The Biological and Evolutionary

Bases of Behavior

Jinmian Yang PhD

What make you a unique individual?
• Nature versus Nurture or
Heredity versus environment
7 Contemporary perspectives
• What and how
important body systems
affect the function of
mind?
Today’s Outline
• The show of the biological/evolutionary perspective: different
level of analysis and explanation of Cause-and-effect

• The biological bases: the nervous system and the brain

What part of & how the nervous system and brain make it possible to
produce (what type of) psychological functions? (proximate
explanation)

• The evolutionary bases: heredity and behavior

What & why psychological processes evolve and for what functions?
(ultimate explanation)
From cells to brain

THE BIOLOGICAL BASES:

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE BRAIN
Neuron
• The basic unit of the nervous system
• There are between 100 billion and 1 trillion neurons in your brain
• Our brain contains more cells than there are stars in our entire galaxy

• Basic functions: to receive, process, and /or transmit information to

other cells within the body.
 Neuron
• Basic structure
➢Soma (胞体): the cell body
➢Dendrites (树突): the branched
fibers that receive incoming signal
from other neurons

➢Axon (轴突): a single extended

fiber that transmit information to
terminal buttons

➢Terminal buttons (终扣):

bulblike structures at the other end
of axon, able to stimulate nearby
glands, muscles, or other neurons. Neurons transmit information in only one direction
 Neuron
• Three major classes:
➢Sensory neurons:
carry messages from sense
receptor cells toward the central
nervous system.
➢Motor neurons:
carry messages away from the
central nervous system toward the
muscles and glands.
➢interneurons
relay messages from sensory
neurons to other interneurons or to
motor neurons.
Mirror Neuron
• They are activated whether we make an action ourselves or
when we see others do the same
• Enable us to understand the intentions of other people’s behavior.
• Learn through imitation
• Use your own experiences to make sense of other people’s behavior
……
• How to prepare for your presentation?
 Important neurotransmitters

The chemical mind:

• http://open.163.com/movie/2015/9/C/R/MB3BV210T_MB3C1
S2CR.html
The crown of humanity: Brain
• Brain structures and their functions
• Three layers:
1. Brain stem – maintain autonomic processes, such as breathing
Thalamus (丘脑) – passing sensory information to cortex
Cerebellum (小脑) –body movement, procedure memory acquisition
2. Limbic system – emotional center, motivation, emotion memory
① Hippocampus (海马回) acquisition of long-term memories
② Amygdala (杏仁核) detect & evaluate threats; formation of
emotional memory
③ Hypothalamus (下丘脑) motivation regulation & maintain internal
balance
3. Cerebrum – the headquarter of “human civilization”
Brain
Cerebrum
• Main composition: cerebral cortex (2 hemispheres) +
corpus callosum（胼胝体）
• Four brain lobes
1. Frontal lobe (额叶）– motor control and cognitive activities
2. Parietal lobe (顶叶) – sensation of touch, pain, and temperature
3. Temporal lobe (颞叶) – processes of hearing
4. Occipital lobe (枕叶) – final destination for visual information
Methods to explore the brain
• Methods to explore the brain
• Lesion study
• EEG: to detect electrical activity of brain
• Brain Imaging: MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) & functional MRI – to detect
changes in the flow of blood to cells in the brain

• Research questions: how to understand the function of amygdala in

detecting threat?
Reginald B. Adams Jr. et.al. Effects of Gaze on Amygdala Sensitivity to Anger and Fear Faces.
SCIENCE, 2003, 300: 1536.
Cognitive Neuroscience Methods
• Event related potentials (ERP)
• Uses electroencephalogram (EEG)
recording
• Neurons firing cause slight changes in the
electrical potential of the scalp
• A single EEG recording of an experimental
trial has a lot of noise
• But if you sum over a great number of
trials, the noise averages out and you can
see systematic patterns
ERP
Cognitive Neuroscience Methods
• Event related potentials (ERP)
• Advantages:
• High temporal resolution – you can distinguish different
stages of processing
• Relatively cheap
• Disadvantage:
• Low spatial resolution – hard to tell where the activation
comes from
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI)
• MRI gives us very high-resolution, three-dimensional
images of the body (structural MRI)
• How does that help us with measuring brain activity?
• Brain reacts to neuronal activity by increasing blood flow to the active
areas
→Higher oxygen saturation in active areas
• MRI can distinguish oxygen-rich blood from blood that is low in oxygen.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T.
Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
fMRI cont. (2)
• Advantages
• Relatively high spatial resolution
• No radioactivity
• More and more widely available
• Disadvantages
• Poor temporal resolution – brain takes ~ 1-2 s to adjust the
blood flow
• Still expensive – around $60/h
Other important issues
• Plasticity
– Changes in the performance of the brain based on experiences
– Self healing: collateral sprouting; substitution of function and
neurogenesis
• Please reflect
– What is the implication & application of the idea of plasticity in your daily
life

• Rosenzweig, M., Bennett, E., & Diamond, M. (1972). Brain Changes in Response to
Experience. Scientific American, 226(2), 22-29.
Meet your master (brain)
• http://open.163.com/movie/2015/9/2/U/MB3BV210T_MB3CB9
G2U.html
THE EVOLUTIONARY BASES:
HEREDITY AND BEHAVIOR
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Charles Darwin(1809 – 1882) (p47)
• Landmark theory – The Origin of Species (1859)
• Natural selection and survival of the fittest
Organisms well adapted to their environment will
produce more offspring than those less well adapted.

• Darwin’s theory serves as the foundational

theory for evolutionary approach in psychology
Evolution and Natural Selection
• The goal of evolutionary psychology (Confer et.al., 2010):
- “to study human behavior as the product of evolved psychological
mechanisms that depend on internal and environmental input for their
development, activation, and expression in manifest behavior”
• More specific evolutionary theories are created to provide
explanation to critical issues other than survival, such as
mating, parenting, altruistic behaviors, aggression and so on.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Genotypes （基因型） – genetic structure (from parents),
determining an individual’s development and behaviors within
a particular environment.
• Phenotypes （表型）- outward appearance and repertory of
behaviors
• Genes are not destiny; environment may enhance or inhibit
the expression of certain genes - Epigenetics (表观遗传学)
Twins study
• https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Nb41117AT?from=search&seid=25537
02065963837725
Variation in Human Genotype
• To separate the source of variance into two components:
genetic (nature) versus environmental components (nurture)

• Measurement: Heritability, an estimate of the contribution of

inheritance to a given trait or function in a group sample
• Its value ranges from 0 to 1,
e.g., intelligence ? height ?
How heredity influences behaviors
• How to figure out the influence of genes (vs. environment) on
certain behaviors & mental functions?
• Concerning Methods：We need to control one influence and
manipulate the other
• How?
How heredity influences behaviors
• How to figure out the influence of genes (vs. environment) on
human behaviors & mental functions?
• Twin studies
• To assess how much more alike monozygotic (MZ, identical) twins are than
dizygotic (DZ, fraternal) twins on a certain attributes
• MZ vs. DZ: 100% vs. 50%
• Equal environment hypotheses and representative hypotheses
• Adoption studies
• To assess the relative similarity between adopted children to their birth parents and
their adoptive families
How heredity influences behaviors
• Example: Studies done by Minnesota Center for Twines and
Adoption Research (1990)
– Comparing testing results of identical twins reared apart
with that of those who reared together
• IV: reared together vs. reared apart
• DV: correlations of test results
• Hypothesis: if there is a clear genetic influence on certain behavior,
the correlation of the test result of that behavior will be ————？
 Discuss: What can you infer from the data?
Characteristics MZA（r） MZT（r）
Brain wave activity 0.80 0.81
Blood pressure 0.64 0.70
Heart rate 0.49 0.54
intelligence 0.69 0.88
Personality 0.48 0.49
Career interest 0,39 0.48
religiosity 0.49 0.51

• Bouchard, T., Lykken, D., McGue, M., Segal, N., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Sources of human
psychological differences: The Minnesota study of twins reared apart. Science, 250, 223-229
Interaction between genes and environment
• Environments allow genes to be expressed
• Certain genes affect the importance of the environment
• Behavior is the joint product of nature and nurture!