psych KA 1-50

Question 1

retinal disparity

Answer 1

due to having binocular cues, . Eyes are ~2.5 inches apart which allows humans to get slightly different views of objects of world around. Gives humans an idea on depth.

Question 2

convergence

Answer 2

Gives humans an idea of depth as well based on how much eyeballs are turned. Things far away – muscles of eyes relaxed. Things close to us – muscles of eyes contract.

Question 3

monocular cues

Answer 3

give humans a sense of form and motion of an object

ex: relative height, interposition (overlap) , relative height, shading and contour,

Question 4

motion parallax

Answer 4

type of monocular cue

“relative motion” Things farther away move slower, closer moves faster

Question 5

constancy

Answer 5

Constancy – Our perception of object doesn’t change even if the image cast on the retina is different. Different types of constancy include size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy.

Question 6

endolymph

Answer 6

allows us to detect what direction our head is moving in, and because we can detect how quickly the endolymph is moving we can determine the strength of rotation. •

Question 7

downregulation vs upregulation of eye sight

Answer 7

eye sight is also part of the adaptation

Down regulation: light adaptation. When it is bright out, pupils constrict (less light enters back of eye), and the desensitization of rods and cones become desensitized to light)

Up regulation: dark regulation. Pupils dilate-, rods and cones start synthesizing light sensitive molecules

Question 8

just noticeable difference

Answer 8

The threshold at which you’re able to notice a change in any sensation is the just noticeable difference (JND) • So now take 5 lb weight, in this case if you replace by 5.2 weight, might not be noticeable. But if you take a 5.5 lb it is noticeable.

Question 9

weber’s law

Answer 9

ΔI (JND)/I (initial intensity) = k (constant) o ex. 0.2/2 = 0.5/5 = 0.1, change must be 0.1 of initial intensity to be noticeable. If we take Weber’s Law and rearrange it, we can see that it predicts a linear relationship between incremental threshold and background intensity.

Question 10

subliminal stimuli

Answer 10

stimuli below the absolute threshold of sensation.

Question 11

types of adapting for encoding neurons

Answer 11

Timing: Neuron encodes 3 ways for timing: non adapting, fast adapting, or slow adapting

Non-adapting- neuron consistency fires at a constant rate
Slow-adapting - neuron fires in beginning of stimulus and calms down after a while

Fast-adapting - neuron fires as soon as stimulus start…then stops firing. Starts again when stim stops).

Question 12

otolithic organs

Answer 12

(utricle and saccule) help us to detect linear acceleration and head positioning. In these are CaCO3 (Calcium carbonate) crystals attached to hair cells in viscous gel. If we go from lying down to standing up, they move, and pull on hair cells, which triggers AP. These would not work very well w/o gravity!

Question 13

what is signal detection theory

Answer 13

Looks at how we make decision under conditions of uncertainty – discerning between important stimuli and unimportant “noise”

Question 14

options for signal detection theory

Answer 14

Hit= the subject responded affirmative when a signal was present, §

False alarm = the subject perceived a signal when there was none present;

Correct Rejection = correct negative answer for no signal

Miss = a negative response to a present signal

Question 15

conservative vs literal strategy

Answer 15

has to do with signal detection theory

Conservative strategy - always say no unless 100% sure signal is present. Bad thing is might get some misses. • Or liberal strategy- always say yes, even if get false alarms

Question 16

pragnanz

Answer 16

reality organized reduced to simplest form possible. Ex. Olympic rings, where the brain automatically organizes these into 5 circles, instead of more complex shapes.

Question 17

law of common fate

Answer 17

For example, if there are an array of dots and half the dots are moving upward while the other half are moving downward, we would perceive the upward moving dots and the downward moving dots as two distinct units.

Question 18

law of past experience

Answer 18

The law of past experience implies that under some circumstances visual stimuli are categorized according to past experience. If two objects tend to be observed within close proximity, or small temporal intervals, the objects are more likely to be perceived together. For example, the English language contains 26 letters that are grouped to form words using a set of rules. If an individual reads an English word they have never seen, they use the law of past experience to interpret the letters “L” and “I” as two letters beside each other, rather than using the law of closure to combine the letters and interpret the object as an uppercase U

Question 19

conjunctiva

Answer 19

thin layer of cells that lines the inside of your eyelids from the eye.

Question 20

anterior chamber

Answer 20

space filled with aqueous humour, which provides pressure to maintain shape of eyeball; allows nutrients and minerals to supply cells of cornea/iris.

Question 21

pupil

Answer 21

The pupil modulates the amount of light able to enter the eyeball.

Question 22

lens

Answer 22

bends the light so it goes to back of eyeball – focuses light specifically on the fovea of the retina. Adjust how much it bends the light by changing its shape, using the suspensory ligaments.

Question 23

name the 2 suspensory ligaments for the eye

Answer 23

attached to a ciliary muscle. These two things together form the ciliary body, what secrets the aqueous humor. •

Question 24

macula vs fovea

Answer 24

Macula: special part of retina rich in cones, but there are also rods.

• Fovea: special part of macula. Completely covered in cones, no rods. *Rest of the retina is covered in primarily rods.

Question 25

choriod

Answer 25

pigmented black in humans, is a network of blood vessels that helps nourish the retina. It black all light is absorbed. Some animals have a different colored choroid which gives them better night vision.

Question 26

phototransduction cascade

Answer 26

Light hits rods (which causes rod turns off) à bipolar cell (turns on)à retinal ganglion cell (turns on) à optic nerve à BRAIN.

Question 27

ganglion vs bipolar cells

Answer 27

As a part of the retina, bipolar cells exist between photoreceptors (rod cells and cone cells) and ganglion cells. They act, directly or indirectly, to transmit signals from the photoreceptors to the ganglion cells which then the ganglion will send signal to the optic nerve

Question 28

why is it called a blind spot?

Answer 28

this makes up the optic disk of the retina and There are no photoreceptors (i.e., rods or cones) in the optic disk, and, therefore, there is no image detection in this area.

Question 29

rhodopsin

Answer 29

(on a cone the same protein is called a photopsin), a multimeric protein with 7 discs, which contains a small molecule called retinal (11-cis retinal). When light hit, comes through pupil and hit the retinal, then it rods, some of the light hits rhodopsin (which contains the retina) and causes the retinal to change conformation from bent to straight conformation (11-trans retinal).

Question 30

tranducin

Answer 30

When the rhodopsin changes shape to go into a trans state, transducin breaks from rhodopsin, and alpha subunit binds to another disk protein called phosphodiesterase (PDE). § PDE takes cGMP and converts it to regular GMP. [So when light hits, lower concentration of cGMP and increases concentration of GMP]. §

Question 31

sodium (na+) role in the phototranduction cascade

Answer 31

with rids off, it turns the cascade on and sodium will bind to tranducin

cGMP bound to Na+ channel, keeps the channel open and hence “ON”, as cGMP concentration decreases (due to the PDE which converts it into GMP), Na+ channel closes and cell turns “OFF” • When Na+ channels become unbound of cGMP, less Na+ enters the cell, then cell hyperpolarization and turn “OFF”

Question 32

photopic vs mesotopic vs scotopic vision

Answer 32

Photopic vision occurs at levels of high light levels.
• Mesopic vision occurs at dawn or dusk and involves both rods and cones. • Scotopic vision occurs at levels of very low light.

Question 33

rods vs cones light effects and recov time

Answer 33

roda have slower recovery time than cones

At the fovea (dimple in retina) - there no axons in way of light so get higher resolution. At the periphery - light has to go through bundle of axons and some energy lost. So at fovea light hits cones directly. At the periphery, less light gets to the rods.

Question 34

optic chiasm

Answer 34

At the optic chiasm, the optic nerve fibers from the nasal halves of the retinas cross to the opposite sides, where they join the fibers from the opposite temporal retinas to form the optic tracts.

If the optic nerve is damaged, then that causes monocular blindness because no information from that eye is reaching the optic chiasm. If the optic tract is damaged, that causes a homonymous hemianopsia - an entire half of the visual field is missing from both eyes.

Question 35

trichromatic theory

Answer 35

RED (60%), GREEN (30%), BLUE (10%). • Remember, red objects reflect red, green objects reflect green, and blue objects reflect blue. § If object reflects red à red light hits red cone à fire axon potential à brain is like OH RED!!

Question 36

For us to hear sound we need two things (for audition to occur):

Answer 36

1. pressurized sound wave (a stimuli)

2. hair cell (a receptor, located in the cochlea)

Question 37

feature detection

Answer 37

When looking at an object, you need to break it down into its component features to make sense of what you are looking at.

There are 3 things to consider when looking at any object: color, form, and motion.

Question 38

how does air travel through ear

Answer 38

pinna (outer ear)
the auditory canal (also known as external auditory meatus).
3. Then from the auditory canal they hit the tympanic membrane aka eardrum
4. causing 3 bones to vibrate in this order: i. malleus (hammer) ii. incus (anvil) iii. stapes (stirrup) *[acronym: MIS] *Three smallest bones in the body. *These bones combined are also referred to as the ossicles.

5. Stapes is attached to oval window (aka elliptical window). The oval window then vibrates back and forth.
6. As it gets vibrated, it pushes fluid and causes it to go in/around cochlea (a round structure lined with hair cells).
7. At tip of cochlea (inner most part of circle), where can the fluid now go? It can only go back, but goes back to the round window (circular window) and pushes it out.
8. The reason doesn’t go back to oval window, is because in middle of cochlea is a membrane – the organ of Corti (includes the basilar membrane and the tectorial membrane).
9. As hair cells (cilia) move back and forth in the cochlea – electric impulse is transported by auditory nerve to the brain.

Question 39

place theory

Answer 39

theory of hearing which states that our perception of sound depends on where each component frequency produces vibrations along the basilar membrane. By this theory, the pitch of a musical tone is determined by the places where the membrane vibrates, based on frequencies corresponding to the tonotopic organization of the primary auditory neurons. Place theory posits that one is able to hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea’s basilar mem

Question 40

kinocilium

Answer 40

filament in the cochlea

Tip of each kinocilium is connected by a tip link which is attached to gate of K+ channel. When the tip links get pushed back and forth by endolymph movement, they stretch and allows K+ to flow inside the cell from the endolymph (which is K+ rich)

o Ca2+ cells get activated when K+ is inside, so Ca2+ also flows into the cell, and causes an AP, which then activates a spiral ganglion cell, which then activates the auditory nerve.

Question 41

basilar tuning aka tonotopical mapping

Answer 41

there are varying hair cells in cochlea and allows brain to distinguish between high and low frequency sounds. Hair cells at base (start of cochlea) of cochlea are activated by high frequency sounds, and those at apex (end of cochlea) by low frequency sounds. THNK: long wavelengths can travel farther.

Question 42

sensory adaptation vs amplification

Answer 42

former is down reg bc stimulus will be constant until u don’t recognize

latter is upregulation bc it can even start a cascade

Question 43

Somatosensory Homunculus

Answer 43

: A map of your body in your brain. Information all comes to the “sensory strip”.

Different	areas	of	the	body	have	signals	that	go	to	different	parts	on	this	strip.

Question 44

tryp 1 receptor

Answer 44

bc thermos and nocireception is slow to detect the stimuls, this receptor helps bc its sensitive to both

When cell is poked, thousands of cells are broken up, and releases different molecules that bind to TrypV1 receptor. Causes change in conformational change, which activates the cell and sends signal to brain. •

Question 45

3 type of nerve fibers

Answer 45

[Acronym: fast to slowest alphabetically AB, A-D, C]

o A-beta fibres - Fast ones are thick and covered in myelin (less resistance, high conductance)
o A-delta fibres -– smaller diameter, less myelin. o C fibres - small diameter, unmyelinated (lingering sense of pain).

Question 46

Gate control theory of olfaction is a theory of the processes of nociception

Answer 46

The gate control theory of pain asserts that non-painful input closes the “gates” to painful input, which prevents pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system.

Question 47

vomeronasal

Answer 47

In system of the olfactory , there are basal cells and apical cells. They have receptors at tips.

In humans have vomeronasal organ, but no accessory olfactory bulb. As a result, we rely very little on pheromones

Question 48

pheromone pathway (not in humans)

Answer 48

Molecule will come in and activate receptor on basal cell/apical cell in vomernasal. Basal cell sends axon through accessory olfactory bulb to glomerulus, then mitral or tufted cell which eventually goes to the amygdala (

Question 49

cribiform plate

Answer 49

bone with little holes that allow olfactory sensory to send projections to the brain

Question 50

olfactory bulb

Answer 50

a bundle of nerves that sends little projections through cribriform plate into the olfactory epithelium, which branch off.

Question 51

anosmia

Answer 51

without nose

Partial or complete inability of sensing odor.

Question 52

labeled line theory of olfaction

Answer 52

describes a scenario where each receptor would respond to specific stimuli and is directly linked to the brain.

Question 53

steric/ shape theory of olfaction

Answer 53

Steric theory of olfaction, or shape theory, asserts that odors fit into receptors similar to a lock-and-key.

Question 54

where are taste buds?

Answer 54

Taste buds can be fungiform (anterior), foliate (side), and circumvallate (back).

Question 55

filiform papillae

Answer 55

do not contain taste buds and exist all over the tongue. The center of the tongue contains only filiform papillae. This is why stimulation of the center of the tongue does not cause a taste sensation

Question 56

gustducin

Answer 56

a protein associated with the sensation of taste

Question 57

what type of taste receptors do the taste buds (total five) use?

Answer 57

Sweet, umami, and bitter cells rely on GPCR receptors. • Sour and salty rely on ion channels.

(Acronym: SOdium, which is an ion channel is SOur and salty, think salt.) They bind to receptor directly,
ex. NaCl binds to receptor and causes ion channel to open, and + ions outside flow in. Cell depolarizes and fires an AP. o

Question 58

sleep spindles vs k complex

Answer 58

found in N2 and REM sleep

Sleep spindles are a burst of rapid brain activity. Some researchers think that sleep spindles help inhibit certain perceptions so we maintain a tranquil state during sleep. Sleep spindles in some parts of brain associated with ability to sleep through loud noises.

§ K-complexes	-	supress	cortical	arousal	and	keep	you	asleep.	Also	help	sleep-based	memory	consolidation	(some	memories	are	transferred	to	long	term	memory	during	sleep,	particularly	declarative/explicit	memories).	Even	though	they	occur	naturally,	you	can	also	make	them	occur	by	gently	touching	someone	sleeping.	“that	touch	was	not	threatening,	stay	asleep	brain”	o

Question 59

tetris effect

Answer 59

if you play Tetris right before bed, you might see visual images of blocks during sleep. OR Ex. Been on a boat all day, you might still feel like you are on water even when on dry land

Question 60

type of sleep brain waves and frequency relationship

Answer 60

Beta (12-30Hz) – associated with awake/concentration. If you are alert for too long, beta levels get high and you experience increased stress, anxiety, restlessness- constant awakened alertness.

§ Alpha	(8-13	Hz)	–	in	daydreaming	state.	Lower	frequency	than	beta	waves.	Disappear	in	drowsiness	but	reappear	later	in	deep	sleep.		

§ Theta (4-7 Hz) – slower/lower frequency than alpha waves. Drowsiness/right after you fall asleep/when you are sleeping lightly.

§ Delta (0.5-3 Hz) – Slower/lower frequency than theta waves. Deep sleep or coma.

Question 61

narcolepsy

Answer 61

can’t help themselves from falling asleep. Various fits of sleepiness, going into REM sleep. Have fits (usually 5 minutes) that can occur any time. 1 in 2000.

Question 62

right anterior insula

Answer 62

– increased attention control (the goal of meditation).

Question 63

barbiturates vs benzopedines

Answer 63

both are depressants

Barbiturates – used to induce sleep or reduce anxiety (calm them down) Depress your CNS. Anesthesia or anticonvulsant (drugs that reduce seizures) § Not often prescribed due to negative side effects such as reduced memory, judgement and concentration, with alcohol can lead to death (most drugs w/ alcohol are bad) § -barbital

o Benzodiazepines are the most commonly prescribed suppressant as a tranquilizer. Subscribed for same things as barbiturates - sleep aids (to treat insomnia) which is for short term or anti-anxiety which is long term or seizures (anticonvulsant)

Question 64

hallucinogens aka

Answer 64

referred to as psychedelics):

Question 65

why are opiates not considered a depressant?

Answer 65

because they can produce an euphoria effect if taking out of proportion

Question 66

what type of psychoactive drug is nicotine

Answer 66

Nicotine is a CNS stimulant, which works as an acetylcholine receptor agonist.

Question 67

define Amphetamines and methamphetamines (meth)

Answer 67

also trigger release of dopamine, feeling of euphoria for up to 8 hours. Once effect wears off - experience irritability, insomnia, seizures, depression

Question 68

ventral tegmental area (VTA), in the midbrain.

Answer 68

part of reward pathway

VTA sends dopamine to the amygdala (controls emotions), nucleus accumbens (NAcc , controls motor functions), prefrontal cortex (focus attention and planning), and hippocampus (part of the temporal lobe, involved in memory formation)

Question 69

serotonin affect on dopamine

Answer 69

At same time dopamine goes up (increase sense of euphoria), serotonin goes down. o Serotonin - partially responsible for feelings of satiation. So if serotonin goes down, you are less likely to be satiated or content.

Question 70

acute withdrawal vs post acute withdrawal

Answer 70

former has more physical symptoms and is peak of 2 days and gets better at five days

latter will take about a 2 year recovery and may cause emotional issues so it has more emotional sympotms

Question 71

substance induced vs substance use disorder

Answer 71

latter disrupts daily activities like work and school

former plays a toll on mood disorder or emotions

Question 72

methadone

Answer 72

Methadone activates opiate receptors, but acts more slowly, so it dampens the high. Reduces cravings, eases withdrawal, and if heroine is taken the user can’t experience the high because receptors are already filled with longer-acting methadone