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PSYC1200 > Chapter 3: BIological Psychology > Flashcards

Chapter 3: BIological Psychology Flashcards

1
Q

what are chromosomes?

A
  • structures in the cell nucleus that contain the genes an individual inherits
  • Get half chromosomes from parents
  • XY - male
  • XX - female
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2
Q

what is DNA?

A
  • deoxyribonucleic acid
  • a double helix molecule that contains 4 types of nucleotides (A, C, T, G)
  • blue print for what makes us us
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3
Q

what are genes?

A

basic unit of herdity; guides protein synthesis

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4
Q

what are genotypes?

A

genetic makeup of an organism

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5
Q

what are phenotypes?

A
  • observable characteristics, including physical structures and behaviours
  • Ex. height: interaction btwn genotype and environment
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6
Q

what does homozygous mean?

A
  • inherited same version of gene from fathers chromosome and mothers chromosome
  • When genes @ particular location are the same on each chromosome
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7
Q

what are heterozygous mean?

A
  • when the genes @ a particular location are diff on each chromosome
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8
Q

what does dominant mean?

A

that genes and the genes assoc. w/ will always be expressed, doesn’t matter what its paired w/

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9
Q

what does recessive mean?

A

only expressed if paired w/ another recessive gene

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10
Q

what does polygenetic mean?

A

multiple genes contribute to the trait

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11
Q

what does behavioural genetics mean?

A

evaluating how genes and environment influence behaviour by studying people of varying relatedness

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12
Q

what are twin studies?

A
  • Study of pairs of people that differ in how related they are to each other
  • The more similarly genetic people are, they should have similar genetic outcomes
  • Monozygotic (identical) vs dizygotic (fraternal) twins
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13
Q

what are Concordance rates?

A

degree of similarity btwn pairs of individuals

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14
Q

what are adoption studies?

A
  • Comparing adopted child and biological parents
  • If adopted kid more similar to bio parents than adopted, suggests that genetics has strong influence on that trait
  • More like bio parents = nature
  • More like adoptive = nurture
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15
Q

what is heritability?

A
  • ranges form 0 to 1
  • Measures degree to which genetics explains individual diffs or variance in a behaviour or trait
  • Isn’t fixed
  • The diffs btwn 2 pairs of individuals that we can attribute to a behaviour/cause - NOT THE ENVIRONMENT ANY DIFFS MEASURED BETWEEN THEM IS BC OF THEIR GENETICS
  • h^2 = 0.99 means 99% of this difference can be attributed to genetics
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16
Q

what are behavioural genomics?

A
  • study of DNA and ways in which specific genes are related to behaviour
  • Human genome project - mapped entire genetic code of a human being
  • Can sequence people’s genomes as see common abnormal sequences among diseases
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17
Q

how do single genes affect behaviour?

A
  • Any complex phenomena is caused by many genes
  • Combinations of genes influence behaviour, one gene isn’t limited to 1 trait
    Genes code for proteins and combine and get involved in diff
    Proteins used in diff structures and ways i n the body
    Inheritance of a gene isn’t guarantee that characteristic will be expressed
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18
Q

what is evolution?

A

can be thought of as change in frequency of genes occurring in a pop over generations

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19
Q

what did darwin believe about evolutionary psychology?

A
  • natural selection
  • Didn’t know how selection developed on the gene basis
  • Certain genes become more frequent over time = natural selection
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20
Q

how does genetics influence human mate preferences?

A
  • Preferences likely shaped by differing evolutionary pressures on each sex
  • Females = prefer strong, committed, and financially secure males
  • Males = prefer youthful, physically beautiful females
  • No limit on # of sperm that can be developed
  • Reproductive success is only limited by the number of partners they can acquire over their lifetime
  • Comes down to reproductive biology
  • Females have more cost assoc. w/ reproduction (limited production of eggs in a lifetime)
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21
Q

what are the sex differences in cognition?

A
  • diff hormone lvls can affect cognitive processes
  • Testosterone effects
  • Males tend to do spatial stuff faster than females
  • Female better at language, spatial memory
  • Statistical vs practical significance
  • Hunter gatherer explanation vs. byproduct of other evolutionary changes
  • Some say males better at spatial bc they were hunters, females had to remember location of food sources bc gatherers
  • Environment always play a role
  • Stereotypes of women and men
  • Stereotype that women are bad at math - has nothing to do w/ biological/genetic reason, more has to do w/ our expectations
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22
Q

what is a neuron?

A
  • Basic units of behaviour
  • Have billion neurons in our brain
  • Soma: top
  • Dendrites connect to others - that’s how neurons communicate w/ each other
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23
Q

what are the types of neurons?

A

sensory neurons, motor neurons, interneurons

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24
Q

what are sensory neurons?

A

collect info from external world through our 5 senses, and communicates it to spinal cord or brain

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25
Q

what are motor neurons?

A

move info from brain/spinal cord to muscles to help us move our bodies and create a motor response

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26
Q

what are interneurons?

A
  • connect sensory neuron to motor neuron to create circuit to create reflex arc
  • Helps us make quick reactions to stuff (Ex. putting hand on a hot stove top)
  • Take signal from neuron, route it through spinal cord, connect it to motor neuron and send signal to muscles to pull hand back
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27
Q

what is neural plasticity?

A
  • brain’s ability to change structure and function
  • Brain cells change according to our experiences
  • Brain previously thought to be unchanging outside critical developmental window during childhood
  • Thought that brain damage was permanent
  • Most of brain’s plasticity comes from changes to existing neurons themselves
  • Dendritic branching and formation of dendritic spines
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28
Q

what is adult neurogenesis?

A
  • formation of new neurons that are integrated into adult brain
  • Only few parts of brain capable of neurogenesis
  • Takes weeks to happen
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29
Q

what is branching?

A

when neuron develops more branches, increases potential of that neuron to connect w/ other neurons

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30
Q

what is human echolocation?

A
  • When people are blind, the back of the brain starts to be recruited for non-visual tasks
  • Tiny microphones placed in ears of blind echolocators as they tried to identify various objects
  • Researchers played back recording during fMRI scan = activation of primary visual cortex in brain
  • Able to echolocate (using sound to see)
  • Feedback of sound allows them to know where things are in their environment
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31
Q

what are glial cells and types?

A
  • variety of cell types that support functions for neurons
  • Microglia: engulf debris and mounts immune response (body guards of neurons)
  • Oligodendrocytes: produce extension that wrap axons in myelin
  • Astrocytes: provide physical support and delivers energy to neurons, glue of the brain
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32
Q

what is MS (multiple sclerosis)?

A
  • Result of malfunctioning glial cells
  • Myelin created by oligodendrocytes become target of the immune response for microglia
  • Glial incorrectly labels - Myelin as a foreign pathogen that’s not supposed to be in body and then destroy it
  • Causes loss of saltatory conduction - slows electrical signals down length of neuron, neurons can’t communicate like they should
  • Body deteriorates and people lose independence over time
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33
Q

what are cations?

A
  • +Vely charged ions

- Ex. sodium (Na), potassium (K)

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34
Q

what are anions?

A
  • -vely charged ions

- Ex. Cl, -vely charged proteins

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35
Q

what is concentration gradient?

A
  • ions will move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration
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36
Q

what is electrostatic pressure?

A
  • repulsion of like charges, attraction of opposite charges
  • Similar charges will move away from one another
  • If ions have opposite charges, they’ll attract
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37
Q

what is the synaptic cleft?

A
  • small space btwn terminal button and dendrite of another neuron
  • Interact w/ receptor sites on dendrite of neuron
  • Grab neurotransmitters which can cause action potentials to start in the neuron
  • Neurotransmitter = key, receptor = lock
  • Specific shaped receptors for specific neurotransmitters
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38
Q

what is reuptake?

A
  • process whereby released neurotransmitters are absorb into the axon terminals of the presynaptic neuron
  • Recycling process
  • Ex. SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors)
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39
Q

how do SSRI’s (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors)

work?

A
  • Preventing reuptake of serotonin
  • If a cell can’t uptake serotonin bc of a drug, the serotonin transmitters will just float btwn the neurons
  • If they’re available and continue to bind these receptors on the dendrite of the post synaptic neuron = continue to cause action potentials and activity
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40
Q

what are excitatory neurotransmitters?

A
  • make action potentials more likely to occur

- Want to depolarize neuron and bring it closer to the threshold for action potential to occur

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41
Q

what are inhibitory neurotransmitters?

A

decrease likelihood of action potential occurring ; brings it further away from the threshold of action potential

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42
Q

what is glutamate?

A

primary excitatory neurotransmitter/most abundant, going to make action potentials more likely to occur

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43
Q

what is GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)?

A

primary inhibitory transmitter, going to slow down and calm activity in the brain

44
Q

what is Acetylcholine?

A

find it in the neuromuscular junctions (space in btwn nerve and a muscle) - how we can activate and control our muscles is bc of this

45
Q

what is dopamine?

A

important for our voluntary movements/goal directed movements, important for our processing of reward

46
Q

what is norepinephrine?

A

important for regulating our arousal lvls, energy lvls , involved in fight or flight response

47
Q

what is serotonin?

A

important for regulating mood

48
Q

what are agonists?

A

drugs that enhance/mimic effects of a neurotransmitter’s action

49
Q

what are direct agonists?

A

drug is having an agonistic effect by directly binding to the receptors that the neurotransmitter usually fits into

50
Q

what are indirect agonists?

A

drugs that cause neurotransmitter to be enhanced by doing so by some other mechanism other than binding to the receptor

51
Q

what are antagonists?

A

drugs that inhibit neurotransmitter from having normal activity/effect by blocking receptors or preventing synthesis of neurotransmitter

52
Q

what are direct antagonists?

A

fitting into a receptor, but it’s shape is wrong enough that it doesn’t cause any effect that a normal neurotransmitter would have - would prevent neurotransmitter from binding

53
Q

Nervous system made up of 2 main subdivisions:

A

central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and peripheral nervous system (made up of autonomic nervous system and somatic nervous system)

54
Q

Autonomic nervous system:

A

body’s ability to control automatic processes (organs, glands, other physiological processes), don’t have to think about

55
Q

2 sub branches of autonomic nervous system

A

sympathetic and parasympathetic

56
Q

what is the sympathetic divison?

A
  • Anytime we deal w/ emergency situations it activates sympathetic nervous system
  • Deal w/ fight or flight
  • Heart races, pupils dilate, breathing heavily, sweating, body supplies more blood
  • Digestive system shuts down
57
Q

what is the parasympathic division?

A
  • Opposite of sympathetic
  • Aka rest and digest response
  • Taking us out of the emergency situation and bringing body and body systems to “normal” lvl
58
Q

what is the somatic nervous system?

A

nerves that control our body, (soma = body), transmits sensory info and controls movement of skeletal muscles

59
Q

what is the hindbrain and what does it consist of?

A
  • Oldest part of the brain (Evolutionary speaking)
  • Looks the same for all species mostly
  • Serves basic life sustaining functions
  • consists of medulla, pons and reticular formation, cerebellum
60
Q

what is the medulla?

A
  • extension of spinal cord
  • Controls basic living functions ex. Heart beating
  • Does all of this automatically for us, don’t have to consciously think of these things
61
Q

what is the pons and reticular formation?

A
  • involved w/ lvls of wakefulness and arousal,
  • Pons thought to contribute to aspects of dreaming
  • Acts as a bridge from hindbrain to rest of the brain, involved w/ sleep paralysis
62
Q

what is the cerebellum?

A

main function is for coordination and refinement of movement (esp. Movement w/ timed component to them ex. Dribbling basketball)

63
Q

what is the midbrain made up of?

A

tectum and substantia nigra

64
Q

what is the tectum?

A
  • consists of superior colliculus and inferior colliculus
  • Involved in oriented response
  • It’s their job to convert sensory info in form of light and sound into motor response
  • Superior colliculus does this for visual information and reflexes (ex. Throwing a ball at ur face so you turn ur head to avoid it)
65
Q

what is the inferior colliculus?

A
  • orients out auditory attention

- Ex. when someone slams a door and everyone looks for the source of the sound

66
Q

what is the substantia nigra?

A
  • Rich in dopamine releasing neurons
  • Plays role in controlling voluntary movement and generating movement
  • Starts to degenerate in diseases like parkisons
  • Primary symptom is people have hard time w/ intentional movements, have a lot of tremors when trying to do intentional movements
67
Q

what is the forebrain and what is it made out of?

A
  • most visibly obvious part of brain

- consists of ventricles

68
Q

what are ventricles?

A
  • contain cerebrospinal fluid which removes waste products, supplies nutrients and hormones
  • Acts as plumbing system of the brain - bringing nutrients, flushes away toxins
  • Also acts as airbag - lessens force of the impact
69
Q

what is basal ganglia?

A

involved in facilitating planned movements and skilled learning

70
Q

what is the nucleus accumbens?

A
  • integrates sensory and movement info w/ brain’s reward system
  • Helps us to learn about the consequences of our actions
  • Neural Mechanism underlying the rewarding condition
71
Q

what is amygdala?

A
  • activates and processes emotional responses and stimuli

- Fear centre of the brain

72
Q

what is the hippocampus?

A

important for initial formation of memories and learning, esp emotional memories

73
Q

what is the thalamus?

A

sensory relay station; all of our senses gets routed to our thalamus, thalamus has to redirect sensory info to where its needed in the brain

74
Q

what is the limbic system and what does it consist of?

A
  • Emotion and memory networks of our brain

- consists of amygdala, hippocapus, and thalamus

75
Q

what is the endocrine system and what does it consist of?

A
  • System of hormones in our brain and body

- consists of hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and hormones

76
Q

what is the hypothalamus?

A
  • helps to regulate basic biological needs and motivation systems (ex. Thirst, hunger, sex drive)
  • maintains homeostasis
  • Once it detects a deviation from homeostasis, hypothalamus signals pituitary gland
77
Q

what is homeostasis?

A

body’s steady state (ex. Body temp, blood sugar levels)

78
Q

what is the pituitary gland?

A

master gland of the endocrine system, controls all the glands in our body

79
Q

what are hormones?

A

chemical way which one neuron communicates to another neuron, secreted by the glands of the endocrine system

80
Q

what is the cerebral cortex made up of?

A

grey and white matter

81
Q

what is grey matter?

A

composed of cell bodies and dendrites

82
Q

what is white matter?

A
  • composed of myelinated axons that interconnect the diff structures of the brain
  • White bc its made up of long myelinated axons
  • Long axons allow signals to be shared in the brain
83
Q

what is localization?

A

specific function “located” in a specific brain area

84
Q

what are circuits?

A

specific function controlled by interconnected areas

85
Q

how has the cerebral cortex evolved?

A
  • Human brain retains most of basic features of other mammalian brains
  • Brain stem, midbrain
  • Cerebral cortex size and frontal areas dramatically increases in size
  • How do we increase brain size but our head never grows?
  • Our skulls are malleable @ birth
86
Q

what are the lobes of the cerebral cortex?

A

occipital, temporal, frontal, parietal

87
Q

what are the occiptal lobes?

A

back of brain, visual info processed here

88
Q

what are the temporal lobes?

A

involved w/ auditory processing, language, hearing

89
Q

what are the frontal lobes?

A

important for higher cognitive functions, like planning, inhibition of impulses and emotion, language production, and voluntary movement

90
Q

what is the primary motor cortex?

A
  • back of frontal lobe, controls voluntary movement
  • Spot on band of neural tissue devoted to each of our body parts that will move that part
  • Diff body parts are disproportionately represented (mouth, lips, tongue, hands take up more space in primary motor cortex)
  • Gives us our sense of fine motor control
91
Q

what is the somatosensory cortex?

A

Processes touch sensations for various body parts

92
Q

what is phantom limb pain?

A

feeling presence of a limb after its gone

93
Q

what is the corpus callosum?

A
  • densely concentrated bundle of nerve cells connecting the two hemispheres
  • Main connection btwn 2 hemispheres
  • Allows ½ of brain to talk and communicate w/ other half
  • Some functions get processed in one area and not the other sometimes
  • Ex. broca’s and wernicke’s area
  • No such thing as left and right brained people
94
Q

what is laterilization of function?

A
  • cases in which one hemisphere is dominant for or specializes in the processing of certain types of info
  • Increases processing efficiency / parallel processing
95
Q

what are split-brain patients?

A
  • Patients that have severe epileptic seizures
  • To treat it, some people would get split brain surgery and sever their corpus callosum
  • Theory is that if they sever connection btwn 2 hemispheres it will prevent it from travelling and affecting the other hemisphere
  • Doesn’t have profound impact in day to day life
    In each of our eyes, theres a left and right visual field
  • Anything in the left visual field gets communicated to opposite hemisphere
96
Q

what are the structural/static neuroimaging techniques used?

A
  • CT
  • MRI
  • DRI
97
Q

what is Computerized tomography (CT)?

A
  • X-ray beam passed through brain @ many diff angles to create many diff images
  • X-rays pass through diff tissues w/ diff speeds
98
Q

what is Magnetic resonance imaging (mri)?

A

Produces 3d brain image by passing a strong magnetic field through the brain

99
Q

what is Diffusion tensor imaging (DRI)?

A
  • Method for visualizing white matter tracts
  • Used to identify functional neural circuits and abnormalities in neural pathways
  • Useful for brain injuries and concussion
  • The white matter tracts get torn, you can see it through this and isolate the damage
100
Q

what are the Functional/dynamic neuroimaging techniques used?

A
  • EEG
  • PET
  • fMRI
101
Q

what is an Electroencephalogram (EEG)?

A
  • Put weird hat thing on them lined w/ many electrodes that measure surface lvl electrical activity of the brain
  • Get a sense of where the brain is active during any particular task
  • Can also measure Event-related potentials: change in surface lvl activity of the brain during cognitive engagement
102
Q

what is a Positron emission tomography (PET)?

A
  • Person given an injection of radioactive glucose (primary fuel source for brain)
  • When parts of brain become active, the need energy
  • They draw glucose and radioactivity up
  • By doing this u know which regions were recently activated
103
Q

what is Function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)?

A
  • a Hybrid approach
  • Generating a pic of brain using structural version of MRI and measures blood oxygenation instead of radioactive glucose (areas of brain also use blood oxygen) to see what areas of brain are active
  • Signal averaging: not good enough to do just 1 trial - should do many and get avg
  • Data is correlational
  • Active regions may not be necessary for task
104
Q

what are some lesioning techniques?

A

cryogenic blockade, surgical cuts, chance cases of brain injury, transcranial magnetic stimulation

105
Q

what is cryogenic blockade?

A
  • Very thin electrode is inserted into brain and in it you can pump cooling fluid to freeze a small area of brain at a desired depth
  • After that area thaws, the brain regains normal function
  • Can turn off area of brain by temporarily freezing it
106
Q

what are surgical cuts?

A
  • Can implant thin scalpel and attach little blade and activate it and just snip a small nerve fibre/connection ur interested in studying
  • More invasive
    0- Usually done on animals
107
Q

what is transcranial magnetic sitimulation

A
  • Magnetic pulse used to temporarily induce/disrupt brain activity
  • Gives u direct experimenter control
  • Very safe

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