Psychology-A Concise Introduction Sixth Edition: Chapter 2 Neuroscience Flashcards
What Is Our Brain Responsible For?
Perception, Consciousness, Memory, Language, Intelligence, & Personality (Everything that makes us human)
About how much does the brain weigh?
3 pounds
The brain consists of an estimated, how many Neurons?
100 billion
What are nerve cells called?
Neurons
What is a genome?
THe entire sequence of nucleotides in your DNA
The totality of connections between neurons in your nervous system is called :
Connectome
A genome is _________ at conception. Your connectome ________ thorughout your life.
fixed, changes
The human brain is the most _________ device in the known universe. Therefore it’s ________ may never be completely understood.
Complex, Complexity
The scientific study of the brain and nervous system.
Neuroscience
Cellular building blocks of the nervous system
Neurons
The seat of higher mental functioning in humans
The cerebral Cortex
A natural break from consciousness
sleep
Humans are _______ ________.
Biological Organisms
How we feel, perceive, learn, remember and think all stem from _________ ________.
Neural Activity
Crucial pieces of the puzzle of human behavior and mental processes.
How neurons communicate and how they work
2 types of cells that the brain and nervous system are composed of.
Neurons & Glial cells
Responsible for information transmission throughout the nervous system.
Neurons
Neurons ________, _______ & _________ information within the brain and the rest of the nervous sustem.
Recieve, Send & Integrate
Glia is “greek” for what
glue
They constitute the support system for the neurons
Glial cells
Glial Cells take away waste products, keep the chemical environment stable and insulate ________. Allowing them to do their work more efficiently.
Neurons
What is the overall ratio of neurons to glial cells in the brain? This ratio ________ across different parts of the brain.
1:1 , differs
Glail cells communicate with Neurons but also communicate with each other in a ________ yet_____ network to the neural network
seperate, parallel
Cells that transmit information within the nervous system
Neurons
Cells in the nervous system that omprise the suppport system for the neurons.
Glial cells (glia)
Appear to influence the formation of neural connections to aid in determining which neural onnections get stronger or weaker over time.
Glail Cells
Glail cells may p9lay ian important role in mental disorders such as __________ and ___________, and in ______________ _______ such as ____________ and ___________.
Schizophrenia, Depression, Neurodegeneratiive disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s
Neurons are srill viewed as the::
most important cells for communication within the human nervous system.
They all have the same basic parts and sturcture and they all operate the same way.
Neurons
3 main components of a neuron
dendrites, cell body & Axon
The fibers that project our of the cell body like the branches of a tree.
Dendrites
What is the main function of a dendrite?
To receive information from other neurons, passing it on to the cell body.
It contains the nucleus of the cell and the other biological machinery that keeps the cell alive.
Cell body
It decides if it should pass information on to other neurons from the dendrite by way o an Axon
Cell Body
The long, singular fiber leaving the cell body
Axon
What is the main function of an axon?
to conduct information from the cell body to the axon terminals in order to trigger the transmission of information with other neurons.
The longest _______s going from spinal cord to the toes.
axon
The process of how neurons commmunicate with one another ((and sometimes muscles and glands)) is partly _______ and partly _______.
electrical, chemical
within a neuron it’s __________ , and an acrtual elecrrical impulse is generated and travels down the axon.
elecrrical
Comunication between neurons is _________
Chemical
These don’t actually touch each other when they are relaying messages amongst each other. They are separated by a microscopic gap that chemical molecules travel across to carry their message.
Neurons
When does the electrical part of the neuronal commmunication story begin?
with the messages received by the dendrites from other neurons.
When dendrites receive messages from neurons the inputs are either __________ or __________
Excitatory or Inhibitory
telling the neuron to generate an electrical impulse
Excitatory impulse
telling the neuron not to generate an electrical impulse
Inhibitory Impulse
When will the cell body produce it’s impulse
by continually calculating the impulses it decides when one of the impulses suffienciently outweighs the other
When does the cell body generate the impulse?
If the excitatory input outweighs the inhibitory input by a sufficient amount.
What is an all-or-nothing event?
It either happens or it doesnt
The impulse travels from where to where and down what to get there?
From the cell body., down the axon, to the axon terminals.
Does the impulse have different speeds of traveling depending on the intensity of the stimulus input?
no, always tavels at the same speed.
The ________ of the ________ determines how many _________ generate _________ and he number of ______ that are generated each ))))) by the ________.
The INTENSITY of the STIMULI determines how many Neurons generate IMULSES and the number of IMPULSES that are generated each SECOND by the NEURONS.
Stronger Stimuli (a slap rather than a pat) lead to more ______ generating _____ and generating those _____more often.
Neurons, Impulses Impulses
The impulses in different neurons travel down the axon at carrying rates up to around how many piles per hour?
200
An insulating layer covering an axon that allows for faster neural impulses
Myelin sheath
The major factor that determines the impulse speed for a particular neron is whether :
its axon is encased in a myelin sheath as insulating layer of a white fatty substance.
Coomposed of glial cells that wrap around the neuron’s axon.
without a myelin sheath isn’t present?
The impulses travel slowly down the axon in a continuous fashion. Like burning down a stick of dynamite.
When Myelin is present and the impulses move faster, how come?
They regenerate in the periodic gaps between Sheath where there is no Myelin
Damage to this will cause serious problems
The Myelin sheath
Multiple Sclerosis causes deterioration of the myelin sheath that encases neuronal axons. This means that impulses can no longer lep down the ____, or eventually even travel down it. ____
axon.. causing information transmission to be slowed.
an unspecialized cell in the body that can develop into a specialized cell
Stem cell
IT is responsible for th3 distinction between white matter and gray matter in the brain
Myelin
White matter
Myelinated axons
Gray Matter
Unmyelinated axons, ell bodies and dendrites
a naturally occurring chemical in our nervous system that speci=iakizes in transmitting information
neurotransmitter
