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Psychology > Biopsychology > Flashcards

Biopsychology Flashcards

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1
Q

Central nervous system

A

Brain and spinal cord

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2
Q

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

A
  • relays messages from the environment to the CNS
  • further divided into the autonomic nervous system and the somatic nervous system
  • the autonomic nervous system then breaks up into the sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)
  • the SNS arouses the body (raises heart rate) and the PNS calms it back down (flight or flight response)
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3
Q

Endocrine system

A
  • the main chemical messenger system of the body. releases hormones into the blood via glands
  • pituitary gland is the master gland, and controls all the others
  • adrenal gland/adrenaline
  • testes/testosterone
  • pineal gland/melatonin
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4
Q

What is the fight or flight response

A
  • evolutionary mechanism to ensure survival when put in stressful situations
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5
Q

How does the fight of flight response work

A
  • stress is recognised
  • hypothalamus activates the endocrine and sympathetic nervous system
  • cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline are released
  • pupils dilate, blood flow increases, sweat increases, non-necessary processes like digestion stop
  • once the stressor is removed, the parasympathetic nervous system relaxes the body again
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6
Q

Tend and Befriend response

A
  • women are more likely to protect their young and form alliances with other women than flee/fight
  • evolutionary mechanism as caregivers
  • original FoF response has a beta bias, as minimises the differences
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7
Q

What is localisation of function

A

the idea that different areas of the brain are responsible for different things

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8
Q

Motor area

A
  • coordinates voluntary movement
  • damage can lead to inability to control fine voluntary motor movements
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9
Q

Auditory area

A
  • processes auditory information and speech
  • damage can lead to hearing loss
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10
Q

Visual area

A
  • in occipital lobe, processes visual information
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11
Q

Somatosensory area

A
  • interprets sensory information
  • damage leads to loss of sensation, eg. not being able to feel pain
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12
Q

Broca’s area

A
  • speech production in the frontal lobe
  • damage leads to failing to form sentences
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13
Q

Wernicke’s area

A
  • speech comprehension in the temporal lobe
  • damage leads to being able to form fluent sounding speech but not actually making any sense
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14
Q

AO3 Tan case study

A
  • he could understand spoken language but could not produce any coherent words
  • Broca conducted a post-mortem examination of his brain and found that had a lesion on his left frontal lobe
  • supports localisation of function and that things happen in different regions
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15
Q

AO3 Phineas Gage case study

A
  • injured by a rod that tore through his prefrontal cortex
  • suffered changes to his personality, rational decision making, and emotional processing but was fine in other aspects
  • supports localisation of function
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16
Q

AO3 contradictory theory of localisation of function

A
  • some take a holistic view of brain function
  • eg. after removing 20-5-% of rat cortices, they could still traverse a maze
  • shows that intelligence is too complex to be concentrated in on area and that localisation theory can only provide a simple explanation
  • not complex enough
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17
Q

What is hemispheric lateralisation

A
  • each hemisphere of the brain is responsible for different things
  • the right brain controls the left body and vice versa
  • information received in the left visual fields is processed by the right brain
  • the two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum
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18
Q

Sperry and Gazzaniga study

A
  • aimed to see to what extent the two hemispheres are specialised for certain functions
  • 11 epileptic patients that had already had their CC’s severed (to prevent seizures)
  • 10 men and 1 woman, all right-handed
19
Q

AO3 Sperry methodological evaluation

A
  • low population validity (only 11 already brain-damaged patients)
  • high internal validity (covered one eye and stimulus shown for only 1/10th of a second to control which hemisphere the info was processed in)
  • lacks mundane realism
20
Q

Sperry tactile tasks

A
  • ppts hands were covered, and an object was placed in the participant’s left or right hand, and they had to either describe what they felt, or select a similar object from a series of alternate objects
  • objects placed in the right hand could be described and named but objects in the left couldn’t
  • left hemisphere is more responsible for verbal and analytical tasks, whereas the right hemisphere is better at spatial and musical tasks.
21
Q

Sperry visual tasks

A
  • when stimuli was flashed in the right visual field, they could say what they saw as it was processed in the left (language) hemisphere, however when flashed in the left and processed in the right they claimed to have seen nothing
22
Q

AO3 Sperry contradicting research

A
  • Turk et Al 2002 conducted a case study on patient JW who developed the ability to speak using his right hemisphere regardless of whether the stimuli were presented in the left or right visual field
  • goes against Sperry’s theory of hemispheric lateralisation and proposes an alternative viewpoint.
23
Q

Plasticity

A
  • the brain’s tendency to change and adapt as a result of new experiences and learning
24
Q

Functional recovery

A
  • a form of plasticity following damage through trauma, the brain has the ability to redistribute or transfer functions from a damaged to an undamaged part of the brain
25
Q

Maguire’s study into plasticity

A
  • studied brains of London taxi drivers, and found high grey matter in their posterior hippocampi than in a control group
  • also found a positive correlation between grey matter volume and time spent being a taxi driver
26
Q

Gabby Giffords Case study - Functional recovery

A
  • shot in her left hemisphere at 40
  • lost movement on her right side and her right visual field
  • loss of speech/aphasia showing damage to Broca’s area, e.g: could only say the words “chicken” and “what”
  • despite her older age she was able to regain control of her right side movement and some of her speech
  • however, her whole treatment was funded by Obama
27
Q

Cameron Mott Case study - Functional recovery

A
  • 5 year old girl who had an autoimmune disease causing cognitive decline and severe violent epilepsy
  • had brain surgery to remove all of the right side of her brain, resulting in paralysis of her left side
  • through recovery and therapy she has regained most of the movement on her left side and could go to school as normal
28
Q

How does functional recovery happen?

A
  1. axon sprouting
  2. reformation of blood vessels
  3. recruitment of homologous areas
29
Q

Schneider et Al - Issues with generalisability in functional recovery

A
  • found that patients with the equivalent of a college education are 7x more likely than those who didn’t finish high school to be disability-free one year after a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury
  • functional recovery can’t be generalised to all people + not everyone is able to recover so well
30
Q

What are the methods of brain investigation?

A
  1. PET scans
  2. fMRI scans
  3. EEG scans
  4. ERPs
  5. Post-mortem
31
Q

PET scans

A
  • radioactive material is injected, and when under the PET scans it lights up in areas of the brain with high levels of activity
  • very expensive and invasive
32
Q

fMRI scans

A
  • detects the change of blood flow in the brain using a magnetic field
  • active brain areas consume more blood and oxygen, which fMRI machines measure
  • provide 3D images of the brain with areas of activity highlighted
  • less invasive but very expensive
  • cannot move + metal interference
33
Q

EEG scans

A
  • electroencephalograms
  • up to 34 electrodes are put on the scalp, and detect electrical activity in the brain and picks up waves
  • very useful in sleep studies
34
Q

ERPs

A
  • event-related potentials
  • like EEGs, uses electrodes on the scalp
  • stimuli are shown to the patient, and their response is recorded
  • useful in memory studies
35
Q

Post-mortem examinations

A
  • the brain is autopsied after death and compared to a normal, healthy brain
  • any differences are assumed to be the cause of problems whilst alive
  • based only on inference
36
Q

Circadian rhythms

A
  • about 24 hours
  • sleep-wake cycle
  • exogenous zeitgebers are sunlight and caffeine
  • endogenous pacemakers is the SCM (suprachiasmatic nucleus) in the hypothalamus which stimulates the release of cortisol and melatonin
37
Q

Exogenous zeitgebers

A
  • external factors that influence our biological rhythms
38
Q

Endogenous pacemakers

A
  • internal factors that influence our biological rhythms
39
Q

Ultradian rhythms

A
  • greater than 24 hours
  • menstrual cycle or SAD
  • exogenous zeitgebers 🩸 could be diet/stress
  • endogenous zeitgebers ❄️ could be lack of sunlight/ cold weather
  • endogenous pacemakers 🩸are hormones
40
Q

Infradian rhythms

A
  • less than 24 hours
  • stages of sleep 💤
41
Q

Siffre 1962

A
  • went into a cave with no light or clocks to see if his circadian rhythm would be maintained without exogenous zeitgebers
  • when he thought it was day, he told the researchers above ground to turn on the lights, and when he thought it was night they turned them off
  • after 2 months in the cave, his sleep-wake cycle was c. 24.5hrs
42
Q

Siffre 1999

A
  • wanted to see if age would affect the sleep-wake cycle
  • after putting other people in caves and watching them reach 48hr cycles, he wanted to see if he could too
  • demand characteristics present
43
Q

McClintock and Stern

A
  • field study using 29 women with irregular periods
  • obtained pheromones from 9 of the women and then wiped them under the noses of the other women
  • 68% of the women responded to the pheromones and synced with the respective donors
  • pheromones acted as exogenous zeitgebers

Psychology (11 decks)

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