Mind Brain and Behavior
Unit 1
1/24 Methods of Studying Topics of Mind, Brain & Behavior
*Three Identical Strangers* on netflix
The Scientific Approach
- Why is it important?
- Intuition and common sense come into play and sometimes make us think
psychological research is not important because we can “trust our gut”
- Just because we can come up with good and familiar reasons quickly does not
mean we do not need the science
- Placebo
- There can be actual and effective changes induced from placebos
- We need to ask if the drug/therapy/etc is more powerful than the placebo
- the research is important!
- Ex: do antidepressant medications actually work better than placebos or
other treatments?
- Hindsight bias (the “i knew it all along” phenomenon)
- Overconfidence
- Study “Sadder but Wiser”
- NECESSITY
- Critical Thinking
- Assumptions & values
- Science will always be biased - ‘bias circle’
- Operational definition
- Define research values
- What is “happier” or “healthy” or “good”
Types of Research Strategies
1. Descriptive
a. Case study: one person or a few studied in depth
b. Survey
i. Can be problems with survey research such as anchoring - these issues
generally don’t happen accidentally, people will search for data to support
their cause
c. Naturalistic Observation
i. Observer behavior, NO manipulation
ii. *What Would You Do?* tv show
, 2. Experimental
a. Manipulate - IV and DV
Cognitive Neuroscience:
the study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition
Temporal and Spatial Resolution
- WHERE did something happen in the brain and WHEN
- Where in the brain do we have to look and how refined does our temporal
resolution need to be
- What is the temporal resolution that we need
Background
- CN methods based on premise that cognitive or mental state consists of a pattern of
activity distributed over many neurons
Electrical Techniques
- Electroencephalogram (EEG) -- use surface electrodes to record the activity of
underlying brain tissue, a continuous display of electric activity in your brain
- Wide variety of uses (seizures, sleep study,
- Event-Related Potential (ERP) -- averaging across repeated stimuli allows event-related
activity to be identified
- Technology is identical to EEG but is focussed on single events, lots of post
processing
- Looks at activity in brain when researcher presents a stimuli
- You get to see what someone's brain does independent of what that person is
Unit 1
1/24 Methods of Studying Topics of Mind, Brain & Behavior
*Three Identical Strangers* on netflix
The Scientific Approach
- Why is it important?
- Intuition and common sense come into play and sometimes make us think
psychological research is not important because we can “trust our gut”
- Just because we can come up with good and familiar reasons quickly does not
mean we do not need the science
- Placebo
- There can be actual and effective changes induced from placebos
- We need to ask if the drug/therapy/etc is more powerful than the placebo
- the research is important!
- Ex: do antidepressant medications actually work better than placebos or
other treatments?
- Hindsight bias (the “i knew it all along” phenomenon)
- Overconfidence
- Study “Sadder but Wiser”
- NECESSITY
- Critical Thinking
- Assumptions & values
- Science will always be biased - ‘bias circle’
- Operational definition
- Define research values
- What is “happier” or “healthy” or “good”
Types of Research Strategies
1. Descriptive
a. Case study: one person or a few studied in depth
b. Survey
i. Can be problems with survey research such as anchoring - these issues
generally don’t happen accidentally, people will search for data to support
their cause
c. Naturalistic Observation
i. Observer behavior, NO manipulation
ii. *What Would You Do?* tv show
, 2. Experimental
a. Manipulate - IV and DV
Cognitive Neuroscience:
the study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition
Temporal and Spatial Resolution
- WHERE did something happen in the brain and WHEN
- Where in the brain do we have to look and how refined does our temporal
resolution need to be
- What is the temporal resolution that we need
Background
- CN methods based on premise that cognitive or mental state consists of a pattern of
activity distributed over many neurons
Electrical Techniques
- Electroencephalogram (EEG) -- use surface electrodes to record the activity of
underlying brain tissue, a continuous display of electric activity in your brain
- Wide variety of uses (seizures, sleep study,
- Event-Related Potential (ERP) -- averaging across repeated stimuli allows event-related
activity to be identified
- Technology is identical to EEG but is focussed on single events, lots of post
processing
- Looks at activity in brain when researcher presents a stimuli
- You get to see what someone's brain does independent of what that person is
