Video Transcript: Biology

Well, why do you act that way? How are you responding that way? I don't  understand. I want to fight. I want to run. I want to I really want to talk a lot. I  don't want to talk at all. Boy, I made it. I sure was scared. I sweat a lot when I  get scared. I was white as a sheet when that I just missed that truck going off  the road. Glad we're okay. Ah, feel so warm inside when you speak kindly to me, reactions, physical reactions, the mind and the body working together with all  the human condition, all the human experience. We've talked in this course on  psychology, of what psychology is the broad expression of the human  experience, as well as where the ideas, the structure, the mechanisms, the  systems of understanding psychology have come from. In this third lecture, we  want to look at the biology of psychology, because the biology of psychology  matters. We just can't talk about the unconscious and not address where the  unconscious may be coming from, or why is it that I want to fight when I react at  in a very tense situation or run hence fight or flight, there are many answers that come from what's inside here, inside my whole body, that God has created  beautifully and wonderfully. So let's celebrate again. I'm Dr Mark, and we  welcome you here to this lecture on the biology of psychology. Well, biology of  psychology takes us into this discussion of what the brain tells us about human  behavior. There are many aspects that we can't get into in this brief lecture, but  we are going to get into the overview like we do with every lecture on the main  topic. Hence, the biology of psychology. So as we look at the brain and how it  tells us about human behavior, what is it about our brain? What are the main  elements of our brain? Well, we start with the frontal lobe and the occipital lobe.  Now my major was not in biology, but my major was in ministry, education,  sociology, psychology, behavior, all those things, and it takes me every time to  looking at the brain, looking at the body, because we need to. We can't discount  it. So the frontal lobe, also known as the motor cortex, is this portion of the brain  that is involved in motor skills, higher level cognition that is thinking and  expressive language. In other words, speaking. I think, then I speak. I think it  through, then I have words and delivery, tone, candor. The frontal lobe is about  these things. Well, then there's the occipital lobe, and the occipital lobe is also  known as the visual cortex. This portion of the brain is involved in interpreting  visual stimuli and information. What I see, I process in my mind, in my brain to,  for example, ascertain that, yes, that is a cat, or that as a dog, that is a car, that  is my spouse, that is my child, also that this is a very happy occasion, or it's a  very tense occasion, stressful or not so stressful, the occipital lobe helps us to  process what is going on as far as external stimuli affecting us, what we see and therefore is processed in the brain. Those are the main two frontal lobe and  occipital lobe that then leads to the look at the parietal lobe and the temporal  lobe. The parietal lobe is also known as the somatosensory cortex, this portion  of the brain is involved in the processing of other tactile sensory information,  such as pressure, touch and pain. Obviously, of course, when you shake 

someone's hand, the parietal lobe then senses that feel the pressure of that  handshake, it's a really firm handshake, or just a soft handshake, or when the  doctor has the nurse poke you with that needle, I don't like needles. Maybe you  don't either. But of course, who does? But as far as needles are concerned, that  needle goes into the arm for that vaccination, and we feel the Poke, we feel the  pain just for a minute, or we feel that pain when we slip on the ice and we fall on the pavement. Ouch. The parietal lobe is that place in the brain that processes  that tactile sensory information. The temporal lobe, also known as the auditory  cortex, is this portion of the brain that is involved in the interpretation of the  sounds and language we hear. So if the temporal lobe, for example, is  damaged, then the process of of hearing and processing sounds and language  is therefore damaged or disabled, and we don't know what's really said, we can't process it, and we need some help. On the flip side, this is where we do process language and sounds. So when it's someone speaking French, we can tell the  accent or another accent in your own native tongue that is from a different part  of your country. For example, here in America, I am from Michigan. Here in the  United States, and there are other people who I've come to know over the years  who are from the southern United States. The accent of the Southern people,  those who come to the southern United States have is very different than the  accent that I'm accustomed to here in the northern United States. So I speak as  I'm speaking now, with my accent. People from the South will talk like this, and  y'all come on here, you know, here, okay, and there we go. Thank you. That's  probably the best I can imitate it. Just give an example, very different and just as beautiful. So we thank God for for differences. We talk about individual  differences and those aspects of psychology that plays right into how our brain  processes, accents, sounds, pressure, pain, pleasure. The brain is a powerful,  powerful organ in our bodies, and truly the center, the center where everything  goes from it to all parts of our body, fingers, hands and so on. But also too, when we talk about the heart, and here's leaping off in the biology into the theology  and also existential part of our minds that we experience faith, God's love and  the Holy Spirit and coming through the our heart is at the center of the mind,  especially when King David talks about that inner place in Psalm 51 Well,  anyhow, parietal lobe, temporal lobe. From there, we look at the peripheral  nervous system. Again. This is just an overview. We looked at the lobes of the  brain, those sections that is, and then we look at the peripheral nervous system  having to do with the spine, going to the brain, to the brainstem, to the spine, the spinal column, and all the nerves. What an amazing system God has given us  throughout our bodies. Well, the key components of the peripheral nervous  system are these. The two parts are the somatic nervous system, which controls the actions of skeletal muscles. Of course, it's all important and somatic.  Nervous system controls these the automatic nervous system, or autonomic,  rather autonomic nervous system, which regulates automatic processes such as

heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. They all work together, and from these two parts, the somatic and the autonomic nervous systems, we then look at the  two parts of the autonomic nervous system in particular, because, as we can  tell, with our brain and our bodies, there are many layers, and psychologically,  there are many layers, like onions, there are many layers. So the layers here in  the autonomic nervous system are the two parts, first, the sympathetic nervous  system, which controls the fight or flight response, a reflex that prepares the  body to respond to danger in the environment, or something abrupt or  something that You fear, or the stranger danger, as they say, this is where that  comes from the fight or flight. The parasympathetic nervous system is also one  of the parts of the autonomic nervous system. Parasympathetic nervous system  works to bring the body back to its normal state after a fight or flight response, in other words, back to normal, back to that place of rest and of normal, as we say, activity. So peripheral nervous system, very, important, and it gives us the  compliment to the lobes of the brain and how the brain to the peripheral nervous system, the peripheral system and so on, gives us all of the signals that come  from the brain to tell our bodies how to respond when it comes to our feelings, it  comes to our emotions and how we respond to how people react to us, or if it's a confrontation, if it's A time of happiness or a time of sadness. In ministry, we deal with a whole range of emotions, and therefore we deal with a whole range of  bodily responses. As you dig deep into the biology of psychology in this topic,  you'll soon discover how it all works, from what we think to how our body  responds and how much God has put in our bodies, the ability to not only react,  but also to heal. Well, that was a brief overview of the biology of psychology.  Most of this course has to do, of course, with the behavioral, the cognitive, how  we act, how we think, and things that follow from there. But as I said earlier, it's  good to know where it all comes from. I.