’s a certain amount of light that can make us see certain colors more than others like enough to put our color receptors to black and white. That might be a crazy thought, but movies like Pleasantville make me wonder what it’d be like to only see black and white or be color blind.
One topic I found interesting was the section Helmholtz on Vision and Audition. The part I found interesting was the trichromatic theory, based on color-matching experiments. Young and Helmholtz showed this by mixing different combinations of three colors, red, green, and blue, the resulting color could be made to match any other single color. From this they came to the conclusion that the eye must have three different receptors, one for each primary color. I guess the part I found interesting was that they were able to tell that the incoming light of a certain wavelength was “said to stimulate the receptors to different degrees, resulting in the perception of a certain color.” I just find it interesting about how they know about light and color wavelength, and they know that the receptors in our eyes are for the primary colors, red, blue, and green. It just blows my mind how they were able to determine these things.
Another section in this chapter that fascinated me is the section about the brain. I guess the reason this section interested me is because I love reading about the brain and how it functions. This section talked about Gall making the notation through his studies that the brain on one side of the body controls the opposite side of the body. I found it interesting that Gall compared brain structures of different species and made an argument that “the mental abilities of different species correlated with the size and complexity of the brain, especially the cortex.” Gall dissected brains to find out information differently than others did. Gall went from the brain stem up, taking off the structures one by one to follow the interconnections between the structures that are “impossible” to start from the top. I found it interesting that he started getting his ideas early in life, when he was young he found relationships between the shape of a person’s head and some behavior characteristics of that person. An example given in the book was that he noticed schoolmates with bulging eyes seemed to have a better memory than he did, and he wanted to find evidence to support this.
The third thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section on Equipotentiality and Mass Action. I found it interesting that Lashley used brain-damaged rats to test the learning process. I guess the main part I found interesting was that he was using brain damaged rats. Lashley used three different mazes for the rats to see if the different damages had an effect on the rat finding its way through.
I can’t really think of anything in this chapter that I found least interesting because it was mostly about the brain, theories of the brain, and experiments on the brain which I love learning about.
I can’t really find a specific topic in this chapter that would be considered the most important in understanding the history of psychology. I think there were multiple in this chapter that contribute. A big one that stood out to me was the large section on the brain, and how it works. This contributes to psychology, because a lot can be explained about our cognitive development and much more.
This chapter relates to the previous chapters, because it builds on to the theories about physiology. Chapter 2 talked about Descartes model of the functioning of the nervous system. He showed that the body works like a machiene. After this Robert Whytt wrote and published “The Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals.” This told about the research of the spinal cord in “mediating reflex action.” This chapter also went on to tell what other researchers did to learn about the nerves such as Helmholtz and du Bois Reymond who suggested that it transmitted along the nerve by an electrochemical process.
One topic I think I would like to learn more about is Gage and his life and more about his accident. I want to learn more about this because I am interested in damages done to the brain and he had a tamping iron that went through below his left eye and came through the top left of his forehead. I want to learn more about his functions and abilities after the accident, such as how it changed his personality.
I think I would have liked to live in this time to be able to watch these experiments take place. One of them I would like to have seen how the mazes were for the rats and actually watch it happen. This chapter also made me wonder how they came up with the primary colors and how they decided about the wavelengths in the light.
The idea of phrenology has always been an interesting concept. Though not really empirically supported, phrenology still seems interesting in that it had so much time and thought put into it without much support for the factuality of the information. Gall and the phrenology theory built on the idea that the parts of the brain which we use most will be bigger and therefore more pronounce. This seems to be a common sense idea which is why it is so interesting-not only was it thought up and believed by so many, but it was also proven wrong. It’s interesting that our brain is not a “cut and dry” as common sense would lead us to believe. Perhaps most importantly of all ideas stemming from Galls original idea is that the brain is complex. The skull and brain do not simply bulge in areas to show specialties, there is much more to them than that. Still, most interestingly of all, other research and theories have formed on the basis of phrenology. The doctrine of the skull and skull structure have been looked at in greater detail, it also added to the nature vs. nurture debate in terms of brain development (Spurzheim), analysis of individual differences, etc. Though proven false or of little to not merit, phrenology had and important and interesting effect on the research and society that developed from it’s base.
At the risk of being creepy or odd, I must say that I was incredibly interested in the guillotine and the studies that people did with severed heads. I would have never been the person who thought, ‘hey, I wonder what they are going to do with all of these heads…better not let them go to waste’. However, I think it’s cool that the heads ended up getting used to study pain and movements and death/killing and the humanity of it all. I think that I might actually enjoy looking more at the brains of people who were killed. I mean, they knew it was coming. I wonder if that changed or affected their brains at all? Also, if people move and have reflexes after they die and their brain is disconnected, how much of our reflexes are actually connected to our brains? Are our nerves able to have a mind of their own? It’s interesting to think about the timing or those last brain signals and what they may have been. I couldn’t imagine what would be happening in my head before, during, or after the guillotine. How interesting is it that someone thought to study it. Furthermore, how important is this curiosity—Especially considering this work
cannot ethically be repeated.
A final point of interest that I would like to address is Phineas Gage. Before I read this chapter, I glanced at a few posts and noticed that many people seemed to find this guy interesting. Perhaps this created a bias that made me pay more attention to his section, but none-the-less, I was intrigued. The case of Phineas Gage is most interesting because not only did Phineas survive the trauma, pain, and personal destruction of the tamping iron, but science was able to record more information about him and the left frontal cortex. With such extraordinary damage to the brain, I’m impressed and shocked that this guy was able to live on his own, or live at all. I wonder how important our left frontal cortex is to our lives after all? Based on Phineas’ case it is clear that the left frontal cortex has some control over personality and character. Gage’s case is interesting because it lead to and helped give support for the left frontal cortex’s functions as a controller of memory or personality. After reading about Gage, I couldn’t see how anyone would not list Phineas as an interesting part of this chapter and history.
I find it interesting that no matter what class I go to, I cannot escape the mention of the Enlightenment Period. It is almost getting annoying how much we have to learn or just touch on the subject. Since learning about the Enlightenment period is becoming like beating a dead horse, it would be the topic I would choose to address as LEAST interesting in this chapter. I acknowledge that it was an interesting and important period full of tons of important subjects. However, we hear about it all the time and the fact of the matter is, I’m sick of hearing about it. I like that the chapter breaks everything down to make it more specialized and, in my opinion, more interesting. I like that it chose to address Newton and others through the recognition of their work and it’s importance. Though it’s interesting to read about how the scientists of the time are “heroes” in terms of our research, knowledge, and where we are today…I still and growing tired and bored of the Enlightenment period.
I think that of all the things I read about in this chapter, the most useful in understanding the history of psychology were the examples of people or specific things that were used in the formation and understanding of the various theories. It’s interesting to think of the human and animal heads that were used to look at and study the killing ideas and it’s brain relationship. I also found Phineas to be really interesting. I think that the interesting points that refer to the examples that lead to the theory formations were most useful in understanding the history of psychology. I believe this is because it gave an answer to the classic “why” question of ‘Why’ are we studying this or ‘who cares’. You have to love the examples and their ability to help one understand the basis of our theories. This chapter further builds on the last one as it not only continues chronologically, but it also seems to look more at science and psychology as a science. It also continues to look a little bit at reflexes as it mentions our reflexes after death/being killed. It all is interrelated.
I would like to learn more abou reflexes and nerves and what our body does when we are killed. It would be nice to know about how the body reacts. I am really interested in neuroscience as I did some research over the summer where I worked with rat brains, but still, it would be interesting to learn more about the guillotines and the brain after death.
While reading the chapter I get the feeling that the old school/original psychologists and scientists didn’t have much to go off of. I want to know what went through their heads as they created some of these theories and cooky ideas. An idea I always have is about how interesting I think it would be to be the fly on the wall back in the day when some of these scientists first stated their ideas out loud. I hope that they were able to laugh at themselves sometime, or perhaps even better, I hope that they were able to laugh off the discoveries that didn't work.
Early on in chapter three, I found it interesting how multiple researchers get credited for discovering something. Which is actually called a “multiple”. For example, the Bell-Magendie Law discussed early on that the posterior roots on the spinal cord were responsible for sensation, while the anterior roots were for motor movements. I found it intriguing because the text says that Magendie was right and Bell was not. However, Bell ended up getting credit as well. This seems to happen a lot in the scientific world and a dispute usually always follows.
Herman von Helmholtz’ invention of the ophthalmoscope was new news to me. This is a tool that eye doctors still use to this day to examine the retina. That wasn’t the most interesting thing I read about Helmholtz though. It was his description of an unconscious inference about distance. The description states that when we see things in the distance getting closer to us, they are not actually getting closer but getting larger. The unconscious mind then translates that to our conscious mind as movement. Helmholtz says the mind is able to learn about distance from our past experiences. It’s a hard concept to understand but it made me realize even more just how much our mind does for us that we don’t even realize.
Phrenology. Wow. I remember learning about this topic in past psychology classes but I never knew it was “that” popular back in the day. I find it interesting that phrenology was able to create such an uproar in the psychological community due to its crazy accusations. Then again, I shouldn’t be so critical because what seems so ludicrous to us now probably wasn’t all that crazy back then. Also, phrenology could’ve only pushed us closer to advancing in the world of neuroscience and the field of psychology. I found it particularly interesting that people believed or “wanted” to believe in it so much and it ended up to be big business for some.
The section on the idea of Helmholtz’ Trichomatic theory was the least interesting to me. I grasp the idea and somewhat understand it, but I feel that the way it was presented to me in the text made it hard for me to understand. Otherwise, Helmholtz was very interesting to read about and kept me mentally engaged while reading about him and his ideas.
This chapter builds on the last chapter by once again pointing out the advancement of human thought processes and the construction of a scientific method. In the last chapter, we moved from a time that gave us answers from authority (religion) and started looking at things philosophically or objectively. Now, we are continuing that trend but looking only for the absolute truth and precision that life/nature gives to us.
One topic I would like to learn more about is the manifestation of motor aphasia. I would like to learn more about this because I find it confusing on how an initial injury can spread into a larger one creating more damage to the brain as time moves on, affecting different regions of the brain.
Even after being asked in class what ideas I had while reading the chapter, I still find this a hard skill to master. I’ll try my best though. An idea I had while reading chapter three involved the advancement from the past to the present in the name of science. The easiest way I can explain this is to instruct one to look at the past or the first founding steps of a particular field, then look at where we are now. One good example would be when we put man on the moon. It was a “giant leap for man-kind”, and now we are putting car sized rovers on mars. It just shows that everything has to start somewhere, which often begins at the very bottom.
The first part I read that was very interesting was when they talked about the enlightment period and how it came to pass after chapter 2. The book does a great job in explaining how great scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and many other great scientists sparked the ideas of empiricism and neurology which is talked about very frequently in this chapter. I love how this is a time when people become so much more optimistic to science and new ways of thinking. It’s great when I can relate this time to my humanities classes I’ve taken in the past. They also started talking about Joseph Guillotine and his famous new way to chop heads off. They ended up studying various corpse and body parts to learn about nerves and how they still functioned after death which I tonight was very interesting.
Franz Josef Gall was the originator of phrenology and a professor, doctor, and renowned surgeon. He focused on the brain with neurology and the study of how the brain functions and how it really works. Gall was one of the first to discover different fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain together and also the spinal cord. He also found that each side of the brain interacts directly with the opposite side of the body. The doctor realized that the brain is all designed for a specific reason and each part has different functions as well. He was also one of the first to realize that the brain not only had a contribution to motor control, but also emotions. He came to the conclusion that peoples characteristics were different when they had different shaped heads and that was how he came up with the idea of cranioscopy. Johann Spurzheim was the contra part of Gall’s work and believed that the brain could be altered by its environment as well not just simple functions. It also gave the supreme notion that each human being is their own person and can do many things in their own lives relating to even the job the perform. I think this concept is defiantly on the Nurture side in the Nature Vs Nurture debate which I most commonly agree with as well.
This chapter had a lot of neurology which is not my favorite subject to learn about, but I do realize its utter importance. The scientists that were discussed were interesting and I made many correlations with how they influenced psychology it was just painful to read at times with the confusing neural terms and concepts. I can defiantly see how this chapter is building up from chapter 2 and the authors do a great job of correlating the two chapters so well with references of past philosophers and terms. I enjoy the different scientist’s unique backgrounds and the work that they do that may be considered odd in this time period which I think is fun to learn about. This chapter also got me thinking a lot about how complex our brain really is and the many doors that these men opened for not only psychology, but other sciences as well.
I thought that phrenology was a very interesting topic. What I found most intriguing about it in this book is the discussion of nature versus nurture within the subject by Gall and Spurzheim. Although phrenology wasn’t truly bringing anything to the scientific table, it may have helped boost people’s levels of determination beause Spurzheim believed that nurturance could improve a person’s “faculties.”
Another interesting topic is Phineas Gage and the changes in his personality. All I can think is: what an interesting way for scientists to discover how certain parts of the brain work (or don’t work when they are gone). It interested me that his doctor, John Harlow, wanted to link his personality changes to phrenological study--to use it as proof of phrenology being useful in determining a person’s abilities.
Lastly, Sir Charles Sherrington interests me because he “discovered” the synapse. While he didn’t actually see the physical synapse, he did a series of evaluations of dogs both with and without the ability for neural transmission through their spinal cords and found that the responses occurring were not linked to the spinal cord. In the past I have found the study of the synapse, neurons, and dendrites interesting, so I enjoy learning about someone who helped in a related discovery. It still seems strange to read about the things that were done in the name of science in the past that would not be allowed today because of ethical limitations.
Least interesting to me was reading about Magendie and Bell. I was somewhat interested, but the subject felt drawn-out to me. I had expressed interest in multiples previously, but reading about who discovered what more than what the importance of the discovery is seems to bore me rather than educate me.
I think that learning about the discovery of neurons and synapses will help me greatly because they can be tied to a lot of different things when learning about psychology. I have always had a difficult time with the physical side of psychology, but reading about the history of the discoveries is helping me to better understand.
I would like to learn more about the disproval of phrenology and which main ideas replaced it. I enjoy seeing the progress chronicled so that I can understand why things were believed and then disproved. It is interesting, to me, to know which theories disproved those before them.
During this chapter I kept thinking back to my Intro to Psychology class and realizing how much more I understand about what I learned back then. I thought I understood concepts fairly well at that time, but by reading about the history of the theories I am realizing that I didn’t know as much as I had thought. This class is really opening my mind up to more critical thinking.
One thing I found interesting was the discussion of if the brain was the center of consciousness and the controller of voluntary action. I thought it was interesting that they did tests seeing what would occur if you cut the heads off of people. Bischoff tried this and found that the lower body that was not the head had movement whereas the head did not respond at all. He concluded that the moving of the parts had nothing to do with the consciousness of the body, but rather the twitches of muscles in the body after decapitation. This led to the conversation of reflexes. Descartes was first to discover or make a model of reflex action. He thought the body works as a machine. By using decapitated frogs, Whytt noticed that the spine had a significant role in the nervous system. Wytt also talked about the voluntary and involuntary actions that occur and I found it interesting that he says that if we have a voluntary action that occurs a lot, it will eventually become somewhat of an involuntary action. The thing I found least interesting was talking about the actual different parts of the brain mapping it onto a brain. To me that was just boring to read and it was boring to see a mapped out version of our motor areas. I would much rather learn about them and what they do versus locating them for the purpose of saving time and energy knowing exactly within the brain. The nervous system is important for the history because it is a major part of everyday life. We use it every day voluntarily and involuntarily. It is a very cool thing in my opinion. I would like to learn more about it because it was pretty neat and its essential to our lives. My ideas were how someone just thinks one day to try and cut a head off of something and see what happens, or how does seeing a soldier move after being de-headed make you think about what your spine has to do with all of this. It really is a fascinating thing that we, as psychology majors, don’t really come in contact with much in our studies.
One thing I found interesting was whether the brain was the center of consciousness and the controller of voluntary action. For instance, decapitated soldiers often showed arm and leg movements for a brief time after being decapitated. This was investigated during executions using the guillotine during the French Revolution. Although the guillotine was clean and quick and considered to be humane, bodies continued to twitch for a short time after. These observations lead people to question if some level of awareness and perhaps some perception of pain remained after the beheading. These questions were investigated by Theodor Bischoff, who conducted tests on decapitated heads of criminals immediately after execution. If consciousness remained, then Bischoff believed that thrusting a finger towards the eye, placing smelling salts under the nose, and yelling “pardon” in its ear would in some sort of reaction. No such reactions were recorded. This meant that the muscle twitches were involuntary actions, reinforcing the theory that consciousness resides in the brain.
Another interesting topic was Pierre Flourens and he was able to prove that the phrenologists belief that the mind is centered in the brain and that the mind is composed of numerous faculties. Flourens stated that “of these two propositions, there is certainly nothing new in the first one and perhaps nothing true in the second.” Flourens was able to falsify the beliefs of the phrenologists by using the method of ablation. Flourens removed specific sections of the brain in certain animals and observed the effects. By doing so he was able to show that the cerebral cortex operates as an integrated whole, rather than a large collection of faculties located in specific places.
I also found Francois Magendie’s research on posterior and anterior roots of the spinal cord to be interesting. Magendie was a gifted scientists and physician who aimed to find the different functions of the anterior and posterior roots of the spinal cord. Using a six-week-old puppy, Magendie exposed the spinal cord and cut the posterior roots while leaving the spinal cord intact. He stitched the wound and observed the animal after it recovered. To his surprise he discovered that the limb was still able to function, but lost all feeling. Therefore, he concluded that the posterior roots controlled sensation. He then repeated the process only this time severing the anterior roots. This would eventually lead to the conclusion that the anterior roots controlled motor responses. It was interesting to read about the surgical skill required to successfully complete this research; it seems so far advanced for this time period.
One thing I found to be less interesting was the section about Phineas Gage. His case in itself is interesting and the fact that he survived for as long as he did was amazing. However, I have already learned about him in biological psychology, which in turn made reading about him again less interesting. This is not to say that his case didn’t provide helpful information about the brain.
Something useful in understanding the history of psychology is realizing the key role that the advancement of technology played. The advancement continued advancement of technology allowed researchers to continue searching deeper and deeper into certain issues, leading to new findings and theories – technological advances still play a role in present research as well. For instance, the text spoke how once the technique for hardening the brain was perfected; it allowed for precise dissections and offered a whole new image of the brain and nerve pathways.
This chapter relates to previous chapters by expanding on topics discussed in previous chapters while giving us a better understanding. For instance, Desecrates model of reflex action was discussed in the previous chapter and again in this one, only this chapter expanded on it more using Robert Whytt’s findings to make more sense of it. Something in this chapter I would be interested in learning more about is the morality of some of the research that was being done during this time period. For example, I think using puppies as test subjects would be frowned upon in today’s society and considered immoral. With that in mind I thought about what the people thought about it then and if there were any restrictions when it came to research and if so, what were they?
The first part of the chapter that I found very interesting was the part regarding the “Phineas Gage”. He was blasting rock for a railway line in Vermont in 1848 when a missile from “tampering iron” entered below his eye and exited from the top of his head. Of course, anyone would assume someone that took a blow like this that pieced through the skull would die, but Gage did not. In fact, he was able to converse with the doctor not even thirty minutes after the accident. He recovered after just after a few months, and was able to live alone once again. Although he was able to live alone, he was not however, able to work, and his personality had chance a great amount. He went from the foreman of the railroad company, to what seemed like the village idiot. The reason for this is because the blow had pieced his frontal lobe, which in turn changed his personality. He was no longer the same person.
I also found the section on Localization of Brain Function very interesting as well. Phrenology was the first study devoted to the localization of brain function. This was developed by Franz Josef Gall and shaped how we know the brain to work certain parts of our bodies as we know it today. Unfortunately for Gall, some of his theories lacked scientific evidence.
The subsection “Close Up: The marketing of Phrenology” was intriguing because it told how exactly they wanted to spread the word about Phrenology back in that time period. In the age that we live today, we are able to market idea via the internet, which is much easier than back in the older days. For example, psychologists and scientists had to publish letters that they sent to other psychologists and scientists in order to gain recognition. Today, we have such things as Ebscohost or Psychinfo, where one is able to easily find research on almost ANY topic.
The part of this chapter that I did not like was the part about neurology and synapses. The reason for this is because Biopsychology has always been my least favorite part of psychology. I am not much of a science guy, and it gets much too confusing for me. It really took some hard concentration for me to be able to understand exactly what they were talking about.
One thing that interested me from the chapter was the case of Phineas Gage. A work accident left Gage with a tamping iron lodged in his left frontal cortex. Surviving such an injury with today’s technology would be a feat in itself. But, the fact that he was able to make it out of the hospital alive in a time before antibiotics and other modern surgical procedures makes his story that much more remarkable. I hadn’t realized before reading the chapter that the entry wound was probably crucial to Gage’s survival by providing a drainage area that prevented a fatal abscess.
Another thing I found interesting from the chapter was the brief discussion of the Age of Enlightenment. This is one of my favorite periods in science history. The shift from Renaissance ideas to a bigger focus on scientific methodology was led by great thinkers such as Bacon, Galileo, Harvey, and Descartes. The second half of the seventeenth century gave way to Sir Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking science and reasoning. I thought it was interesting how Enlightenment thinking was applied to politics in America’s Constitution and in Ben Franklin’s passion for science. The peak of Enlightenment influence came at the second half of the eighteenth century and continued to influence innovations into the Industrial Revolution. How does this era apply to psychology? That’s what interested me the most. Psychologists in the nineteenth century tried to uncover the mysteries of the senses and the nervous system and eventually gave way to a scientific approach to psychology.
A third thing I found interesting from the chapter was phrenology; more specifically, its downfall. Phrenologists often supported their claims and research findings with anecdotal evidence. That was acceptable under the guidelines of the scientific theory. The problem with phrenology was found in their lack of precision, whereas their claims were not capable of disproof. Even after the failure of the phrenology theory, the general public still ate it up like most pseudoscience today, like extrasensory perception (ESP) for example. The fact that phrenology was widely followed by the general public after it was dispelled in the scientific community was interesting to me, but not entirely surprising because of the prevalence of pseudoscience in popular culture today.
The thing I found to be least interesting in the chapter was equipotentiality and mass action. The effects of maze difficulty and cortical destruction on maze learning is not something I find to be particularly fascinating. Maze studies are great for examining brain mechanisms and intelligence. Lashley discovered that the learning process is not localized to any specific area of the cortex, but is rather proportional to the extent of cortical destruction. The relationship between brain and behavior is instrumental in nervous system physiology that emerged in his time. But overall, I found this section to be dry and boring to get through.
The thing I read that will be most useful to understanding the history of psychology is the origins of the clinical method used to study human brain function. Ablation studies were often difficult to interpret, and sometimes impossible to perform (on human subjects) for scientific observation. The clinical method allows for the study of the behavioral and mental outcomes of brain injury, the identification of behavioral or mental disorder, and the examination of brain abnormalities in such disordered individuals. A key player credited with the founding of this method is Broca. A famous case associated method is one mentioned above: Phineas Gage.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter by describing the physiological developments made at the same pace as the philosophical developments, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Physiologists were aware and concerned with many philosophical issues about human understanding and the mind-body problem. On the other hand, philosophers were also aware of the physiological developments being made at the time and even made contributions to those developments in some instances.
I would like to learn more about the topic of Carl Wernicke’s sensory aphasia studies. Broca’s work with motor aphasia was covered in significantly more detail than Wernicke’s work with sensory aphasia. In my mind, both topics should have earned equal coverage. I would like to know more about his specific studies, much like Broca’s work with “Tan.”
An idea I had while reading this chapter was that I had a decent understanding of different components of the brain, but not so much of their discovery. This chapter was the first time I had heard Sir Charles Sherrington’s name associated with the synapse. Likewise, I hadn’t heard the name Cajal mentioned with the modern theory of the neuron.
Another idea I had while reading this chapter was that the concept of “scientific phrenology” actually held some credibility unlike its predecessor of phrenology. I think would have given that procedure of electrical stimulation to map the brain a different title if I had been a pioneering researcher of it.
The first thing I found interesting was the work done on reflexes. The question was brought up in the chapter “did some level of awareness, and perhaps some perception of pain, remain after a beheading?” If so that would have meant that the method they were using was not humane. They asked this question because many noticed that even after a head had been decapitated there were still twitches. This question lead Theador Bischoff to conduct tests on decapitated heads right after they were executed. After experimenting on these decapitated heads it was concluded that consciousness ended with the moment execution took place. This just reinforced what they had already believed to be true, that consciousness resided in the brain. Therefore they believed that the method of execution was humane after all.
The second thing I found interesting was Pierre Flourens attacking phrenology. Phrenology really did work for the “main street” Americans but it didn’t work for real scientists like Flourens. Flourens took an ablation (carry away/remove) method of experimentation. He experimented on many different types of animals. Flourens took parts of the brain out that phrenologists said would be affecting something and tried to see if it really did. An example of this is he believed that if he took part of what phrenologists believed was the vision part of the cortex the animal would no longer be capable of sight. He found no indication that certain functions were in specific areas of the cortex. He did conclude that “it operated as a whole and served the general functions of perception, intelligence, and will.
The third thing I found interesting was the section of “Mapping the Brain: electrical stimulation.” Two scientists Edward Hitzig and assistant Eduard Fritsch were going to experiment on how the brain worked while stimulated. Hitzig observed muscle movements when the exposed brain of a wounded soldier had been mechanically stimulated, but it was generally believed that touching the surface of the brain didn’t produce reliable effects. So Hitzig and Fritsch used dogs by exposing their cortex. While exposing their cortex Hitzig and Fritshc probed the surfaces with a stimulating electrical current. This activity was called the “new” phrenology or “scientific phrenology” and lead to many other researchers to entertain this idea.
I honestly found most of this chapter interesting. If I had to choose I would say that the least interesting part was about Helmholtz and his investigation of vision and audition. It just wasn’t a very lively read and I got pretty bored reading that section. I don’t think it’s fair to ask what is the most important thing to understanding psychology anymore, because I really feel like almost everything you read is important in understanding psychology as a whole. Yes there are certain things that I found more interesting than others, but I don’t think one thing was more important than another. It builds because we are slowly building off of Descartes and other scientists that we learned in previous chapters. Again I think this is a bad question, obviously it builds off of the past chapter its history it will continue to keep building. I would like to learn more about phrenology.
When thinking about what Whytt did to those frogs for research and how Theodor Bischoff did tests to decapitated heads I wonder if they would have been able to do such research today. I feel like due to ethics it might not have been allowed. Now imagine if all of the things that have been proven through scientific method, but were perhaps unethical wouldn’t have been allowed to be tested we might not understand things such as reflexes as well as we do. Now what if we never worried about ethics; would be more advanced today if there were no considerations towards ethics that we had to make?
For chapter 3 one of the most interesting topics I came across while reading was the discussion of Reflex Actions. I found this interesting because I had already read over the discussion of Descartes and how he was the first to develop a model for reflex actions, but for this chapter Robert Whytt has made the most significance scientific contributions to the study of reflexes based after Descartes prior to the nineteenth century. He found that pinching a leg on an animal after the animal had died would result in the animals’ leg to move, but if the connection between the nerve in the leg and the spinal cord were disconnected there was no movement. Resulting that the spinal cord does play a vital role in reflexive behaviors, which would make sense since the spine does play a key role in movements throughout the body. When thinking about this I can say I would agree but does it matter if the head is still attached or not, in his study in the book the animals head wasn’t attached. I also wonder how long after the death did they try these experiments because isn’t the body known to make movements after death for a short period of time. Very interesting though, but kind of gross at the same time.
The second thing I found to be interesting was the discussion of specific energies of nerves. What I found to be interesting was that different sensory nerves have different qualities, that someone may take a sensation of touch the other may use taste. The book used a good example of metal on their tongue, one said sharp the other said metallic. Each impression made two different nerves of sense using the same object, but can produce two distinct sensations; I would never have thought about the sensations we have like this before. Is this why if someone that has lost their eye sight compared to someone who has fine eye sight have a more developed sense of smell or taste? The credit for this research went to a man named Johannes Muller; and he pointed out that “in perception we are not directly aware of the external world; rather we are only aware of the action of our nervous system, which conveys information of the world to us”. Once I read this the first thing I thought of was when you go to touch something and the surface is really hot and you know it and you pull back your hand before you’re fully aware that it is actually really hot. I found this to be confusing yet interesting at the same time.
Another topic I found interesting was the topic of Phineas Gage. I found this interesting because even now-a-days this seems impossible to survive; I understand that where the pole went through his head it barely missed “the important things” but it amazes me someone could survive that. I also found it interesting that he only lost consciousness for a short period of time and was able to walk shortly after the incident happened, and even within 2 months he was recovered. What I still wonder is why did his attitude change so much when he didn’t suffer as much? It says in the book that brain damage is the reason but I feel there should be more, that maybe if something like this were to happen tomorrow we would be able to study and understand why.
One topic I found less interesting was Helmholtz on Vision and Audition and how after studying the physiology of vision and audition he invented a tool called the ophthalmoscope, a device for directly examining the retina. I found this less interesting because the eyes are such a small part of the body why would anyone ever focus their time on looking more in depth on it. What I really found confusing was his theory on color vision though; that the eye must contain three different kinds of receptors (for primary colors). I had a kid in my class who was color blind to where he couldn’t see the color red; he saw his version of red. This is something I don’t understand why happens, why only the color red could it be green.
What I read that I feel would be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology was everything about the brain functions. They separated the topics and also discussed reflexes which are very important too. I find these important to know and understand what they mean on a basic level because it can explain behavior and why the body (without a functioning mind) does what it does. It also explains why people do what they do if a dramatic event has happened to them.
I would love to learn more about Phrenology because the book I felt did a poor job at explaining what it actually was, a good definition.