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Psychology > Biology Of The Mind > Flashcards

Biology Of The Mind Flashcards

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0
Q

What connects the cortexes of the left and right hemispheres?

A

Corpus callosum

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1
Q

What is the role of the left hemisphere?

A

Controls the right side of the body. Responsible for language and math problems.

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2
Q

What causes seizures disorder?

A

A severed connection in the corpus callosum.

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3
Q

What is the right hemisphere responsible for?

A

Controlling the left side of the body. Drawing, spatial reasoning, face perception, reading maps.

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4
Q

What is the limbic system’s job? What parts of the brain are in this system?

A

Involved in emotion, memory, motivation and drives. Composed of: any gala, hippocampus, hypothalamus.

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5
Q

What does the autonomic system do?

A

Controls (mostly) involuntary muscles (I.e heart, lungs, blood vessels, digestive system) as well as certain glands.

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6
Q

What are the subsystems of the autonomic nervous system, and what are their functions?

A
  • sympathetic (fight-or-flight)

* parasympathetic (rest-and-digest)

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7
Q

What is the central nervous system?

A

The brain and spinal cord.

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8
Q

What are neurons?

A
  • Brain cells, or nerve cells
  • Special in that they communicate with each other
  • The brain forms networks of these cells
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9
Q

What is the anatomy of a neuron?

A
  • Cell body (soma)- has a nucleus and organelles
  • Dendrites- increase surface area of the cell body and send messages to neutrons, connect
  • Axon- comes out of the cell body; the highway for the message, comes from the cell body and travels to the terminal branches
  • Terminal branches (buttons) - Electrical signals that start at the cell body, travel through the axon, and spread through the dendrites
  • Myelin sheath- fatty coating that protects the axon as it travels
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10
Q

What are the characteristics of a neuron at rest?

A
  • Semi- permeable membrane
  • Inside of the cell= negative charge
  • Outside of the cell= positive charge
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11
Q

What does it mean to say a neuron at rest has an ‘action potential’?

A
  • Since the outside is positive and the inside is negative, the resting membrane potential (net negative charge) is on the inside
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12
Q

What is an action potential?

A
  • A brief electrical charge that travels down the axon (A “neural impulse”,The neuron is “firing”)
  • Electrical signal is transmitted along the axon by the diffusion of charged atoms
    • The membrane becomes more permeable
      - Series of channel openings along the axon that allow the diffusion of charged atoms
  • Soudium channels open @ the axon hillock - Sodium is positively charged, the inside becomes positive)
  • DEPOLARIZATION
  • Resting membrane potential is restored
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13
Q

What is the refractory period?

A
  • When an action potential cannot happen in order to restore resting membrane potential
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14
Q

What is depolarization?

A
  • When the resting membranes inside and outside charges are reversed.
    • Negative inside turns positive;
    • Positive outside turns negative
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15
Q

What is the role of the myelin sheath?

A
  • Cover axon
  • Sodium diffuses through the in between sections of myelin
  • Provides insulation, which increases the speed of transmission
  • Keeps the positive charge inside
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16
Q

What is a synapse?

A
  • Where 2 neutrons signal to each other (1 way conversation)
  • Junction between an axon terminal and a dendrite/ cell body
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17
Q

Describe the spinal cord.

A
  • Connects the brain and peripheral nervous system
    • sensory neurons enter from sensory systems
    • motor neurons from the brain exit
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18
Q

What does the central nervous system consist of?

A
  • The brain and spinal cord

- brain = 40 billion neurons. 10 000 connections each. 400 trillion synapses.

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19
Q

What are the two major divisions of the nervous system?

A
  1. The central nervous system:
    • Brain and spinal cord
  2. The peripheral nervous system:
    • Nerves
    • Connect the brain to sensory organs, muscles, and glands
    • Divided into the somatic and the autonomic nervous system
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20
Q

Explain the somatic nervous system.

A
  • Controls voluntary muscles attached to the skeleton

Ex: We control whether we want to walk or not

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21
Q

Explain the autonomic nervous system

A
  • Controlled involuntarily for the most part
    Ex: heart, lungs, blood vessels
  • Divided into sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
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22
Q

What are the components of the peripheral nervous system, and what does it do?

A
  • Nerves
  • Connect the brain to the sensory organs, muscles, and glands
  • Divided into the somatic and autonomic nervous systems
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23
Q

What are neural networks?

A
  • Systems of neurons with a common purpose
    • some are innate (I.e visual perception, reflexes)
    • some are learned (I.e neurons that fire together wire together)
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24
Q

What is the role of the sympathetic nervous system?

A
  • Expend energy
  • Fight-or-Flight
  • Active if you’ve been challenged and your body or brain needs to do something
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25
Q

What Is the role of the parasympathetic nervous system?

A
  • Conserve energy
  • Active when you’re at rest
  • Rest-and-Digest
  • Designed to calm you down after a stressful event
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26
Q

What do antagonists do?

A
  • Block a neurotransmitter’s functioning

Ex: Botox

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27
Q

What do agonists do?

A
  • Block reuptake

Ex: black widow spider venom

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28
Q

What are neurotransmitters?

A
  • Chemicals that transmit information from one neuron to another
29
Q

What is the neurotransmitter Acetylcholine (ACh) responsible for?

A
  • Enabling muscle action, reading, and memory
  • It’s the messenger at every junction between motor neurons and skeletal muscles

(with Alzheimer’s disease, ACh-producing neurons deteriorate)

30
Q

What psychological disorder is linked to an undersupply or serotonin?

A
  • Depression

- This neurotransmitter affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal

31
Q

What is an oversupply of dopamine linked to?

A
  • Schizophrenia

- Dopamine influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion

32
Q

Information travels through the nervous system in 3 types of neurons. Name them.

A
  • Sensory neurons (carry info from the body’s tissues and sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord for processing)
  • Motor neurons (carry instructions from the central nervous system out to the body’s muscles and glands).
  • Interneurons (communicate internally and intervene between sensory inputs an motor outputs. Located within the brain and spinal cord).
33
Q

What is phrenology?

A
  • Early psychology
  • Studied bumps on the skull, believing they could reveal a persons mental abilities and character traits
  • Brought attention to the localization of function, even though it’s theories were incorrect
34
Q

What is a synapse?

A
  • ‘Meeting point between neurons’
  • Junction between the axon and the tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron
  • The tiny gap at this junction is called the synaptic gap (or cleft)
35
Q

What is reuptake?

A
  • A neurotransmitter’s reabsorbtion by the sending neuron
36
Q

What is the endocrine system?

A
  • The body’s “slow” chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream, close to the central nervous system
    • Divided into the;
      - Adrenal glands
      - Pituitary glands
37
Q

What do the Adrenal glands do?

A
  • Help around the body in times of stress
  • Increase heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar
  • Provide us with a surge of energy
38
Q

What does the pituitary gland do?

A
  • Regulates growth and controls other endocrine glands (I.e the adrenal gland in times of stress)
  • Controlled by the hypothalamus
39
Q

What does an Electroencephalogram (EEG) do?

A
  • Measures the electrical activity of brainwaves (can diagnose epilepsy)
  • Can measure the timing of brain’s information processing
40
Q

What does a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan do)

A

-Measures metabolic activity and glucose consumption

41
Q

What is the brainstem responsible for?

A
  • Heart rate, breathing, blood pressure
42
Q

What are the pons involved in?

A
  • Coordination of movement
43
Q

What is the cerebellum responsible for? Where is it located?

A
  • Coordination of movement
  • Leaning and smooth, skilled movement
  • Located at the base of the brain
44
Q

What is the reticular formation?

A
  • Network of neurons running through core of the brainstem

- Involved in relaying the sensory nerves to the appropriate area of higher brain centres

45
Q

What does the thalamus do?

A
  • Senses send their information here first, then to other parts of the brain
  • Major relay station of the brain (from the senses of touch, taste, sight, and sound, to the appropriate areas of higher processing- the cortex).
46
Q

What is the role of the Amygalda?

A
  • Involved with emotions; like fear and aggression

- Involved with the processing of emotional memories (closely associated with the hippocampus)

47
Q

What is the hypothalamus responsible for?

A
  • Body temp
  • Hunger, thirst
  • Sleep/ wake cycle
  • Controls the pituitary gland
  • Reward centre
48
Q

What is the cerebral cortex responsible for? How many neurons is it composed of?

A
  • Perception, thinking, language, movement
  • 20-23 million (of 40 million) neurons.
  • Divided into 4 lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital
49
Q

What is the motor cortex responsible for?

A
  • Voluntary movements

- Located @ the rear border of the frontal lobe

50
Q

What does Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) do?

A
  • Displays a 3-D image of the brain
  • Magnetic field passed though head
  • Causes atoms to spin in the same direction/ orientation- the atoms give off radio waves which a scanner detects based on their frequency
51
Q

What does Functional Magnetic Resonance imaging (fMRI) do?

A
  • Measures recent metabolic activity and blood flow

- Detects the oxygenation of blood- by radio frequency

52
Q

What is lesion?

A
  • Tissue destruction (natural or experimental)

- Today, scientists can selectively lesion tiny clusters of brain cells, leaving th surrounding tissue unharmed

53
Q

If you injured your cerebellum, what would you have trouble doing?

A
  • Keeping your balance
  • Walking
  • Shaking hands with someone
54
Q

What neural systems is the limbic system composed of?

A
  • Amygalda
  • Hypothalamus
  • Hippocampus
55
Q

What is neurogenesis?

A
  • When the brain tries to mend itself by producing new cells (neurons)
  • Baby neurons originate feel in the brain and may migrate elsewhere and form connections with neighbouring neurons
56
Q

What is constraint- induced therapy?

A
  • Constraining the fully- functional limb, forcing patients to strengthen the “bad” limb
57
Q

What is living with a split brain like?

A
  • Life having 2 separate minds

- Left hand often has an unruly independence

58
Q

What is the left hemisphere like?

A
  • An “interpreter” or press agent

- Good at making quick, literal interpretations

59
Q

What is the right hemisphere good at?

A
  • Overseeing our sense of self, modulating speech to make meaning clear
  • Excels in making inferences
  • Helps us to orchestrate our sense of self
60
Q

What is the sensory (somatosensory) cortex responsible for?

A
  • Sense of touch
  • Contralateral sensation
  • No direct correspondence between the size of the sensory area, and the size of the area that receives its sensory neurons
61
Q

What is the visual cortex responsible for? Where is it located?

A
  • Sight

- Located in the occipital lobe

62
Q

What is the auditory cortex responsible for? Where is it located?

A
  • Hearing

- Located in the temporal lobe

63
Q

What does the olfactory love do? Where is it located?

A
  • Transmits smell from nose to brain

- Located in the temporal lobe

64
Q

What is the gustatory lobe responsible for? Where is it located?

A
  • Sense of taste

- Located in the frontal lobe

65
Q

What happens during a hemispherectomy?

A
  • Half of the brain is removed

- Fluid compensates for the other half of the brain

66
Q

What does the brain do with available area when someone suffers from visual or auditory impairment?

A
  • Brain moves sense to a different area of the body.

Ex: For someone who is blind, sense may move to fingers to help them with reading brail

67
Q

What do association areas do?

A
  • Interpret, integrate new info and experiences

- compare incoming information to memories

68
Q

What are the frontal lobes responsible for?

A
  • Judgement and planning
69
Q

What are the parietal lobes responsible for?

A
  • Mathematical and spacial reasoning
70
Q

What are the temporal lobes responsible for?

A
  • Auditory processing an facial recognition
71
Q

What is neural plasticity?

A
  • The brain’s ability to recognize itself in the face of different environmental stimulation

Psychology (4 decks)

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