Exam 2 Flashcards
Consciousness
- Our moment to moment awareness of ourselves and our environment.
- Subjective/private, dynamic, and central to sense of self
3 ways to measure states of consciousness
- Self reports (e.g. on a scale of 1-10 how awake are you? –> subjective)
- Physiological measures (e.g. BAC level in field sobriety test)
- Behavioral measures (e.g. how many yawns in one lecture)
Preconscious
Information that you’re not thinking of in the moment, but it will easily come out when prompted.
Unconscious
Information that is not easily accessed. (e.g. Do you have any unresolved trauma?)
Freud’s Iceberg Theory
What you are conscious of in an instant is only a small proportion of everything in the preconscious and unconscious
Controlled processing
Conscious use of attention, and effort (e.g. learning how to ride a bicycle)
Automatic processing
Perform tasks with little or no conscious awareness or effort (e.g. showering, riding a bicycle once you’ve learned how to do those skills)
- Over practiced, and no longer take effort
Circadian Rhythm
- Daily 24-hour biological cycles
- Affect body temperature, some hormonal secretions, and other bodily functions
- e.g. sleep
Suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)
- SCN links to the pineal gland, which secretes melatonin
- SCN resides in the hypothalamus
- Regulates circadian rhythm through this secretion of melatonin
Stages of sleep
- Roughly cycle through 5 stages of sleep roughly every 90 minutes
- 5 stages are defined by different brain waves
Beta waves
Brain waves that occur when we are awake and alert (15-30cps)
Alpha waves
Brain waves that occur when we are relaxed and drowsy (8-12cps)
Stage 1 (describe brain waves and time )
- Lots of theta waves
- 3 - 5 minute stage, transition between awake and sleep
Stage 2
- Lots of theta waves and presence of sleep spindles (bursts of brain activity that occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep, and are a key indicator of sleep onset)
- 15-25minute light sleep
Stage 3 and 4
- Delta waves appear
Delta waves
- Slowest brain waves with lowest frequency
- Associated with sleep
REM
- Eye moves in socket
- Beta waves –> closest to being awake (high arousal)
- Lots of memory consolidation occurs during REM
- Vivid, frequent dreaming occurs
- Limbic system and visual cortex have increased activity
- Motor cortex is active but blocked (doesn’t take in sensory information, so you don’t move too much in your sleep)
- Decreased activity in prefrontal cortex
Describe the depth of sleep throughout the night.
- The first two cycles go from stage 1 to REM.
- After that body doesn’t go to stage 3,4. Just stage 2 and REM (REM = 25 % of the sleep at night)
Describe changes in sleeping with aging
- REM sleep decreases during infancy/childhood, and is stable after
- Time spent in stages 3,4 also declines
Restoration Model
- Sleep recharges bodies, and allows recovery from mental and physical fatigue.
Evolutionary/circadian models
- Each species evolved a sleep-wake pattern that increased its chances of survival in relation to environmental demands
Wish Fulfilment
- Freud’s theory on why we dream
- Dreams can provide us with gratification from unconscious desires and needs
- Dreams contain manifest content and latent content
Manifest Content
“surface story” of a dream
–> e.g. fish was in my dream
Latent Content
Disguised psychological meaning of dream
–> fish can be indicative of pregnancy. Maybe one of my friends is pregnant
Cognitive-process dream theory
- Dreams and waking thoughts are produced by the same systems in the brain and involve processes that are more similar than we typically realize
- Dreams are process of sifting and sorting information about the day (due to memory consolidation)
Activation synthesis theory
Dreams are merely the byproduct of neural activity. Brain synthesizes ”best fit” story in response to random neural activation
What are content of dreams affected by?
- Negative/unpleasant content is common
- Affected by cultural background, life experiences, current issues
Drugs and the blood brain barrier
- Drugs work by crossing the blood brain barrier
3 factors that can influence the effects of drugs
- Dose (how much do you take?)
- Set (behavior, rituals beforehand)
- Setting (Environment familiar/unfamiliar)
Depressants
- Decrease nervous system activity
- Includes alcohol, tranquilizers, pain killers
Alcohol
- Most widely used recreational drug in many cultures (depressant)
- Increases activity of GABA, decreases activity of glutamate
- Depress activity of inhibitory control centers (more social, more sexual, lower inhibition)
- Slowed reaction time, impaired motor skills, slurred speech
Sedatives
- Subcategory of depressants
- Valium, Ambien, ketamine, ruffees belong in this category
Valium
- prescription anti-anxiety medication
- sedative
- you can build tolerance, which leads to addiction
Ambien
- prescription sleeping medication
- sedative
- you can build tolerance, which leads to addiction
Special K, Ketamine
- Horse tranquilizer
- Sedative
Ruffees
- Sedative
- Often put in drinks at parties to make people pass out
Opiates
- Subcategory of depressants
- Derived from morphine (heroin, oxycontin, codeine)
- The body has natural opiate system (endorphins) which these opiates bind to.
- Intake of opiates results in blocking of GABA receptors, which gives a flood of glutamate and leads to a flood of dopamine.
- 2 MAJOR EFFECTS: block pain, produce euphoria
Stimulants
- Increase neural firing and arouse the nervous system
- Work to directly activate the reward pathway
- Legal stimulants: caffeine, nicotine, Adderal
- Illegal stimulants: Cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines
Amphetamines
- Increase dopamine and norepinephrine activity
- Increase in dopamine = addiction
- Increase in Norepinephrine = high blood pressure, higher risk of heart attack
- Too much dopamine can result in having a psychotic break
Cocaine
- increases activity of dopamine and norepinephrine
- dopamine reuptake is blocked
- chronic use is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment and brain damage
Ecstasy (MDMA) (Molly)
- Produces feelings of pleasure, elation, empathy
- Chemically half stimulant half halucinogen
- Interferes with serotonin reuptake, cells reuptake molly instead of serotonin –> punch a bunch of serotonin with no proper reuptake
- can affect body temperature
- can lead to depression, sluggishness, poor memory
Hallucinogens
- Distort or intensify sensory experience (influences information taken in)
- Can blur boundaries between reality and fantasy
- Peyote, LSD, ayahuasca, etc
Marijuana
- Can be categorized as a stimulant, hallucinogen, and depressant
- Most widely used illegal drug in the US
- Increase in dopamine, decreases GABA, can produce hallucinogenic effects
- Can only develop a psychological dependence
- Has cancer-causing substances and alters reaction time, thinking, memory
Memory
- The process that allows us to record, store, and retrieve
- It allows us to learn from experience and to adapt to changing environments
Memory as information processing (3 basic processes)
- encoding, storage, retrieval
Encoding
- Translating information into a neural code that the brain processes
Storage
- Retaining information over time
Retrieval
- Processes that access stored information
Three stage model of memory
- Sensory memory
- Working (short-term memory)
- Long-term memory
Sensory memory
- Briefly holds sensory information (visual and auditory information)
- Visual information lasts a milisecond
- Auditory information lasts 1-3 sec
Short-term (working memory)
- Temporarily holds a limited amount of information
- Stores and processes information of which we are conscious
- 7 +-2 items in memory
- 5-9 meaning full items
- Shelf life of 20 seconds for information
How can you increase short-term memory?
Chunking
- Combining individual items into larger units of meaning e.g. phone number -> instead of 10 digits, 781-517-6150
Mnemonic Devices
- acronym, rhymes
- memory aids that we use to help us remember things
Working memory
- “mental workspace”
- stores information, actively processes it, supports problem solving and planning
- e.g. calculating 67*28
- 3 divisions of working memory: phonological loop, visual-spatial sketchpad, central executive (Baddeley discovered)
Phonological loop
- Auditory storage
- can hold info taken in in 2 second period, and starts to decline as time passes from incident
- visual information can be translated to auditory, as it lasts longer
- eg repeating phone number so you can write it down
Visual-spatial sketchpad
- Storage of mental images and spatial information
-eg seeing math addition while doing math problems
Central Executive
- Directs attention, recall from long term memory, and integration of auditory and visual input
Long-term memory
- Limitless number of long term memories (storage capacity unlimited)
Effortful processing
- Intentional and conscious encoding of information in long-term memory
- Eg learning in school
Automatic processing
- Unintentional and requires minimal attention when encoding information in long term memory
- e.g. knowing where the phone and keys are without putting effort in
Maintenance Rehearsal
- A type of effortful processing
- Repeating something over and over to remember it
- Shallow processing and not optimal
Elaborative Rehearsal
- A type of effortful processing
- Focuses on the meaning of the information and elaborates on the information
- eg Won’t remember the name Jon alone, but will remember if you connect it with “oh the same name as my dad”
Schemas
- Organizational framework. Our brain categorizes things into different groups
- Eg. we know if a song played is pop vs rap vs country due to a schema
Levels of processing theory of encoding
- Made up of three levels: structural, phonemic, semantic
- For example, processing the word house
Structural: 5 letters, written in blue ink (visual)
Phonemic: Rhymes with mouse (auditory)
Semantic: We can determine that “house fits into the sentence “Wanna come over to my ___ to study” because we are processing the word’s meaning.
MAIN IDEA: Deeper processing leads to better retrieval of information
Long term potentiation
- High-frequency stimulation in a synapse in the hippocampus that strengths it
- Leads to memory formation (short term in hippocampus)
- Once time passes, memories can move out of the hippocampus and consolidate in other regions of the brain (eg visual cortex, somatosensory cortex)
HM
- Patient in 1960s with bilateral lesion to treat seizure
- Severe anterograde and some retrograde amnesia
- Other lesions in the cortex show how long term memories are stored differently
Serial Position Effect
- Primacy effect: better recall for the beginning of a list (LTP has started to occur)
- Recency effect: better recall for end of a list
HM: Can remember last few words when not interrupted. Recency effect intact, primacy effect gone: no encoding benefit (LTP doesn’t occur)
KF: Damaged joining of occipital and parietal lobe Primacy effect intact, regency effect gone.
Two types of long term memory
- Explicit (declarative) memory (conscious memory)
- Implicit (procedural) memory
(unconscious memory, but memory still influences behavior even with no conscious awareness)
Two types of declarative memory
Semantic memory
- facts, general knowledge
Episodic memory
- personally experienced events
Recall vs recognition
Both retrieval of memory
- Recall is like short answer question
- Recognition is like multiple choice (distinct activation of memory with key words)
- Multiple cues lead to a better retrieval of memory
Two types of procedural memory
Skills
- motor and cognitive
Classical conditioning effects
Distinctiveness
- Distinct, novel, unique things capture our memory
- cause us to remember later on
Context-dependent memory
- Easier to remember something in the same environment that it was encoded in
(eg taking test in same room as class)
State-dependent memory
- Memory is enhanced when conditions present during retrieval match those present during encoding
(eg sick studying, do better on test when sick)
Mood-congruent recall
-Tend to recall information or events congruent with current mood.
- good mood –> recall good memories
Priming
- Cue to retrieve certain/specific thing
- e.g. cat –> dog
- e.g. fork –> spoon
Flashbulb memories
- Vivid, clear recollections like snapshots in time.
- Typically surrounding big events e.g. first kiss
- Strong release of hormones creates a strong memory, and you remember even irrelevant details.
Encoding failure
Lack of attention or processing and memory never gets converted into long-term memory
Decay of memory trace
- Long-term physical trace in nervous system fades away over time and with disuse
Interference
- Information forgotten because other items in long term memory impair ability to retrieve it
- Proactive interference and retroactive interference
Proactive interference
- Past material interferes with the recall of newer material
Retroactive interference
- New information interferes with ability to recall older information
Tip of the tongue state
- On verge of remembering but can’t recall something
Motivated Forgetting
Conscious or unconscious repression of a memory (e.g. trauma)
Alzheimer’s disease
- Severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia
Misinformation effect
- Distortion of memory by misleading post-event information
- Can affect eye witness testimonies
- Think of experiment with stolen tape recorder
Suggestive Questioning
- Can distort children’s memories (think court case with day care)
- Different words used can alter the perception of something e.g. car crash
