Understanding the Basics to our

developmental journey
Greeting
 The Lord be with you
And also with you
Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
It is right to give God thanks and praise
Seigle’s Beginning Meta Theory
 Brain
 Relationships
 Mind
 How do they go
together?
 Erik Erikson?
 Easy to grasp as he
describes the
neuroscience?
Energy
Siegel’s Big Ideas (similar to Brown?)
 Brain is embodied (nervous system throughout the
body)
 Mind is “more” than brain (emergent regulatory
system)
 Brains are connected through relationships (next level
of “social bodies”)
 Seigle’s dictum of the “self”
 “I am more than me, and I am connected to you, but I am
a member of we”
 Interface between inner and outer (example of skin
cells folding to become nervous system)
Challenge of Neuro-anatomy
in explaining metatheory
 Seigle’s “hand” example
(p. 20)
 Difficulty with
unfamiliar terms
 Location in brain
 Geography or Pathways
 Macro vs. Micro
(synaptic selves)
Large Regions: Lobes and
Regional Questions Vary
Putting Big Ideas together
Macro or Micro? Neuroscience History
Cajal Sketch This drawing by
Santiago Ramon y Cajal first
appeared in volume two, part
two of Cajal's Textura del
Sistema Nervioso del Hombre y
de los Vertebrados, published in
Madrid in 1904. The
image shows the six layers of the
mouse neocortex, labeled A
through F, in Cajal's
hand. Cajal's drawings provided
the foundation of modern Ultimately FMRI
neuroanatomy by showing that and Computer
the nervous system is composed Technology
of individual nerve cells, as Expanded our
opposed to a web of continuous view and opened
elements. new doors for
study
Basics of Synaptic Connections
Axon
Recipient
Neuron

Synapse

Signal
Dendrite
Sending
Neuron
Synaptic Connections
 Chemically
induced
transmissions
crucial
Synaptogenesis
 A continuous dynamic of synaptic
neurotransmission regulates the
activity and functional properties
of the chains of neurons that allow the brain to do all of
its remarkable activities.
 These neural connections are not random.
 They are guided by important genetic and environmental
cues.
 In order for our brain to function properly, neurons need
to find and connect with the “right” neurons.
 This explosion of synaptogenesis allows the brain to have
the flexibility to organize and function in with a wide
range of potential.
 It is over the next few years--in response to patterned
repetitive experiences--that these neural connections will
be refined and sculpted.
Synaptic Sculpting
 The synapse is continually changing.
 A key determinant of change in the synapse appears
to be the level of presynaptic activity.
 During synaptogenesis, synaptic connections are
strengthened with actual physical changes that make
the pre- and postsynaptic neurons come closer, and
the process of neurotransmission more efficient.
 When there is little activity, the synaptic connection
will literally dissolve and higher order thinking
becomes more difficult (see folder insert).
 Intentional activities during childhood and
adolescence can protect or inhibit the development
of synaptic pathways that lead to unhealthy
development.
Synaptic Sculpting
 Again, this powerful activity-dependent process
appears to be very important for understanding
learning, memory and development.
 At any given moment, all throughout life, we are
making and breaking synaptic connections.
 For the majority of life we are at equilibrium; the
rate of creating new synaptic connections is equal
to the rate of resorbing older, unused connections.
 While somewhat simplistic, it appears that the
synaptic sculpting is a “use-it-or-lose-it” process.
  Voxel: 3
Dimensional
Index of
volume
density (1
mm3)
 Equals 45,000
Neurons or
450-500
million
synapses

What we can
& cannot “see”
02-066

The Fear Response

Visual Thalamus

Visual Amygdala
Cortex

Why is fear so important for LeDoux?

Seigel’s Beginning Point
 Why start with
Memory?
 Attachment?
 Emotion?
 How do they go
together?
Memory
 Memory: the way past events affect future function
(46)
 Synaptic: increased probably of firing a similar patter
is how system remembers (millenation and pruning)
 Hebbard: fire together wire together (active process)
 Later in chapter
 Short term or working memory
 Long term memory (consolidation through REM sleep
but also focal attention)
 May be more complicated and definitely active
reconstruction rather than passive recall
Forms of Memory
 Implicit (navigation through models, behavior, image
and emotion) Remember “how”
 Epigenetic (can transfer generations)
 Shape growing architecture of child’s self (emotion)
 Explicit Memory
 Semantic: Remember “that”
 Also autonoeisis: self awareness, projecting oneself into future
 Autobiographical: Remember “who”
 Subjectivity uses both implicit and explicit: sense of
self in time and space both inner and outer awareness
 Deals with special subjects (childhood and stress)
 More important: narrative as consolidation (summary
89-90)
Attachment Bowlby and Ainsworth (p.99)
Emotions
 Limbic (yes!) but also across the brain
 Emotions represent dynamic processes created within
the socially influenced, value-appraising process of the
brain (more than sensations or states) p.148
 Emotions are proposed to be changes in the state of
integration (ie. Regulate between interpersonal and
cognitive exchanges)
 Orient responses, suggest value (good/bad) and arouse
action
 Primary: clear change of mind, dynamic processes of
change
Emotions: Categories
 Categories: specific and engrained patterns of
activation
 Negative: fear/anger/aggression
 Positive: love(?) affection/altruism
 Affect: bodily display or social signal
 Mood: general tone of emotions over time (Eyor/Tiger)
 Nonconscious fear (reactive) vs. conscious emotion or
awareness of feedback and alertness to others
Emotions and Meaning
 Emotions provide a sense of value
 “The appraisal of stimuli and the creation of meaning
are central functions that occur with the arousal
process of emotion” (p.164)
 Mirror neurons (later vonconomo spindle cells) allow
both behavioral experience and also potentially place
of empathy
 Emotions complex, embodied, flexible,subjective,
communicated, regulated yet varied due to experience
 Key: Emotions influence meaning and communication
(p.183)
Next Week: building off the base
 Baseline
 Memory
 Attachment
 Emotion
 Complex states
but just as crucial