biopsych Flashcards
Peterson
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
Lashley
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
Phineas Gage
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
Dick and Tremblay
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
Fink et al
+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
Gazzaniga
+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
Boivin
+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
Ramachandran
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
Bezzola
+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
Schneider
-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
Knutsson
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
Stern and McClintock
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
stern and McClintock 2
+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
sanassi
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
Cauter
+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
tucker
-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”
DeCoursey
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)
Ralph
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
Campbell and Murphy
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
miles
-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
Medina
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
Aschoff and wever
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
Solomon
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
