Psychology

- Latin word meaning “the study of the soul” (psychologia)

- The science of behavior and mental processes (formal definition)
- Has everything to do with creating different ways of asking interesting questions and
attempting to answer them through all kinds of data-gathering methods.
*the term (psychology) was not coined until the turnaround of the 16th century.
Science wasn’t established until the mid-1800s.
Chinese rulers conducted the world’s first psychological exams requiring public officials to
take personality & intelligence tests.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (854 AD – Oct. 15, 925 AD)

Full name: Abu Bakr Mohammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi
- Aka Rhazes
- In the late 800s, he was one of the first to describe mental
illness.
- He treated patients with an early psych ward in his Baghdad
hospital.

Big questions tackled in psychology:

1. How can humans commit genocide or torture other humans?
2. Do we have free will, or are we driven by our environment, biology, and nonconscious
influences?
3. What is mental illness, and what can we do about it?
4. What is consciousness? Or the notion of self?
Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – Sept. 23, 1939)
- Was one of the most tremendously influential & controversial
thinkers of his time
- His theories helped build our views on childhood, personality,
dreams, and sexuality.
- His work fueled a legacy of both support and opposition
- He developed his revolutionary ideas by building on the works
of others
- He began his medical career at a Viennese hospital.
- In 1886, he started his own practice, specializing in nervous
disorders
- In September 1939, Freud died through morphine injection at
the age of 83.

Scientific psychology started in 1879 in Germany when physician Wilhelm Wundt set up the
1st psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, just a few years after publishing his
Principles of Physiological Psychology (this book is considered the first true psychology
textbook).

Edward Bradford Titchener (Jan. 11, 1897 – Aug. 3, 1927)

- A student of Wundt
- Him and Wundt took cues from chemists and
physicists and argued that if those people could break down
all matter into simple elements/structures, why couldn’t
they do the same for the brain?
Titchener and Wundt tried to understand the structures of
consciousness by getting patients to look inward, asking
them how they felt when they watched the sun set, or
smelled a coffee, etc. Titchener called this approach,
Structuralism.

Structuralism
- This sought to analyze the adult mind in terms of the simplest definable components
and then find the way in which these components fit together in complex forms.
Mind
- Defined as the sum total of experience from birth to the present.
Introspection
- This is a major tool of structuralist psychology
- A set of observations made under controlled conditions made under controlled
conditions by trained observers using a stringently defined descriptive vocabulary.
- The examination/observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes
Structuralism was fairly short lived as psychologists can’t actually observe a patient’s inner
thoughts/feelings. It also relied so much on introspection that it became too subjective.

William James (Jan. 11, 1842 – Aug. 26, 1910)

- American physician and philosopher who proposed a
different set of questions, following on why we think, feel,
smell, lick, etc.
- He focused on the function of behavior (functionalism)
Functionalism
- James based this on Charles Darwin’s idea that
adaptive behaviors are conserved throughout the
evolutionary process.
- Refers to a general psychological philosophy that
considers mental life and behavior in terms of active
adaptation to the person’s environment.

The Principles of Psychology (1890)

- In this book, James defined psychology as the science of mental life.
Josef Breuer (Jan. 15, 1842 – June 20, 1925)
- Colleague of Freud
- He treated a patient called Anna O with a new talking
cure (cathartic method), which was witnessed by Freud.
- During that, Breuer just let her talk about her
symptoms. The more she talked and pulled up traumatic
memories, the more her symptoms were reduced.
Upon witnessing that, Freud encouraged his patients to talk
freely about whatever came to mind, to free associate.

Free associate
- This technique provided the basis for Freud’s career, and an entire branch of psych.
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
- Book by Freud where he introduced his theory of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis
- Theory that our personalities are shaped by unconscious motives
- Freud suggested that we’re all profoundly affected by mental processes that we’re not
even aware of.
- Use dreams, projections, and free association to root out repressed feelings and gain
self-insight
According to Freud, mental disorders could be healed through talk therapy and self-discovery.

In the first half of the 20th century, behaviorism gained a higher profile. Notable people
include Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B.F Skinner.
Behaviorism
- Focused on the study of observable behavior
Humanist Psychology
- Focuses on nurturing personal growth.
Behavior of Organisms
- Book by B.F Skinner published during the 1960s
Psychodynamic theories
- Collective thoughts affiliated to Freud’s psychoanalysis theory.
- These focused on the importance of early experiences in shaping the unconsciousness
and how that process affects our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and personalities.
Owen Gingerich (1930 - )
- Harvard astronomer who acknowledged that the human brain is by far the most
complex physical object known to us in the entire cosmos.

Hindsight Bias
- I-Knew-It-All-Along phenomenon
- Our intuitive sense more easily what just happened, than what will happen in the
future
- A psychological phenomenon that allows people to convince themselves after an event
that they had accurately predicted it before it happened.
- This can lead people to conclude that they can accurately predict other events.
The Scientific Method
1. Make an observation
2. Ask a question
3. Form a hypothesis, or testable explanation
4. Make a prediction based on the hypothesis
5. Test the prediction
6. Iterate (use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions)
Operationalizing
- Figuring out how to ask general questions about your subject and turn them into
measurable, testable propositions.
Theory
- This is what explains and organizes lots of different observations and predicts
outcomes.
Alfred Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – Aug. 25, 1956)
- Sexuality researcher who formally used surveys to collect behavioral data.
- He surveyed thousands of men and women on their sexual history and published his
findings in a pair of revolutionary texts, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
Case studies
- A type of psychological research which take an in-depth look at one individual.
- Can’t be replicated; run the risk of over-generalizing
Naturalistic observation
- A type of psychological research, where researchers simply watch behavior in a
natural environment
- The idea is to let the subjects just do their own thing without trying to
manipulate/control the situation
- Spying on people
- Great at describing behavior, but they’re very limited in explaining it.
Placebo
- Inert substances that has no known effects
- Researchers might utilize a placebo control group, which is a group of participants
who are exposed to the placebo or fake independent variable
- This is used to test the effectiveness of treatments in blind and double-blind studies
Sampling bias
- Occurs when some members of a population are systematically more likely to be
selected in a sample than others
Random sample
- Unbiased
- Sampling technique in which each sample has an equal probability of being chosen
Correlations
- predict the possibility of cause and effect relationships, but they cannot prove them
Experiments
- Allow investigators to isolate different effects by manipulating an independent
variable and keeping other variables constant.
Experimental group
- Going to get “messed with”
Control group
- Not going to get “messed with”
Double-blind procedure
- A procedure in which experimenters and participants are “blind to” (without
knowledge of) crucial aspects of a study, including the hypotheses, expectations, or
the assignment of participants to experimental groups.
- Particularly useful for preventing bias due to demand characteristic/placebo effect.

”Everything Psychological is Biological”

Neurons
- The building blocks that comprise our nervous system
- They share the same basic makeup as our other cells, but they have electrochemical
mojo that lets them transmit messages to each other.
- Basic unit of the nervous system
- Cells that make up the brain and the nervous system
Fact: the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons.
Types of Neurons

Bipolar
- Interneuron
- A type of neuron that has two extensions (one axon and one dendrite)
- Part of the sensory pathways for smell, sight, taste, hearing, touch, balance, and
proprioception.
 - Act as the “middle men” between sensory and motor neurons, which convert external
stimuli to internal stimuli and control muscle movement, respectively.
Unipolar
- Sensory neuron
- Detect light, sound, odor, taste, pressure, and heat and send messages about those
things to the brain.
- Responsible for converting external stimuli from the environment into corresponding
internal stimuli
Multipolar
- Motor neuron
- Transmit messages from the brain to the muscles to generate movement.
- Neurons located in the CNS
- They project their axons outside of the CNS to directly or indirectly control muscles
Pyramidal cell
- Excitatory projection neuron
- A type of multipolar neuron found in areas of the brain including the cerebral cortex,
the hippocampus, and the amygdala.
- Receive both excitatory (glutamatergic) and inhibitory (GABAergic) inputs

Note: No matter how big a nerve is, they all have the same three basic parts: the soma (cell
body), dendrites, and axon.

Soma
- Cell body
- Neuron’s life support
 - Contains all that necessary cell action like the nucleus, DNA, mitochondria,
ribosomes, and such.
Dendrites
- Bushy and branch-like
- Short and bushy
- Receive messages and gossip from other cells
- Listeners, whispering what they hear back to the soma
- Tree-like structures that receive messages from other neurons
Axon
- The talker
- Long, cable-like extension that transmits electrical impulses from the cell body out to
other neurons/glands/muscles.
Nerves
- Bundles of axon that are found throughout the body
Myelin sheath
- Protective layer of fatty tissue that protects the axon
- It speeds up the transmission of messages
- A white, fatty material composed of lipids and lipoproteins that surrounds the axons
of nerves and facilitates swift communication.
Nodes of Ranvier
- Periodic gaps in the myelin sheath where the signal is recharged as it moves along the
axon.
Multiple sclerosis
- A chronic, typically progressive, disease involving damage to the sheaths of nerve cells
in the brain and spinal cord
Note: Neurons transmit signals when stimulated by sensory input or triggered by neighboring
neurons.
The dendrites pick up the signal and activate the neuron’s action potential, or firing impulse,
that shoots an electrical charge down the axon to its terminals and towards the neighboring
neurons.
Axons and dendrites allow neurons to communicate, even across long distances.
Synapses
- The contact points between neurons
- Found in dendrites
 - The junction between the terminal of a neuron and either another neuron or a muscle
or gland cell, over which nerve impulses pass.
Synaptic gap
- Microscopic cleft
Neurotransmitters
- Messengers
Reuptake
- The process of popping out then pulling back to the neuron that released them in the
first place
Note: Neurons communicate with neurotransmitters which in turn cause motion and
emotion, they help us move around, learn, feel, remember, stay alert, get sleepy, and do
everything that we do.
Endorphins
- Natural, opiate like neurotransmitters linked to pain control and pleasure
Excitatory neurotransmitters
- Rev up the neuron, increasing the chances it will fire off an action potential
Norepinephrine
- Helps control alertness and arousal
Glutamate
- Involved in memory, but an over-supply of it can wig out the brain and cause seizures
and migraines
Inhibitory neurotransmitters
- Chill neurons out, decreasing the likelihood that the neuron will jump into action.
GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric Acid)
- A major inhibitory neurotransmitter
Serotonin
- Affects your mood, hunger, and sleep
- Low amounts are linked to depression, and a certain class of antidepressants help
Acetylcholine (Ach)
- Enables muscle action, learning, and memory
Dopamine
- Influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion
Alzheimer’s
- Progressive neurological deterioration that can occur in middle or old age, due to
generalized degeneration of the brain
- Patients experience a deterioration of their acetylcholine producing neurons
Schizophrenia
- A long term psychiatric disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation
between thought, emotion, and behavior
- Excessive amounts of dopamine are linked to this disorder as well as addictive and
impulsive behavior
Endocrine system
- The body’s “slow” chemical communication system
- A set of glands that secretes hormones into the bloodstream
Hormones
- Chemical messengers that are manufactured by the endocrine glands, travel through
the bloodstream and affect other tissues
- Affect our moods, arousal, and Arcadian rhythm
- They regulate our metabolism, monitor our immune system, signal growth, and help
with sexual reproduction
- Attraction, appetite, aggression

Hormones Neurons and synapses

They linger Flick on and off, sending messages with
amazing speed

The Nervous system (fast) and Endocrine system (slow) are similar, in that they both produce
chemicals destined to hit up certain receptors, but operate at very different speeds.
Adrenal glands
- Inner part helps trigger ‘fight or flight’ response
- Secretes adrenaline
- Snuggled up against our kidneys
- Release cortisol
Pineal Gland
- Releases melatonin
Pancreas
- Sits right next to the adrenal gland and oozes insulin and glucagon hormones that
monitor how you absorb sugar (your body’s main source of fuel)
Thyroid gland
- Affects metabolism
- At the base of throat
Parathyroid
- Help regulate level of calcium in blood
Testes
- Secretes male sex hormones (estrogen & testosterone)
Ovary
- Secretes female sex hormones
Pituitary gland
- Secretes many different hormones, some of which affect other glands
- Pea-sized located in the brain
- The most influential gland in the endocrine system
- Releases growth hormone, oxytocin
- Master gland
Growth hormone
- Stimulates growth in animal/plant cells, secreted by the pituitary gland
Oxytocin
- Love hormone
- Promotes warm, fuzzy feelings of trust and social bonding
Hypothalamus
- Brain region controlling pituitary gland.

Frank Joseph Gall

- German physicians who spent a lot of time running his fingers over the scalps of
strangers
 - A phrenologist
- He believed that a person’s personality was linked to their skull morphology, that its
bumps and ridges indicates aspects of their character

Phrenology
- The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of
character and mental abilities
Eventually, phrenology was dismissed as a cult pseudoscience because it turns out your
cranial contours tells exactly nothing about what’s happening inside the brain
Gall’s lasting and correct proposition was that different parts of the brain control specific
aspects of our behavior.
Localized parts of the brain have specific functions (e.g vision, movement, memory, speech,
etc.)

Nervous System
- Transmits signals between the brain and the rest of the body, including internal
organs.
- This controls the ability to move, breathe, see, think, and more.
How do our brains’ functions tie to the behavior of the mind?
Central Nervous System (CNS)
- What makes your bodies big decisions
- This system is the command center
- Consists of two parts: the brain and the spinal cord.
Peripheral Nervous System
- Composed of scout-like sensory neurons that gather information and report it back to
the CNS.
- This is made up of nerves that branch off from the spinal cord and extend to all parts
of the body.
Phineas P. Gage
- An American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable survival
of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head,
destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe.
- His accident is an extreme example of how function is localized in the brain and how
physical and biological factors can be reflected in psychological ways.
Nearly every region of the brain lights up during even simple tasks like walking and talking.

Old brain
- Inner core of the brain
- It’s anchored by the brain stem

Brain stem
- The most ancient and central core of the brain where the spiral brain enters the skull
Medulla
- Located at the base of the skull
- Here, the old brain functions happen automatically without any conscious effort (e.g
the beating of the heart, the breathing of lungs)
Pons
- Perched on the medulla
- Helps coordinate movement
- This is involved in a lot of important functions, including arousal, automatic
functions, sleep, and relaying information between the cerebellum and the cerebral
cortex.
Thalamus
- Located above the pons, top of the brainstem
- A pair of egg-shaped structures that take in sensory information related to seeing,
hearing, touching, and tasting.
Cerebellum
- “little brain”
- Baseball sized that swells from the bottom of the brain stem and is responsible for
non-verbal learning and memory, the perception of time, and modulating emotions.
Reticular formation
- A finger-shaped nerve network inside the brain stem that’s essential for arousal, like
sleeping and walking, and pain perception.
The old brain systems keep our body’s basic functions running smoothly
For higher functions, we look to the limbic system
Limbic System
- Amygdala
- Hypothalamus
- Hippocampus
- Acts as a border region of the brain separating the old brain and the newer, higher
cerebral areas.
Amygdala
- Two lima-bean-sized clusters of neurons, involved in memory consolidation and
emotion
Hypothalamus
- Regulates body temperature circulation rhythms, and hunger
- Helps govern the endocrine system
Hippocampus
- Central to learning and memory
- If damaged, a person may lose their ability to retain new facts and memories
The two hemispheres of your cerebrum make up about 85% of your brain weight, and
oversee your ability to think, speak, and perceive.
Corpus callosum
- A large, c-shaped nerve fiber bundle found beneath the cerebral cortex
- This stretches across the midline of the brain, connecting the left and right cerebral
hemispheres
- Makes up the largest collection of white matter tissues found in the brain
Cerebral cortex
- Covers the left and right hemispheres
- A thin layer of over twenty billion interconnected neurons
Glial cells
- Provides a spider web of support that surrounds, insulate, and nourish the cerebral
neurons
- Non-neuronal cells that provide structure and support to neurons
4 lobes of the cerebral cortex: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal.
These are all separated by especially prominent folds or fissures

Pop psychology
- A behavioral disorder in which journalists and arm chair psychologists use research
showing beautiful, detailed, intimately connected complexities of your brain to sell
newspapers/reinforce previously held beliefs.
Frontal lobes
- Located behind the forehead
- Abstract thinking
- Speaking
- Planning
- Judging
- Personality aspects
Parietal lobes
- Receive and process your sense of touch and body positions
Occipital lobes
- Located at the back of your head
- Receives information related to sight
Temporal lobes
- Located above the ears
- Process sound, including speech comprehension
Note: each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body. Ex.: left temporal lobe process
sounds heard through the right ear.
Motor cortex
- Located at the rear of your frontal lobes
- Controls voluntary movements and sends messages from the brain out to the body
Somatosensory cortex
- Behind motor cortex
- Process incoming sensations
The rest of your grey matter is made up of association areas that are related to higher mental
functions like running, thinking, learning, and speaking.
Association areas are more subtle; they deal with things like interpreting and integrating
sensory input and linking up with memories.

Oliver Sacks
- Famous physician, professor, and author of unusual neurological case studies.
- He has a form of prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia
- A neurological disorder that impairs a person’s ability to perceive or recognize faces
- Aka face blindness
- A good example of how sensing and perceiving are connected, but different.
Sensation
- The bottom-up process by which our senses, like vision, hearing, and smell, receive
and relay outside stimuli
Perception
- The top-down way our brains organize and interpret that information and put it into
context
Absolute Threshold of Sensation
- The minimum stimulation needed to register a particular stimulus 50% of the time
Signal Detection Theory
- A model for predicting how and when a person will detect weak stimuli, partly based
on context
Sensory adaptation
- The process in which changes in the sensitivity of sensory receptors occur in relation
to the stimulus.
- A gradual decrease over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant
stimulus.
- Example: people who live by busy roads typically don’t even notice that there is the
sound of constant traffic outside their window, but if someone comes to visit from a
more rural area with less traffic, he/she will most likely find the constant sound of
traffic irritating.
Difference threshold
- The point at which one can tell the difference
Ernst Heinrich Weber
- Made Weber’s law
Weber’s Law says that we perceive differences on a logarithmic, not a linear scale.
Weber’s Law
- Also called Weber-Fechner law
- This law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant
ratio of the original stimulus.
 - Example: when you are in a noisy environment, you must shout to be heard. While a
whisper works in a quiet room.

What we humans see as light is only a small fraction of the full spectrum of electromagnetic
radiation that ranges from gamma to radio waves.

Visible light
- Part of the spectrum visible to humans
Short wavelengths = high frequency Long wavelengths = low frequency
(bluish colors) (reddish colors)
Great amplitude (bright colors) Small amplitude (dull colors)
Note: The wave’s wavelength and frequency determines their hues
Their amplitude determines their intensity/brightness

Lens
- The transparent disc behind the pupil
- Focuses the light rays into specific images
- This project the images onto the retina
Retina
- The inner surface of the eyeball that contains all the receptor cells that begin sensing
the visual information
Fovea
- Retina’s central focal point
Note: an average person can distinguish a million different hues.
Rods and cones
- Retinal receptors
Rods
- Detect gray scale and are used in our peripheral vision as well as to avoid stubbing our
toes in twilight conditions when we can’t see in color.
Cones
- Detect fine detail and color
- Concentrated near fovea
- Function only in well-lit conditions

Two Theories that help us explain how our color vision works:
Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory
- Suggests that the retina houses three specific color receptor cones that register red,
green, and blue, and when stimulated together, their combined power allows the eye
to register any color.
Opponent-process theory
- Suggests that we see color through processes that actually work against each other
- Suggests that the way humans perceive colors is controlled by three opposing
systems.
- Example: being afraid of something. This theory states that the more a person
experiences the fear, the less the fear will affect them. This decrease in fear may
continue to the point where the situation is no longer scary.
Difference between the two theories:
The trichromatic theory states that our eye detects with red, green, and blue receptors and
process these to perceive color. Meanwhile, the opponent-process theory states that we have a
color receptors and opposing receptors and perceive that color by the balance between the
two.
Bipolar cells
- Cells whose job is to turn on the neighboring ganglion cells
Ganglion cell
- The long axon tails of these ganglions braid together to form the ropy optic nerve
Ropy optic nerve
- Carries the neural impulses from the eyeball to the brain
Visual cortex
- This sits at the back of the brain in the occipital lobe
- This cortex has specialized nerve cells called feature detectors that respond to specific
features like shapes, angles, and movements
Note: different parts of your visual cortex are responsible for identifying different aspects of
things.

Fusiform gyrus
- Activates in response to seeing faces
Parallel processing
- Ability to process and analyze many separate aspects of the situation at once
Visual processing
- The brain simultaneously works on making sense of form, depth, motion, and color.

Homunculus
- Latin for “little man”
- In psychology, it refers to a kind of sensory map of the human body
- A deception of what we’d look like if each of our parts grew in proportion to how
much we sense with them
Note: sound moves in waves that vibrate through a medium, like air.
Sound waves can vary in shape.
 Short waves have a high frequency and a high pitch (ex. Violin)
 Long waves have a low frequency and low pitch (ex. Cello)
Wave height (amplitude)
- Determines a sound’s loudness
 - Measured in decibels
Directional Stereophonic Hearing
- The 30 type of hearing we couldn’t experience if we had just one big, freaky ear
Ossicle bones
- Amplifies sound vibrations
- The most awesomely named bone in your body (hammer, anvil, stirrup)
Umami
- Fifth flavor
Note: taste is nothing without smell
Cochlea
- The spiral cavity of the inner ear and the main organ of hearing.
- It contains the nerve endings that transmit sound vibrations from the middle ear to the
auditory nerve
Sensory interaction
- The principle that one sense can influence the other
Synesthesia
- A rare and fascinating neurological condition where two or more senses get wrapped
together
- The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by
stimulation of another sense or part of the body
Theory on why synesthesia exists:
1. The rogue development of new neural connections may override normal boundaries
that typically separate the senses.
2. All babies are born with synesthesia and experience mixed senses until the brain
matures and creates separate sense channels.
3. Neurotransmitters associated with one function turn up in a different part of the
brain.
Note: our taste and smell are chemical senses
Odor receptors
- Activation of the olfactory neurons, which results in neurochemical effects in different
areas of the brain, triggering what we interpret as a smell.
Note: how we feel about a smell, and our perception of it, is often tangled up in our
experiences with that scent.
Sense of touch is actually a combination of 4 distinct skin sensations: pressure, warmth, cold,
and pain.
Kinesthesis
- The way your body senses its own movement and positioning
- This sense allows you to detect changes in the position of your body without relying
on other senses
Vestibular sense
- Partner sense to kinesthesis
- Monitors your head’s position and your balance
This sense of equilibrium is ruled by the pretzel-shaped semicircular canals and the fluid filled
vestibular sacs that connect those canals to the cochlea in your inner ear.

Perception
- How we order the cacophonous chaos of our environment
- The top-down way our brains organize and interpret that information and put it into
context
- This is heavenly influenced/biased by our own expectations, experiences, moods, and
cultural norms.
- This is the process that allows us to make meaning out of our senses and experience
the world around us.
Note: your expectations are just one factor in your perceptual set.
Perceptual set
- The psychological factors that determine how you perceive your environment.
Note: sometimes seeing is believing. But perceptual set theory teaches us that believing is also
seeing.
Factors in the perceptual set:
 Context
 Culture
 Emotions
 Motivations
Note: most of the time, your personal perceptual set leads you to reasonable conclusions. But
sets can also be misleading or even harmful.
Form perception
- The recognition of visual elements of objects, specifically those to do with shapes,
patterns, and previously identified important characteristics.
- The ability of the human mind and senses to perceive the shapes of physical objects
and outline observed in the environment.
Figure-ground relationship
- The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their
surroundings (the ground).
Proximity
- We group nearby figures together
Closure
- We fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object
Continuity
- We perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones
Depth perception
- The ability to see objects in three dimensions although images that strike the retina
are two-dimensional
- Helps us estimate an object’s distance and full shape
- We’re able to perceive depth by using both binocular and monocular visual cues.
Binocular cues
- Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes.
Monocular cues
- Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
- Help determine the scale and distance of an object
- Relative size and height, linear perspective, texture gradient, and interposition.
Motion perception
- We use this to infer speed and direction of a moving object
- Example: shrinking objects are retreating and enlarging objects are approaching
Note: your brain is easily tricked when it comes to motion.
Constancy = consistency
Perceptual constancy
 - This is what allows us to continue to recognize an object regardless of its distance,
viewing angle, motion, or illumination, even as it might appear to change color, size,
and brightness depending on the conditions.
Note: your brain constructs your perceptions

Consciousness
- Our awareness of ourselves and our environment
Note: It’s the awareness that allows us to take in and organize information from many sources
and senses, at once.
William James
- American psychologist who thought of consciousness as a continuously moving,
shifting, and unbroken stream, hence the term “stream of unconsciousness”.
States of Consciousness
1. Waking
2. Sleeping
3. Dreaming
4. Tripping

WAKING
Cognitive Neuroscience
- The study of how brain activity is linked with our mental processes (thinking,
perception, memory, & language)
- It uses neuroimaging technologies to consider links between specific brain states and
conscious experiences
Structural imaging
- Shows the brain’s anatomy
- Useful in identifying large-scale tumors, diseases, and injuries
Functional imaging
- Shows us electromagnetic or metabolic activity in the brain (ex. Blood flow, to let us
observe correlations between specific mental functions and activity in particular brain
areas.)
Note: Correlation does not equal causation. Meaning, activity in a certain brain region while
having certain kinds of thoughts might be useful to know, but it’s not the end of the
conversation.

Dual Processing
- The principle that information is simultaneously processed on separate conscious and
non-conscious tracks
Note: by some estimates, all your senses are scooping up nearly 11 million bits of information
every second. And yet, you consciously register only about 40 at a time.
Selective attention
- The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus or group of stimuli
A classic auditory example of selective attention is the cocktail party effect. You could be in a
room with 47 people jabbering away, and yet be able to concentrate your hearing on one
conversation, tuning out the rest of the voices and background music. But if the couple next to
you were to speak your name, suddenly your cognitive radar would light up and your
attention would whip around to the sound of your name.
Selective inattention
- Unmindful absence or failure of attention to particular physical or emotional stimuli
Inattentional blindness
- The failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was
engaged on another task, event, or object.
- The psychological phenomenon that causes you to miss things that are right in front of
your eyes
The Invisible Gorilla experiment
- Developed by researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
- For the experiment, the researchers showed people a video and asked them to count
how many times three basketball players wearing white shirts passed a ball. After
about 30 seconds, a woman in a gorilla suit sauntered into the scene, faced the
camera, thumbed her chest and walked away. Half the viewers missed her.
- This phenomenon has nothing to do with the limitations of our sight; rather, it has
everything to do with the limitations of our minds. We tend to focus in on something
that’s in front of us, but we can also miss things that are happening right under our
noses if we’re not expecting them. On the one hand, this is beneficial because we can
ignore distractions and keep on point. On the other, we may miss something crucial,
simply because of inattentional blindness.
Fact: Magicians understands and exploits Inattentional blindness better than anyone.
Raymond Joseph Teller
- Famous modern magician of Penn and Teller
- Stated that “Every time you perform a magic trick, you’re engaging in an experimental
psychology.”
Misdirection
- A well-known tool for magicians, a form of deception in which the magician draws
audience attention to one thing to distract it from another.
Change blindness
- Psychological phenomenon in which we fail to notice changes in our environment
- The failure to recognize the difference between what was there a moment ago, versus
what is there now.
Person swap
- An experiment where an experimenter will stop someone in a park and ask for
directions. And then, during some staged interruption, the original experimenter will
leave and be replaced with a totally different person.

SLEEPING
Note: when you sleep, your perceptual window remains slightly open.
Sleep
- A periodic, natural, reversible and near total loss of consciousness
- Recuperation, growth, mental function (improving memory, giving our brains time to
process the events of the day, and boosting our creativity)
Recuperation
- Allowing our neurons and other cells to rest and repair themselves
Armond Aserinsky
- Son of Eugene Aserinsky
- He was the first subject of his father’s research which lead to the discovery of the REM
sleep.
 Eugene Aserinsky (May 6, 1921 – July 22, 1998)
- Father of Armond
- Discovered that the brain doesn’t just “power
down” during sleep, as most scientists thought.
- Discovered the sleep stage REM
- He and his colleague Nathaniel Kleitman went
on to become pioneers of sleep research.

Electroencephalograph (EEG)
- Machine that measures the brain’s electrical activity
- Alpha waves (Waking Alpha)
Two Main Types of Sleep:
1. Non-rapid eye movement (NREM)
- Aka quiet sleep
2. Rapid eye movement (REM)
- Aka active sleep or paradoxical sleep
4 Stages of Sleep
Note: each stage is defined by a unique brainwave pattern.
1. NREM-1
- In this stage of sleep, you might experience hypnagogic sensations (those brief
moments when you feel like you’re falling, and your body jerks, startling you.)
- Hypnagogic jerk/hypnic jerk might also occur. This is the sudden and strong
involuntary twitch or muscle contraction.
- Transition period between wakefulness and sleep
- Lasts around 5-10 minutes
2. NREM-2
- This is where your brain starts exhibiting bursts of rapid brain wave activity called
sleep spindles (asleep but could still be easily awakened)
- Body temperature drops and heart rate begins to slow
- Brain begins to produce sleep spindles
- Lasts approx. 20 minutes
3. NREM-3
- Comes with slow rolling delta waves (high amplitude brain wave; deep sleep occurs)
- Muscle relax
- Blood pressure and breathing rate drop
- Deepest sleep occurs
 4. REM
- A perplexing period when the sleeping brain is buzzing with activity, even though the
body is in a deep slumber
- Dreaming and nightmares occur
- A recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur
- Body becomes relaxed and immobilized
- Eyes move rapidly
Sleep deprivation
- Causes immune system suppression and slowed reaction time
Insomnia
- Recurring problems in falling or staying asleep
Narcolepsy
- A sleep disorder characterized (sometimes) by uncontrollable sleep attacks
- Deficiency in hypocretin (this helps you keep awake)
Sleep apnea
- A sleep disorder that causes the sleeper to temporarily stop breathing, until their
decreased oxygen levels wake them up.
REM sleep behavior disorder
- Associated with a dopamine deficiency
Night terrors
- Spurring increased heart and breathing rates, screaming, and thrashing that’s seldom
remembered upon waking.
- Most common in children under seven, and may be spurred by stress, fatigue, sleep
deprivation, and sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings.
- Occur during the NREM-3 stage of sleep
- NOT the same as nightmares

DREAMING
Fact: the average person spends about 6 years of their life dreaming
Oneirology
- The study of dreams
- A mix of neuroscience and psychology
Oneiros
- Greek for dream
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
- By Sigmund Freud
- Freud proposed that our dreams offer us wish-fulfillment
Information Processing Theory
- Proposes that our dreams help us sort out and process the day’s events and fix them
into our memories
Fact: studies show that people recall new tasks better after a good REM sleep full of dreams
Physiological Function Theory
- Suggests that dreaming may promote neural development and preserve neural
pathways by providing the brain with stimulation
- When our brains are stimulated, they expand their connections more
Cognitive Development
- By this model, dreams draw on our knowledge and understanding of the world,
mimicking reality, and engaging those same brain networks that light up when we
daydream.
Fact: REM sleep triggers neural activity, and dreams are accidental side effects, the brain’s
attempt to weave a story out of a bunch of random sights, emotions, and memories

TRIPPING
Franz Anton Mesmer (May 23, 1734 – March 5, 1815)
- German physician who started treating all manner of
medical problems by putting patients into a trance-like
state, during which he claimed to align their “internal
magnetic forces”, which he called “animal
magnetism”(later known as mesmerism).
- He was inadvertently using the healing power of
suggestion
Fact: the word “mesmerize” is named after him.
Hypnosis
- A good example of an altered state of consciousness
 - A calm, trance-like state during which you tend to have heightened concentration and
focus, and in which you’re typically more open to suggestion
- Used effectively in treatments for stress and anxiety, weight loss, and chronic pain.
- Note: upon being hypnotized, you do NOT lose control over your behavior. Hypnosis
can’t make you act totally against your will. Nor is a reliable way to enhance the recall
of deeply buried memories.
Note: altered states also include hallucinations and the effects of psychoactive drugs.
Dissociation
- A special dual processing state of “split consciousness”
- A sort of detachment from your surroundings, which can range from mild spacing out
all the way up to a total loss of your sense of yourself.
Adaptive dissociative capacity
- Being able to feed in hypnosis
Tolerance
- The diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user
to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug’s effect.
- Note: the more you use a substance, legal or illegal, the less you feel its effects as your
tolerance grows.
Neuroadaptation
- Refers to the process whereby the body compensates for the presence of a chemical in
the body so that it can continue to function normally
- Ex.: For people who abuse drugs/alcohol, this neuroadaptation leads to tolerance and
dependence on a substance.
Psychoactive drugs
- Chemical substances that alter your mood and perception
- They’re the ones that go right to your brain’s synapses, mimicking the functions of
neurotransmitters
- They work by tapping into the psychological component
3 Different Types of Drugs
1. Depressants
2. Stimulants
3. Hallucinogens
Depressants
- Ex. Alcohol, tranquilizers, & opiates
- These drugs do exactly what you’d expect
 - They bring the mellow, slow body functions, and suppress neural activity.

William Seward S. Burroughs II

- Beat writer who called alcohol as “our national drug”
Disinhibitor
- Impairs your brain’s judgement areas, while reducing your self-awareness and self-
control.

Stimulants
- Excite rather than suppress neural activity, and speed up body functions, bringing up
your energy, self-confidence, and changing your mood.
- Ex. Caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, meth, ecstasy, and cocaine.
Uber Coca (1884)
- Freud’s first big publication dedicated to coke
- Freud believed that cocaine was a viable cure for morphine addiction
Cocaine
- This hits the bloodstream in a flash of energetic euphoria that quickly taxes the brain’s
supply of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
Methamphetamine
- Triggers the release of dopamine
Note: when those neurotransmitters are excessively activated, they can become temporarily
depleted, which is what causes that agitated, depressive crash that users often feel.

Hallucinogens
- Comes on a variety of plant and fungal forms, as well synthetic forms (ex. Lysergic
acid diethylamide)
- Aka psychedelics
- These drugs distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of actual
sensory input.
- You could end up seeing, hearing, smelling, or feeling things that are not real.
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)
- Was developed by accident in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann.