Course intro

2025-08-26

Rick Gilmore

Department of Psychology

Prelude

melodysheep (2011)

“If understanding everything we need to know about the brain is a mile, how far have we walked?”

National Geographic (2014)

Jeff Lichtman

Today’s topics

  • Introductions
  • Structure of the course
  • What’s this course about?
  • On systems

Introductions

Teaching Assistant

  • Katherine “Katie” Billetdeaux

Rick Gilmore

Structure of the course

What is this course about?

  • What is behavior?
  • How is human behavior similar to/different from other animals?
  • What are the neurological bases (of human) behavior?
  • What other bases (of human behavior) are there?
  • How do the neurological bases of human behavior affect your life?
  • Why does taking/drinking X make me feel Y?
  • My grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease. What’s happening to her brain?
  • Carrie Fisher had bipolar disorder. What’s that about?
  • Why is sleep so important for brain health?
  • My mom says my frontal cortex isn’t fully mature. Is she right?
  • Is it safe for high school athletes to play football (or soccer, hockey, etc.)?

There are many “neurological” bases…

Neurotransmitters

Neurons

Networks

From https://source.wustl.edu/2013/08/brain-flexible-hub-network-helps-humans-adapt/

Brains

Behavior

Keys for success

  • Study the figures, not just the text.
  • Study regularly – don’t cram.
  • Come to class.
  • Participate!

Why is biology essential for the science of behavior?

  • What is science?
    • What distinguishes sciences?
    • What is neuroscience?
  • Why is neuroscience harder than physics?

What is science?

  • Body of facts or truths
  • Process of acquiring (and verifying) knowledge
    • Systematic study
    • Observation, experiment, description
    • Aims at reliable, reproducible, general, systematic, universal laws
    • Strives for objectivity

Science vs. other ways of thinking

  • Science is a way of thinking and a set of behaviors
  • Scientists strive toward communal norms Merton (1979): communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism
  • Don’t always meet them, but keep striving
  • Science describes, tries to predict

Science…

  • has led to huge advances in human health & prosperity

(Roser, 2020)

Gilmore’s personal:

Similarities among sciences

  • What are the different kinds of X?
    • Form, e.g., anatomy
  • How does X work?
    • Function, e.g., physiology
  • Where did X come from?
    • Origins, e.g., development/evolution

Examples

  • “Coronavirus gets its name because of its crown-like shape.”
  • “Viruses reproduce (and cause illness) by forcing host organisms to create massive quantities of the virus that then spread to others.”
  • “Coronavirus originated in non-human animals in China or escaped from a biological laboratory.”

We are family

“The tree of life” (n.d.)

Differences among sciences

  • Phenomena of interest (studying what)
  • Methods or tools (studying it how)
  • At what level(s) of analysis
    • Spatial scale (nanometers \(10^{-9}m\) to light-years \(10^{15}m\))
    • Temporal scale (milliseconds \(10^{-3}s\) to millenia \(10^3s\))

What is neuroscience?

  • The study of the nervous system
    • And the behavior it makes possible
  • Questions neuroscience asks…
    • What are the parts of the nervous system?
    • How do the parts work? What do they do?
    • Where did they come from?

Spatial and temporal scales

Sejnowski, Churchland, & Movshon (2014)

Why neuroscience is harder than physics

Systems

  • Neuroscience studies the nervous system…
  • But what are systems?

Your turn

Important

Think of a system you know something about.

What makes it a system?

Examples

Solar System (Wikipedia)

Earth’s climate system (https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/earth-system/climate-system)

Economic system

Systems have…

  • Boundaries
  • Components
  • Interactions
  • Forces/influences
  • Inputs, outputs, processes

Systems…

  • “Behave” or change state across time
  • May (or may not) return to starting state
  • Appear to be regulated, controlled, influenced by feedback loops

May be thought of as networks

Cole et al. (2013)

Why is studying systems so hard?

  • Single parts -> multiple functions
  • Single functions -> multiple parts
  • Change structure/function over time (learning, development, evolution) == are dynamic

Why is studying systems so hard?

  • Naturally occurring systems not “designed” like human-engineered ones
  • What is being exchanged/processed?
    • Answer (often): Information
  • What is being controlled?
  • Stochastic not deterministic
  • Butterfly effect, Wikipedia contributors (2025)

Extra credit assignment

Important

Take your own example system from earlier. What are the components of that system? What are the inputs and outputs? What do the components exchange?

Submit a 1 page write-up describing your system and answers to these questions via Canvas by Friday, September 5 at midnight for 2 extra credit points.

Take homes

  • Evaluation: 3 exams/4; 3 quizzes/4.
  • Systematic description and study of the nervous system touches on multiple aspects of behavior and mental experience

Next time

  • History of neuroscience
  • Levels of analysis
  • (if time) Methods

Resources

About

This talk was produced using Quarto, using the RStudio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), version 2025.5.1.513.

The source files are in R and R Markdown, then rendered to HTML using the revealJS framework. The HTML slides are hosted in a GitHub repo and served by GitHub pages: https://psu-psychology.github.io/psych-260-2025-fall/

References

Cole, M. W., Reynolds, J. R., Power, J. D., Repovs, G., Anticevic, A., & Braver, T. S. (2013). Multi-task connectivity reveals flexible hubs for adaptive task control. Nature Neuroscience, 16, 1348–1355. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3470
melodysheep. (2011, March). Ode to the Brain! By Symphony of Science. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB7jSFeVz1U
Merton, R. K. (1979). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. (N. W. Storer, Ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=zPvcHuUMEMwC
National Geographic. (2014, January). Beautiful 3-D brain scans show every synapse | national geographic. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXuq9jRWKE
Roser, M. (2020). It’s not just about child mortality, life expectancy increased at all ages. Our World in Data.
Sejnowski, T. J., Churchland, P. S., & Movshon, J. A. (2014). Putting big data to good use in neuroscience. Nat. Neurosci., 17(11), 1440–1441. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3839
The tree of life: We are related to every living thing! (n.d.). Retrieved August 18, 2025, from https://www.evogeneao.com/en
Who pays for science? - understanding science. (2022, April 18). Retrieved August 18, 2025, from https://undsci.berkeley.edu/who-pays-for-science/
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, July 29). Butterfly effect. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect