Psychobiology Flashcards
What is stress?
Can be a stimulus stressors are events that place strong demands on us stress can be a response
What are the 3 stages of General Adaption Syndrome?
1: Alarm reaction - shift to sympathetic dominance causes increased arousal 2: Resistance - endo system releases hormones to maintain increased arousal 3: Exhaustion - adrenals lose ability to function normally.
Define stress using primary and secondary appraisal (transactional definition of stress)
Combination of stimulus and responses. Pattern of cognitive appraisals, emotional reactions, physiological responses and behavioural tendencies that occur in response to a perceived imbalance between situational demands (primary appraisal) and the resources needed to cope with them (secondary appraisal).
What is the primary appraisal?
Perceived imbalance between situational demands
What is the secondary appraisal?
Perception of availability of resources needed to cope with them
Diagram of stress?
Give an example of a cognitive appraisal
Exam
primary appraisal - how hard will it be
secondary appraisal - do i know enough
Take into account potential consequences of failing with regards to likelihood and severity
Pyschological meaning of consequences may be related to beliefs about yourself
What is the Yerkes-Dodson Law?
Normal distribution curve
At low arousal you have poor performance but at really high levels of performance you also have poor performance due to anxiety.
Optimal level of performance found at around medium arousal.
How did support affect health behaviours leading up to exam in steptoe1996?
Those with more support showed decrease in number of cigs and alky when exam time came.
Summarise the pathway of stress to disease
How are anxiety and heart disease linked?
anxiety showed 52% increased risk to CVD
Independent of traditional risk factors - obesity, smoking
Anxiety management future CVD management technique.
List some features of Type A behaviour
Time urgency
Free-floating hostility
Hyperaggressiveness
Focus on acomplishment
competitive and goal driven
How are type A behaviour and cardiovascular health linked?
Type A behaviour patterns doubled the risk of develpoing CHD in healthy males, type A accounted for 31% increased risk when compared to type B (patience, serenity, not very time urgent)
Which factor of Type A behaviour is thought to be key behavioural factor to CHD?
HOSTILITY
What is mechanism for personality affecting actual health with regard to CHD?
Poor health behaviour - increased physiological resoponse to stressors - endothelial dysfunciton - atherosclerosis
What other traits blah have been associated with CHD?
Depression - increased risk for onset of CHD, CHD patients have 2.5 times higher risk of of mortality when depressed - physiological and health behaviour changes
What are the different mechanisms for coping with stress?
Define approach and avoidance
Approach = activity orientated towards threat e.g. problem solving and planning a response
Avoidance = away from threat e.g. denial, may find it difficult to engage in conversation about health
Utility of coping style depends on situation
Swearing and pain relief?
perceived pain score was down when people swore with pain
However, heart rate was higher when people swore with pain
Elaborate on the importance of social support
Individuals with adequate social relationships have a 50% likelihood of survival compared to those with insufficient social relationships
Exert independent effect beyond pyhsiological role that is comparable with stopping smoking
Provide an example of social support benefitting the ting
Breast cancer groups control and experiment
Those with support group had a 1/3 more survivors over a 4 year period
How does branding of medication help?
Neurofen ibuprofen was shown to better improved perceived feeling compared to non-branded, even branded placebo did better than non branded placebo.
Define the placebo effect
An inactive substance such as sugar or saline can sometimes improve a patient’s condition because person has expectation it will be helpful.
Define the nocebo effect
negative effect that occurs after receiving treatment even when the treatment in inert or a sham L00000L
Warnings of side effects will increase likelihood that patient feels said side effects
What are the physiological framing mechanisms involved with placebos?
Framing
Social/experimental learning
classical conditioning - behaviour, placebo may be able to elicit the unconditioned response from controlled stimulus now being the placebo not unconditioned stimulus(active treatment)
What are the clinical implications for placebo?
Effect of therapies can be affected by their presentation - not specific to placebo.
placebos don’t have negative side effects
can be useful where there is a psychological component
Were open placebos successful?
When the patient knows they are taking a placebo
Showed global improvement, symptom improvement, relief improvement and better QoL in IBS patients compared to no treatment.
