exam 3 Flashcards
heritability of a tendency toward antisocial behavior is lowest for which of the following?
People in impoverished neighborhoods
How does the gene for the less active form of the enzyme MAOa affect the probability for aggressive behavior?
Increased probability for someone abused in childhood
Aggressive behavior correlates with low turnover of which neurotransmitter?
Serotonin
which of the following hormones tends to inhibit aggressive behavior?
cortisol
Why do we know more about the brain mechanisms of fear and anxiety than we do about other emotions?
researchers can more satisfactorily measure anxiety than other emotions in laboratory animals
After damage to the amygdala what happens to the startle reflex?
It becomes more consistent from one time or situation to another
suppose a researcher wants to determine whether someone is afraid of cats. What would be the most reasonable approach?
Present a photo of the cat then a loud sound. see whether the photo enhances the usual startle reflex
Research on the amygdala supports what psychological conclusion?
What we call fear is a combination of several components not an indivisible entity
What role does the bed nucleus of stria terminals play in fear or anxiety?
It affects fear of the environment in general
The amygdala responds most strongly to which type of facial expression?
Expressions that require some effort to understand
What if anything, can we predict from measuring the strength of amygdala response to frightening stimuli or faces showing fear?
We can predict probability of strong emotional responses to stressful experiences
After urban-wiethe disease damaged their amygdala two people showed no fear under most circumstances. what evokes fear?
Breathing concentrated carbon dioxide
What type of people would be more likely to than average to develop PTSD?
People with smaller than average hippocampus
What do benzodiazepines do?
They facilitate GABA synapses
The parasympathetic nervous system is most active during which of the following?
Digesting food
According to the James Lang theory feedback from the body’s actions is responsible for which aspect of emotion?
Feeling
When researchers looked for brain areas associated with particular emotions what did they find?
No brain area is responsible for one and only one emotion
Several lines of evidence argue against the idea that facial expressions demonstrate the existence of six basic emotions. Which of the following is NOT one of those lines of evidence?
Asking people to match six faces to six labels interferes with accuracy
Which brain area is associated with behavioral activation system and a tendency to approach?
The left hemisphere
Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex increases which tendency is decision making?
More utilitarian choices
Which hormone does the alarm stage release, but the resistance stage does not?
Epinephrine
How do the functions of the HPA axis compare to those of the sympathetic nervous system?
The sympathetic nervous system readies the body for brief vigorous action and the HPA axis prepares the body for prolonged coping with a persistent stressor
How does McEwens definition of stress differ from Selyes
Selyes definition applied equally to favorable or unfavorable events
which cells of the immune system secrete antibodies?
B cells only
Why do nearly all infections produce similar symptoms such as fever sleepiness and loss of energy?
The immune system sends propagandist to the brain where they stimulate the hypothalamus to produce these effects
What are the effects of stress on the immune system?
Brief stress activates the immune system, but prolonged stress weakens it
Prolonged stress is known to damage which area of the brain?
The hippocampus
Which of these increases’ resilience?
Social support
What evidence led lashley to draw his conclusions of equipotentiality and mass action?
Impairment of learning depended on the amount of cortical damage rather than the location
What assumptions did lashley make that later, researchers rejected?
Any convenient example of learning will reveal the mechanisms that apply to all learning
Why did Thompson conclude that eyeblink conditioning depends on the lateral interpositus nucleus instead of the red nucleus?
Inactivating the red nucleus suppressed responses but did not prevent learning
What was the original concept of consolidation?
The time necessary to synthesize proteins
Emotional arousal facilitates consolidation by what means?
Increased release of norepinephrine epinephrine and cortisol
How does the cortex store a working memory?
Occasional bursts of gamma oscillations
Which of the following would probably prevent most cases of Korsakoff’s syndrome?
Require all alcoholic beverages to be fortified with vitamins
Currently what seems the most promising explanation for infant amnesia?
More new hippocampal neurons in infants than in older individuals
What is anterograde amnesia?
Inability to form new memories
What was the status of working memory in patient HM?
His working memory seemed normal unless he was distracted
which of the following was most severely impaired in patient HM?
Episodic memory
Why is it unsurprising that HM had intact procedural memory?
Procedural memory depends on the striatum not the hippocampus
What type of memory do the radial maze and Morris water maze test?
Spatial memory
Evidence that rats imagine the future came from recordings from what type of cell?
Place cells
Why are certain cells in the entorhinal cortex called grid cells?
They respond to locations distributed in a hexagonal grid
The striatum is primarily responsible for what type of learning?
Gradually learning habits
Someone with semantic dementia has lost which of the following?
Factual knowledge
What is true about a Hebbian synapse?
It strengthens if its activity is associated with an action potential in the postsynaptic cell
Cells that fire together wire together, but only if which of the following?
Cells are close together
Why is Aplysia an appealing animal for psychological learning?
Relatively few neurons and they are the same from one individual to another
What is meant by the cooperativity of LTP?
LTP is greater if two inputs are active together
What excites NMDA receptors?
The transmitter glutamate but only if the membrane is depolarized
During the formation of LTP which ions enter at the NMDA receptors?
Calcium and sodium
What does CaMKII do?
It releases a protein that alters the expression of several genes
Of the following which correlates most strongly with intelligence?
The surface area or the cerebral cortex
In which ways are mens and womens brains most similar?
Total number of neurons
What happens to the heritability of intelligence as people grow older?
it increases
The heritability of intelligence appears to be the lowest under which of these conditions?
An impoverished environment
When researchers selectively bred guppies for large brains which of these occurred?
Guppies decreased their reproduction
Which of these enabled humans to evolve a larger brain?
Learning to cook
In humans what happens to visual information from the left visual field?
It reaches the right half of each retina which sends messages to the right hemisphere
At the human optic chiasm which axons cross to the opposite hemisphere?
Those from the nasal half of each retina
