BIOA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Endocrine Gland, Chemical Substance, Brainstem

• School: UTSC
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BIOA02H3
• Professor: Rachel Sturge

Document Summary

Nervous system receives/ responds to signals: adaptive behaviour depends on interactions between the nervous system, the body and environment. Pathways: afferent - ascending toward cns - receive stimuli, receptor->spinal cord->brainstem->higher brain areas, efferent - descending away from cns - response to stimuli, higher brain regions->brainstem->periphery (effector) Feature detections: feature detections: specialized sensory receptors that respond to important signals. Hormonal influence on behavior: each species of frogs has different calls, consisting of different frequencies hormones can trigger certain behaviors. In lizards, hormones show significance in sexual behaviors castrated male lizards do not perform courtship rituals in presence of females, but one it is injected with testosterone, it begins to do so. Artificial selection: selective breeding can demonstrate effects of genes on behaviour, alleles favoring direction of selection will increase in subsequent generations of the population, ex. Fox domestication (replication of wolf domestication: within 40 years, produced foxes that were highly social and interact with humans in playful, friendly manner.