Test 1 Flashcards
What is consciousness?
the state or quality of awareness- awareness of our thoughts, perceptions, memories, and feelings
What is a frontal lobotomy?
used to treat psychosis, depression, anxiety, etc. (experimental)
- Cuts off pieces of the brain
What is the split brain operation?
- Used to cure severe epilepsy, when both sides of the brain exhibit excessive and uncontrolled neural activity
- An outdated approach that involves cutting the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connect the left and right sides of the cerebral cortex
Patients cannot verbalize any stimuli directed to their _____ brain
Right
Which hand is always consistent with conscious awareness?
The right hand
What is the corpus callosum?
- A bundle of fibers that interconnects the two cerebral hemispheres
- Enables both hemispheres to share information with each other
- If it is cut, the two hemispheres cannot directly talk to each other, but they can send information down the spine and to the lower brain
What is the function of the spine and lower brain?
They help with balance and coordinating body movements
Where is our comprehension of language and our ability to talk and write is generally located in?
The left cerebral cortex
What is Gazzaniga’s interpreter theory?
he argued that our ability to communicate and make up stories might have given rise to our ability to think and be aware of our own existence; the evolution of speech gave rise to storytelling, which in turn gave rise to consciousness
What is mind-body dualism?
while the body may be a mechanical device and the world deterministic, the mind is something else, something immaterial that exists outside of the body
What are the main elements of cells?
H, O, C, N
- we breathe mostly O and N
What is RNA?
A strand of a certain type of nucleic acid, specifically ribonucleic acids
- it easily breaks apart
- not much diversity
- sections of DNA are transcribed in RNA
What are RNA-based enzymes?
They can catalyze chemical reactions
What is a phospholipid bilayer?
- Strands of fat with a phosphate cap
- Lipids interact with each other, while phosphate groups prefer to interact with water
What are micelles?
Shaken up phospholipids
What are liposomes?
- When micelles explode
- Diffusion through the membrane is limited
- The interior is full of saltwater
What floats in the cytoplasm of a prokaryotic cell?
Chromatin, ribosomes, proteins
What is chromatin?
consists of loose strings of nucleic acids (DNA)
What are ribosomes?
Consist of nucleic acids (mostly RNA) and proteins
- Function: make proteins by linking together amino acids in the order dictated by the DNA genetic code
What are proteins?
- Catalyze all chemical reactions (specifically enzymes)
- Receptors are proteins that sense things and react accordingly
- Proteins make up roads of the cell and mediate transport and storage
- Serve as messengers
What is different about a eukaryotic cell?
- The loose chromatin DNA is compacted into a nucleus, which is called a chromosome
- It has mitochondria, which are responsible for extracting energy from nutrients
- This energy is typically stored in the molecular bonds of the molecule ATP
What is a neutron typically defined by?
Where the soma (cell body) is located
What is a gene?
Section of a chromosome that encodes a specific protein
• When a gene is being read, copies of it are made (transcribed) into DNA
What is the genome of a cell?
Refers to all the DNA sequences in the soma
- Provides the info necessary to synthesize all the proteins for a particular organism