Physiological Psychology/psychopharmacology

Question 1

Memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease has most consistently been linked to which of the following neurotransmitters?

a. epinephrine
b. norepinephrine
c. serotonin
d. acetylcholine

Answer 1

d. Acetylcholine has been implicated in memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Specifically, degeneration of cholinergic neurons in the entorhinal cortex (which communicates directly with the hippocampus) has been linked to this disorder.

Question 2

Hydrocephalus involves which of the following brain structures?

a. cerebellum
b. brain stem
c. substantia nigra
d. cerebral ventricles

Answer 2

d. Hydrocephalus (“water head”) is caused by a build-up of cerebrospinal fluid in the cerebral ventricles

Question 3

The all-or-none principle applies to which of the following?

a. neurotransmitter re-uptake
b. action potential
c. neurogenesis
d. synaptogenesis

Answer 3

b. The all-or-none principle states that the magnitude of an action potential is independent of the intensity of the stimulation that produced it.

Question 4

Which of the following is most likely to be useful for treating Obsessive-compulsive disorder?

a. a drug that blocks the reuptake of serotonin
b. a drug that increases cholinergic activity
c. a drug that blocks the release of GABA
d. a drug that increases the availability of cortisol

Answer 4

a. The SSRI’s, which block the reuptake of serotonin at nerve synapses have been found useful for alleviating the symptoms of OCD

Question 5

The creation of new neurons is referred to as neurogenesis and, in the human brain, has been observed in the _____________ and _________________.

Answer 5

hippocampus; caudate nucleus

Question 6

An electrical impulse that travels quickly through the cell

Answer 6

action potential

Question 7

Chemical substances that transmit signals from one neuron to another.

Answer 7

Neurotransmitters

Question 8

This neurotransmitter is found throughout the peripheral and central nervous systems and causes muscles to contract. Also involved in the REM sleep, the regulation of the sleep-wake cycle, and learning and memory.

Answer 8

Acetylcholine (ACh)

Question 9

Which neurotransmitter is believed to underlie the memory deficits associated with Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 9

Acetylcholine (more specifically, degeneration of cholinergic cells in the entorhinal cortex and other areas that communicate directly with the hippocampus)

Question 10

Which neurotransmitters are involved in a number of funcitons including personality, mood, memory, and sleep?

Answer 10

Catecholamines (dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine)

Question 11

Dopamine is involved in the regulation of movement and has been linked to several disorders with prominent motor symptoms including ________________ and _________________.

Answer 11

Tourette’s disorder; Parkinson’s disease

Question 12

______________ plays an important role in mood, attention, dreaming, learning, and certain autonomic fuunctions. With regard to mood, the ____________________ hypothesis predicts that some forms of depression are due to lowerr-than-normal levels of this neurotransmitter.

Answer 12

Norepinephrine; catecholamine

Question 13

____________________ usually exerts an inhibitory effect and has been implicated in mood, hunger, temperature regulation, sexual activity, arousal, sleep, aggression, and migraine headache.

Answer 13

Serotonin

Question 14

Elevated levels of Serotonin contribute to _______________, Autistic Disorder, and _____________ related to Anorexia Nervosa, while low levels play a role in _____________, _____________, suicide, Bulimia nervosa, PTSD, and __________.

Answer 14

Schizophrenia, food restriction; aggression, depression, OCD.

Question 15

___________ is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and plays a role in eating, seizure, and anxiety disorders, motor control, vision, and sleep.

Answer 15

GABA Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid

Question 16

Evidence for the role of GABA in motor control is provided by studies showing that degeneration of cells that secrete GABA in the _________________ contributes to the motor symptoms of ______________________.

Answer 16

basal ganglia; Huntington’s disease

Question 17

_______________ acts as an excitatory neurotransmitter in many areas of the brain. It plays a role in learning and memory and, more specifically, in long-term potentiation.

Answer 17

Glutamate

Question 18

Excessive ___________ receptor activity (aka excitoxicity) can lead to seizures and may contribute to stroke-related brain damage, Huntington’s diseas, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Answer 18

glutamate

Question 19

_________________ are inhibitory neuromodulators that lower the sensitivity of postsynaptic neurons to neurotransmitters. They have analgesic properties and may be responsible for the pain relief produced by acupuncture.

Answer 19

Endorphins

Question 20

The _____________ have been implicated in certain pleasurable experiences (the runner’s high), emotions, memory and learning, and sexual behavior.

Answer 20

Endorphins

Question 21

________________ is caused by an obstruction of the flow of cerebrospinal fluid that leads to build up of fluid and enlargement of the ventricles.

Answer 21

Hydrocephalus

Question 22

The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. The _______________ branch is associated with arousal and expenditure of energy. The _________________ branch is involved in the conservation of energy and is active during digestion and periods of rest and relaxation.

Answer 22

sympathetic; parasympathetic

Question 23

Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide information on the ___________ of the brain, while ________, SPECT, and fMRI provide information on the brain’s ____________ activities.

Answer 23

structure; PET; functional

Question 24

Damage to the cerebellum can produce _________, a condition involving slurred speech, severe tremors, and a loss of balance.

Answer 24

ataxia

Question 25

Damage to the _________________ disrupts the sleep-wake cycle and can produce a permanent coma-like state of sleep.

Answer 25

reticular formation

Question 26

The ______________ consists of three forebrain structures - the caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus, and the substantia nigra. It is involved in planning, organizing, and coordinating voluntary movement and regulating the amplitude and direction of motor actions. They also play a role in sensorimotor learning and in stereotyped, species-specific motoric expressions of emotional states.

Answer 26

Basal ganglia

Question 27

This syndrome is based on a study that found that bilateral lesions in the amygdala and temporal lobes of primates substantially reduce fear and aggression, increase docility and compulsive oral exploratory behaviors, alter dietary habits, and produce hypersexuality and psychic blindness (an inability to recognize the significance or meaning of events or objects).

Answer 27

Kluver-Bucy syndrome

Question 28

For most sensory and motor functions, the cortex exhibits ________________________, which means that the left hemisphere controls the functions of the right side of the body and vice versa. One exception to this general rule is _____________. In addition, visual information from each eye goes to both sides of the brain, with information from the _________ visual field of each eye going to the left hemisphere and information from the ________ visual field of each eye going to the right hemisphere.

Answer 28

contralateral representation; olfaction; right; left

Question 29

This is characterized by difficulties in producing spoken and written language

Answer 29

Broca’s (expressive) aphasia

Question 30

Occurs from damage to the parietal lobe and is the inability to perform skilled motor movements in the absence off impaired motor functioning.

Answer 30

Apraxia

Question 31

Inability to recognize familiar objects by touch due to damage to the parietal lobe

Answer 31

tactile agnosia

Question 32

Failure too recognize parts of one’s own body due to damage in the parietal lobe.

Answer 32

asomatognosia

Question 33

The inability to recognize one’s own neurological symptoms or other disorder caused by damage to the parietal lobe.

Answer 33

anosognosia

Question 34

Lesions in the right parietal lobe can cause ______________________ (loss of knowledge about or interest in the left side of the body); while lesions in the left parietal lobe can produce _______________ (inability to carry out a sequence of actions), ________________ (inability to carry out a simple action in response to a command), or ___________, which involves a combination of finger agnosia, right-left confusion, agraphia, and acalculia.

Answer 34

contralateral neglect; ideational apraxia; ideomotor apraxia; Gerstmann’s syndromee

Question 35

Lesions in this part of the temporal lobe produce ____________________, which is characterized by severe deficits in language comprehension and abnormalities in language production.

Answer 35

Wernicke’s area; Wernick’s (receptive) aphasia

Question 36

An inability to recognize familiar faces

Answer 36

Prosopagnosia

Question 37

_________________ occurs when a person is unable to perceive objects despite intact visual acuity, while ________________ occurs when a person is unable to recognize an object that he/she is focusing on as the result of impaired memory or inability to access relevant semantic knowledge.

Answer 37

Apperceptive visual agnosia; associative visual agnosia

Question 38

The inherited form of color blindness is usually caused by a gene on the ____ chromosome, which means that _________ are more prone to color blindness than are _________. For a female to be color blind, she must inherit the trait from ____________, while a male is vulnerable when his __________ is either color blind or carries the color-blind trait.

Answer 38

X; males; females

Question 39

According to this theory, the nervous system can process only a limited amount of sensory information at any one time.

Answer 39

Gate-control theory

Question 40

This is a rare condition in which the stimulation of one sensory modality triggers a sensation in another sensory modality. For example, a person might hear a color or taste a shape.

Answer 40

Synesthesia

Question 41

According to __________, the more intense the stimulus, the greater the increase in stimulus intensity required for the increase to produce a just noticeable difference. It predicts, for instance, that, if one gram must be added to ten grams for an increase in weight to be detected, then ten grams would have to be added to 100 grams for an increase to be perceived.

Answer 41

Weber’s law

Question 42

____________ states that physical stimulus changes are logarithmically related to their psychological sensations. In other words, a person’s experience of stimulus intensity increases arithmetically as the stimulus intensity increases geometrically.

Answer 42

Fechner’s law

Question 43

_____________ works well for extreme stimulus intensities and makes it possible to predict, for instance, that doubling the intensity of a light less than doubles the sensation of the light’s brightness, while doubling the intensity of an electric shock more than doubles the physical sensation.

Answer 43

Stevens’s Power Law

Question 44

Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are connected by the arcuate fasciculus, and damage to this structure can produce ________________, which does not significantly affect language comprehension but does result in anomia, paraphasia, and impaired repetition.

Answer 44

conduction aphasia

Question 45

________________ aphasia is caused by lesions that isolate Broca’s area and/or Wernick’s area from other regions of the brain, while ___________ aphasia is caused by widespread brain injury involving Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas as well as other areas in the left frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes.

Answer 45

Transcortical; global

Question 46

This theory of emotion stresses the importance of peripheral factors and proposes that emotions represent perceptions of bodily reactions to sensory stimuli. In other words, “you are afraid because your knees are shaking and your heart is pounding.”

Answer 46

James-Lange Theory

Question 47

This theory of emotion places greater emphasis on the brain mechanisms that mediate emotion. It proposes that emotional and bodily reactions to stimuli occur simultaneously as a result of thalamic stimulation of the cortex and the peripheral nervous system.

Answer 47

Cannon-Bard Theory

Question 48

This theory of emotion describes subjective emotional experience as the consequence of a combination of physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation of that arousal and the environmental context in which it occurs.

Answer 48

Schachter and Singer’s two-factor theory

Question 49

This theory of emotion proposes that emotions are universal but that there are differences in how emotion-arousing events are interpreted or appraised.

Answer 49

Lazarus’s cognitive appraisal theory

Question 50

The research has confirmed that the human brain is _____________________, which means that there are sex-related differences in its physical appearance.

Answer 50

sexually dimorphic