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Week 3 · Module overview

Week 3 — Biological Bases of Behavior

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 3 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nurse watching a patient's heart rate climb and a coach teaching a new skill read the same nervous system. So does anyone judging a headline that a chemical causes a mood.

In plain language

Everything you do, from blinking to deciding what to eat, runs on messages sent by your body's nerve cells. This week follows one of those messages from start to finish. You will meet the neuron (a nerve cell that carries messages) and see how it fires. You will see how a message jumps from one cell to the next with a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger). Then you will zoom out to the whole nervous system and take a tour of the brain, one structure at a time.

  • Already covered: Week 1 named the biological perspective; Week 2 taught case studies and that correlation is not causation.
  • This week: the neuron, the all-or-none impulse, the synapse, six neurotransmitters, the nervous system's divisions, and a brain tour.
  • How they connect: Week 2's design questions keep this week's brain claims honest.
  • Where we're going next: Week 4, Sensation & Perception, follows the senses into this system.

Focus

Where does behavior live, and how does one message travel from a fingertip to the brain?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] trace one message through a neuron, the synapse, and the nervous system
  • [ ] explain why a stronger stimulus changes firing rate, not impulse size
  • [ ] match neurotransmitters and brain structures to their jobs in hedged language
  • [ ] judge what the case of H.M. and a brain headline can and cannot claim

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 3 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

Checkpoint: walk the hot-stove signal trace through its 9 stations from memory.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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