Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is a stimulus?
A detectable change in the internal or external environment; conscious and/or pathological; addition or removal.
What are exteroceptive stimuli?
Shared with the people around us (e.g. temperature of room)
What are interoceptive stimuli?
Only felt by the individual (e.g. hunger); state of body/space
What are the different types of stimuli?
Appetitive, neutral and aversive. The distinction depends on the situation.
What is a response?
Quantifiable reaction to a stimulus
What is homeostasis and what is it related to in learning?
The tendency for an organism to maintain an internal equilibrium; a physiological response to the environment; fluctuation around a stable set point maintained by negative feedback.
What do anterior hypothalamus lesions in rats demonstrate?
They are unable to maintain homeostasis; in 5C chamber, baseline body temp reduced by 2C
How do rats in cold environment with anterior hypothalamus lesions vs those who do not have lesions react with lever/heat lamp?
Lesioned rats hold the lever, controlled don’t need to bc their bodies adjust to the temperature
What are some reflexive/homeostatic/autonomic behaviours?
Shivering to warm up, sweating to cool down
What is behaviour?
Generally a set of responses of an organism, usually in reaction to stimuli (predominantly somatic)
What are learned behaviours?
- Adapted to environment
- Flexible and open to modification
- Ex. jacket on when cold, scarf off when warm, fatty foods
What are instinctual behaviours?
Genetically programmed behaviours that occur under appropriate circumstances; no learning (ex. breastcrawl)
What do learned stimuli require?
Experience to become conditioned/learned (ex. Haggis)
Why are animal models useful?
Provide info about origins/mechanisms of human behaviour; NOT replicas (e.g. drug addiction)
- Every experience influences learning, and human’s learning history cannot be controlled
How is learning exemplified?
Change in behaviour
What is behaviourism?
Science that emphasizes analysis of behaviour based on antecedent (previously existing) stimuli and consequences.
- Consciousness/thought are irrelevant
- Built on observations of automaticity of behaviour
- Stimuli trigger response/behaviour
What is radical behaviourism?
Ignores everything not observable
What does ‘anthropomorphize’ mean?
Give human attributes to animals being tested
What was behaviour thought to be based on before the 1600s?
Volition/free will. We determine and guide our own fate. Emerges from conscious volition.
What did René Descartes find?
People do some things automatically (but still hung on to notion of free will)
What is Cartesian Dualism in general terms?
Combination of involuntary and voluntary behaviour.
Involuntary - automatic reactions to external stimuli (reflex)
Voluntary - conscious intent to act (capacity for thought only capable by humans)
What are the reasonable aspects of Cartesian Dualism?
1 - stimuli are perceived by sense organs
2 - Nerves relay info to brain
3 - Brain responds using nerve signals to initiate involuntary response (reflex)
What are the less reasonable aspects of Cartesian Dualism?
1 - Mind observes body through pineal gland
2 - Mind can signal body to perform voluntary actions (consciousness/mentalism)
- Sensory inputs and motor outputs used same nerves
- Nerves were hollow to allow movement of gasses (animal spirits) released by pineal gland
- Gasses caused muscles to swell and create movement
What is the pineal gland?
Endocrine gland that secretes melatonin, regulating circadian rhythms
What is Nativism?
- Mind-based theory
- Descartes believed mind connected to body through pineal gland
- Mind contains innate ideas (ex. God, self, basic geometric axioms like shortest distance)
What is Empiricism?
- John Locke
- All ideas are acquired directly/indirectly after birth
- Tabula rasa (blank slate)
- Simple sensations combined into more complex ideas by associations (ex. smell/touch of mother, words to pictures)
What is contiguity?
If 2 events repeatedly occur close together in space and time, they’ll become associated.
What did Descartes suggest about ‘free will’?
- Some human behaviour is involuntary
- Voluntary behaviour is initiated by the mind
- Mind operated w/out rules/order (how much free will do we have?)
What did Thomas Hobbes say about ‘free will’?
- Agreed w/ distinction b/n human voluntary/involuntary behaviour
- mind operates ‘lawfully’/predictably
- Hedonism - people do things to pursue pleasure/avoid pain
What is Hedonism?
People pursue pleasure and avoid pain (Thomas Hobbes)
How did Charles Darwin contribute to comparative cognition?
- Created continuity b/n human and non-human animals
- Mind is a product of evolution
- Suggested non-human animals have mental capacities (e.g. attention, memory, reasoning, imitation, curiosity)
How did George Romanes contribute to comparative cognition?
- Operational definition (how to measure) of intelligence
- Ability to learn to make new adjustments/modify old ones in accordance w/ result of its own experience
- Don’t try same way if it didn’t work
What is the Law of Effect and who came up with it?
- Edward Thorndike
- Learning happens by trial and error
- Behaviours leading to desirable outcomes are repeated
- Behaviours leading to undesirable outcomes are not repeated
- Hobbes’ notion of hedonism is extended
- foundations of operant conditioning
Who discovered that sensory inputs and motor outputs did not use the same nerves?
Charles Bell and Francois Magendie
- separate nerves
- Cut sensory input, motor output remains and vice-versa
Who discovered that animal spirits are not released by the pineal gland?
John Swammerdam
- Nerves can function independently from brain input
- Irritating a nerve can produce muscle contraction
Who discovered that animal spirits do not enlarge muscles for contraction?
Francis Glisson
- Gasses do not expand muscle size
- a contracted muscle has same volume as relaxed muscle
What did Ivan Sechenov discover about reflexes?
- Stimuli do not always elicit reflexes
- Sometimes a stimulus releases inhibition of response (vigour of a measured response will not reflect intensity of releasing stimulus)
What did Ivan Pavlov discover about reflexes?
- Not all reflexes are innate (new reflexes to stimuli can be learned through associations)
- Responses to stimuli can change as a result of experience (ex. dogs salivate when seeing lab assistant)
What is nervism?
All key physiological functions are governed by nervous system - the discovery of hormones damaged this theory a bit (as well as tripartite synapse)
What is the main concept of behavioural neuroscience?
The study of learning operates most thoroughly when conducted in conjunction with study of the nervous system
Does learning equal performance? Why/why not?
- No
- Performance is determined by factors in addition to learning (e.g. motivational state - salt when salt-deprived)
- Learning can happen without evidence of performance
Does learning equal maturation? Why/why not?
- No
- Behavioural patterns can shift with physical growth of body/nervous system (ex. not enough myelin)
What is the presumption of causality?
- Assume that manipulation causes the change
- Is change of behaviour due to learning rather than changes in motivation/sensory development/hormone fluctuation/fatigue/etc?
- Requires systematic manipulation to confirm
What is the General-Process Theory?
- Extrapolating the shared processes of learning across species and situations because they DO generalize
- Universal laws of associations that are investigated according to particular ethological needs of species (e.g. visual acuity, key peck/lever press)
- Salience of reinforcement does impact degree of response
What are psychological instincts?
- William James
- Psychology is a system of instincts
- Instincts can be overridden by experience and by each other (many are in conflict)
- Instincts = motivators of behaviour
- Behave in ways that promote survival
- Instincts = impulses from within organism that lead to behaviour
What are biological instincts?
- Kondrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen
- Instincts are behaviours
- they exist bc they have/had survival value
- ## Controlled by genes (not learned)
What is ethology?
Fixed/modal action pattern that occurs in response to certain stimuli
- stereotypical behaviours
- complex
- inborn
- exhibited by most members of a species
- basic unit of behaviour
What are appetitive instincts?
- Biological
- Searching behaviours
- Flexible, adapted to environment, subject to modification (learning)
- early components of behaviour sequence
- ex. pressing lever to get mate
What are consummatory instincts?
- Fixed patterns of responding to specific stimuli
- Rigid, insensitive to environment, stereotyped and independent from learning
- Fixed/modal action patterns
- End components of behaviour sequence
- ex. copulation of rats
How are biological instincts affected with a lesioned hypothalamus?
Consummatory instincts are affected (e.g. rats cannot copulate)
How are biological instincts affected with a lesioned basolateral amygdala?
Appetitive instincts are affected (e.g. rats cannot press lever to get mate)
What’s an example of a reflex (stimulus-response)?
Knee-jerk
- Stretch tendon/sensory receptors
- Excites motor neuron and interneuron in spinal cord
- Interneuron inhibits motor neuron to flexor muscles
- Contraction of extensor muscle, relaxation of flexor muscle
What are modal/fixed action patterns?
- Response sequences typical of a particular species
- i.e. rooting/sucking, net building, territory defence, imprinting
What are stimulus-evoked instincts and what is an example?
Newborn birds memorize shapes/calls of parents, but can show same behaviour with non-parental object (i.e. imprinting).
- Man allowed birds to imprint on him.
- Chicks imprint with computer-generated shapes (avoid different colours)
Why does imprinting happen in chicks?
They have 2 distinct visual pathways:
- Tectofugal (recognition of colours, shapes and motion of objects)
- Thalamofucal (visual learning)
These pathways work together for imprinting.
Why do babies elicit a longing to ‘cuddle’?
- Surge of activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to infant faces (not adult)
- Directly related to saliency of structural features of infant face
What can repeated stimulation trigger?
- Decrease in behaviour through habituation
- Increase in behaviour through sensitization
- Simplest forms of learning
What is habituation?
- Behaviour varies across repetitions
- Stimulus specific (same stimulus)
- Food-evoked responding (salivation decreases after a while)
How did the lemon/lime taste study exhibit habituation/dishabituation?
- Given lemon or lime which elicit salivation (habituation) (10 times)
- Dishabituating stimulus was opposite (1)
- Responses to habituating stimulus after dishabituation are restored to normal levels (didn’t last)
- With chocolate dishabituator (no salivation), still dishabituation
- Dishabituation does NOT require response elicitation itself
- Dishabituation also occurs with distraction
Does dishabituation need to elicit response itself?
No (ex. chocolate during lemon trials)
Does dishabituation occur as a result of distraction?
Yes (ex. video games)
Is distraction sufficient to prevent habituation?
Yes (ex. video games)
What’s an example of stimulus specificity in habituation?
Eat more turkey dinner bc same stimulus isn’t repeated like in pasta
What’s an example of stimulus attention in habituation?
When watching TV while eating, we eat more because we are distracted
How does complexity affect habituation?
More complex stimuli elicit an initial increase in attention and slower habituation
- Response to novelty is greater (more dishabitutation) when stimulus is complex
- Dishabituation obtained when original pattern is retested after complex, not simple, patterns
How is the acoustic startle response affected by habituation (novelty)?
- Rat jumps less with habituation
- New noise, dishabituation
How does delay affect habituation/dishabituation?
Startle response returns after 3 days without stimulus (i.e. dishabituation occurs)
How does frequency affect habituation/dishabituation?
The larger the interstimulus interval, less habituation (i.e. more startle response)
When is sensitization likely to occur?
Fear-potentiated startle
- Ex. those who think they are going to get a shock show activity in sympathetic NS, but less when there is no threat
- Ex. rat has greater fear when light is paired with shock
Drug-evoked locomotor sensitization
- locomotor activity increases with each cocaine injection
What is the Dual-Process Theory?
One underlying neural process produces decreases in responsiveness, and a second underlying neural process produces increases in responsiveness
In what system is habituation assumed to occur?
- Stimulus-response system
- shortest neural path
- each presentation activates S-R system and causes buildup of habituation (ex. knee-jerk)
In what system is sensitization assumed to occur?
- State system (state of organism/circuit)
- Parts of NS determining general level of arousal
- Ex. caffeine
When are the S-R system and the state system activated?
S-R System - every eliciting stimulus State System - only arousing events - Ex. quieter background noise = habituation, louder noise = sensitization
What produces the sensitization/habituation effects?
Net effect of combining sensitization/habituation processes is what produces observed effects
- Effects =/= Processes
How does the sea slug exhibit sensitization/habituation?
- Repeatedly applying touch to mantle/siphon results in habituation of gill withdrawal reflex
- Stimulus specific - i.e. mantle has no effect on siphon pathway
- Tail shock enhances gill withdrawal through sensitization
- Activation of state system
- Sensitization involves facilitatory interneurons releasing serotonin to prolong AP (inactivation of K+ channels)
How is habituation related to neurotransmitters?
- Habituation is caused by decrease in neurotransmitters from sensory neuron
- Reduction of vesicle pool
- Inactivation of calcium channels (by calcium itself)
How does sensitization relate to neurotransmitters?
- More Ca2+
- More vesicles in sensory neuron
- 5 shocks = growth of new synapses in sensory neuron
What is classical/pavlovian/associative conditioning based on?
Learning the orderly sequence of events in the world and acting in anticipation of that knowledge
What did Aristotle contribute to associations?
3 Principles for establishing associations
- Contiguity (proven)
- Similarity (true to some extent)
- Contrast (no evidence)
What is contiguity?
If 2 events repeatedly occur together in space/time, they will become linked/associated