A2 Biopsychology Flashcards

Question

What is functional recovery

Answer 1

Healthy areas of brain compensate for lost neuronal pathways

Answer 2

Strengthen neuronal pathways

Answer 3

Axonal sprouting: growth of new nerve endings which connect undamaged nerve cells to form new neuronal pathways Denervation supersensitivity: occurs when axons do a similar job but become aroused to higher level to compensate for ones lost (can be negative and cause pain) Recruitment of homologous areas: Specific tasks can be performed but by other parts of the Brain

Answer 4

Maguire et al Found significantly more grey matter in hippocampus than in a matched control group London taxi can drivers Also found longer they been in job the more different hippocampus was Supporting evidence Draganski: took brain images of med students and found that changes occurred three months after exams as a result of learning

Answer 5

P: negative behavioural consequences E: médina et al found that adaption to prolonged drug use leads to poorer cognitive function in later life and risk of dementia E2: phantom limb syndrome, 60-80% of amputees known to develop phantom limb syndrome, people develop pain due to cortical reorganisation in somatosensory cortex (hirstein) E: shows how brains adaptions may not always be functional and can result in pain, or negative implications in later life

Answer 6

P: life long E: bezzola et al found 40 hours of golf training produced changes in neural representation. Fmri showed increased motor cortex E: shows how this gives hope for people L: demonstrates of how plasticity can be positive

Answer 7

P: can be used to help patients recover E: constraint induced therapy Is used with stroke patients E: can help healthcare professionals, makes people’s lives better, can help economy etc L: shows how understanding plasticity can contribute to cultivating new neuroréhabilitation techniques

Answer 8

P: supporting evidence to for functional recovery E: EB had a hemispherectomy on left side of brain (removed left side), fmri scans showered how left like a blueprint for language E: shows how even in cases extreme trauma the brain can recover could argue things like age being a factor as children recover quicker L:

Answer 9

P: limitation as level of education can affect recovery rates E: schinder et al found more time people were in education the more cognitive reserve they had, greater chance of disability free recovery CP: can be damaging to people’s recovery rates, 40% with DFR had 16 years of education Link: implies people with less CR less likey to recover

Answer 10

level of accuracy identifying exact location of brain structure in space (where it happened

Answer 11

level of accuracy in identifying exact location of where a brain activity happened in time (when activity happened)

Answer 12

What is it? When you dissect brains of people who suffered trauma and mental disorders and compare them to neurotypical brains. Example brocas area Advantages - Spatail resolution: can study brain in microscopic detail down to neurons - technique has significant historical development of psychs understanding language centers - able to see deep brain structures like hypthalmus Disadvantage -Problem with causation, after death means that you can't see the brain in action, hard to make a correlation to damage in brain to behaviour seen in life. There also may be confounding variables that caused a change in brain structure like drugs Ethical issues: people may not be able to provide consent (like HM )

Answer 13

What is it can detect blood flow in brain. When doing a task there will be more blood flow to part of brain that controls it (haemodynamic response) This then produces a 3D image showing parts of brain involved Advantages - Has good spatial resolution, so it can identify areas of brain involved when doing a task - non invasive as it uses magnets, so better than PET scans, beneficial to econmey as people can recover quicker Disadvantages - low temporal resolution: 1 image can be taken every few seconds, so it would be hard to study brain processes that are very fast - as it only measures blood flow, it cannot tell you what individual neurones are involved, so hard to tell what's being shown, may be misinterpreted - machine is expensive to build and operate, EEG is cheaper and captures more

Answer 14

What is it an electroencephalogram, you were a cap with electrodes that measures activity. EEG readings are used In sleep studies and can detect Alzheimer's and epilepsy Advantages - has good temporal resolution - Has medical applications as it can diagnose epilepsy and Alzheimer’ - non invasive as there are no instruments inserted into brain - cheaper than fMRI and is able to use in experiments when subjects are moving Disadvantges - lack of spatial resolution: only detects activity of cortex and not brain structures deep within - Lack of spatial resolution hard to pinpoint exactly which area is producing activity. Cannot notice differences in activity between 2 areas near each other - uncomfortable for ppt, which could result in a reading that is unrepresentative due to the discomfort triggering a result

Answer 15

What is an ERP ERP’s are small voltage changes in the brain triggered by specific events or stimuli measured using an EEG. Stimulus is shown repeaditly as voltages can be hard to pick out from electrical activity of brain. Advanatages - Allows for changes to the stimulus can be directly recorded, as there is a measure of neuronal activity - Good temporal resolution - non invasive Disadvantages - only monitor activity in outer layers of brain so poor spatial resolution - hard to control variables electrical activity may not even be due to stimulus - lack of standardisation in methodology

Answer 16

Are the internal body clocks that keep biological processes to time

Answer 17

External cues that entrain internal body clocks, so they alter body clocks to match the environment

Answer 18

A biological rhythm that lasts about 24 hours

Answer 19

``` Sleep wake Hormones Body temp Blood pressure Etc ```

Answer 20

Called the superchiasmatic nucleus - Also know as master clock - Found in hypothalamus within the limbic system - nerve fibres connected to eye cross an area called optic chiasm. What does it do? When light is detected by SCN it sends light to pineal gland Stopping production of melatonin (hormone that makes us sleepy)

Answer 21

De coursey et al - the de coursey et al destroyed SCN connection in 30 chipmunks - the chipmunks were retuned to their natural habitat - they were observed for 80 days - sleep wake cycle of chipmunks disappeared and many chipmunks were killed Ralph et al - Bred mutant hamsters with 20 hour sleep/wake cycle - when SCN of mutant hamsters were planted into brain of normal hamsters their sleep wake cycle was 20 hours

Answer 22

- The SCN passes info on the day and length and light that it receives to pineal gland - based on this during the night melatonin is increased

Answer 23

Light - Campbell and Murphy demonstrated that light may be detected by skin receptors sites on body - Light was shone on back of their knees - researchers managed to change sleep cycle by 3 hours in some cases - this shows how light is a powerful exogenous zeitgebers and there are other light receptors in our body Social cues - at 6 weeks a babies sleep wake begin - at 16 weeks a babies rhythm has been trained by schedules imposed by parents - research into jet lag shows that adapting local times of eating and sleeping is an effective way of beating jet lag

Answer 24

Research has found that there are peripheral oscillators in organs such as the lungs pancreas and skin - these are influenced by SCN but can act independently Damiola et al found that changing feeding patterns in mice could alter circadian rhythm in cells by up to 13 hours But the rhythm of SCN is unaffected This suggests that there are complex influences of sleep wake cycle

Answer 25

- they can’t studied in isolation - total isolation studies such as siffre are rare - in every day life both EPs and EZs interact so it would make little sense to isolate them as it would affect the external validity of the research

Answer 26

Animal studies can be justified as generalisations of the sleep wake cycle can be made to human as we both have SCN and the pineal gland This is because of adaptive reason But ethically it is wrong The study put the chipmunks at risk of dying In fact some did die

Answer 27

- EZ don’t have same effect in all environments - people who live in places that are dark all year round like the artic circle have similar sleep wake cycle - this suggest that EPs have more of an influence than EZ

Answer 28

Miles et al - did a study with a man who was blind from birth, his CR was 24.9 hours - despite exposure to social cues such as regular metal times his sleep wake cycle could be adjusted - suggests that social cues alone aren’t effective when resetting a biological rhythm

Answer 29

Duffy et al Found 30% of people of 60 have chronic insomnia -this may be due to natural changes in CR as we age Hood et al found if management of insomnia was improved if people were generally more active and had exposure to more light This suggest that EZs can influence biological rhythm

Answer 30

What he did? - deprived himself of exposure to natural light and sound, clocks etc - spend 2 months in a cave What he found -his free running biological rhythm settled down to was that was about 25 hours, but he has a regular schedule Criticism Suggest artificial lights can disparut measurements of free running CR by acting as EZs

Answer 31

- 27 office workers were exposed to blue light - they would shift their CR to match office lighting - the control group would match it natural light This suggest that both light and artificial light can disrupt EP by overriding natural light as primary EZ

Answer 32

Provides understanding of conséquences occur when CR is disrupted For example bolvin et al found that night shift workers have a reduced concentration at 6am called a circadian trough. Also knuston found that workers are 3x more likely to have heart attacks Research like this can have a postive affect on the economy and business can adapt working hours to ensure max worker productivity CP Research on this is usually correlational, this means it can hard to establish whether the sleep wake cycle being adjusted is the cause of negative affects. There may be other confounding variables at play like stress at home. This suggests that biological factors may not be associated with consequences of shift work

Answer 33

- can be used to improve medical treatments - chronotheraputics is how medical treatment can be administered in way that corresponds to biological rhythms - for example aspirin is effective when take at night as heart attacks are more likely in the morning (bonten et al) - this shows how CR research can help increase the effectiveness of drug treatments - help economy etc

Answer 34

- It can be hard to make generalisations - studies like Siffre and ashcoff are based ok small samples of Ppts. - this suggests that Sleep/wake cycles vary from person to person Czeisler -found that individual differences in sleep wake cycles vary from 13 hours to Moreover Duffy found that some people are prefer going bed early and rising early whereas others prefer the opposite This demonstrates how it can be hard to say how long your sleep wake cycle should be as it different for everyone

Answer 35

Wolfson et al suggested that school start a few hours later to fit a teenagers sleep wake cycle Some research has shown how this can have a positive effect on academic and behavioural performance However this may not be practical for parents or teachers even if it has benefits

Answer 36

A biological rhythm which is less frequent that 24 hours

Answer 37

Approx 28 days | Governed by changes in hormone levels

Answer 38

Stern and McClintock Study 29 women with a history of irregular periods Pheromones were gathered from nine of the women at different stages of the menstrual cycle via a cotton pad placed in there The pad was rubbed on the upper lip of participants Day one pads from the start of the menstrual cycle apply to or 20 women day to the pad was given on the second day of the cycle and so on Stern and McClintock found that 68% of women experience changes in their cycle which brought them closer to the cycle of the odour donor

Answer 39

It is a recurrent major depressive disorder which is which has a seasonal pattern Usually happens In winter when there is a lack of light Leads to increased melatonin Symptoms: insomnia, lethargic, guilt/dispair Treated with light therapy

Answer 40

Biological rhythm that occurs through 24 hours Example stages of sleep

Answer 41

Stage one light sleep this is when a person can be easily woken up brain waves have high frequency and short amplitude avoid continue but there are occasional random changes could split second spindles stage three and four deep sleep or slow asleep. brainwaves are Delta waves with low frequency and high amplitude -hard to wake someone up stage five (rem sleep) -body is paralysed -brain activity resembles that of awake brain -rapid eye movement happens and dreams are experienced

Answer 42

It may have an evolutionary basis Could be advantageous for women to menstruate together and become pregnant at the same time This is good social groups allow babies who lost mothers to access breast milk increasing survival Alternative explanations include stops 1 male dominating group increases genetic diversity

Answer 43

Although they have been replications of McClintock study like Russell that showed positive results There is not that much supporting evidence For example Trevathan then showing that cohabiting lesbian couples did not synchronise even though they had optimal conditions for possible synchronisation This suggests that there may be other factors in play when it comes to the synchronisation of menstrual cycles

Answer 44

Factors like stress changes in diet and exercise can affect the menstrual cycle This can act as confounding variables Suggest that patterns of synchronisation could have just occurred by chance So studies of synchronisation may be flawed

Answer 45

Sanassi Light therapy refuses effects of SAD by 80% in some people Light therapy preferred over ADs

Answer 46

Has improved understanding of age related changes in sleep Scientist observes SWS reduces with age Cauter et al Sleep deficits may explain issues in old age like alertness In order to increase SWE relaxation may be used Suggests that knowledge of ultradian rhythms has practical values

Answer 47

There is variation between people Tucker et Al Found differences between participants in terms of duration of each sleep stage particularly in stages three and four Tucker suggests that these differences are biologically determined

Answer 48

A strength is that you can control extraneous variables which increases internal validity A limitation is that be being attached to complicating machinery can lead participants to sleep in the way that does not reflect their ordinary sleep patterns This may be solved by conducting studies in peoples own homes