General Psychology

Question

I'm supposed to formulate a 250 word response to this prompt for my psychology class "You are a famous neurosurgeon. Your daily 7-mile run is interrupted when you are abruptly stopped by 3 FBI agents who require your assistance. They take you to an underground bunker, just miles away, and display an alien. They have dissected the alien's brain and found the alien has a hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and cerebellum. Since the alien is not alive, what can you tell them about the alien and possible behaviors when it was alive?"

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is a question for Anatomy and Physiology, not Psychology!

Anyway, these brain structures are considered to be primitive, I.e. They developed early in terms of evolution, and most animals - certainly mammals - have them. 

You might be responsible for the function of each one, but in general they control things like hunger and thirst, emotion - including pleasure, sleep, some memory, and other complex autonomic systems such as diverting blood supply to GI tract after eating, helping regulate how much urine the kidneys produce vs. how much water they retain ( kidney function is very complicated and very fascinating).

Sorry I don't know the alignment of structure to function off the top of my head. The hypothalamus controls the release of hormones by the pituitary gland, like growth hormone, estrogen and testosterone, and even insulin, all by use of precursors.

You can bring in psychology with the emotions, survival drive, the drive to procreate - the complex and downright weird behaviors animals have developed to attract a mate, territoriality, etc. ooh, and paternal and maternal "instincts"!

 

Hope this helps!