Test 2 (3,7,8,9) Flashcards
What is consciousness?
our awareness of internal and external stimuli. Awareness of internal stimuli includes feeling pain, hunger, thirst, sleepiness, and being aware of our thoughts and emotions.
Can we be influenced by stimuli of which we are unaware?
yes
What is meant by dual processing?
theory of human cognition postulates that reasoning and decision-making can be described as a function of both an intuitive, experiential, affective system
What is priming?
prior exposure to a stimulus has an unconscious influence on our subsequent behavior
Our brains participate in conscious and unconscious behavior at the same time
When prior exposure to a stimulus influences behavior
What are subliminal stimuli?
falls beneath the threshold of conscious awareness.
Subjects were shown pictures of car accidents very quickly. The brain could not consciously process it, but the sympathetic nervous system was activated
Can our brains process subliminal stimuli?
subliminal messages can be integrated unconsciously and can influence decisions and choices.
How effective is
subliminal persuasion?
Effects tend to be small and short-lived. What we perceive consciously tends to have more of an impact on behavior rather than subliminal messages.
What is blindsight?
a phenomenon in which patients with damage in the primary visual cortex of the brain can tell where an object is although they claim they cannot see it
What is attention?
notice taken of someone or something
What is selective attention? What is the cocktail party effect?
the processes that allow an individual to select and focus on particular input for further processing while simultaneously suppressing irrelevant or distracting information
Cocktail party effect: ability to listen to one convo when there are a lot around us
What is divided attention? How does dividing attention affect accuracy?
focus on two or more things at once, affects accuracy bc you are not fully focused
What is inattentional blindness? change blindness?
IB: miss something because attention focused elsewhere
CB: a phenomenon of visual perception that occurs when a stimulus undergoes a change without this being noticed by its observer
What is a circadian rhythm?
a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours
What does chronotype refer to?
are you more of a morning person or night owl?
What are some factors influencing whether a person tends to be more alert in the morning or evening?
Some people are night people or morning people. This is genetic, but mostly switches with age. Around 20 year olds are switching from night to morning people often.
What are circadian low-points (when are people at their sleepiest)?
Drop in performance
Sleepiest from 1-4am and 1-4pm
What does an electroencephalogram measure?
records electric activity of the brain
Synchronous activity of neurons is recorded
“Brain waves”
What are the stages of sleep?
NonREM 1
* when you are first falling asleep. This is the lightest sleep. You may suddenly jerk yourself awake
NonREM 2
* A bit deeper than 1. This is where you spend most of your night asleep
NonREM 3 (slow-wave)
* formerly stages 3 and 4
* Deepest stage of sleep
* Heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature are all about as low as they can get while you are still alive. This is where sleep walking, sleep talking, and bed wetting occurs.
* This is often called slow wave sleep.
REM
* You move from “1,2,3,2, REM” That is one complete sleep cycle. On average, this takes about 90 minutes.
* The amount of sleep is genetically influenced
In what stage of sleep do sleep spindles and delta waves occur?
S: NREM2 DW: NREM3
In what order does one progress through the sleep stages during a complete sleep cycle?
You move from “1,2,3,2, REM” That is one complete sleep cycle. On average, this takes about 90 minutes.
The amount of sleep is genetically influenced
What is slow-wave sleep?
NonREM 3 (slow-wave)
* formerly stages 3 and 4
* Deepest stage of sleep
* Heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature are all about as low as they can get while you are still alive. This is where sleep walking, sleep talking, and bed wetting occurs.
* This is often called slow wave sleep.
How do EEG recordings (brain waves) change during the stages of sleep in terms of
amplitude and frequency?
NREM 1: first fall asleep, very light stage of sleep, easy to wake someone up, could experience hallucinations
NREM 2 - sleep spindles
NREM 3 - delta (slow) waves, deepest stage of sleep, lowest breathing, blood pressure, heart rate
Formerly stages 3 (likely to sleep talk and walk) & 4
REM (rapid eye movement)
go back into NREM 2 before this stage)
What happens during REM sleep?
Rapid Eye Movement
* Strongly associated with dreaming
o Brain activity is very high even though the individual is asleep.
o Physiology: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing is similar to what they are like when people are awake.
o Paralysis: Muscles are paralyzed in REM, and this is a good thing. Otherwise, they would act out dreams.
Why is REM sleep paradoxical?
Your brain activity is very high when you are in the deepest level of sleep
Does evidence suggest that other animals dream during REM?
Yes, they do
How does the amount of time spent in the stages generally change as a night’s sleep progresses?
REM increases as the night progresses
Does everyone need the same amount of sleep? Can you learn info while sleeping?
Most adults require approximately 8 hours of sleep per 24 hours, but there can be substantial differences among individuals. Sleep needs may range from about six to nine hours.
learning during sleep is possible, but that sleep-learning invariably produces memory traces that are consciously inaccessible in the awake state. Thus, sleep-learning can likely exert implicit, but not explicit, influences on awake behavior
What are the ways in which sleep benefits us?
learning and memory, REM and memory processing
What happens when someone goes without sleep?
sleep deprivation causes immune system effects, physical and mental effects
What are microsleeps?
periods of sleep that last from a few to several seconds
Can we adapt and function normally with less sleep than we need?
We don’t adapt to getting less sleep than we need, functioning impaired
What are the theories we covered regarding the functions of sleep?
o Restorative: sleep gives the body a chance to repair, restock, and reorganize itself. There is an increased protein synthesis in the body. There is a greater release of waste products during sleep. Sleep also improves endurance, reaction times, and performance.
o Learning and memory: We remember new information better after sleep. We are better able to solve problems and reason after sleep.
What is REM bound?
REM rebound refers to the tendency to enter REM more quickly and spend more time in REM after having been deprived of REM. The brain is anxious to make up for the REM it has been deprived us. This is true in animals as well, and suggests that REM is important.
What might be some functions of dreaming/REM?
REM may be important for learning, memory, emotional processing. People may be more able to learn something new if they have enough REM.
Different stages of sleep seem to be better for solidifying different types of memory.
REM helps us process emotions, especially anxious emotions. People spend more time in REM after stressful experiences. REM improves our memory for emotionally relevant events.
What is memory consolidation?
the process by which a temporary, labile memory is transformed into a more stable, long-lasting form
What are the effects of alcohol?
it affects lots of neurotransmitters, and impairs almost every aspect of thinking:
Prefrontal cortex
Hippocampus: suppresses memory and REM sleep
Cerebellum: suppresses balance and coordination
Brainstem
Reticular formation: consciousness
Medulla: heart rate and breathing
What are benzodiazepines and how do they work?
a type of sedative medication. This means they slow down the body and brain’s functions. They can be used to help with anxiety and insomnia (difficult getting to sleep or staying asleep).
What do opiates do and how do they work?
- Morphine, heroin, codeine, Vicodin, oxycontin, etc.
- Endorphin agonists: mimic endorphins
- Pain-killers, induce sleep, euphoria and relaxation (reason they are often abused)
- Addiction potential: highly addicting, but still prescribed because their power as pain killers are unsurpassed. There is a high potential that those who take them as directed are not abused.
- Withdrawal: experiencing pain, feels worse than a bad flu, a very unpleasant withdrawal, sweating, diarrhea
What drugs are stimulants? How do they compare with each other?
Increase activity in CNS, opposite as the activity of depressants
Increase wakefulness, energy, confidence, decrease appetite
Caffeine
* Adenosine antagonist
* Wakefulness
Nicotine
* Acetylcholine, DA, NE, opioids, etc
* Improves mood, memory, pain relief
* Highly addicting, as addicting as cocaine, meth, and heroin
Cocaine
* Agonists of norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, etc.
* Euphoric rush, confidence, optimism, well-being
* Can cause heart attack and stroke on small doses
* highly addicting
Amphetamines
Methamphetamine, dexedrine, benzedrine, adderall
* Agonist of norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, etc.
* Comparison with cocaine
* Alertness, euphoria, appetite suppression, hyperactivity
* Highly addicting
MDMA
* Ecstasy
* Agonist of Dopamine and serotonin
* Euphoria, feelings of closeness, hyperactivity, possible brain damage
How addictive is nicotine compared to other drugs?
Highly addicting, as addicting as cocaine, meth, and heroin
What are examples of psychedelic hallucinogens
and what are their effects?
Psychedelic Hallucinogens
* LSD, psilocybin, mescaline/peyote
* serotonin agonists
* produce hallucinations, mystical experiences, alter thinking and emotion (laughing or crying for no reason)
* Low addiction potential, relatively not toxic by themselves
* Possible therapeutic uses
* depression, drug addiction, PTSD
* but unpredictable effects, can cause psychosis (loss of contact with reality) in certain people
Dissociative Hallucinogens
* PCP (can’t feel pain), ketamine, etc.
* Glutamate antagonists
* Out-of-body experiences
What are the effects of marijuana?
Negative effect on concentration, memory, attention, coordination, Low toxicity: no deaths due to overdose, therapeutic uses for pain, nausea, appetite stimulant
Which drugs produce the most dangerous withdrawal syndromes?
Alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates
What does hypnosis effectively treat?
treatment of pain
What is dissociation?
Examples of mild, common dissociation include daydreaming, highway hypnosis or “getting lost” in a book or movie, all of which involve “losing touch” with awareness of one’s immediate surroundings.
What is insomnia?
the feeling of inadequate or poor sleep because of one or more of the following: trouble falling asleep; trouble remaining asleep; awakening too early; or non-restorative sleep
What are the symptoms of narcolepsy?
disorder that involves periodic overwhelming sleepiness
Autoimmune disorder that destroys cells that make a substance/neurotransmitters called erexi
Sleepiness and sleep attacks
Cataplexy: sudden loss of muscle tone
What are sleeptalking, sleepwalking, nightmares, and night terrors and in what stages do these
tend to occur?
Sleep talking : can occur in any stage, but most likely to occur in NREM3
More common in children
If an individual is sleep deprived or feverish
Tends to be genetic
Sleep walking:
sleeping person gets up and does stuff,
not complicated things, but can be
Occurs in NREM 3
Nightmares
Scary dreams happen during REM
Cause a person to wake up
Night terrors:
Occur during NREM 3, not associated with story like dreams
Kind of like a panic attack in deep sleep
What is REM behavior disorder and who is most likely to have it?
More common in men over 50
Association with dementia and parkinson disease, ⅓ of them will have it
However, for men over 50 does not necessarily mean you’ll have it, can be confounding variables: meds
What is sleep apnea?
the temporary cessation of breathing while asleep, which occurs when the upper airway briefly becomes blocked
What are psychoactive drugs?
Drugs that influence psychological processes by altering synaptic activity in the brain.
How do psychoactive drugs generally produce their effects?
Facilitating or inhibiting neurotransmitters
What are agonists and
antagonists?
- Agonists: typically enhance or mimics neurotransmitters in certain parts of the brain.
- Antagonists: typically inhibits or blocks the neurotransmitters in certain parts of the brain. For example, if you take a glutamate antagonist, the effect would be the same as having less glutamate in the brain.
What is learning?
a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience
What area/subdiscipline of psychology is associated with learning?
behavioral learning
What is the relationship between genetic/biological control of behavior and the capacity for learning among species?
Organisms with greater capacity for learning are more flexible in their behavior and less controlled by genetics
Who was Ivan Pavlov?
discovered classical conditioning; trained dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell
How did he discover/investigate classical
conditioning?
Pavlov introduced the ringing of the bell as a neutral stimulus. An unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that leads to an automatic response. In Pavlov’s experiment, the food was the unconditioned stimulus.
What is classical conditioning?
a type of unconscious or automatic learning. This learning process creates a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus
Know the components of classical conditioning (UCS, UCR, CS, CR), and be able to identify them in examples.
An unconditioned stimulus (UCS), always elicits an unconditioned response (UCR). When the conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired over and over again with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), it eventually elicits a response, equivalent to an unconditioned response (UCR), that is now a conditioned response (CR)
What does neutral stimulus refer to in the process of classical conditioning?
a stimulus that at first elicits no response
What is acquisition?
Process of learning associations
Timing of Conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
What is biopreparedness (how do biological predispositions affect classical conditioning)?
Being biologically predisposed to make particular associations more so than others. For example: We are biologically predisposed to make associations with things that have threatened humans throughout our evolutionary history. This is because the humans who avoided these dangers would live on and pass their genes.
What is conditioned taste aversion and how is it unique
compared to other forms of classical conditioning?
Conditioned Taste Aversion (CTA) is the readiness to associate the taste of food to illness (a type of CC). CTA is unique compared to other forms of CC because it only takes one association for the conditioning to occur (sticks the first time).
In classical conditioning: What is stimulus generalization? Stimulus discrimination?
the tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only similar to the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response
In classical conditioning: What is extinction and how does it occur?
the process of getting rid of a CR to a CS (this helps us to adapt to changing situations).
