Sensation, Perception, Physiology Flashcards
The two major divisions of the nervous system are the central and the ________ nervous systems.
peripheral
The central nervous system is made up of
the brain and spinal cord
The somatic nervous system is a component of the ___________ nervous system.
peripheral nervous system
You come home one night to find a burglar in your house. Your heart starts racing and you begin to perspire. These physical “fight-or-flight” reactions are triggered by the:
Sympathetic nervous system controls your “fight-or-flight” response. Danger or stress activates your sympathetic nervous system, which can cause several things to happen in your body.
The motor cortex is located within the _________ lobe whereas the sensory cortex is located in the _________ lobe.
frontal and parietal
The axons of certain neurons are covered by a layer of fatty tissue that helps speed neural transmission. This tissue is:
myelin sheath
The chemical messengers released into the spatial junctions between neurons are called:
neurotransmitters
Reuptake refers to the:
reabsorption of excess neurotransmitter molecules by a sending neuron
A drug that mimics the effects of a particular neurotransmitter is called a(n):
opiate
Who would have been most likely to claim that a slight protrusion in a certain region of someone’s skull indicated that the individual had an optimistic personality?
Franz Gall
Surgical destruction of brain tissue is called a(n):
lesion
Which technique is most useful for seeing which regions of the brain are most active while a person performs a mental activity (e.g., reads a poem)?
PET
Perception is the process by which:
sensory input is selected, organized, and interpreted
The minimum amount of stimulation a person needs to detect a stimulus 50 percent of the time is called the:
absolute threshold
In one experiment, most of the participants who viewed a videotape of men tossing a basketball remained unaware of an umbrella-toting woman sauntering across the screen. This illustrated:
inattentional blindness
Humans experience the longest visible electromagnetic waves as the color ________ and the shortest visible waves as ________.
red; blue-violet
Brightness is to intensity as hue is to:
wavelength
Accommodation refers to the:
process by which the lens changes shape in order to focus images on the retina
The eye’s “blind spot” is related to:
An area without receptor cells where the optic nerve leaves the eye
If images of distant objects are typically focused at a point in front of the retina, a person will:
have unusually good visual acuity
Which of the following is true regarding cone-shaped and rod-shaped visual receptors in the eyes?
cones are highly sensitive to color
Evidence that some cones are especially sensitive to red light, others to green light, and still others to blue light is most directly supportive of the ________ theory.
Young- Helmholtz
