October 1, 2024

·      What question about the reading for today did I prepare before class?

o   What made Gall want to study the brain?

·      What key ideas did I hear in seminar today?

o   Aristotle and Descartes were important people that Gall followed

o   They believed sprits lived in gray matter

o   The brain is the source for all higher brain functions

o   They comparted the brain function across different people and animals, etc. Elderly, brain damaged people, animals, children.

o   They believed you could read a person’s character based on their features

o   There were three major problems with Galls theory

o   Fluorenes would remove small parts of people’s brains to see how they would act and if they were able to live

o   They found out that damage to the brain could cause speech and language problems

o   Paraphasia’s: patients could speak fluently but their words were peculiar and misprinted

o   Fritsch and Hitzig found that the brain had electrical impulses

o   Franz believed that the brain was flexible

o   Equipotentiality: ability the brain to adapt and carry out memory functions
that belonged to now damaged parts of the brain
Law of mass action: function of the brain as a whole will be lessened in
proportion to the extent of the brain injury
Redundancy hypothesis: individual memory gets stored in several locations
throughout the cortex, with the number increasing as the memory becomes
better established and associated with other memories.

·      What substantive ideas or comments did I contribute in seminar today?

o   Active listening

·      What did I learn today that contributed to my understanding of psychology?

o   These people’s early studies lead us into understanding more about the brain and gave us neuroscience