PSYC 2230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Brainstem, Donald O. Hebb, Thalamus
23 Oct 2017
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If our arousal level is very low, we are either asleep or in coma. At moderate level of arousal, we are awake and alert. At the highest level of arousal, we are anxious and stressed. We understand behavior by understand how the organism becomes aroused as a continuum of behavior activation (duffy, 1966). Freeman (1940) obtained an inverted u function between arousal and reaction time. Hokanson (1969) noticed that it did not work in tasks like symbol matching. Thus the relationship between arousal and behavior is more complex and task specific. Ras is a group of neurons located in the center of the brain stem which runs from the level of the medulla through the thalamus. Fibers sent from the cortex also connected to the ras. Therefore information can be transmitted back and forth. The ras is a brain structure that serve to arouse the organism from sleep to wakefulness and also determine our level of wakefulness (kalat.
