The Brain And Neuropsychology – How Does Your Brain Affect You?

Question 1

State two processes that occur in synaptic functioning (2)

Answer 1

• The neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic gap (1).
• The neurotransmitters will bind to the receptor like a lock and
  key (1).

Question 2

Define what is meant by ‘prosopagnosia’. (2)

Answer 2

Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognise faces of familiar
people (1), while other aspects of visual processing remain intact (1).

Question 3

Explain, using synaptic functioning, why Simon may be experiencing pleasurable feelings from the effects of alcohol. (2)

Answer 3

Drugs affect the level of neurotransmitter at the synapse, which
then has an influence on human behaviour (1). Alcohol may
have increased the neurotransmitter dopamine at the synapse,
which may have led to Simon’s pleasurable feelings (1).

Question 4

Josh is investigating sex differences in spatial ability. He asks one female and one male to carry out a spatial ability map reading task. The participants have to independently navigate their way from a castle to a cake shop using the quickest route possible using a map.
(a) Explain one likely outcome of the map reading task.
You should refer to research evidence regarding sex differences in your answer. (2)

(b) Explain one improvement that could have been made to Josh’s investigation.
(2)

Answer 4

a) Rilea et al. (2005) found differences in lateralisation and also
sex differences in performance on some spatial ability tasks
(1). This suggests that males may have differences in
lateralisation and so a better performance compared to
females, so males will get to the cake shop quicker than
females (1).

b) More than one man and woman could have been asked to do
the as they could have been particularly good or bad at
navigating (1) so it could have been more representative of all
men and women in terms of spatial ability if Josh’s
investigation had more males and females complete the map
reading task (1).