Lecture 4a Flashcards
What are the main categories of research methods to study the brian?
Examine effects of brain damage
Examine effects of stimulating brain area
Record brain activity during behavior
Correlate brain anatomy with behavior
Brain damage can produce what?
Inability to recognize faces
Inability to perceive motion
Changes in emotional responses
What is an ablation?
Removal of brain area
What is a lesion?
Damage to brain area
What is a stereotaxic instrument?
Used to damage structures in interior of brain
What is an application of intense magnetic field to a portion of scalp to temporarily deactivate neurons below magnet?
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
TMS allows researchers to do what?
Study behavior with brain area active and then inactive and then active again.
What is the effect of brain stimulation?
Increase behavior
What is a technique that allows researchers to turn on activity in targeted neurons by a device that shines a laser with the brain
Optogenetics
What is a limitation to optogenetics?
Complex behaviors depend on temporal pattern of activity in many areas.
An eeg records what?
Electrical activity produced by various brain regions.
An MEG is similar to EEG but measures what?
Faint magnetic fields generated by brain activitity
What is a PET recording?
Emission of radioactivity from injected radioactive chemicals to produce high resolution image.
What is a fMRI?
Uses oxygen consumption in brain to provide moving picture
What is a CAT scan?
Uses x-rays at many angles
MRI uses what?
Magentic fields, radio waves and computer enhancement.
What interacts to shape human behaivor?
Genes
Environment
What is defined as a portion of a chromosome and is composed of DNA?
Gene
Genes come in pairs called what?
Alleles aligned along chromosomes
What type of gene shows a strong effect in either the homozygous or heterozygous condition?
Dominant
What type of gene shows it’s effect only in the homozygous condition?
Recessive
What type of gene occus in a phenotype where there is incomplete dominance in heterozygous condition?
Intermediate
How do genes change?
Mutation
Microduplication/Microdeletion
What is a heritable change in DNA?
Mutation
What is part of a chromosome that might appear once, twice or not at all?
Microduplication/Microdeletion
Some researchers believe that what might be a result of microduplications and microdeletions of brain relevant genes?
Schizophrenia
What is concerned with changes in gene expression without the modification of DNA sequence?
Epigenetics
What is the explanation for differences betwen monozygotic-identical twins/
Epigenetic differences
What refers to how much characteristics depend on genetic differences?
Heritability
Almost all behaviors have what?
Genetic and environmental component
Do genes directly produce behaviors?
No
Genes produce proteins that do what?
Increaase probability that behaivor will develop under certain circumstances
What refers to a change in frequency of various genes in a population over generations?
Evolution of behavior
What does evolution attempt to answer?
How did some species evolve?
How do species evolve?
Brain development depends on what
Maturation
Learning
We can refine the understanding of brain development by learning how what?
Neurons develop
Axons connect
Experience modifies development
The human CNS begins to form what?
Embryo is 2 weeks old
The CNS forms by what?
Dorsal surface thickening, forming a neural tube that surrounds fluid filled cavity.
The forward end of neural tube enlarges and differentiates into what?
Hindbrain
Midbrain
Forebrain
The rest of the neural tube becomes what?
Spinal Cord
What is the production of new cells/neurons in the brain primarily occuring early in life?
Proliferation
What is movement of the newly formed neurons and glia to their eventual locations?
Migration
What is the term for forming the axon and dendrites that givese neuron it’s distinctive shape?
Differentiation
What is the term for glia that produce the fatty sheath that covers the axons of some neurons?
Myelination
What is the formation of the synapses between neurons?
Synaptogenesis
Growing axons reach their target areas by following what?
Gradient of chemicals they are attracted or repelled by
When axons initally reach their targets they form what?
Synapses with several cells
What strengthens or eliminates connections with some cells?
Postsynaptic cells
The formation or elimination of connections depend on what?
Pattern of input from incoming axons
What is it when the most successful axon connections and combinations survive while others fail to sustain active synapses?
Neural Darwinsim
What are the chemicals that promote survival and activity of neurons?
Neurotrophins
Early stages of brain development are critical for what?
Normal development later in life
During early development the brain is highly vulnerable to what?
malnutrition
toxic chemicals
infections
The brain has some ability to do what?
Reorganize itself in response to experience
Axons and dendrites continue to modify their structure and connections when?
Throughout life
Dendrites continually grow what
New spines
Almost all survivors of brain damage show what?
Behavioral recovery to some degree
Some recovery after brain damage relies on what?
Growth of new branches of axons and dendrites
What is the most common type of stroke that results from a blood clot or obstruction of an artery?
Ischemia
What is a less frequent type of stroke resulting from a rupturned artery?
Hemorrhage
What is the immediate treatment for strokes?
Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA)
tPA does what?
Breaks up blood clots and can reduce the effects of ischemic strokes
What are the later mechanisms of recovery?
Increased brain stimulation Regrowth of axons Axon sprouting Denervation hypersensitivity Reorganized sensory representations and phantom limb Learned adjustments in behavior
