# Biological Psychology

Psychology I · History of Psychology · https://tryals.app/learn/psychology-i/biological-psychology

## The Brain as the Seat of the Mind

**Biological Psychology** investigates the physiological and neural mechanisms of behavior. One foundational debate concerns how bodily states and feelings interact.

| Theory | Order of Events | Key Mechanism |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **James-Lange theory** | Arousal first, then subjective emotion | Feel afraid because we tremble |
| **Cannon-Bard theory** | Arousal and emotion simultaneously | Triggered together by thalamus |

**William James** and Carl Lange argued the body reacts first. Walter Cannon and Philip Bard countered that emotional experience and bodily arousal happen at the same time.

## Searching for the Engram

**Karl Lashley** searched for the **engram**—the physical trace of memory—by removing rat cortical tissue. Memory loss depended on amount removed, not location.

This led to two principles:
- **Mass action**: cortex functions as an integrated whole.
- **Equipotentiality**: areas can substitute for damaged parts.

**Hebbian learning** solved Lashley's puzzle: "cells that fire together, wire together." Memory is distributed across many synapses, not localized.

**Common pitfall**: Assuming Lashley's failure means memory lacks a physical basis. It is just distributed.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 12 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Order the events of an emotional response as the James-Lange theory describes them.

**Answer:**

1. You see a bear.
2. Your body reacts: heart pounds, muscles tremble.
3. Your brain interprets that bodily state.
4. The subjective feeling of fear arises.

**Why:** James-Lange orders it: stimulus, bodily arousal, interpretation of that arousal, then the felt emotion. The theory's signature is that the feeling FOLLOWS the physiological response rather than preceding it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/order-the-events-of-an-emotional-response-as-the-james-lange-theory

### 2. Sort each concept by whether it belongs to the theory of EMOTION or to the study of MEMORY.

**Answer:**

- Theory of emotion: James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, The thalamus triggering arousal and feeling at once
- Study of memory: Mass action, Equipotentiality, Hebbian learning ('cells that fire together, wire together')

**Why:** James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and the thalamus account concern emotion; mass action, equipotentiality, and Hebbian learning concern the physical basis of memory (the engram). Keeping the two founding debates distinct is the skill.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/sort-each-concept-by-whether-it-belongs-to-the-theory-of-emotion-or

### 3. Match each described finding to the concept it defines.

**Answer:**

- Memory loss tracked the amount of cortex removed, not its location → Mass action
- Undamaged regions could take over a lost region's function → Equipotentiality
- Repeated co-activation strengthens the synapse between two neurons → Hebbian learning
- Arousal and subjective emotion occur together, both from the thalamus → Cannon-Bard theory

**Why:** Amount-not-location is mass action, substitution after damage is equipotentiality, synapse-strengthening-by-co-activation is Hebbian learning, and simultaneous arousal-and-emotion-from-the-thalamus is Cannon-Bard. Each finding maps to one concept.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/match-each-described-finding-to-the-concept-it-defines

### 4. Broca's patient could understand everything and say only one syllable, *"tan."* From a **single** case, Broca concluded speech production has a location. Why was one patient enough?

A. Because Broca examined the brain post-mortem, and anatomical evidence needs no replication
B. Because a single dissociation is a demonstration, not a sample
C. Because the case was so extreme that statistical comparison was unnecessary
D. It was not enough, the conclusion was accepted only after large samples confirmed it

**Answer:** B. Because a single dissociation is a demonstration, not a sample

**Why:** An existence claim needs one instance. Showing that comprehension can survive while production is destroyed establishes that they are separable functions, and no average could establish it better. Neuropsychology has argued this way ever since. H.M. is the same move in memory.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/brocas-patient-could-understand-everything-and-say-only-one

### 5. Select every statement that is TRUE about biological psychology's founding ideas.

A. Cannon-Bard holds that the feeling always comes long before any arousal.
B. Cannon-Bard holds that arousal and emotion occur simultaneously.
C. Hebbian learning strengthens synapses between co-active neurons.
D. James-Lange holds that arousal precedes the felt emotion.
E. Lashley located a single engram in one precise cortical spot.

**Answer:** B. Cannon-Bard holds that arousal and emotion occur simultaneously.; C. Hebbian learning strengthens synapses between co-active neurons.; D. James-Lange holds that arousal precedes the felt emotion.

**Why:** James-Lange's ordering, Cannon-Bard's simultaneity, and Hebbian learning are all true. Lashley never found a single localized engram, and Cannon-Bard makes arousal and emotion simultaneous (not feeling-long-before-arousal) - so those two are false.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/select-every-statement-that-is-true-about-biological-psychologys

### 6. Lashley's lesion experiments showed that a specific memory trace sits in one identifiable cortical region.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** False. Lashley found the deficit tracked the *amount* of cortex removed rather than its location, which is why he never found the engram and proposed mass action and equipotentiality. Modern work qualifies this, some memories are quite localised, but distribution was the finding.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/lashleys-lesion-experiments-showed-that-a-specific-memory-trace-sits

### 7. James-Lange says we feel afraid because we notice ourselves trembling; Cannon-Bard says the trembling and the fear arise together. Cannon objected that the same bodily state accompanies fear, rage and fever. Why is that observation a problem for James-Lange?

A. Because James and Lange were studying different emotions from the ones Cannon examined.
B. Because alike bodily states would then have to feel alike.
C. Because it proves emotions are entirely cognitive and involve no bodily component at all.
D. Because it shows the body produces no arousal during emotion, only during illness.

**Answer:** B. Because alike bodily states would then have to feel alike.

**Why:** James–Lange gives the body a specific job: not accompanying the emotion but supplying it, so the body must carry enough information to tell fear from rage, and it largely does not. Schachter and Singer's resolution keeps James's insight and answers Cannon's objection, which is often how these disputes actually end: with a third account inheriting from both.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/james-lange-says-we-feel-afraid-because-we-notice-ourselves

### 8. Lashley trained rats on a maze, then removed varying amounts of cortex from varying locations. Performance declined with the AMOUNT removed and barely depended on WHERE. What does that pattern rule out, and what does it leave open?

A. It rules out one cortical location, leaving a distributed trace open.
B. It rules out memories being stored in the brain at all, which is why Lashley never found the engram.
C. It establishes that all memories of every kind are stored diffusely throughout the entire brain.
D. It rules out cortex having any role in memory, since damage anywhere produced the same result.

**Answer:** A. It rules out one cortical location, leaving a distributed trace open.

**Why:** Location barely mattering rules out a single site; amount mattering rules out the cortex being irrelevant. What remains is a distributed trace, which fits a task drawing on vision, touch, movement and layout at once. H.M. is why the general version fails, how distributed a memory is depends on what kind of memory it is.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/biological-psychology/lashley-trained-rats-on-a-maze-then-removed-varying-amounts-of