Done by: Maedot Fikru Haddis

How psychology has changed

over time
"
Psychology is now defined as the scientific study of the human

,
mind and its functions particularly those influencing behavior ."
Psychology has evolved over the last 200 .
years It began as a

philosophical discipline but is now widely accepted as a science

, ,
alongside biology chemistry and physics The way psychologists .
work and study behavior has evolved over time psychology has .
,
evolved since its inception from Wilhelm Wundt s early work in the '
1870 ' ,
s to modern psychologists work including the development of

neuroscience .
In 1875, researcher Wilhelm Wundt established a laboratory in

, , '
Leipzig Germany to study people s thoughts Previously people . ,
had not given much thought to what happened inside our heads ;
they were more interested in the anatomy of the brain than in

.
what it does Cases such as Phineas Gage s accident in ' 1848
prompted doctors to investigate how the brain itself was involved

.
in the control of specific behaviors At the time studying the brain ,
was only really possible after someone died when the brain could ,
-
be removed during a post mortem examination .
Despite the fact that Gage lived for another 12 years after his

,
accident knowledge of how the brain and behavior are linked was

.
still very limited People began to make more connections between

the physical brain and human behavior after the study of

psychology as we now know it began with Wundt .

 (
Hans Berger invented the EEG electroencephalograph in ) 1924 as

.
a method of measuring brainwave activity in a living brain This

was the beginning of methods of studying the brain that did not

' .
rely on the patient s death Electrodes are placed on the scalp to

detect the general level of activity in various areas of the brain in

.
EEGs This tells the researcher which parts of the brain are

working the hardest when the person is performing various tasks .

,
This gave rise to more modern forms of brain scanning such as

( ) (
MRI magnetic resonance imaging and PET positron emission

) ,
tomography scans which provide more detailed information

.
about how the brain functions These scans can provide detailed

'
images of the brain s appearance as well as images that show

how active different parts of the brain are at different times .

The ability to help people living with brain damage is one

advantage of using brain scans to study the living brain rather

- .
than post mortem studies We can help if we can see where the

(
damage is and understand how that area is working or not

working ).