biopsych

Question 1

Peterson

Answer 1

evidence from brain scans of localisation of function
-used brain scans to demonstrate how Wernickes area was active during a listening task and brooks area was active during a reading task

Question 2

Lashley

Answer 2

removed areas of the cortex in rats that were learning the route through a maze - no area was proven to be more important than the other in terms of the rats ability to learn the route

Question 3

Phineas Gage

Answer 3

Whilst working on the railroad Phineas suffered an accident, hurling a metro long pole through his left cheek and passing through his left eye- damaging most of his left frontal lobe.
His accident left him with an altered personality, and had turned from someone who was calm and reserved to someone who was quick tempered and rude

Question 4

Dick and Tremblay

Answer 4

language may not be localised just to Brocas and Wernickes area
-study found that only 2% of modern researchers think that language in the brain is completely controlled by B and W- fMRI show that language function is distributed more holistically in the brain than first through

Question 5

Fink et al

Answer 5

+supports lateralisation in the brain -
used PET scans to identify which brain areas were active during a visual processing task - when ppts with connected brains were asked to attend to more global elements of an image, regions of the RH were more active , but when required to focus on finer details, the specific areas of the LH tended to dominate

Question 6

Gazzaniga

Answer 6

+support for split brain research
-showed that split brain ppts actually perform better than connectd controls on certain tasks - for example faster at identifying the odd one out in an array of similar objects than normal controls

Question 7

Boivin

Answer 7

+provides an understanding of the adverse consequences when circadian rhythms are disrupted
night workers engaged in shirt work experience a period of reduced concentration around 6 in the morning, meaning mistakes and accidents were more likely

Question 8

Ramachandran

Answer 8

60-80% of amputees have been known to develop phantom limb syndrome - continued experience of sensations in the missing limbs as if they were still there - usually unpleasant and painful -

suggests that the brains ability tp adapt to damage is not always beneficial

Question 9

Bezzola

Answer 9

+brains plasticity may be life long
-bezzola demonstrated how 40 hours of golf training produced changed in the neural representations of movement in participates ages 40-60 - using fMRI the researchers observed increased motor cortex activity in golfers compared to control group

Question 10

Schneider

Answer 10

-limitation of functional recovery
-level of education may influence recovery rates
-founs that the more time people with a brain injury had spent in education - as an indication of their ‘cognitive reserve’- the greater their chances of disability free recovery
40% of those who achieved DFR had more than 16 years of education compared to about 10% of those who had less than 12 years education

Question 12

Knutsson

Answer 12

research has shown a relationship between shift work and poor health - shift workers and 3 times for likely to develop heart disease than people who work more typical work patterns
-real world economic impact

-however uses correlation

Question 13

Stern and McClintock

Answer 13

demonstrated how menstrual cycles may synchronise as a result of the influence of pheromones
-studied 29 women with a history of irregular periods - samples of pheromones were gathered from nine of the women at different stages of their menstrual cycles via a cotton pad placed in their armpit
-the pads were worn for at leats 8 hours to ensure that the pheromones were picked up
-the pads were treated with alcohol and frozen to be rubbed on the upper lip of the other participants
-68% of women experienced changed to the cycle, bringing them closer to the cycle of their “odour donor”

-however confounding variables - such as diet exercise

Question 14

stern and McClintock 2

Answer 14

+evoloutionary basis
- can be explained by natural selection as it may have been advantageous for women to menstruate together to become pregnant at the same time - as this would allow babies who had lost their mother at an early age to have access to breast milk - increasing chances of survival

Question 15

sanassi

Answer 15

Real world application of light therapy for SAD
-a box which stimulates very strong light to reset the body internal clock
-helps reduce the effects of SAD in about 80% of people
-preferred over anti depressants

Question 16

Cauter

Answer 16

+research into ultradian rhythms has improved our understanding of age related changes in sleep
-researchers have observed that SWS reduces with age and growth hormones are mostly produced during SWS- therefore reduced in order people
-this may lead to reduced alertness in older people
-relaxation and medication is suggested

Question 17

tucker

Answer 17

-individual differences in ultradian rhythm research
-found a large difference between ppts in terms of the duration of each sleep stage - especially stages 3 and 4
-difficult to describe “normal sleep”

Question 18

DeCoursey

Answer 18

influence of SCN on animal studies
-destroyed the SCN connections in the brain of 30 chipmunks who were then returned to their natural habitat and observed for 80 days
-sleep/wake cycle of the chipmunks disappeared and by the end of the study, a significant proportion of them had been killed by predators (as they were awake when they shouldn’t have been)

Question 19

Ralph

Answer 19

bred mutant hamsters with a 20-hour sleep/wake cycle
-when SCN cells from the foetal tissue of the mutant hamsters were transplanted into the brains of normal hamsters - the cycles of the second group defaulted to 20 hours

Question 20

Campbell and Murphy

Answer 20

demonstrated that light may be detected by skin receptor sights on the body even when the same information is not received by the eyes
15 ppts were woken at various times and a light pad was shone on the back of their knees
the researcher managed to produce a deviation in the ppts usual sleep/wake cycle of up to 3 hours in some cases

Question 21

miles

Answer 21

-limitation of exogenous
-study of a young man, blind from birth who had an abnormal circadian rhythm of 24.9 hours - despite exposure to social cues, such as regular meal times, his sleep/wake cycle could not be adjusted

Question 22

Medina

Answer 22

evidence has shown that the brains adaptation to prolonged drug use leads to poorer cognitive functioning in later life, as well as an increased risk of dementia

Question 23

Aschoff and wever

Answer 23

similar to siffre circadian
-convinced a group of ppts to spend 4 weeks in WWII bunker deprived of natural light
all but one of the ppts (who’s sleep/wake cycle extended to 29 hours) displayed a circadian rhythm between 24 and 25 hours

Question 24

Solomon

Answer 24

Contrast Knutson and Boivin
-as they use correlational methods and therefore it is difficult to establish whether desynchronisation of the sleep/wake cycle is actually a cause of negative affects and not other factors
for example, Solomon concluded that high divorce rates in shift workers might be due to the strain of deprived sleep and other influences such as missing out on important family events

Question 25

Aspirin

Answer 25

medical treatment + real world application of circadian rhythms
-circadian rhythms co ordinate a number of the bodies basic processes such as heart rate, digestion and hormone levels
these rise and fall during the course of a day which has lead to the field of chronotherapeutics - how medical treatments can be administered in a way that corresponds to a persons biological rhythms
for example, aspirin as a treatment for heart attacks is most effective if taken at night as it reduces the blood platelet activity and therefore reduce risk of heart attack
as heart attacks are most likely to occur in the morning, the timing of aspirin matters

Question 26

Cseisler

Answer 26

individual differences in circadian sleep wake
-found that sleep wake cycles may vary widely from person to person
-found individual differences in sleep wake cycles varying from 13 to 65 hours

Question 27

Duffy

Answer 27

with czeisler
-found that some people have a natural preference for going to sleep early and rising early, wheres others prefer the opposite

Question 28

siffre2

Answer 28

link to czeisler and duffy
found his own sleep wake cycle had slowed down since he was younger