Learning Objectives

 Describe the precursors to the establishment of the science of psychology.

 Identify key individuals and events in the history of American psychology.
 Describe the rise of professional psychology in America.
 Develop a basic understanding of the processes of scientific development and
change.
 Recognize the role of women and people of color in the history of American
psychology.

Introduction

It is always a difficult question to ask, where to begin to tell the story of

the history of psychology. Some would start with ancient Greece; others
would look to a demarcation in the late 19th century when the science of
psychology was formally proposed and instituted. These two
perspectives, and all that is in between, are appropriate for describing a
history of psychology. The interested student will have no trouble finding
an abundance of resources on all of these time frames and perspectives
(Goodwin, 2011; Leahey, 2012; Schultz & Schultz, 2007). For the
purposes of this module, we will examine the development of psychology
in America and use the mid-19th century as our starting point. For the
sake of convenience, we refer to this as a history of modern psychology.
The earliest records of a psychological experiment go all the way back to
the Pharaoh Psamtik I of Egypt in the 7th Century B.C. [Image:
Neithsabes, CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]
Psychology is an exciting field and the history of psychology offers the
opportunity to make sense of how it has grown and developed. The
history of psychology also provides perspective. Rather than a dry
collection of names and dates, the history of psychology tells us about the
important intersection of time and place that defines who we are.
Consider what happens when you meet someone for the first time. The
conversation usually begins with a series of questions such as, “Where
did you grow up?” “How long have you lived here?” “Where did you go
to school?” The importance of history in defining who we are cannot be
overstated. Whether you are seeing a physician, talking with a counselor,
or applying for a job, everything begins with a history. The same is true
for studying the history of psychology; getting a history of the field helps
to make sense of where we are and how we got here.

A Prehistory of Psychology

Precursors to American psychology can be found in philosophy and

physiology. Philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and Thomas
Reid (1710–1796) promoted empiricism, the idea that all knowledge
comes from experience. The work of Locke, Reid, and others emphasized
the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining
how the mind comes to acquire knowledge. In American colleges and
universities in the early 1800s, these principles were taught as courses on
mental and moral philosophy. Most often these courses taught about the
mind based on the faculties of intellect, will, and the senses (Fuchs,
2000).

Physiology and Psychophysics

Philosophical questions about the nature of mind and knowledge were

matched in the 19th century by physiological investigations of the
sensory systems of the human observer. German physiologist Hermann
von Helmholtz (1821–1894) measured the speed of the neural
impulse and explored the physiology of hearing and vision. His work
indicated that our senses can deceive us and are not a mirror of the
external world. Such work showed that even though the human senses
were fallible, the mind could be measured using the methods of science.
In all, it suggested that a science of psychology was feasible.

An important implication of Helmholtz’s work was that there is a

psychological reality and a physical reality and that the two are not
identical. This was not a new idea; philosophers like John Locke had
written extensively on the topic, and in the 19th century, philosophical
speculation about the nature of mind became subject to the rigors of
science.

The question of the relationship between the mental (experiences of the

senses) and the material (external reality) was investigated by a number
of German researchers including Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner. Their
work was called psychophysics, and it introduced methods for measuring
the relationship between physical stimuli and human perception that
would serve as the basis for the new science of psychology (Fancher &
Rutherford, 2011).

Wilhelm Wundt is considered one of the founding figures of modern

psychology. [CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]
The formal development of modern psychology is usually credited to the
work of German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm
Wundt (1832–1920). Wundt helped to establish the field of experimental
psychology by serving as a strong promoter of the idea that psychology
could be an experimental field and by providing classes, textbooks, and a
laboratory for training students. In 1875, he joined the faculty at the
University of Leipzig and quickly began to make plans for the creation of
a program of experimental psychology. In 1879, he complemented his
lectures on experimental psychology with a laboratory experience: an
event that has served as the popular date for the establishment of the
science of psychology.
The response to the new science was immediate and global. Wundt
attracted students from around the world to study the new experimental
psychology and work in his lab. Students were trained to offer detailed
self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known
as introspection. The goal was to identify the elements of consciousness.
In addition to the study of sensation and perception, research was done on
mental chronometry, more commonly known as reaction time. The work
of Wundt and his students demonstrated that the mind could be measured
and the nature of consciousness could be revealed through scientific
means. It was an exciting proposition, and one that found great interest in
America. After the opening of Wundt’s lab in 1879, it took just four years
for the first psychology laboratory to open in the United States
(Benjamin, 2007).

Scientific Psychology Comes to the United States

Wundt’s version of psychology arrived in America most visibly through

the work of Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–1927). A student of
Wundt’s, Titchener brought to America a brand of experimental
psychology referred to as “structuralism.” Structuralists were interested
in the contents of the mind—what the mind is. For Titchener, the general
adult mind was the proper focus for the new psychology, and he excluded
from study those with mental deficiencies, children, and animals (Evans,
1972; Titchener, 1909).

Experimental psychology spread rather rapidly throughout North

America. By 1900, there were more than 40 laboratories in the United
States and Canada (Benjamin, 2000). Psychology in America also
organized early with the establishment of the American Psychological
Association (APA) in 1892. Titchener felt that this new organization did
not adequately represent the interests of experimental psychology, so, in
1904, he organized a group of colleagues to create what is now known as
the Society of Experimental Psychologists (Goodwin, 1985). The group
met annually to discuss research in experimental psychology. Reflecting
the times, women researchers were not invited (or welcome). It is
interesting to note that Titchener’s first doctoral student was a woman,
Margaret Floy Washburn (1871–1939). Despite many barriers, in 1894,
Washburn became the first woman in America to earn a Ph.D. in
psychology and, in 1921, only the second woman to be elected president
of the American Psychological Association (Scarborough & Furumoto,
1987).
Striking a balance between the science and practice of psychology
continues to this day. In 1988, the American Psychological Society (now
known as the Association for Psychological Science) was founded with
the central mission of advancing psychological science.

Toward a Functional Psychology

William James was one of the leading figures in a new perspective on

psychology called functionalism. [Image: Notman Studios, CC0 Public
Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]
While Titchener and his followers adhered to a structural psychology,
others in America were pursuing different approaches. William James, G.
Stanley Hall, and James McKeen Cattell were among a group that
became identified with “functionalism.” Influenced by Darwin’s
evolutionary theory, functionalists were interested in the activities of the
mind—what the mind does. An interest in functionalism opened the way
for the study of a wide range of approaches, including animal and
comparative psychology (Benjamin, 2007).

William James (1842–1910) is regarded as writing perhaps the most

influential and important book in the field of psychology, Principles of
Psychology, published in 1890. Opposed to the reductionist ideas of
Titchener, James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous;
it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements. For James, consciousness
helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make
choices and have personal responsibility over those choices.

At Harvard, James occupied a position of authority and respect in

psychology and philosophy. Through his teaching and writing, he
influenced psychology for generations. One of his students, Mary Whiton
Calkins (1863–1930), faced many of the challenges that confronted
Margaret Floy Washburn and other women interested in pursuing
graduate education in psychology. With much persistence, Calkins was
able to study with James at Harvard. She eventually completed all the
requirements for the doctoral degree, but Harvard refused to grant her a
diploma because she was a woman. Despite these challenges, Calkins
went on to become an accomplished researcher and the first woman
elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1905
(Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987).

G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) made substantial and lasting contributions

to the establishment of psychology in the United States. At Johns
Hopkins University, he founded the first psychological laboratory in
America in 1883. In 1887, he created the first journal of psychology in
America, American Journal of Psychology. In 1892, he founded the
American Psychological Association (APA); in 1909, he invited and
hosted Freud at Clark University (the only time Freud visited America).
Influenced by evolutionary theory, Hall was interested in the process of
adaptation and human development. Using surveys and questionnaires to
study children, Hall wrote extensively on child development and
education. While graduate education in psychology was restricted for
women in Hall’s time, it was all but non-existent for African Americans.
In another first, Hall mentored Francis Cecil Sumner (1895–1954) who,
in 1920, became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology
in America (Guthrie, 2003).

James McKeen Cattell (1860–1944) received his Ph.D. with Wundt but
quickly turned his interests to the assessment of individual differences.
Influenced by the work of Darwin’s cousin, Frances Galton, Cattell
believed that mental abilities such as intelligence were inherited and
could be measured using mental tests. Like Galton, he believed society
was better served by identifying those with superior intelligence and
supported efforts to encourage them to reproduce. Such beliefs were
associated with eugenics (the promotion of selective breeding) and fueled
early debates about the contributions of heredity and environment in
defining who we are. At Columbia University, Cattell developed a
department of psychology that became world famous also promoting
psychological science through advocacy and as a publisher of scientific
journals and reference works (Fancher, 1987; Sokal, 1980).
The Growth of Psychology

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, psychology continued to

grow and flourish in America. It was large enough to accommodate
varying points of view on the nature of mind and behavior. Gestalt
psychology is a good example. The Gestalt movement began in Germany
with the work of Max Wertheimer (1880–1943). Opposed to the
reductionist approach of Wundt’s laboratory psychology, Wertheimer and
his colleagues Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), Wolfgang Kohler (1887–1967),
and Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) believed that studying the whole of any
experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience.
The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a Gestalt
perspective. Consider that a melody is an additional element beyond the
collection of notes that comprise it. The Gestalt psychologists proposed
that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than
sequentially. For instance, when you look at a photograph, you see a
whole image, not just a collection of pixels of color. Using Gestalt
principles, Wertheimer and his colleagues also explored the nature of
learning and thinking. Most of the German Gestalt psychologists were
Jewish and were forced to flee the Nazi regime due to the threats posed
on both academic and personal freedoms. In America, they were able to
introduce a new audience to the Gestalt perspective, demonstrating how it
could be applied to perception and learning (Wertheimer, 1938). In many
ways, the work of the Gestalt psychologists served as a precursor to the
rise of cognitive psychology in America (Benjamin, 2007).

Behaviorism emerged early in the 20th century and became a major

force in American psychology. Championed by psychologists such as
John B. Watson (1878–1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990),
behaviorism rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and
observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through
the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could
be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior.
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) influenced early
behaviorism in America. His work on conditioned learning, popularly
referred to as classical conditioning, provided support for the notion that
learning and behavior were controlled by events in the environment and
could be explained with no reference to mind or consciousness (Fancher,
1987).
For decades, behaviorism dominated American psychology. By the
1960s, psychologists began to recognize that behaviorism was unable to
fully explain human behavior because it neglected mental processes. The
turn toward a cognitive psychology was not new. In the 1930s, British
psychologist Frederic C. Bartlett (1886–1969) explored the idea of the
constructive mind, recognizing that people use their past experiences to
construct frameworks in which to understand new experiences. Some of
the major pioneers in American cognitive psychology include Jerome
Bruner (1915–), Roger Brown (1925–1997), and George Miller (1920–
2012). In the 1950s, Bruner conducted pioneering studies on cognitive
aspects of sensation and perception. Brown conducted original research
on language and memory, coined the term “flashbulb memory,” and
figured out how to study the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (Benjamin,
2007). Miller’s research on working memory is legendary. His 1956
paper “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on
Our Capacity for Processing Information”is one of the most highly cited
papers in psychology. A popular interpretation of Miller’s research was
that the number of bits of information an average human can hold
in working memory is 7 ± 2. Around the same time, the study of
computer science was growing and was used as an analogy to explore and
understand how the mind works. The work of Miller and others in the
1950s and 1960s has inspired tremendous interest in cognition and
neuroscience, both of which dominate much of contemporary American
psychology.

Applied Psychology in America

In America, there has always been an interest in the application of

psychology to everyday life. Mental testing is an important example.
Modern intelligence tests were developed by the French psychologist
Alfred Binet (1857–1911). His goal was to develop a test that would
identify schoolchildren in need of educational support. His test, which
included tasks of reasoning and problem solving, was introduced in the
United States by Henry Goddard (1866–1957) and later standardized by
Lewis Terman (1877–1956) at Stanford University. The assessment and
meaning of intelligence has fueled debates in American psychology and
society for nearly 100 years. Much of this is captured in the nature-
nurture debate that raises questions about the relative contributions of
heredity and environment in determining intelligence (Fancher, 1987).
Applied psychology was not limited to mental testing. What
psychologists were learning in their laboratories was applied in many
settings including the military, business, industry, and education. The
early 20th century was witness to rapid advances in applied psychology.
Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) of Harvard University made
contributions to such areas as employee selection, eyewitness testimony,
and psychotherapy. Walter D. Scott (1869–1955) and Harry Hollingworth
(1880–1956) produced original work on the psychology of advertising
and marketing. Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) was a pioneer in industrial
psychology and engineering psychology. Working with her husband,
Frank, they promoted the use of time and motion studies to improve
efficiency in industry. Lillian also brought the efficiency movement to the
home, designing kitchens and appliances including the pop-up trashcan
and refrigerator door shelving. Their psychology of efficiency also found
plenty of applications at home with their 12 children. The experience
served as the inspiration for the movie Cheaper by the Dozen (Benjamin,
2007).

Clinical psychology was also an early application of experimental

psychology in America. Lightner Witmer (1867–1956) received his Ph.D.
in experimental psychology with Wilhelm Wundt and returned to the
University of Pennsylvania, where he opened a psychological clinic in
1896. Witmer believed that because psychology dealt with the study of
sensation and perception, it should be of value in treating children with
learning and behavioral problems. He is credited as the founder of both
clinical and school psychology (Benjamin & Baker, 2004).

Psychology as a Profession

Although this is what most people see in their mind’s eye when asked to
envision a “psychologist” the APA recognizes as many as 58 different
divisions of psychology. [Image: Bliusa, https://goo.gl/yrSUCr, CC BY-
SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/6pvNbx]
As the roles of psychologists and the needs of the public continued to
change, it was necessary for psychology to begin to define itself as a
profession. Without standards for training and practice, anyone could use
the title psychologist and offer services to the public. As early as 1917,
applied psychologists organized to create standards for education,
training, and licensure. By the 1930s, these efforts led to the creation of
the American Association for Applied Psychology (AAAP). While the
American Psychological Association (APA) represented the interests of
academic psychologists, AAAP served those in education, industry,
consulting, and clinical work.

The advent of WWII changed everything. The psychiatric casualties of

war were staggering, and there were simply not enough mental health
professionals to meet the need. Recognizing the shortage, the federal
government urged the AAAP and APA to work together to meet the
mental health needs of the nation. The result was the merging of the
AAAP and the APA and a focus on the training of professional
psychologists. Through the provisions of National Mental Health Act of
1946, funding was made available that allowed the APA, the Veterans
Administration, and the Public Health Service to work together to
develop training programs that would produce clinical psychologists.
These efforts led to the convening of the Boulder Conference on
Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology in 1949 in Boulder, Colorado.
The meeting launched doctoral training in psychology and gave us
the scientist-practitioner model of training. Similar meetings also
helped launch doctoral training programs in counseling and school
psychology. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, alternatives
to Boulder have been debated. In 1973, the Vail Conference on
Professional Training in Psychology proposed the scholar-practitioner
model and the Psy.D. degree (Doctor of Psychology). It is a training
model that emphasizes clinical training and practice that has become
more common (Cautin & Baker, in press).

Psychology and Society

Given that psychology deals with the human condition, it is not surprising
that psychologists would involve themselves in social issues. For more
than a century, psychology and psychologists have been agents of social
action and change. Using the methods and tools of science, psychologists
have challenged assumptions, stereotypes, and stigma. Founded in 1936,
the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) has
supported research and action on a wide range of social issues.
Individually, there have been many psychologists whose efforts have
promoted social change. Helen Thompson Woolley (1874–1947) and
Leta S. Hollingworth (1886–1939) were pioneers in research on the
psychology of sex differences. Working in the early 20th century, when
women’s rights were marginalized, Thompson examined the assumption
that women were overemotional compared to men and found that emotion
did not influence women’s decisions any more than it did men’s.
Hollingworth found that menstruation did not negatively impact women’s
cognitive or motor abilities. Such work combatted harmful stereotypes
and showed that psychological research could contribute to social change
(Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987).

Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Clark studied the negative impacts of
segregated education on African-American children. [Image: Penn State
Special Collection, https://goo.gl/WP7Dgc, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0,
https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Among the first generation of African American psychologists, Mamie

Phipps Clark (1917–1983) and her husband Kenneth Clark (1914–2005)
studied the psychology of race and demonstrated the ways in which
school segregation negatively impacted the self-esteem of African
American children. Their research was influential in the 1954 Supreme
Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended
school segregation (Guthrie, 2003). In psychology, greater advocacy for
issues impacting the African American community were advanced by the
creation of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968.

In 1957, psychologist Evelyn Hooker (1907–1996) published the paper

“The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” reporting on her
research that showed no significant differences in psychological
adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men. Her research
helped to de-pathologize homosexuality and contributed to the decision
by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973
(Garnets & Kimmel, 2003).

Conclusion

Growth and expansion have been a constant in American psychology. In

the latter part of the 20th century, areas such as social, developmental,
and personality psychology made major contributions to our
understanding of what it means to be human. Today neuroscience is
enjoying tremendous interest and growth.

As mentioned at the beginning of the module, it is a challenge to cover all

the history of psychology in such a short space. Errors of omission and
commission are likely in such a selective review. The history of
psychology helps to set a stage upon which the story of psychology can
be told. This brief summary provides some glimpse into the depth and
rich content offered by the history of psychology. The learning modules
in the Noba psychology collection are all elaborations on the foundation
created by our shared past. It is hoped that you will be able to see these
connections and have a greater understanding and appreciation for both
the unity and diversity of the field of psychology.

Timeline

1600s – Rise of empiricism emphasizing centrality of human observer in acquiring

knowledge
1850s - Helmholz measures neural impulse / Psychophysics studied by Weber &
Fechner

1859 - Publication of Darwin's Origin of Species

1879 - Wundt opens lab for experimental psychology

1883 - First psychology lab opens in the United States

1887 – First American psychology journal is published: American Journal of

Psychology

1890 – James publishes Principles of Psychology

1892 – APA established

1894 – Margaret Floy Washburn is first U.S. woman to earn Ph.D. in psychology

1904 - Founding of Titchener's experimentalists

1905 - Mary Whiton Calkins is first woman president of APA

1909 – Freud’s only visit to the United States

1913 - John Watson calls for a psychology of behavior

1920 – Francis Cecil Sumner is first African American to earn Ph.D. in psychology

1921 – Margaret Floy Washburn is second woman president of APA

1930s – Creation and growth of the American Association for Applied Psychology
(AAAP) / Gestalt psychology comes to America

1936- Founding of The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

1940s – Behaviorism dominates American psychology

1946 – National Mental Health Act

1949 – Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology

1950s – Cognitive psychology gains popularity

1954 – Brown v. Board of Education

1957 – Evelyn Hooker publishes The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual

1968 – Founding of the Association of Black Psychologists

1973 – Psy.D. proposed at the Vail Conference on Professional Training in

Psychology

1988 – Founding of the American Psychological Society (now known as the

Association for Psychological Science)

Outside Resources

Podcast: History of Psychology Podcast Series

http://www.yorku.ca/christo/podcasts/

Web: Advances in the History of Psychology

http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/

Web: Center for the History of Psychology

http://www.uakron.edu/chp

Web: Classics in the History of Psychology

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/

Web: Psychology’s Feminist Voices

http://www.feministvoices.com/

Web: This Week in the History of Psychology

http://www.yorku.ca/christo/podcasts/

Discussion Questions
 1. Why was psychophysics important to the development of psychology as a science?
2. How have psychologists participated in the advancement of social issues?
3. Name some ways in which psychology began to be applied to the general public and
everyday problems.
4. Describe functionalism and structuralism and their influences on behaviorism and cognitive
psychology.

Vocabulary

Behaviorism
The study of behavior.

Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes.

Consciousness
Awareness of ourselves and our environment.

Empiricism
The belief that knowledge comes from experience.

Eugenics
The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.

Flashbulb memory
A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant
event.

Functionalism
A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of
consciousness.

Gestalt psychology
An attempt to study the unity of experience.

Individual differences
Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion,
cognition, and development.

Introspection
A method of focusing on internal processes.

Neural impulse
An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.

Practitioner-Scholar Model
A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes
clinical practice.

Psychophysics
Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the
perception of those stimuli.

Realism
A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in
providing knowledge of the external world.

Scientist-practitioner model
A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the
development of both research and clinical skills.

Structuralism
A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements
of conscious experience.

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
The inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the
sensation that that word is available.
So, what is the physical seed of thought?
What is the source of our emotions,
or decision-making, our passions,
or pains, and everything else?
Well, it's the brain,
and it's set to be the most complex mechanism in the known universe.
You might expect, given all it is, and given all it does,
that will look very pretty,
Philips shimmering lights and glass tubes, and mysterious colors.
But in fact, it looks really kind of gross,
it looks a the three-day old meatloaf.
It's gray when you take it out of the head,
and inside the head it's bright red because of all the blood.
In fact, it turns out very surprisingly that the source of our mental life,
of our consciousness is meat.
In fact, you could eat it,
people have eaten brains,
I've had brain with cream sauce, not human brain,
mind you, but I've had brain with cream sauce.
It's not bad.
But it makes the puzzle all the more harder,
how can this fleshy thing give rise to mental life?
That's the question I want to explore in this lecture, and the rest of the
lectures.
I want to do so by starting with the smallest relevant parts,
different parts of neurons.
Then explore how the neurons are connected together,
how they're wired up,
how they form different subparts of the brain,
like the hypothalamus and the frontal lobe.
Finally, talking about the brain,
and the larger perspective,
looking at the two halves of the brain,
the left half and right half,
and how they interact.
Now, there's a lot of stuff in the brain,
a lot of chemical stuff,
a lot of different parts,
but where the action is,
the part that does the thinking,
the part that is the focus of most of our research, is the neurons.
It's not an accident they call the study of the biological basis of thought
neuroscience,
because it all comes from the neurons.
So, you can see here pictures of neurons interacting together.
Here's a diagram that depicts a typical neuron.
So, what you see is the dendrites,
and dendrites receive signals from other neurons.
Either excitatory, like pluses, or inhibitory, minuses.
Then they get to the cell body,
which sums up these pluses and minuses.
When you reach a certain threshold,
a certain amount of pluses, there's neural firing.
Firing takes place through the axon,
and the axon is much longer than the dendrites.
In fact, for some motor neurons,
it's very long indeed.
There's axons running from your spinal cord,
all the way to your big toe.
You could think of it of the relative sizes of things in terms of a
basketball,
and a 40-mile garden hose.
Surrounding the axon is what's called a myelin sheath.
The myelin sheath is- you can think of it as insulation,
as fatty tissue like insulation on a wire.
So, the information comes through the dendrites,
and summed up in the cell body,
and it's transmitted through the axon.
So, what neurons do,
is they sum up and transmit information,
and we know that there's a lot of them.
By some estimates, it's 100 billion,
or the estimates tend to be very different and very rough,
but there's billions upon billions of neurons,
and each connect to thousands,
maybe tens of thousands of other neurons.
So, the fact that you have something of this degree of complexity,
this degree of structure,
structure which there's no way to replicate in any machine,
the numbers are just too big is
why people might describe the brain as the most complicated machine in
the universe.
At least this is fitting, it's made of meat maybe.
Which is kind of disappointing,
but at least it shows its incredible internal structure.
So, neurons come in three flavors.
There are sensory neurons,
which take in information from the environment,
from the external world.
There's motor neurons, which go from the brain out to your motor
control.
So, if you touch something hot,
and you feel the pain,
that is sensory neurons,
if you rent your hand back,
or you reach for something, that's motor neurons.
Finally, there's interneurons, which
connect different neurons without making contact with external world.
Either through sensation, or through motor action.
Now, the main thing to think about for neurons and
neuron firing is that it's all or nothing.
It's like firing a gun, or sneezing.
Neurons either fire, or they don't.
Now, you might think that's a little bit strange, particularly,
when you think about sensory neurons,
because your experience seems to be a continuum.
So, you have sensory neurons in your eyes,
and you can distinguish from a very dim light,
and a very bright light.
You have sensory neurons in your fingers,
and you could distinguish between gently touching something,
versus being stabbed on the tip of your finger, or something.
But still the neurons are all or nothing,
the way we get to this continuity of
experience is that neurons can code for intensity in different ways.
So, one way is in terms of the number of neurons that fire.
If x neurons corresponds to a mild experience,
x times 10 neurons may correspond to an intense experience.
Another factor is the impulse frequency of individual neurons,
an individual neuron might denote a mild sensation by doing fire, fire,
fire, fire.
Well, it might denote an intense situation with fire,
fire, fire, fire, fire, fire.
So, you have neurons,
and the neurons talk to each other,
they talk to each other because axons,
an axon of one neuron will communicate with the dendrites of another
neuron.
A long time ago, people used to think that neurons were
wired up together like a computer,
but in fact, neurons don't actually touch one another.
There is a gap between the axon terminal of one neuron,
and the dendrite of another one.
A very tiny gap,
typically of like 1/110,000 of a meter wide.
This gap is known as a synapse.
When one neuron fires,
the axon releases neurotransmitters,
these are chemicals that shoot out over that gap,
and affect dendrites and other neurons.
As I said before,
the effect of these neurotransmitters could be excitatory,
which is that they raise the energy,
so they increase the likelihood of a neuron firing, or inhibitory.
So that they bring down the likelihood of a neuron firing.
What's interesting is that different neurons shoot out different
neurotransmitters.
So, they have different effects on other neurons that they made contact
with.
In fact, a lot of psychopharmacology,
both attempts to cure various psychological or physical diseases by
giving medicines,
or recreational psychopharmacology designed to increase pleasure of
different forms,
or sometimes help people work,
or help people focus.
Works by fiddling with the neurotransmitters and this can be either
antagonists,
they lower down intensity of things by binding to the dendrites,
making it hard to create more neurotransmitters,
or they can increase the amount of
neurotransmitters available in different ways agonists.
So, you're either pumping up the volume or turning down the volume.
So, you think about different drugs and their effects.
There's a curare.
Curare, is a drug that used by South American Indians.
It's a antagonist.
It blocks motor neurons from affecting their muscle fibers.
It keeps your motor neurons from working,
and what it does is it paralyzes you,
and in large enough doses, it kills you,
because motor neurons also keep your heart beating.
So, shut that down and you die. There's alcohol.
Now, alcohol also has an inhibitory effect.
You might think that's strange because when I drink
alcohol I get all excited and happy and goofy.
But you have to keep this in mind here,
the way alcohol works is,
it inhibits part of your brain that does the inhibition.
So, you have part of your brain that says,
don't say that to the other person,
keep your pants on, stop yelling,
and alcohol basically inhibits that part of the brain,
making you more exuberant.
Then, over the course of things,
in the course of drinking too much,
it also inhibits other parts of the brain.
So, you could pass out and fall on the floor,
and in large enough doses, die.
So, both curare and alcohol,
in different ways bring things down.
Other drugs bring things up.
So, amphetamines, for instance,
increase the amount of norepinephrine,
which is another neurotransmitter,
that's responsible for genetic general arousal,
and this is how drugs like speed or cocaine work.
Other drugs like Prozac or L-Dopa,
influence neurotransmitters in ways that they increase,
for instance, the supply of dopamine or serotonin.
Which can be relevant for issues like parkinsons,
which seems to be related to too little dopamine,
and depression, which is related to too little serotonin.
So, these drugs work by influencing neurotransmitters,
either by directly pumping in more neurotransmitters,
or increasing the supply in different ways,
or stopping them from having effects by
binding them or sucking them up in different ways,
but they work through their effects on neurotransmitters.
So, the more general idea is,
the way neurons lead to thinking,
is that they form clusters or networks.
These clusters and networks,
are computational devices that do interesting things like recognizing
faces,
or walking up right,
or understanding sentences, or doing math,
or experiencing great sadness,
or falling in love, and so on.
We now know that, that's possible,
because we create computing machines that work in certain ways.
That if you wire up a computing machine in certain complicated ways,
it can do mathematics, play chess,
do flight simulator, and so on.
So, you may be interested in the project of
computational neuroscience which tries to ask the question,
how are neurons wired up to do interesting things,
and uses our own success at computational theory as a model.
Then, sometimes takes the inference the other way around,
which is you can see how people do it,
and then use this knowledge of how people do it,
to create computational systems that can do it as well.
So, how is the brain wired up?
Well, you might imagine that it's wired up like a portable computer,
like a laptop, like the sort of computer you're looking at now.
Into some regards it is,
but there's a couple of reasons why it can't be,
and both of them have to do with how well the brain works.
So, first, the brain is highly resistant to damage.
If you get a knife to the brain,
if you get damage to the brain,
it won't typically shut down the whole system.
The information and capacitors somehow distributed across
neurons in such a way that makes them extremely resilient to damage.
While in contrast, somebody could open up the back of your laptop,
pull out a chip and the whole thing is ruined,
the whole thing will stop working.
But the brain is wired up in a certain way that makes it highly resilient.
The second thing is, the brain is wired up in such a way that makes it
work very fast.
So, computers can do millions of operations per second,
because they're purely electrical,
but brain tissue is much slower and can spend the time to do many steps.
So, to put it a different way,
if your brain was wired up like a computer,
it would be so slow,
as to be entirely unusable.
It has to be wired up in a way that's more efficient,
that allows for the slowness of brain tissues and neurotransmitters,
and can still compute things at a level,
at a human level,
which is often blindingly fast.
Because of this, there has been a huge interest in
massively parallel systems and complicated neural networks,
which are wired up as we believe the brain does, and as such,
we are helping computers to do things based on
our understanding of the brain that they could never do before.
The details of this is something we're going to talk about through the
course.
We're not actually going to end up explaining
different capacities directly in terms of neurons,
because we can't, and because we want it to have higher level
explanation.
So, when I talk about how people learn language,
or how do they recognize faces,
we're not going to talk much about neurons in particular,
but we will talk about different brain areas and how they work.
Then the assumption is, the bet is,
that everything we talk about in more functional ways,
can ultimately reduce down to large networks of neural systems,
and that in turn will ultimately reduce down to
the specific behaviors of the specific neurons that we're looking at.

We've talked now about the parts of the brain, a little bit about what the
different parts do, and let's end by talking about the brain as a whole.
So, if you just look at the brain, if you remove it from somebody's head
and put it on your table, it looks symmetrical, but it's actually not. So,
this final topic is about what's called lateralization, which is about the
difference between the two halves of the brain; the right half and the
left half. It's long been known that there's a difference between right
and left. We're not symmetrical creatures. Most people are right-
handed, meaning that they do a lot of their motor control and they are
most fluid and capable like right hand writing with their right hand and
as minority people are left-handed. And then, some people are evenly
mixed, ambidextrous, right and left. People who are right-handed for the
most part have language in the left half of their brain, and people who
are left-handed are more evenly mixed. Some people have in the right
side of brain, others in the left side of the brain. So the cool thing is
that, most functions of your brain are duplicated. So, a lot of times
when you hear somebody say on the right side of the brain, the left side
of their brain, and right brain and left brain, a lot of what people say
about that is total nonsense. Most of the functions of the brain are on
both sides and to a large extent, it's sort of more of an issue of
dominance or greater potential on one side to another than an absolute
difference. But as sort of common wisdom goes, the left brain is more
associated with a written language, and spoken language, with a
reasoning, and logic, and science, and the right brain is more
associated with insight, and imagination, and music. So, we have these
two halves of the brain and normally they're in coordination, but they
deal with the world in different ways. So, one thing worth noting in any
discussion of the halves of the brain is that it works on a principle of
contralateral organization, which is an awful technical term, but what it
means is that your right brain sees the left side of the world, the left
visual field, and the left brain sees the right side of the world. It just
works out that the brain has this crossover effect where each half of
the brain is looking towards the opposite half of the world. And similarly
for motor control, your right hemisphere controls the left side of body,
your left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. Now, you might
say, "Well, this is ridiculous because I am one person and not two
people. I can understand language and appreciate art. I see the world
as a coherent scene. I don't see the world with half of me and see the
other half of the world with the other half of me." But that's because the
two halves of the brain are in constant immediate conversation. It's
through the corpus callosum, and the corpus callosum is a network of
neurons that connect one half of the brain with the other half. And this
is what allows sensory information that's received on the left side of the
brain for instance, to be perceived in the right side of the brain. It's
what allows the left side of the brain to control the motor actions on the
right side of the body because it could send instructions over to the
right side of the brain to do it. In fact, you can see in some clever
experiments the strange organization of the brain. So for instance, if
you flash on the screen very quickly something on the right side of the
body, you're quicker to name it than if it's flash on the left side of the
body. Why would that be? Well, think about. If it's flash on the right side
of the body, it's immediately perceived by the left hemisphere. The left
hemispheres were spoken languages so you say, "Oh it's a cup, it's an
apple." If it's flash on the left side of the body, for a fraction of an
instance delay, it has to crossover to the left side of the brain. And
you'll never see this in everyday life, the time differences are just too
small. But in a psychology lab, you can see this. Now, what becomes
really interesting is that for almost everybody, the two halves of the
brain are in constant conversation, but not everybody. So, a while ago,
people with severe epilepsy, they would cut the corpus callosum.
Epilepsy could be viewed as an electrical storm in the brain, the corpus
callosum causes the brain to communicate from one half to another. So
cutting the corpus callosum in some way, the idea would be to isolate
and shrink the electrical storms. And so, people did work on. What they
did is this very severe form of surgery and people with terrible cases of
epilepsy. And the consequence which they didn't anticipate is all of a
sudden you break one person off into two to some extent. You have a
left side of the brain which does the talking and the right side of the
brain which does a lot of other things, which appreciates music, and
space, and so on. And the idea is that in some sense, you've taken a
person and now you have two, one half of them who can speak and
articulate their wishes, the other that can't. And making sense of this,
what this means, what this does to a person leads to philosophical
questions that fall outside the scope of this course. : Added to Selection. Press [CTRL + S]
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Transcript language: English