Biopsychology LCWC Pack 2024-25 Flashcards

Question

What is excitation?

Answer 1

When a neurotransmitter increases the positive charge of the postsynaptic neuron, increasing the likelihood that the neuron will fire. E.g. adrenaline

Answer 2

When a neurotransmitter makes the charge of the postsynaptic neuron more negative, decreasing the likelihood that the neuron will fire. E.g. Serotonin

Answer 3

A chemical messenger that helps transfer the electrical impulse across the synapse from the presynaptic to the postsynaptic neuron

Answer 4

The net result of adding up the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters binding to the receptors- determines whether or not the neuron fires

Answer 5

x Nerve impulse travels down axon of presynaptic neuron and then reaches the terminal button. x At the end of the axon, there are a number of sacs known as synaptic vesicles. These contain neurotransmitters. x The synaptic vesicles release neurotransmitters which transfer electrical impulses into chemical messages. The neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors on surface of postsynaptic neuron- has either inhibitory or excitatory effect x Likelihood of cell firing determined by summation

Answer 6

Specific functions (physical and psychological) have specific locations in the brain

Answer 7

Occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal

Answer 8

Motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory, Broca’s, Wernicke’s

Answer 9

Phineas Gage was working on a rail road when an iron rod entered his head and causes severe damage to his frontal lobe. He went from being calm and reserved to quick-tempered. The change in his temperament suggests the frontal lobe is responsible for regulating personality.

Answer 10

Controls voluntary movement in the opposite side of the body. Found in the back of the frontal lobe

Answer 11

Processes sensory information related to touch, pressure, pain and temperature which it then localises to specific body regions. Found in the parietal lobe.

Answer 12

Each eye sends information from the right visual field to the left visual cortex and the left visual field to the right visual cortex. Found in the occipital lobe.

Answer 13

Analyses speech-based information. Found in temporal lobe

Answer 14

Broca's area= speech production. Found in frontal lobe, left hemisphere Wernicke's area= speech comprehension. Found in temporal lobe, left hemisphere

Answer 15

Brain scan evidence of localisation: Petersen et al. (1988) used brain scans to demonstrate how Wernicke’s area was active during a listening task and Broca’s area was active during a reading task, suggesting that these areas of the brain have different functions. Case study of Phineas Gage There has been evidence which has revealed that damage to either Broca’s or Wernicke’s area has led to different types of language difficulty. Expressive aphasia (Broca’s aphasia)= an impaired ability to produce language. In most cases caused by brain damage in Broca’s area. E.g. Patient Tan could understand speech but couldn’t produce any coherent words (could only say the word ‘Tan’). When he died a post-mortem revealed that Tan had a lesion in the left frontal lobe. Receptive aphasia (Wernicke’s aphasia)= an impaired ability to understand language= usually the result of damage in Wernicke’s area. This suggests that the role of speech production and speech comprehension is localised in the brain.

Answer 16

Law of equipotentiality: It has been found that when the brain is damaged and a function is lost, the rest of the brain can reorganise itself in an attempt to recover the lost function. Lashley described this as the law of equipotentiality= surviving brain circuits ‘chip in’ so the same neurological action can be achieved. Eg. stroke victims recovering functions Evidence for holistic theory: Lashley (1950)- suggested that higher cognitive functions are not localised but distributed in a more holistic way in the brain. He removed areas of the cortex (between 10 and 50%) in rats that were learning a maze. No area was proven to be more important than any other area in terms of the rats’ ability to learn the maze. The process of learning appeared to require every part of the cortex, rather than being confined to a particular area. This evidence seems to suggest that learning is too complex to be localised and requires the involvement of the whole brain.

Answer 17

Refers to the fact that some mental processes in the brain are mainly specialised to either the left or right hemisphere

Answer 18

Left hemisphere= right side of the body Right hemisphere= left side of the body

Answer 19

A bundle of nerve fibres which join the two hemispheres of the brain

Answer 20

Research that studies individuals who have been subjected to the surgical separation of the two hemispheres of the brain as a result of severing the corpus callosum

Answer 21

Sperry and Gazzaniga (1967)

Answer 22

Patient had an image projected to either their right or left visual field for 1/10th of a second. They were then asked to describe what they saw, do a tactile test or a drawing test

Answer 23

The patient will not be able to name it because object will be processed by right hemisphere, but language is in left hemisphere.

Answer 24

They will not be able to find the object because the object will be processed by the right hemisphere, which controls the left hand, not the right.

Answer 25

They will be able to because right visual field is processed by the left=hemisphere which is responsible for lanaguage.

Answer 26

They will be able to find it. This is because the object is processed by the LH which controls the right hand.

Answer 27

Increased neural capacity By using only one hemisphere to engage in a particular task this would leave the other hemisphere free to engage in another function and thus increasing neural processing capacity. E.G. Rogers et al. found chicks lacking in lateralisation are slower to detect predators while searching for food. The experiments involving split-brain patients made use of highly specialised and standardised procedures. There was a high degree of control over all variables and thus increasing the internal validity of the experiment. COUNTER-ARGUMENT: Many researchers have urged caution in the widespread acceptance of the conclusions drawn from this split-brain research. Split-brain patients constitute such an unusual sample of people. There were only 11 who took part in all variations of the basic procedure, all of whom had a history of epileptic seizures. This may have caused unique changes in the brain that may have influenced the findings lowering the internal validity of the research and making it difficult to draw general conclusions.

Answer 28

Differences in function may be overemphasised.. Modern neuroscientists would contend that the actual distinction between left and right hemisphere is less clear-cut. In the normal brain the two hemispheres are in constant communication when performing everyday tasks, and many of the behaviours associated with one hemisphere can be performed by the other when the situation requires it. E.G. Patient J.W. developed the capacity to speak out of the right hemisphere with the result that he can now speak about information presented to the left or to the right brain. This challenges the claim that the right hemisphere is unable to handle language. Lateralisation changes with age: Lateralisation of function appears not to stay the same throughout a lifetime, but changes with normal ageing. Szaflarski et al. (2006)- found language became more lateralised to the left hemisphere with increasing age in children and adolescents, but after the age of 25, lateralisation actually then decreased with each decade of life. Across many types of tasks and many brain areas, lateralised functions found in younger individuals tend to switch to bilateral functions in healthy older adults. This implies that a lateralised brain is in fact only a feature of young adults and not true for all ages.

Answer 29

Refers to the brain’s ability to modify its own structure and function as a result of experience and new learning

Answer 30

Refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt in order to recover abilities and mental processes that have been compromised as a result of brain injury or disease.

Answer 31

With age rarely used synaptic connections in the brain are deleted and frequently used connections strengthened= example of plasticity of brain

Answer 32

1. Axonal sprouting 2. Reformation of blood vessels 3. Recruitment of homologous areas on the opposite hemisphere

Answer 33

Maguire et al. (2000)= London cabbie drivers Davidson et al. (2004)= Tibetan monks meditating

Answer 34

New nerve endings grow and connect with other undamaged nerve cells to form new neural pathways.

Answer 35

He developed the capacity to speak out of the right hemisphere with the result that he can now speak about information present to the left or right brain

Answer 36

x Cabbie drivers required to learn all city streets and possible routes in London for a test. x Their brains were scanned using MRI x Found cabbie drivers had more grey matter in the posterior hippocampus than control group x This part of the brain is associated with development of spatial and navigational skills

Answer 37

x Compared Tibetan monks with student volunteers with no meditation experience x Both fitted with electrical sensors during meditation x Greater activation of gamma waves in monks. This was even true before they started meditating, suggesting the changes are permanent.

Answer 38

Research support from humans for neural plasticity: Maguire et al. (2000)= London cabbies and Davidson et al. (2004)= Tibetan monks Animal study support Increased number of new neurones in the hippocampus (navigation) in the brains of rats housed in complex environments rather than lab cages.

Answer 39

Negative plasticity: The brain’s ability to rewire itself can sometimes have maladaptive behavioural consequences. It was found that prolonged use of marijuana resulted in poorer cognitive functioning as well as an increased risk of dementia later in life. Plasticity changes with age: Age is a confounding variable which affects the plasticity of the brain. Functional plasticity tends to reduce with age as the brain has a greater propensity for reorganisation in childhood as it is constantly adapting to new experiences and learning. COUNTER-ARGUMENT: Researchers showed that 40 hours of golf training in 40-60 year olds produced changes in the neural representation of movement ‡ suggests that neural plasticity is evident in all ages and not just young people.

Answer 40

Hubel and Wiesel (1963)- sewed one eye of a kitten shut and analysed the brain’s cortical responses. It was found that the area of the visual cortex associated with the shut eye was not idle (as predicted) but continued to process information from the open eye Level of education may influence functional recovery: Schneider et al (2000) found that 40% of those who has a recovery has more than 16 years of education versus 10% who had less than 12 years education

Answer 41

1. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 2. Electroencephalogram (EEG) 3. Event-related potentials (ERPs) 4. Post-mortem examinations

Answer 42

Measures changes in blood flow which shows neural activity. When a brain area is more active, it consumes more oxygen so there is increased blood flow.

Answer 43

Measures general electrical activity in the brain via electrodes which are fixed to the scalp. Small electrical charges are detected and graphed over a period of time

Answer 44

Record electrical activity of the brain but isolate specific neural responses. They do this by repeatedly presenting a stimulus and averaging the responses. Any extraneous neural activity that is not related to the specific stimulus will not occur consistently and therefore will be filtered out,

Answer 45

Analysis of a person's brain after their death. Areas of damage examined to establish the likely cause of the person's affliction.

Answer 46

- Non-invasive (no exposure to harmful radiation or insertion of harmful instruments) - Produces images with very high SPATIAL resolution which allows for better discrimination between brain regions. - Poor TEMPORAL resolution. 5 second time lag between image and initial firing of neuron

Answer 47

- High temporal validity - Useful in clinical diagnosis, such as for epilepsy - Poor spatial resolution. Can only detect activity in superficial and not deep regions such as the hypothalamus or hippocampus - Not useful for pinpointing the exact location of neural activity as electrical activity can be picked up by neighbouring electrodes.

Answer 48

- Can measure the processing of stimuli even in the absence of a behavioural response. They make it possible to monitor the processing of a particular stimuli without requiring the person to respond to them. In order to establish pure data in ERP studies, background noise and extraneous material must be completely eliminated and this may not always be easy to achieve.

Answer 49

-Allow for a more detailed examination of anatomical aspects of brain that wouldn’t be possible with non-invasive techniques (fMRI and EEG). - Played central part in early understanding of key processes in the brain before neuroimaging became a possibility. - Issues with causation- damage may not be linked to deficit under review but to some other trauma - Ethical issues of consent from before death due to deficits in the brain

Answer 50

Distinct patterns of changes in body activity that conform to cyclical time periods.

Answer 51

A type of biological rhythm that recurs approximately every 24 hours, which regulates a number of body processes. Light and heat reset the rhythm

Answer 52

1. Sleep-wake cycle 2. Core body temperature 3. Hormone production

Answer 53

It will maintain a cycle of about 24-25 hours even in the absence of external cues

Answer 54

Michel Siffre’s cave study (1962) Aschoff and Weaver

Answer 55

x He spent several extended periods underground with no external cues to guide his rhythms such as clocks or daylight x Found that his 'free-running' circadian rhythm was 25 hours. x Shows that we have an internal rhythm which guides our sleep-wake cycle in the absence of external cues.

Answer 56

A group of participants spent 4 weeks in a WW2 bunker deprived of natural light. All but one of the participants displayed a circadian rhythm of between 24-25 hours.

Answer 57

x Controls release of melatonin x During darkness- high levels of melatonin released to make us feel sleepy x When its light melatonin drops to wake us up

Answer 58

x Drop in body temp. makes you feel sleepy (between 2 and 4pm and at 4.30am). X Body temp. rises towards last hours of sleep to promote alertness first thing in the morning

Answer 59

Practical application to shift work: Knowledge of circadian rhythms has given researchers a better understanding of the adverse consequences that can occur as a result of their disruption= desynchronisation. E.g Boivin found night workers engaging in shift work, experience a period of reduced concentration around 6am resulting in more mistakes and accidents. Thus, research into the sleep/wake cycle may have economic implications in terms of how to best manage worker productivity. Practical application to drug treatments One real-world application of circadian rhythms is chronotherapeutic- the study of how timing affects drug treatments. There are certain peak times during the day or night when drugs are likely to be at their most effective. This has led to the development of guidelines to do with the timing of drug dosing for a whole range of medications such as anticancer, cardiovascular, anti-epileptic etc.

Answer 60

Individual differences: Cycle length: Research has found that circadian cycles can vary from 13 to 65 hours. Cycle onset: Individuals appear to be innately different in terms of when their circadian rhythms reach their peak. This explains why some people prefer to rise early and go to bed early, whereas others prefer to wake late and go to bed later.

Answer 61

Rhythms that have a duration of over 24 hours, and may be weekly, monthly or even annually.

Answer 62

Rhythms that last less than 24 hours

Answer 63

1. The menstrual cycle 2. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

Answer 64

1. Sleep cycle 2. The Basic Rest Activity Cycle (BRAC)

Answer 65

A seasonal variation in mood with some people becoming severely depressed during winter months. During winter, the lack of light in the morning means melatonin is secreted for longer. Mealtonin has been found to have an impact in the production of serotonin which has been linked to depressive symptoms

Answer 66

x Lasts around 28 days and releases oestrogen- causing uterus lining to build up and then Luteinising Hormone causes an egg to be released. x Then progesterone released to thicken womb lining x If pregnancy doesn't occur egg is absorbed and womb lining breaks down- menstrual flow

Answer 67

First 4 stages= NREM (non-rapid eye movement) 1-2 light sleep, 3-4 deep sleep. Last stage= REM (rapid eye movement)

Answer 68

BATS Drink Red Blood

Answer 69

Pre stage 1 - High frequency beta waves punctuated by alpha waves Stage 1 - Alpha waves reduce in frequency and replaced by Theta waves Stage 2 - Sleep spindles (waxing and waning bursts of energy) Stage 3 - Sleep spindles disappear and replaced by Delta waves. Stage 4 - Delta sleep REM sleep then Back again.

Answer 70

A 90-minute rhythm cycle characterised by a period of alertness followed by a spell of fatigue. This occurs every 90-minutes throughout the day

Answer 71

Stern and McClintock (1998) Aimed to investigate whether women’s cycles would synchronise as a result of the influence of female pheromones. They took a group of women who had irregular periods and gathered a sample of pheromones from 9 of the women by using cotton pads and placing under their arms for 8 hours. These were then frozen and wiped under the noses of 20 other women. It was found that 68% of the women experienced changes to their cycle which were more in sync with their pheromone donor.

Answer 72

Evolutionary basis of the menstrual cycle: Menstrual synchrony (McClintock study) is thought to have an evolutionary value. For our ancestors it may have been advantageous for females to menstruate together and fall pregnant around the same time ‡ would mean new-borns could be cared for collectively increasing the chances of offspring’s survival. COUNTER-ARGUMENT: The validity of the evolutionary perspective has been questioned. Researchers have argued that if there were too many females in sync together within a social group, this would produce competition for the highest quality males (and thereby lowering the fitness of any potential offspring). Practical application for SAD: Research on infradian rhythms and SAD has allowed the development of effective treatment for SAD. One of the most effective treatments for SAD is phototherapy. This is a lightbox that simulates very strong light in the morning and evening. It is thought to reset melatonin levels in people with SAD. This relieves symptoms in up to 60% of sufferers.

Answer 73

Individual differences: Studies into ultradian rhythms tend to show significant variability among individuals, which suggests that there are innate differences in ultradian rhythms that are not accounted for in controlled lab settings. Tucker et al. (2007) found significant differences between participants in terms of the duration of each sleep stage, particularly stages 3 and 4 (just before REM sleep). This demonstrates that there may be innate individual differences in ultradian rhythms. Methodological limitations Sleep studies Sleep research often takes place in controlled lab conditions using specialised equipment such as monitors and sensors glued or taped to the PPs head. This can feel uncomfortable for some and overall, quite intrusive so may alter their natural sleep patterns. The studies therefore have low ecological validity as the sleep patterns observed in the lab setting may not accurately represent the ultradian rhythms that occur naturally in real life.

Answer 74

Mechanisms within the body that govern the internal, biological bodily rhythms.

Answer 75

Environmental cues that help to regulate the biological clock in an organism.

Answer 76

1. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) 2. The pineal gland

Answer 77

1. Light 2. Social cues

Answer 78

When our biological clock is reset each day by cues in the environment, such as the light cues of sunrise and sunset.

Answer 79

Pineal gland= A pea-like structure in the brain just behind the hypothalamus SCN sends signals to the pineal gland directing it to either increase the production and secretion of melatonin at night and to decrease it as light levels increase in the morning.

Answer 80

The SCN has its own circadian rhythm which needs resetting and uses light to do this. It receives light through the optic chasm.

Answer 81

Morgan (1995) Bred hamsters to have circadian rhythms of 20 hours. SCN neurons of these abnormal hamsters transplanted into normal hamsters. Repeated the other way round. Normal hamsters displayed 20hr rhythms and abnormal changed to 24hr rhythms.

Answer 82

Campbell and Murphy (1998) 15 participants awoken at various times and a light pad shone on the back of their knee. This produced a deviation in their usual sleep wake cycle of up to 3 hours.

Answer 83

Klein and Wegmen (1974) Got air travellers to venture out or stay in mor when thy arrived at their destination. Found that those who ventured out adjusted more quickly to the time zone

Answer 84

Research support from animal studies for the role of the SCN: Morgan (1995) - see last lesson Research support from humans for influence of light: Campbell and Murphy (1998)- see last lesson Practical applications for jetlag: Burgess et al. (2003)- Those who were exposed to the continuous bright light prior to the flight needed less time to readjust to the local time on arrival. This suggests that light exposure prior to a flight would allow travellers to arrive with their circadian rhythms already partially re-entrained to local time.

Answer 85

Influence of exogenous zeitgebers may be overstated: Miles et al. (1977) - a young man, blind from birth, with a circadian rhythm of 24.9 hours. Despite exposure to social cues, his sleep-wake cycle could not be adjusted and he had to take sedatives at night and stimulants in the morning to keep pace with the 24-hour world. Similarly, studies of individuals who live in arctic regions (where the sun does not set during the summer months) show normal sleep patterns despite the prolonged exposure to light. Both of these example suggest that there are occasions when exogenous zeigebers may have little bearing on our internal rhythm.