Biopsych Flashcards
What are the two nervous systems?
Central nervous system- Brain and spinal cord make decisions and send out instructions
Peripheral nervous system- Parts of the nervous system outside of the brain and spinal cord
What are hormones?
The body’s chemical messengers
Describe fight or flight.
When the body is threatened it secretes hormones to fight and protect itself or avoid the situation.
What are axons?
Axons carry electrical impulses down the length of neurons.
Outline Maguire et al (2000) study.
Structural MRI scans were obtained. 16 right-handed male London taxi drivers participated; all had been driving for more than 1.5 years. Scans of 50 healthy right-handed males who did not drive taxis were included for comparison. The mean age did not differ between the two groups.
He found that taxi drivers had an increased volume of grey matter in their posterior hippocampus
Outline Sperry’s research.
He studied people whose corpus callosum was severed, he flashed images into their right or left visual field and found that when an image was flashed into a person’s RVF they could describe what they had seen, however, they would say they had seen nothing when an image was flashed to their lVF but could draw it, this led Sperry to believe that language must be lateralized.
What is the Wernickers area?
Located in the temporal lobe the Wernickers area is responsible for language comprehension.
What is the Brocas area?
Located in the frontal lobe it is responsible for the generation of speech.
What is an infradian rhythm?
A rhythm that happens less every 24 hours normally over a long period of time.
What is an ultradian rhythm?
A rhythm that happens more than once every 24 hours.
What is a circadian rhythm?
A rhythm that happens approximately every 24 hours.
Explain Siffre’s research.
To investigate the impact of Exogenous pacemakers Siffre lived in a cave for three weeks and found that his sleep-wake cycle settled at around 25 hours just above the 24 hours showing endogenous pacemakers play a large role in the natural sleep-wake cycle.
What is an Endogenous Pacemaker?
Our internal biological clock.
What is an Exogenous Zeitgebers?
External factors that may affect biological cycles.
What are the three methods of measuring brain activity?
FMRI’s
EEG
ERP- event-related
