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Intro to Biopsychology

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[Music]

hi welcome to our lecture on

neuroscience and biopsychology so we've

been working up to this point we keep

talking about the possible physiological

determinants of

behavior and mental processes so now

here we are

why is this important why are we

studying this because this is at least

part of the picture here part of the

picture to who we are as human beings

we know that genes play a role

in things like physical traits and our

height and our hair color and our eye color

color

we know that we know that genes play a

role in the diseases that we develop

but what's really interesting is that

this goes further

there's a possibility

that personality traits cognitive

abilities behavioral habits all these

kind of things are in part determined by

genetic factors

so it's really amazing when you think

about it things like our political views

could have to do with with our genetics

i was just actually reading a study that says

says um

that it has been suggested that there is

a 70 hereditability estimate which we'll

talk about what that is but there's a 70

hereditability estimate when it comes to

political preferences here in the united states

states

so they're saying that genes play a role

in that

we know that

genes play a role in things like will we

develop alzheimer's or not or

parkinson's or not

but we're taking it a step further and

we're saying that hey maybe jeans can be

influencing things like political views

whether we in our values whether we

believe in the death penalty or not

how okay we are with ambiguity how

skeptical we are all this kind of stuff

has to do with genes

so it's really interesting

we could get into a really fun debate

here of free will versus determinism but

i'm going to wait for that for when we

talk about nature versus nurture but

first let's put up the definition for biopsychology

biopsychology

biopsychology i love this definition

because what's the definition of

psychology well the scientific study of

behavior and mental processes so for

biopsychology we just throw the word

biology in

there it's a scientific study of the

so you heard me a second ago referencing

nature versus nurture and saying we're

going to wait for our debate on free

will versus determinism until then but

but

this is a question that we are starting

that we're asking at this point

what role does nature play in who we are

and all these different traits whether

they're physical or psychological

and what role does nurture play

so there's an area

of study that looks specifically at this

and it's called behavioral genetics

the definition of behavioral genetics i

love that one too

is the study of the relative effects of

heredity in the environment on behavior

and mental processes so what did we

throw in there we just threw in the

relative effects of heredity and the environment

environment

so what's the role of nature our genes

how we're born

and what's the role of nurture our

environment our experiences our surroundings

so if we're going to talk about

behavioral genetics we've got to talk

about genes [Music]

okay so let's break it down

each cell in the human body has a nucleus

nucleus

each nucleus contains 46 chromosomes

thread-like molecules of dna each dna

molecule contains thousands of genes so

genes are the most important and basic

building block of our biological

inheritance it's the most basic unit of heredity

heredity

so let's talk about two different types

of genes if we really want to make this

real simple we can say there's recessive

genes and there's dominant genes

the dominant genes are always expressed

basically if they're present

they express themselves they reveal

their trait whenever they are present

recessive genes on the other hand they

both both genes and the gene pair

have to be present

so how i think about is i think of the

dominant genes kind of like bully jeans

they're big bullies whenever they're

there they're the only ones that get a

talk they're the only ones that get to

be seen the recessive genes don't have a voice

voice

so if you have a bully gene around

they're the ones that are going to be obvious

obvious

in order for the recessive genes to be

heard they both need to be recessive so

we can look at a really popular and kind of

basic easy example of this

we can look at eye color

brown eyes is a dominant trait blue eyes

or green eyes is a recessive trait

so if you get

one brown gene brown eye gene

from one of your parents and one blue

eye gene from the other parent the brown

eye gene is a bully jean so that's the

one that's going to be expressed

eyes now if we look at a situation where

you get one blue eye gene from one

parent and one blue eye gene from the

other parent they're both recessive

there's no bully in sight so then you

now what's really funny is someone might

say well i have brown my mom has brown

eyes and my dad has brown eyes but i

i have blue eyes

well just think about it

obviously mom and dad each had a brown

bully gene present but we don't know

what that other gene in the gene pair is

and obviously if you have blue eyes that

means they each had one recessive blue

gene it just wasn't expressing itself

nobody knew

but then in the jumble dance

dance

whatever that is conception

you ended up with

two blue eyed jeans

and so here you have

so that is really an over simplified

explanation of genetics it's nice to

think about it in that simple way but

when it comes down to it what they're

finding out more and more is that most

characteristics most traits are

polygenic meaning they're controlled by

multiple genes it's not as simple as a

trait being a result of either one

dominant gene or two recessive genes

it's that all these different genes are

at work

and so things even like hair color eye

color height are controlled by more

genes than we thought

also they're affected by the environment

and social factors

we can't rule that out

and we can look at how the environment

and social factors can actually impact

the expression of genes and so if we

wanted to go into this more we would

talk about genotype versus phenotype

genotype is what your genetic material

actually says whereas phenotype is what

is actually expressed and sometimes what

is expressed is impacted

or triggered or revealed by the environment

environment

one of the best examples of the impact

an environment can have on genetics is

prenatally whenever the baby's still in

the womb the environment that the mom is

putting the baby in can impact its

genetic development

psychologists use twin studies and

they've gained so much information from

these studies let's look at okay we have

identical twins and we have fraternal twins

twins

identical twins come from one egg and

one sperm they share one hundred percent

of the same genes this means they're

essentially clones

fraternal twins on the other hand

come from two sperm and two eggs

they are no more genetically similar

than non-twin siblings they share about

50 of the same genes so we have a huge

difference here between identical twins

and fraternal twins in that identical

twins share 100 of the same genes and

fraternal share about 50

fraternal how i think about them i heard

this a long time ago they're simply womb

mates please don't be able to see my

heart so i find it so funny

okay so

psychologists and researchers use

use

twins identical twins versus fraternal

twins to study

um what's the role of nature versus

nurture so essentially they're gonna

compare identical twins to the fraternal twins

twins

and they're gonna look and see if when

it comes to a certain trait identical

twins are more alike than the fraternal

twins then that means that heredity

influences a trait or behavior to some degree

degree

so let's look at that a little bit more

identical twins you have all these

identical twin pairs

they grow up in the same environment in

the same household

fraternal twins

you have all these twin pairs those

pairs they grow up in the same

environment in the same household

so the only thing that's really really

different between the two groups is that

identical twins share 100 of the same genes

genes

so if we test them on something like intelligence

intelligence

and it shows up that the identical twins

are more similar to their twin when it

comes to intelligence than the fraternal

fraternal twins that means that

genetics are playing a role is playing a

role in intelligence

it's almost like how i think about it

you know we talked about um

experimental research last week

and i kind of think about the fraternal

twins being a control group

so we talked about the scale remember we

want everything the same on each side so

once we we add something different it

tilts the scale and that's the thing

that's causing the tilt

so the fraternal twins they have the

same nurture

as their twin

the identical twins they should have the

same nurture as their twin

the only thing different in this group

is they share way more of the same

genetics so when we see a tilt

then we know that it has to do with genetics

now we could poke holes all kinds of

holes in this theory and some of y'all

and this kind of is an old-fashioned way

of studying genetics now research

methods are much more advanced

we could look at something as simple as

well are identical twins actually

treated differently raised

raised

differently than fraternal twins are

because identical twins are much more

similar to each other so does that

inspire a different environment

and then maybe we can't really say that

oh everyone's raised you know the same

they're all siblings raised in the same household

household

we can also look at well

even when you study identical twins

according to some time of separation

we could see identical twins that either

share a placenta or have their own placenta

placenta

and that plays a role in things

so there's all kinds of things at play

that this can get really complicated and

we can poke holes in this theory but

this is essentially what they look at

when it comes to twin studies

there's also adoptive studies

with adoptive studies we have this

really unique situation where all of a

sudden you have somebody who's

biologically different being raised by

adoptive parents

and so we could look at does the adopted child

child

turn out similar to the biological

parents that they never interacted with

if they do we know that those traits

have something to do with genetics

whereas if they turn out similar to

their adoptive parents in certain traits

we know that that has to do with nurture

so it's a cool way of isolating nature

and there was a really neat study i was

just hearing about this was actually a

really important study because it was

one of the first studies

that showed that mental there's a

genetic component

that there's a genetic component to

mental illness so they were studying schizophrenia

schizophrenia

and i think it was danish study

anyway wherever they were doing this

they had this wealth of data

that for years and years everything was

recorded everything was recorded from

all the incidences of schizophrenia

everything was written down um everyone

that was adopted all this stuff was documented

documented

and so there's tons of data that they

could analyze

and they wanted to look at okay well

what's the chance if you look at the

population as a whole in the area what's

the chance

of somebody the usual rate

of schizophrenia

if you look at then adopted

adopted

children who have neither a biological

history or legacy of schizophrenia and

their adoptive parents don't have

schizophrenia we see that normal one

percent rate

a one percent chance of having schizophrenia

schizophrenia

now they looked at okay well what if

there's no

biological genetic component no

biological legacy meaning the biological

parents they didn't have any history of

schizophrenia but they are this these

children were brought up in a household

an adoptive household with a schiz with

a parent that was struggling with schizophrenia

schizophrenia

this triples the risk

so you go from the one percent usual

rate to the three percent rate

okay now let's look at the opposite where

where

neither of the adoptive parents

have schizophrenia

but there's a biological legacy

meaning the biological parents

had schizophrenia

then we see that the rate goes up to a

nine percent chance of having schizophrenia

schizophrenia

so this kind of research kind of blew

everyone's mind and they said oh my gosh

there's a genetic component when it

comes to schizophrenia

and that was the first time that they had

had

identified okay there's a genetic

component to mental illness

but what's even cooler is they went one

step more and they looked at the

the children that kind of got the bad

end of the stick on both ends

meaning there was a biological legacy

the biological parents had a history of

schizophrenia and their adoptive parents

one of them had history had schizophrenia

schizophrenia

so you have it both when it comes to

your nature and your nurture what

happens then

[Laughter]

we should end up with about a 10

raise well they found that that's not

the case

that if you have the biological legacy

coupled with the adoptive legacy

you end up with a 17

chance of having schizophrenia

this shows that there's this synergism

at work

that the nature and nurturer like

compounding on themselves

it's really really telling research and

it shows the powerful dynamic

relationship bi-directional relationship

between nature and nurture

that it's not as simple as appears it's

not just about one of the pieces

okay so you keep hearing me mention this

word hereditability right i used to hate

that word because i couldn't say it now

i do i know how to say it okay so let's

look at the definition of her

readability the percentage of variation

in a population attributable

attributable to genetic factors rather

than differences in the environment so

the role that genetics is playing

if genetics contributed nothing to a

trait it would have a hereditability

estimate of zero if it

was completely due to genetics then it

would have a hereditability estimate of 100

100

it's really important to say that these

do not apply to individuals these

estimates they are generalizations

so it's impossible for example to

predict with certainty an individual's

height from a hereditability estimate

that's not how it works

now i mentioned height

height is one of the highest

hereditability estimates at around 90 percent

percent

so we know that height has a ton to do

with genetics i mentioned intelligence

around 60 to 70 percent

so we know genetics i mean intelligence

has a ton to do with genetics

right before the study i said that i was

reading something and maybe i need to

look more into it because that seems

really high well

well

some professor at stanford was saying

that studies have suggested 70 percent

her readability

when it comes to political preferences

it's high

but anyway what they're trying to do is

they're trying to figure this out for

each trait out there what is the role

that genetics is playing

and in the end what they're finding is

it's way more complicated than we could

ever imagine

but it's it's exciting to think about

what is the information that they are

going to figure out i was reading more

on that study i mentioned with

schizophrenia is a really old study it

was an important study like i said it

was important study in history but it's

an old study

and now they're looking more and more at

what is causing

schizophrenia and they're able to

isolate certain genes

and they're looking at some kind of over

pruning that's happening during adolescence

where we don't talk about in this class

we talk about it in lifespan development

you have this idea where tons of neural

pathways are created

and tons of neural connections and then

so it's called bloom and prune there's

this blooming of neural connections and

then there's this pruning the

connections that are used are the ones

that will be solidified and the other

ones that aren't used are the ones that

are just going to fall by the wayside

so with schizophrenia we have this over

pruning happening

so what's exciting about all this

information that new research is

revealing is that thanks to

genetic breakthroughs

breakthroughs in this research we can

finally see the potential for clinical

tests early detection new treatments and

even prevention

you know they mentioned that we're far

from having a treatment based

on this research

especially when it comes to what's

happening with um

the synaptic pruning but it's exciting

to think that one day we might be able

to turn down the pruning process in some

individuals and therefore decrease their

risk of schizophrenia okay

and i feel like we've done an adequate

job of saying this but i've got to say

it before we move on hereditability does

not trump environment

and essentially we can come to think of

things as nature endows what nurture engages

engages

you know this idea that we can have a

genetic predisposition to something but

nurture is the one that kind of

activates that so

with some stuff you can kind of

not be so afraid you know for example if

you inherited a gene known to increase

your chances of developing emphysema

from smoking you shouldn't overreact

because smoking is an environmental

factor and if you never smoke you have

little or no chance of developing emphysema

we can relate this to cancers as well

angelina jolie

had a preventative double mastectomy

she had found out that she had this gene

that was going to

highly increase her lifetime risk of

developing breast cancer

and so what did she do well she just

eliminated the possibility

she had the double mastectomy to reduce

personal risk of developing breast

cancer to prevent it from ever happening

i can't get breast cancer if i don't

and so

there's so many questions we could talk

about here

and maybe i'll be able to post some and

as discussion board questions but i

don't know because they can get controversial

controversial

has anyone taken a 23andme test you know

permission for them to tell you about

your risk when it comes to things like i

think it's specifically alzheimer's and parkinson's

parkinson's

why do they ask about those things

because right now we really don't have

treatments for those we don't have cures

for them

so if you have if you know that you have

this really high chance of having

parkinson's what can you do

is that knowledge truly empowering is it

a good thing is it a bad thing do you

want to know do you not want to know if

there's nothing you can do about it or

is there something you can do about it

or we can ask the question what if one

day when you have a child

their entire genetic

code gene map everything is printed out

when you have them so you know what are

all the chances of all the different

what is this information going to do

who's going to have access to this

information what potential consequences

or we could talk about

genetic manipulation

if you knew that your child

had a 90 chance

of dying from cancer

in the their teen years

but you had the ability or the option

to change their genes so that that

was no longer

a possibility would you change it

would you get rid of that 90 chance of

we could ask a more complicated

what if you found out that your child

was going to have down syndrome

and they gave you the option to alter

the genes

so that they didn't

would you alter the genes

what if your child was going to have a

90 chance of struggling with major depression

depression

and they were going to struggle with

suicidal ideation their entire life

but they knew that they could alter some

genes and you could get rid of that

struggle with major depression

would you save your child from a

lifetime of unhappiness

would you the first question would you

save your child from death

i think you can see that some of these

questions are harder than others

but the point is

for the easier ones

if you said yes

you've crossed a boundary here you've

crossed a line

you say yes and i think the normal

response for if you find out your child

is going to die in their teen years from

cancer is yes save them don't let this happen

happen

i think that's a natural response but as

soon as you say yes to that you've

crossed that line

possibly

that designer baby line

as genetics as all of this advances

we're going to be faced with these major

major ethical questions

is there such thing as too much knowledge

knowledge

all of these things i wish we could

discuss in person

i'm kind of just trying to ask the

questions here to get you all thinking

maybe we can discuss them in a

discussion board i heard a story of a

couple and i was reading about designer

babies and altering jeans and

and

this couple it's not typically what you

think of whenever you think of

designer babies but

this couple they had some kind of

disease running in their family that was

extremely painful it was like a muscular

muscular

and so what they did is they did in

vitro fertilization

and then they looked at all the embryos

and they had them genetically tested

and they selected the embryo that did

not have the genes

for the

so the question is is that something

these are huge huge questions and so i

just want if we're approaching this

topic i think it's something really

what is the direction that we're going

should we have concerns

and it's interesting to think how is all

of this going to impact evolution

you know evolution was kind of this

natural process before

now if we start altering things how is

how are we going to evolve as a species

so this brings us back to evolutionary

psychology and we mentioned this on our

timeline the branch of psychology that

studies the application of the

principles of evolution to explain

behavior and mental processes so we've

just added application of the principles

natural selection occurs when a

particular genetic trait gives an

organism of reproductive advance

advantage over others

it's a process by which hereditable

traits that increase an organism's

chances of survival or reproduction are

favored over less beneficial traits

essentially the fastest strongest

smartest and otherwise most fit

organisms are most likely to live long

enough to reproduce and thereby pass on

so it's interesting to think okay well

it used to be clear

who is going to be most likely to

survive and reproduce and therefore pass

on their genes

those that are able to maybe protect

their tribe

those that are able to um

to farm and

maintain sustenance

those who are able to find food

and protect against oncoming predators

but now life is getting more complicated

what makes somebody more likely to

because those people that are reproducing

reproducing

so we can look at genetic mutations

what i think of is x-men and wolverine

but let's wait for that and genetic

mutations help explain behavior everyone

likely carries at least one gene that

has mutated or changed from the original

very rarely rarely will it be

significant enough to change an

individual's behavior so very rarely

so very rarely will you develop

wolverine clause or the ability to read minds

minds

but if the mutation gives you a

reproductive advantage

then you're going to be more likely to

pass on that gene to future generations

so wolverine he's got a mutation he's

got his wolverine claws

does that give him a reproductive advantage

advantage yeah

yeah

wolverine has a reproductive advantage

because one he's hugh jackman and we all

know hugh jackman's going to get all the ladies

but also he has the wolf claws

so he can kill or

get any competitors out of the way

so we can think yeah wolverine's got a

reproductive advantage so what's going

to happen is eventually there's going to

be a ton of little baby wolverines all

over the place okay so that's pretty

basic but that's really just what we

need to cover as an introduction to

biopsychology so we referenced well what

is biopsychology well we know

that we've got to look at what is the

role that genetics is playing in who we

are as human beings well how is it

influencing our personalities how is it

influencing our behaviors how is it

influencing um our mental processes how

is it influencing our values um and then

we looked at well behavioral genetics is

this area that's studying well what is

the role that nature's playing what is

the role that nurtures plane

and then we looked at evolutionary psychology

psychology

okay

and so that's not over complicated

that's good now next lecture we're going

to move on to neural basis of behavior

we'll see y'all later [Music]

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YouTube Transcript:
Intro to Biopsychology