OCW Scholar: Introduction to Psychology

With examples of patients with various forms of amnesia, Prof. Gabrieli discusses different types of memory and how, through experiments with these patients, scientists identified the parts of the brain with which each is associated.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli discusses and gives demonstrations illustrating short term and long term memory, various factors that influence how we remember, and when and why memory goes wrong.

This lecture introduces psychology as the scientific study of human nature, the mind, and behavior. Prof. Gabrieli uses vision, hearing, knowledge, and memory examples to demonstrate ways in which our minds make our worlds.

This lecture covers a brief overview of the stages of life (from infancy through old age), and what psychologically defines that stage. There is more extensive coverage of how the brain develops throughout the stages of life.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli takes a historical look of psychopathology and discusses the definition of a mental disorder, their prevalence and diagnostic difficulty. He then discusses in detail the symptoms, causes, and treatment of schizophrenia.

After this lecture, you will be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses and IQ testing, various models of intelligence, some underlying neural mechanisms, and the influences of nature and nurture on intelligence.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli discusses two spectacular disorders of attention, blindsight and neglect. He shows how bit by bit, studies on these patients have provided insights on how our brains receive and interpret information about the world.

This lecture covers child development, focusing on ages zero through twenty-four months. This includes work done by Piaget, as well as more modern research by scientists like Nancy Kanwisher.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli shows how perceived social norms affect us and how concepts like cognitive dissonance, first impressions, and culture have an incredibly powerful effect on the way we judge ourselves and others. Finally, he discusses autism.

How has evolution shaped our brains and minds? Can we measure happiness, and predict what will make us happy? This final lecture includes brief looks at evolutionary psychology and the study of happiness.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli introduces key concepts in social psychology such as the fundamental attribution error, cognitive busyness, and social influence. He discusses the Stanford prison and Milgram obedience experiments and the bystander effect.

This lecture covers the treatment of neuropsychological disorders. It summarizes the two main approaches - behavioral (psychotherapy) and medical (psychopharmacology) - and looks at the specific cases of OCD, depression, and ADHD.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli discusses personality, taking a detailed look at one of the most widely used personality tests. He then goes over the surpising origins of personality, its consistency over time, and brain correlates with personality traits.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli goes over the nervous and hormonal aspects of the physical stress mechanism, short- and long-term consequences of stress (including PTSD), psychological modifiers of the stress response, and the effects of emotional stress.

In this lecture, Prof. Gabrieli goes over how psychologists study and classify emotions, as well as their importance and universality. He also explores the extent to which peripheral bodily events influence emotion, and the brain basis of emotions.

This lecture uses brain teasers and word problems to highlight mechanisms that drive human thinking -- e.g. functional fixedness, heuristics, and framing. The lecture also touches briefly on the role of the brain’s frontal lobes in thought and emotions.

This lecture covers language: what sounds we recognize, how we process those sounds, the neural basis of language, language acquisition, and problems with language and speech.

Prof. Gabrieli discusses learning through conditioning in humans and animals, emphasizing the complexity of what can be learned through conditioning as well as its limits. He also covers concepts like learned helplessness and delayed gratification.

This lecture highlights two aspects of vision: perceptual and mechanical. It discusses both how perception works from a neurological perspective and how the mechanism of sight interacts with the brain.

This lecture highlights how research methods underlie the field of psychology. What makes an experiment scientifically valid? What are some common sources of bias and error? How is scientific psychology different from "common sense" or "folk" psychology?

This lecture introduces the primary research methods to study the human brain, and discusses their strengths and limitations. Methods include lesions (injuries), stimulation (e.g. TMS), and recording (e.g. EEG, MEG, PET, fMRI).

Prof. Gabrieli introduces key concepts about the brain and the mind, including location of mental functions in the brain; examples of Phineas Gage and Paul Broca; and hemispheric specialization, the corpus callosum and split brain patients.

After this lecture, you will be familiar with the psychological concept of attention, see demonstrations depicting the limits of attention, and touch upon related concepts like the influence subliminal perception can have on us.

This lecture highlights two aspects of vision: perceptual and mechanical. It discusses both how perception works from a neurological perspective and how the mechanism of sight interacts with the brain.