PSYB65H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Posterior Cerebral Artery, Somatic Nervous System, Fourth Ventricle
Document Summary
The brains primary function is to produce behaviour, or movement: to produce behaviour, the brain must receive information about the world without stimulation, the brain cannot orient and direct the body to produce an appropriate response. Evolution fosters adaptability, which equips each species with a view of the world that helps it survive. Learning involves a change of neural circuits, this enables the representation and storage of knowledge. Culture plays a dominant role in shaping behaviour: neuroplasticity: the nervous system"s potential for physical and chemical change that enhances its adaptability to environmental change and its ability to compensate for injury. A part of a larger capacity called phenotypic plasticity an individual"s capacity to develop into more than one phenotype. An individual"s genotype interacts with the environment to elicit a specific phenotype from a large genetic repertoire of possibilities, a phenomenon that results from epigenetic influences (do not change genes, but rather influence the expression of genes)
