Biological Flashcards
What’s central nervous system?
Consist brain and spinal cord.
Origin of complex commands and decisions.
Primary internal communication system.
Collects, process and respond to info in environment.
Coordinates the working of different organs and cells
What’s spinal cord?
Tube like extension of brain, connects via brainstem.
Responsible for reflects actions.
Past message to and from brain.
What’s the brain?
Conscious awareness and decision making.
Divided into two hemispheres.
Contralateral.
Outer layer is cerebral cortex and distinguish mental functioning from other animals.
Brain areas divided into cortical and sub cortical.
What are the sub cortical structures?
Thalamus
Hypothalamus
Limbic system
Cerebellum
Corpus collosum 
What’s the thalamus?
Brain’s rely station.
Receive info from senses excluding smell.
Pass info onto appropriate of cerebral cortex for higher level processing.
Filter of info.
Sleep, wakefulness and OCD.
What’s hypothalamus?
Below thalamus.
Control motivated behavior.
Play a role in stress response through its control fight or flight.
Maintain balance in bodily function.
Regulate hormone activity via its connect with pituitary gland.
What’s the limbic system?
Contain several structures.
Regulate emotional response.
Has a role in memory and learning.
Interconnected with areas of cortex, integrating cortical and sub cortical brain part.
What’s cerebellum?
Two hemispheres.
Coordinate posture, balance and movement.
Receive and integrate info from spinal cord and other areas.
10% of brains weight, contain 50% neurons.
What’s corpus callosum?
Connect 2 hemisphere below cerebral cortex.
Pass signals back and forth the hemisphere.
Gives brain’s contralateral control as it integrate activities of both side of body.
What’s lateralization?
Two brain hemisphere are structurally identical but have different functions.
Only happens on one side.
Language associated with left.
What’s localization?
Happens within one area.
Certain area responsible for specific function.
What is cerebral cortex?
Subdivided into four lobes.
Each lobe has different functions.
Look like a giant walnut with gyri and sulci.
What are the four lobes?
Frontal lobe.
Parietal lobe.
Temporal lobe.
Occipital lobe.
What’s frontal lobe?
Front of the brain.
40% of cerebral cortex.
Control high-level cognitive functions.
Containing a motor cortex.
Each motor cortex contain voluntary movement on the opposite side of the body.
What’s parietal lobe?
Further back in the brain, found other other side of central sulcus.
Somatosensory cortex lies along side sulcus.
Processed sensory info from skin, contralateral.
Area of somatosensory cortex devoted to a particular body part reflects sensitivity to touch.
What’s the temporal lobe?
Lie beneath lateral sulcus of each hemisphere.
Contain auditory cortex, contralateral.
Process location, volume and picture of sounds
What’s occipital lobe?
Back of the brain.
Contain primary visual cortex and several secondary areas.
Initially processed by left visual cortex. Shared through corpus callosum.
What’s Broca’s area?
A small area in left front lobe.
Responsible for speech production.
Damage cause slow speech and lack fluency.
What’s Wernicke’s area?
In left temporal lobe.
Damage cause difficulty understanding language, produce fluent by meaningless speech.
Developmental psych in terms of brain.
Structure and function of brain differ between people e.g. handedness.
Control of language functions.
Parts in the left hemisphere associated with movements are more developed.
Lateralization in left handers is opposite to right.
Left hander’s brain are more symmetrical.
What are neurons?
Nerve cell.
80% is located in brain.
Transmit electrical and chemical signals.
Vary in size, share a basic structure.
What’s cell body?
Includes a nucleus containing genetic material of cell.
What are dendrites?
Branch like structures.
Stick out from cell body, carry impulses from neighboring neurons to cell body.
What’s axon?
Tube like structure.
Carry impulses away from cell body, down the neuron.
Covered by myelin sheath.
What’s myelin sheath?
Fatty layer around axon.
Protect axon and speed up electrical impulse.
What’s nodes of ranvier?
Gaps in myelin sheath.
Force impulse to jump across gaps along axon.
What’s the terminal buttons?
End of the axon.
Not connected to next neuron in chain but involved in communication across synapse.
What are the types of neurons?
Sensory neurons.
Relay neurons.
Motor neurons.
What’s sensory neurons?
Carry message from sensory receptors along nerves in peripheral nervous system to CNS.
Long dendrites and short axon.
What’s relay neurons?
Connect sensory and motor neurons.
Connect the relay neurons to other relay neurons.
Found in CNS. Short dendrites and axons.
What’s motor neurons?
Carry message from CNS along nerves in PNS to effectors in motor neurons.
Short dendrites and long axon.
What are the functions of the neurons?
Inside cell is neg charged relative to outside in resting state.
Inside cell become pos charged for a split second when activated by stimulus.
Switch from neg to pos is depolarization.
Create electrical impulse travel down axon to terminal buttons of action potential.
Action potential is generated once depolarization reach certain threshold.
What is synaptic transmission?
Neurons communicate with the neutral networks.
Separated by synaptic gap.
Signals within neurons are transmitted electrically but chemically between neurons.
Synaptic transmission is a chemical process using neurotransmitter.
