Biopsychology Flashcards
What is the cba/pjs/and
Breaking and spinal chord receives sensory information and controls the body responses
Nerves outside can connect the cans to organs and limbs and skin
Unconstiosu actionsnerves communicaye with internal organs glands and involuntary actions
What is the automatic nervous system divided into
Sympathetic nervous system fight or flight response arousing effect on body
Parasympathetic resting and digesting relaxing effect on body
What is somatic nervous system
Controls behaviours nerved recieve input from dense organs and sends output
What are the different neutrons
Sensory neurone afferent lond dendrite short axon send impulses from Sense organs to the ncs
Relay neurones short dendrites and axons multipolar send and receives infor in both directions allows cba and organs to communicate
Motor neurone short dendrite and long axon multipolar transmits nerve impulses from cba to muscles or gland efferent
What is he synapse
Junction between axon of one neurone and dendrite of another neurone
Vesicles in axon terminal of presynaptoc neurone and are filled with neurotransmitter
Travel through the synaptic gap
Receptors on post synaptic dendrites recieve neurotransmitter
What is the process of synaptic transmission
Synthesis chemicals thransported into axon terminals neurotransmitters produces and packed into vescicles
Release in response to electrical impulse the neurotransmitter are released into the synapse
Receptive activation the neurotransmitter cross the synapse and bind to receptor sites
Inactivation neurotransmitters either reuptake info presunaptic neurone or broken down by enzymes
Action potentia explain what happens
Neurotransmitter is released from psn and bind to receptor on dendrites of post synaptic neurone a neuron will receive many inputs along the dendrites and the synapse will either be execitory or inhibitory and influence the firing action potential firing from cell body to axon terminal
What happens within exciting synapse
Increase the rate of firing action potentio they contain receptors taht are activated by dopamine and glutamine and generate excitory post synaptic potential
What’s activity like in inhibitory synapse
Decrease the rate on firing action potential they have receptors that are activated by inhibitory neurotransmitters GABA and serotonin and generate inhibitory post synaptic potential
What is summation
The firing of neurone action potential depends on the summation of the raps and isps if the net summation is positive the rate of firing of action potential will be greater and the rate of firing will decrease in negative summation
Why can signals in a synapse only travel in one direction
There are only receptors in post synaptic neuron in dendrite end
Diffusing from area of high concentration to low concentration
Vesicles only released from presynaptoc neurone
What’s the difference between neurotransmitters and hornones
Neurotransmitters produce within neurones and pass very quickly from one neuron to another across the synapse
Hornones secreted by glands and travel in the blood and travel slowly to distant organs
What is glutamate
Acts as an excitory synapse so has an arousing effect increase the activity of other neurotransmitters
High levels of glutamine can over excite neurone until they die which occurs in neurodegenerative conditions
What is gaba
Acts in inhibitory synapse so has calming effect prevent excessive levels of glutamate fr m influencing firing action potential
Low levels of gava can lead to neurone firing too often linked to epilepsy
What is the endocrine system
Glands that secrets hormones which regulate bodily functions chemical system of communication through blood stream release of right amount of specific hormone that target specific organs
What do different glands do
Pituitary gland control regulate secretion of hormones from other glands releases prolactin
Adrenal gland releaSes adrenaline useful in fight or flight
Thyroid gland secretes thyroxine maintains level of metabolism
What is a hormone
Chemicals produced by glands of endocrine system upon brain signal hormone secreted into bloodstream and travel to specific organ and interact with receptor cells and create a response
What is the autonomic nervous system
Is central to homeostasis it has two separate division the sympathetic branch and parasympathetic branch
When we perceive a stressor the brain activated the sypathomedullary pathway which cause physiological changes to help cope with a situation
What is the sympathimedullary pathway
A stressor is perceived from the enviroment
The hypothalamus activated the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
Sympathetic nerves transmit signals from cbs to adrenal glands
The adrenal medulla secreted adrenaline and bar adrenaline
Adrenaline constricts blood vessels and divert blood to muscles
What is the parasympathetic response
Once the stressor has gone the autonamic system switches to parasympathetic
Reduces the levels of adrenaline in the blood stream
Calming effect on the body rest and digest
Heart rate slows down
Reaches homeostasis
what is post motem
Post mortem examinations. Research study a persons unique abnormal behaviour whilst they are alive after death they analyse the structure of the brain areas that are damaged after post mortem examination and correlate brain damage with the abnormal behaviour if no data on these brain structures before the person dies it is compared against a healthy brain to show abnormalities.
what is a strength of post mortem
Strength of post-mortem examination it allows for a more detailed examination of anatomical and neurochemical features compared to fmri where you cannot expect to get close to the brain and really examine the details wheras in post mortem examination you can physically asses the brain parts so give more precise info in which parts of the brain is involved in paryicular behaviours
pm how has it added scientific credibility
Another strength is that brain post mortem examination has helped add scientific credibility in the past it provides evidence which is crucuial in building first understanding of key brain processes. Paul broca used post mortem examination and established a link between language and the brain area before neuroimaging was developed impinning in giving hypothesis for further study which adds scientific credibility before neuroimaging development.
one weakness of post motrem small..
Another weakness is that it is generally a small sample size as it is often difficult to find patients with certain brain abnormalities for who we have data on therefore we cannot apply the findings to the population
pm data is sometimes …
One weakness of post-mortem examination is the data gathered after the death limited data and its retrospective so you are unable to follow up and further investigate other areas of damage in addition we don’t know whether the damage caused the abnormal behaviour or the brain damage occurred to brain decay after death.
what is FMRI
Uses magnetic field and radio waves to measure the change in blood flow present in the form of neural activity. The active brain requires energy so oxygen is carried to the brain through haemoglobin and used to create energy and water. The fmri detect the water molecules and allows you to infer neural activity. Activity is presented as 3d activation to map the active areas are highlighted during task highlighted yellow and red. To investigate the brain activity we compare the experimental task activity to a baseline task and visualise the difference
what is the safety of FMRI
One strength of fmri is safer than other scans as it avoids the use of radiation , unlike PET scans it also is risk free and non invasive so can be used frequently and still provide a clear quality of the brain activity.
Another strength deep reigions spatial resolution
Another strength is that it helps understand a change in brain activity during tasks in comparison to mri and post mortem which only give structural information only. Fmri can measure deeper reigion of the brain fro example the amyglada whereas eeg and erp only measure areas that are near the surface and gives a more complete picture of activity in brain.
low temporal resolution
One weakness of the fmri is that there is poor temporal resolution, in the brain activity changes very quickly change in blood flow detected by fmri are very slow thus fmri cannot detect quick changes and is poor at detecting when activity happens known as poor temporal resolution vs eeg it measure exactly when activity takes place . so the fmri measure changes in blood much slower than change in neural activity. Quicker changes of activity in the brain are unlikely to be detected by fmri so not effective for identifying when brain activity occurs
small sample size
Another weakness is the reduced sample size due to cost. Compared to other methods it is very expensive so we must use a small sample size in order to reduce the cost and therefore difficult to generalise the findings to target population so decreasing the validity of the findings.
what is an EEG
Measures electrical activity in the brain electrodes are placed in the scalp detects small electrical changes resulting from neural activity the number of electrodes are based on the area which is being researched the wider the area the more electrodes are used, records signals from thousands of neurons directly under the area of the electrodes and provide a measure of general activity in the brain
What are the waves
, there are four patterns alpha waves which are presented in relaxed and retiring state, beta waves when awake and mentally active, theta waves light or drowsy seleep and finally delta waves patterns seen when in deep sleep
the practical application of eeg
Strength of the eeg there are practical applications which has helped diagnose and research disorders such as epilepsy as it measure random burst of electrical brain activity and it also helps woth further research on sleep cycles as it shows different brain waves in different stages of sleep.
high temporal resolution
There is high temporal resolution as unlike fmri eeg picks up on quick changes in neural activity that happen in each millisecond when electrical impulses happen there is a very precise temporal resolution as you are able to identify when neural activity occurs
cheap eeg
Cheaper than FMRI as eeg is much more cheaper than FMRI so a lot more people can be used as samples so a larger sample size so we can generalise to the larger population increasing validity of the findings
one weakness low spatial resolution
One weakness of the eeg is the low spatial resolution information from the eeg in general as it combines activity from lots of locations underneath the electrodes and therefore has low spatial resolution as it is doesn’t pinpoint exactly where neural activity is taking place whereas FMRI can.
We cannot detect deeper activity as we can only detect activity under the surface of electrodes and not deeper reigions like the amyglada and therefore doesn’t provide a complete picture of the brains activity and function
what is an ERP
Event related potentials. Electrodes are placed on the scalp to detect neural activity directly below the placement we measure the changes in voltage using the same equipment that we use in the EEG we can see brain activity in response to a specific stimulus shown repeatedly then it average the values and reduce the effects of extrenous variable
one weakness of ERPS TIME
Weakness is that it is time consuming as ERPS are small and difficult to pick out from other brain activity which are electrical . average number of trials are done in order to remove extraneous variables which is time consuming and not ideal for research situation for example with smaller children
Difference between ERP’S and EEG’S
EEG records the general changes in brain activity over time linked to stages of states such as sleep or arousal however ERPS are elicited by specific stimuli presented to the participant such as the ERP elicited when a face is presented
