THE BRAIN AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGY Flashcards
Provide one example of what each of the following neurotransmitters do.
Serotonin
Plays a role in mood.
Too little serotonin can make people feel depressed.
Provide one example of what each of the following neurotransmitters do.
Dopamine
Plays a role in attention and learning.
Not enough dopamine can make it difficult to concentrate on tasks.
Provide one example of what each of the following neurotransmitters do
GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)
Plays a role in calming us down.
When we feel stressed we produce GABA to relax us.
What functions are the parietal lobe responsible for?
The parietal lobe helps us with perception and sensations of touch.
This part of the brain gives us the ability to recognise faces.
Explain one strength and one weakness of Sperry’s (1968) study.
STRENGTH: A strength of the study is that Sperry gathered a lot of detailed information which improves the reliability of his study. He used procedures (such as the split-screen for presenting visual information) that could be kept the same for each participant, which means that the data was gathered in a reliable way. This made comparison between participants easier.
WEAKNESS: A major weakness of his study was his sample size. Sperry only used 11 participants, which is a very small sample size. However, he may not have had any control over this as there may not have been many split-brain patients available for study.
Who was Phineas Gage and what happened to him?
Phineas Gage was a railway worker who suffered serious damage to his face and the frontal lobe of his brain.
Gage survived the accident yet his personality was permanently changed.
What is prosopagnosia?
This is also known as face-blindness and it means that the person is unable to recognise faces even though they can be seen.
Tanya has been diagnosed with visual agnosia. What symptoms may she exhibit?
Tanya may not be able to recognise the colour of an object.
She may not be able to recognise objects and name them.
Also, she may not be able to recognise places she is familiar with.
What did Adrian Raine (1997) study and what were his findings?
CONCLUSION: Raine studied the brains of murderers and compared these to a similar group of people who had not commited murder.
He found that there were differences in the pre-frontal cortex of the two groups. Murderers had less activity in the pre-frontal part of the brain, making them more impulsive and maybe more aggressive.
What is the CNS?
This is the part of the nervous system which is composed of the brain and the spinal cord. The CNS helps the brain and body communicate with one another by relaying messages backwards and forwards between them.
The CNS is responsible for the control of thought processes and movement, instructing the body what to do.
What is synaptic transmission?
This is the process by which one neuron communicates with another neuron. Neurotransmitters are released by a neuron, move across the synaptic gap and are then taken up by another neuron.
How has the study of Psychology changed over time?
Psychology was officially ‘born’ in 1875 and has been developing over the past 200 years. Before Wundt opened his laboratory people had not really considered what happened inside our heads.
They were more interested in the anatomy of the brain itself rather than what it does. Psychologists could only study the brain once someone had died via a post-mortem. With the invention of scanning techniques such as the EEG, MRI and PET, psychologists could discover more detailed information about how the living brain works.
Brain scans enable researchers to identify specific areas in the brain that are associated with different tasks.
Nowadays it is possible to look at individual synapses with high-powered microscopes. Therefore, we can now investigate behaviour at the level of the neuron.
What is an EEG?
A. A method of measuring brain activity using electrodes placed on the scalp
B. A method of dissecting the brain
C. A method that shows the amount of energy being used throughout the brain
D. A method of studying the brain using electromagnets
A. A method of measuring brain activity using electrodes placed on the scalp
When did Wilhelm Wundt open his laboratory in Leipzig to study people’s thoughts?
A. 1781
B. 1677
C. 1875
D. 1980
C. 1875
How many participants did Sperry use?
A. 9
B. 12
C. 11
D. 10
C. 11
