Historical Background: In 1952 my father had a lacunar stroke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacunar_stroke . It completely destroyed our family's already tenuous emotional stability, and my mother began showing an interest psychotherapy. It never happened, but she began pointing me towards articles about psychology in the popular literature such as Readers Digest, and, in 1957, I took the first of many college level psychology classes. While they were
a good introduction, they left me feeling unsatisfied.
Because so little was known about the nervous and endocrine systems,
the early pioneers in the field, such as William James , Sigmund Freud
and Carl Rogers were limited to considering human thoughts and behavior
after they had manifested themselves. They were unable to say much
about the underlying mechanisms. Our understanding of ourselves has expanded enormously in just the last 50 to 100 years, and this includes our understanding of our nervous and endocrine systems. Yet very little of this new information was included in any of the psychology classes I took. So, on my own, I went looking for psychology books that were based on the rapidly advancing new knowledge about human physiology. The first books I found were "Personality and Behavior" by Jesse E. Gordon and "Human Neural and Behavioral Development" by Esther Milner. These books are now very outdated, but they made it clear to me that I needed to know more about neuroanatomy. So, in 1983, I bought what was then the standard text, "Human Neuroanatomy, 8th ed." by Malcolm D. Carpenter and Jerome Sutin, and began studying it on my own. It was really difficult. Every specialized field has its own vocabulary, and it wasn't until I had read the book from cover to cover three times that I began to understand the language. However, I persevered, and little by little it began to make sense. In 2006, I met some students at U.C. Berkeley who were taking a class which was looking at psychological issues from an neuroanatomical basis. Their text book was: "An Introduction to Brain and Behavior" by Bryan Kolb & Ian G. Whishaw, FIRST edition. We formed an informal study group, and I sent them 14 commentaries on the book. 01 - Spinal Locomotor Generator 02 - Crossed Circuits 03 - Reticular Formation 04 - Spinal Input 05 - The Medulla 06 - Pons & Cerebellum 07 - Diencephalon 08 - Midbrain 09 - Olfactory Lobes 10 - Cortex 11 - Neonatal Behavior 12 - Neurotransmitters *13 - Brain Development and Literacy *14 - Boys Without Fathers: An Endocrine Hypothesis * Commentaries 13 & 14 were actually written before I had Kolb & Whishaw's book. I wrote them as term papers while a student at City College of San Francisco in 2004. So, technically, they're not commentaries on it. However, they both consider the effect of brain on behavior, so I've begun to include them with the commentaries on the book. As you can see, I started back at the tail and moved forward. This is the same order in which Carpenter and Sutin organized their "Human Neuroanatomy", and it makes sense for three reasons. First, the structures toward the tail are less complex than the structures more toward the head. Second, the amphioxus, which provides a model of what our very early ancestors may have been like, is almost all spinal cord with just the first hints of a brain. Third, our vertebrate ancestors, up through the amphibians, are completely lacking the last part of the brain to evolve, the cerebral cortex. I had expected to breeze through the subcortical part of our brain and concentrate on its interaction with the cortex. However, the subcortical brain has proven to be much more complicated and difficult to understand than I had expected. Hence, this website. Free Book: "An Introduction to Brain and Behavior" by Bryan Kolb & Ian G. Whishaw, FIRST edition If you would like a copy of the above book, send me a postal address. I will then send it to you. Now that a second edition has come out, the first edition is available via the internet for almost nothing, and I have several here at home. I will cite references to "An Introduction to Brain and Behavior" by Bryan Kolb & Ian G. Whishaw, FIRST edition, as [K&W: page number]. On [K&W:358] the book says: "The frontal lobe of each hemisphere is responsible for planning and initiating sequences of behavior." This is the majority view and represents a "top down" understanding of human behavior. I will argue for a "bottom up" interpretation in which the frontal lobe plays an almost minor role in determining our behavior. The cerebral cortex is a relatively new evolutionary addition to our nervous systems. Amphibians and their predecessors have no cortex at all, yet they have no trouble initiating, and perhaps even planning, sequences of behavior. Our brains are essentially amphibian brains on top of which has been added a cerebral cortex. Although I agree with the evolutionary framework proposed by Hughlings-Jackson, the book's discussion of behavior on [K&W:358] is very oversimplified. This website is an attempt to look more closely at the evolutionary framework of human behavior. Although my original focus was the nervous system, I've come to realize that the endocrine system is at least equally important, and I intend to study, not only the brain, but also the endocrine system. My original expectation was that my exposition of human behavior would begin at the evolutionary level of the amphioxus. However, it turns out that the amphioxus is far less primitive than I expected, so I'm extending the range of this site back in time to the very beginnings. Two Haiku: Although they are not related to this effort, here are two haiku I wrote many years ago: The sea waits to rise as rain against the shore. Night drives clouds far inland. A pause in the breeze smooths the surface of the lake which reflects the moon.
Open Passwords: My ever worsening word finding difficulties have forced me to confront the fact that I'm not going to live forever. I would like for these webpages to remain as useful as possible for as long as possible, but if I die with the webpages locked up in secret passwords, the multiple secret passwords will restrict the webpages' use to the few who know the passwords. One way around this is to make the passwords public. So here they are: FalseFlag15 FalseFlag16 FalseFlag17 $False&Flag15 $False&Flag2016 Win007Dows ThisPasswordRunAround2016 1. Please be gentle when using these passwords. A lot of work has gone into the pages they are trying to protect. 2. If you find something that you want to protect with a secret password, feel free to do so, but leave the open password version in place on the internet so that others may use it.
CotA: Historical Background, Free Book, Two Haiku & Open Passwords 180716 - 1013 |
Table of Contents >
Historical Background, Free Book, *Two Haiku & Open Passwords
Subpages (14):
01 - Spinal Locomotor Generator
02 - Crossed Circuits
03 - Reticular Formation
04 - Spinal Input
05 - The Medulla
06 - Pons & Cerebellum
07 - Diencephalon
08 - Midbrain
09 - Olfactory Lobes
10 - Cortex
11 - Neonatal Behavior
12 - Neurotransmitters
13 - Brain Development and Literacy
14 - Boys Without Fathers: An Endocrine Hypothesis
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