Final Flashcards
What is the onset age of Schizophrenia?
20s to 29
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a disabling disorder characterized by perceptual, emotional, and intellectual deficits, loss of contact with reality, and inability to function in life.
A psychosis
What are the acute symptoms of Schizophrenia?
Acute symptoms develop suddenly and are typically more responsive to treatment.
What are chronic symptoms of schizophrenia?
Symptoms that develop gradually and persist for a long time with poor prognosis are called chronic
What are brain deficits associated with schizophrenia?
OFTEN PRESENT AT BIRTH
- ) Hypofrontality - less gray matter under activation of the frontal lobes might explain the dopamine deficiency because it has less myelination
- ) Most patients have enlarged ventricles
What is the glutamate hypothesis for schizophrenia?
The glutamate theory states that schizophrenia is due to a dopamine imbalance meaning reduced glutamate activity.
NMDA receptors block the glutamate neurotransmitters and reduces dopamine
What are the effects of antipsychotics?
Blocks dopamine receptors in post synaptic receptors
tardive dyskinesia - tremors and involuntary movements caused by blocking of dopamine receptors in the basal ganglia.
What are characteristics of depression?
person often feels sad to the point of hopelessness for weeks at a time, loses the ability to enjoy life, relationships, and sex, and experiences loss of energy and appetite, slowness of thought, and sleep disturbance.
What is the difference between unipolar and bipolar depression?
Unipolar - alternates with normal emotional states.
Bipolar - the individual alternates between periods of depression and mania.
What are characteristics of bipolar disorder?
Also called manic depressive illness - periods of depression that alternate with excessive, expansive moods (or mania)
What is mania?
excess energy: decreased need to sleep, increased sexual drive, and abuse of drugs are common.
What is the monoamine hypothesis for depression?
depression involves reduced activity at norepinephrine and serotonin synapses.
Increase activity of NE and 5HT at synapse
What are brain deficits in anxiety disorder patients? Two neurotransmitters and 3 brain areas
BENZODIAZEPINE RECEPTORS
involve deficits in GABA and serotonin
Brain areas involved in anxiety include areas of the limbic system:
amygdala - negative emotions
locus coeruleus - drugs help reduce the anxiety produced by this area
parahippocampal gyrus - may explain the learning and memory deficits
What is intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to reason, to understand, and to profit from experience.
What did the Lumper intelligence theorists believe in? Maybe take out but Splitter instead
Lumpers claim that intelligence is overall intelligence for all abilities, which is usually called the general factor, or simply g.
What are 3 capabilities related to intelligence?
linguistic - temporal/frontal lobe
logical-mathematical
spatial.
Declarative Memory
Known as facts and information which can be stated or described.
Located in the hippocampus and nearby cortical regions that communicate with it
Nondeclarative memory
Shown by performance rather than conscious recollection
What happens if someone damages their hippocampus?
May disrupt declarative and relational memories but no affect on Nondeclarative
Learning and Memory deficits occur for new things like retrograde or anterograde amnesia
What are characteristics of Korsakoff’s syndrome?
A memory disorder, related to a thiamine deficiency, that is generally associated with chronic alcoholism. Often accompanied with confabulation ( to fill in a memory gap with a falsification) and anterograde/retrograde amnesia
What is anterograde amnesia?
Difficulty forming new memories for learning and memory and damage in the hippocampus
What can patient H.M. do because of Nondeclarative memory?
He can do the mirror drawing task, the tower of Hinoi, tasks requiring Nondeclarative memory
A patient who, because of damage to medial temporal lobe structures, was unable to encode new declarative memories
What happens for the consolidation of memories?
Consolidation is the process in which the brain forms a more or less permanent physical representation of a memory (info in short term memory is transferred to long term)
What area of the brain is associated with the Nondeclarative learning type of skill learning?
The basal ganglia
What area of the brain is associated with the Nondeclarative learning type of priming?
Left frontal cortex or the bilateral occipitotemporal cortex
What area of the brain is associated with the Nondeclarative learning type of associative learning (classical / operant conditioning)?
The cerebellum
What plays a significant role in nondeclarative memory?
The amygdala has a significant role in nondeclarative emotional learning.
The amygdala even strengthens declarative memories about non-emotional events, apparently by increasing activity in the hippocampus.
What function does working memory serve? In the prefrontal area
Working memory provides a temporary “register” for information while it is being used. It also holds information retrieved from long-term memory while it is integrated with other information for use in problem solving and decision making.
What is long term potentiation (LTP)?
Long-term potentiation (LTP) is an increase in synaptic strength and effectiveness following repeated high-frequency stimulation.
“Cells that fire together wire together.”
What is the LTP?
If the presynaptic is active and then the postsynaptic receptors activate strengthening the connection
Where are the mathematical abilities located in the brain?
Logic - left inferior frontal lobe
Estimation - the intraparietal sulci in both parietal lobes
What are the characteristics of autism?
Autism is a disorder that typically includes compulsive, ritualistic behavior, impaired sociability, and mental retardation.
What characterizes an autistic savant? 80% have intellectual disability or mental retardation. Overall function is below normal but one or more remarkable skills
Socially isolated but a savant is a person with exceptional intellectual skills, beyond the level of “ordinary” genius, like Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein.
This lead to the idea of multiple intelligences, for the genius in one area and their mental retardation in others.
What is the hormone that autistic children usually have lower levels of making them aloof?
Oxytocin has been referred to as the “sociability molecule” because it affects social behavior and bonding in lower animals. A neuropeptide and hormone made in the body.
What are the genes associated with schizophrenia?
Neurotransmitter activity
Neuroreceptor sensitivity
Neuroreceptor development
What are 4 (traits) genes play a role with schizophrenia?
- ) neurotransmitter activity
- ) neuroreceptor sensitivity
- ) neuroreceptor development
- ) neural migration
What are IQ scores positively correlated with?
Nerve conduction velocity
What do Splitter intelligence theorists believe?
Each of the several abilities are separate and independent from one another
Who has the highest brain to body ratio?
The Human
What is the Rouge test?
A child with a developed sense of self when seeing themselves in a mirror will touch themselves if told their is a spot on them instead of the mirror of their reflection
What is the water maze experiment?
The Morris water maze is widely used to study spatial memory and learning by blocking glutamate receptors interferes with memory.
Animals are placed in a pool of water where they must swim to a hidden escape platform. Because they are in opaque water, the animals cannot see the platform, and cannot rely on scent to find the escape route. Instead, they must rely on external/extra-maze cues.
What are characteristics of autism?
Autism is a disorder that typically includes compulsive, ritualistic behavior, impaired sociability, and mental retardation.
What are the characteristics of ADHD?
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) develops during childhood and is characterized by impulsiveness, inability to sustain attention, learning difficulty, and hyperactivity.
What is the leading cause of mental retardation?
Maternal prenatal alcohol exposure
Mirror neuron activity may be reduced in what partof the brain of autistic people due to what?
Mirror neurons may be deficient due to reduced activity in the dorsal stream visual inputs to frontal lobe area
Why are psychologists interested in split brain patients?
To find the sense of self but they had not discovered it or why
What is most detrimental to a self of sense?
Loss of long term memory
