Week 1

Question 1

ACE- Adverse Childhood experiences

Answer 1

10 different types
-Neglect
-Emotional abuse
-Physical abuse
-Psychological abuse
People who have experienced 4 or more have higher risk of substance abuse/psychosis later in life
-But this can create a false link between the 2 (implied causation)

Question 2

Psilocybin

Answer 2

Mushrooms- Above surface
Truffles- Below surface
Dosage is v important- Dried mushrooms (no water) are much lighter than fresh despite having same amount of psilocybin

Question 3

Reason for truffles over mushrooms

Answer 3

Safer
Allows for safety regulation

Question 4

How many neurons in the brain

Answer 4

Around 86 billion

Question 5

Who was first to question whether there was 100 billion neurons in the brain

Answer 5

Suzana- Herculano- Houzel
She coloured neurons to estimate roughly 86 million

Question 6

Do females have smaller brains?

Answer 6

Yes
But same amount of neurons (More full, more efficient use of brain)

Question 7

What part of brain has more neurons?

Answer 7

Cerebellum
-Important for movement, balance and possibly cognitive functions
-Higher density of neurons
-More simple structure of neurons than cortex

Question 8

Is fMRI so precise that you can investigate what assemblies of 10 to 20 neurons are doing?

Answer 8

False

Question 9

ECoG

Answer 9

Improvement of EEG
Electrodes put on brain instead of skull
Better spatial and temporal resolution

Question 10

How many brain areas

Answer 10

In reality- 72
Brodmann proposed- 43

Question 11

Are fMRI and other neuroimaging methods better than other psychological methods at predicting behaviour

Answer 11

No

Question 12

Suzana-Herculano-Houzel study

Answer 12

Questionnaires were distributed to understand beliefs of the brain amongst the general population

Question 13

APT

Answer 13

Augmented psychotherapy

Question 14

EEG

Answer 14

Measures electric currents on the skull
Subject to eye related effects- Blinking
Fluid in fMRI helps to increase signal to noise ratio

Question 15

Advantage of fMRI

Answer 15

Can measure the whole brain volume
Can globalise the signal

Question 16

Problem of fMRI

Answer 16

Not measuring cell activity directly
Slow

Question 17

Corpus callosum

Answer 17

Barrier that connects 2 hemispheres
Sometimes cut in severe epilepsy patients to prevents seizures from spreading through whole brain

Question 18

Cingulate cortex

Answer 18

In front of corpus callosum
Active in cognitive control

Question 19

3 goals of Herculiano-Houzel’s study

Answer 19

Quantitative comparison of different segments of the public to identify factors that might influence neuroscience literacy
Identify which themes the public are informed/misinformed about
Compare how neuroscientists and the public see the functioning of the brain and its relationship to the mind

Question 20

Effect of reading books on science knowledge

Answer 20

People who read no books/1 a month got a lower score than those who read 2/3
Reading more than 3 books didn’t increase scores

Question 21

Who first investigated consciousness empirically

Answer 21

Crick and Coch
Focused on visual awareness

Question 22

Start of consciousness research

Answer 22

-Late 19th century
-Animal studies to reveal brain organization and function
-Early psychologists were introspectionists and prized consciousness

Question 23

Consciousness and behaviorists

Answer 23

Behaviourists banned consciousness from the field

Question 24

David Ferrier and consciousness

Answer 24

Stimulations of parietal and temporal lobes caused animals to behave as if they were having sensory sensations but stimulation to the subcortex did not- Cerebral cortex may be sufficient for eliciting conscious experiences

Question 25

Hughlings Jackson and consciousness

Answer 25

Seizures in focal regions can alter conscious experience -Consciousness is the highest level of cerebral organization -Mind involved interactions between conscious and unconscious processes

Question 26

Gustav Fechner and consciousness

Answer 26

Introduced psychophysical methods for relating physical properties of stimuli with psychological experiences

Question 27

Von Helmholtz and consciousness

Answer 27

Said conscious perception involves unconscious inferences -Foreshadowed idea that consciousness depends on nonconscious processing

Question 28

Early 20th century and consciousness

Answer 28

Consciousness was simply assumed to underlie behaviour

Question 29

Penfield and consciousness

Answer 29

Applied stimulation to patients brains to localize language areas -Patients reported subjective experiences from these stimulations showing the role of cerebral cortex in conscious experiences

Question 30

New approach to brain and behaviour

Answer 30

Lashley Emphasised how consciousness emerges from nonconscious info processing

Question 31

Yerkes and animal neuropsychology

Answer 31

Studied effects of lesions within all major lobes of the cerebral cortex and subcortical areas

Question 32

Animal neuropsychology in the 1970s

Answer 32

People believed that consciousness comes from short term memory or executive planning system- Working memory and prefrontal cortex have also been added

Question 33

Mishkin and animal neuropsychology

Answer 33

Distinguished between ventral and dorsal streams of processing- Crucial for contemporary consciousness processing

Question 34

Human neuropsychological research and consciousness

Answer 34

Patients with neuropsychological issues have dissociations between what they can behaviourally do and what they can consciously report

Question 35

Amnesia and consciousness

Answer 35

-First half of 20th century: Memory is widely distributed in the brain- This shifted in the 50s -Milner: Tested temporal lobe patients and cognitive functions- Plays a large role in visual learning- Later research suggests damage only affects declarative memory (memory that can be consciously experienced) -Prefrontal cortex plays a role in the retrieval of memories and the conscious experience of these retrieved memories -Explicit memories are used to construct conscious simulations of the future

Question 36

Split brain syndrome and consciousness

Answer 36

-Remarkable recovery after procedure -Each hemisphere has separate behavioural capacities and 2 separate mental systems -Isolated right hemisphere may have a separate conscious awareness of self and a vision of the future

Question 37

Blindsight and consciousness

Answer 37

-Damage to primary visual cortex produces a blindness in the visual field opposite the lesion-People can guess the identity of an object in their 'blindside' better than chance but this choice is unconscious -People can unconsciously detect emotional expressions of faces presented in the blind field -Signals to the prefrontal cortex may be necessary for awareness (rather than visual cortex)

Question 38

Korper-LeibDistinction

Answer 38

Korper- Body as an object which physical attributes can be attributed to (objective) Leib- Body as a subject, zero point for perception and action (lived body)- Phenomenological (subjective) Korper is in line with the instrumental worldview that the body can be manipulated

Question 39

KorperLeib and how the body appears to consciousness

Answer 39

Leib- Sensations that are localised in the organ of perception (touch sensations appearing in the touch organ) Korper- Nonlocalized sensations (visual sensations)