Biopsychology - The Nervous System Flashcards
What does bio psychology use to explain behaviour?
How biology influences behaviour.
WHat does the nervous system allow you to do?
- Respond to changes in your environment (stimuli)
- To coordinate your actions
What detects stimuli?
Receptors
What brings about a response to the stimulus? What do they include?
Effectors. Include muscle cells and cells found in glands e.g. pancreas.
How do receptors and effectors communicate?
Via the nervous or endocrine system, or both.
What do the nervous and endocrine systems coordinate.
The response to a stimuli.
What are the two parts of the nervous system?
The central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
What is the central nervous system (CNS) made up of?
The brain and spinal cord.
What is the peripheral nervous system made up of?
The neutrons that connect the CNS to the rest of the body.
What are the two different systems of the PNS?
The somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
What does the somatic nervous system control?
Conscious activities e.g. running and playing video games.
What does the autonomic nervous system control?
Unconscious activities e.g. digestion.
What are the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system?
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
What does the parasympathetic nervous system do?
Calms the body down. It’s the ‘rest and digest system’.
What dos the sympathetic nervous system do?
Gets the body ready for action. It’s the ‘flight or fight system’.
What does the somatic nervous system connect CNS with?
The senses.
What are neurons?
The cells of the nervous system.
What do neurons do?
Transmit electrical information as electrical impulses around the body.
What are dendrites?
The part of the neuron that receives information from other neurons.
In what form does information pass along the axon?
As an electrical impulse.
As the electrical impulse passes along the axon, where does it end up?
At the synaptic knob.
What insulates the axon and for what purpose?
The myelin sheath insulates the axon to speed up nervous transmission.
What are neurotransmitters and where are they released from?
Chemicals released form the synaptic knob.
After neurotransmitters are released from the synaptic knob what happens to them?
They pass across the synapse, to pass on the signal to the dendrites of the next neuron.
What do biopsychologists look at neurotransmitters for?
To work out what they do and how they can be influenced by things like diet, exercise and drugs.
Why do biopsychologists work out how to manipulate neurotransmitters with medication?
To NORTON different behaviours. E.g. if a medication or diet was developed to reduce the neurotransmitters that signal stress, this could help people who get stressed out too easily.
What are the three different types of neurons?
Sensory neurons, relay neurons and motor neurons.
Sensory Neurons
The nerve cells that transmit electrical impulses from receptors to the CNS.
Relay Neurons
The nerve cells that transmit electrical impulses between sensory neurons and motor neurons.
Motor Neurons
The nerve cells that transmit electrical impulses from the CNS to effectors.
Transmission of information to and from the CNS diagram:
Relay Neuron
Sensory Neuron —> Motor Neuron
Stimulus —> Receptors —> CNS —> Effectors —> Response
What do reflexes help prevent?
Injury and damage.
What are reflexes?
Fast, automatic responses to certain stimuli.
Why are reflexes so rapid?
They bypass your conscious brain completely - instead they go through the spinal cord or through an unconscious part of the brain.
What is a synapse?
The junction between a neuron and another neuron, or between a neuron and an effector cell, e.g. a muscle or gland cell.
What is the tiny gap between the cells at a synapse called?
The synaptic cleft/ gap.
