Week 1 Flashcards
What is the “journal impact factor”?
An estimate of how many times you will be cited yearly after being published in a particular journal.
What is the “h-index”?
A RATIO of how many publications to how many times you’ve been cited.
What are the most difficult things to evaluate in the peer-review process?
Novelty & impact
What is the most critical part of peer review?
Evaluating the soundness of the science.
What is a problem with the peer review process and what does this problem lead to?
Personality and politics coming into play
- Politics might lead publications to be rejected unfairly
- Friendship leads to lower-quality papers being approved
What is the advantage of PLoS ONE and other open access journals?
People can comment on the impact a publication has had even years later.
What is the basic assumption of the Scientific Approach?
That events are governed by some lawful order (and that lawful order is what is generally being researched).
What was the problem with facilitated communication, and how did they finally disprove its efficacy?
The facilitators were biasing the responses, and the best way they finally disproved the usefulness was by using a machine as a facilitator (to remove all potential human bias).
What is the most critical factor in making research “scientific”?
Relying on EMPIRICAL evidence gathered thru the scientific method.
What is the name for “an organized system of assumptions that aims to explain phenomena and their interrelationships”?
A theory.
What is the name for “an attempt to predict or account for a set of phenomena, specific relationships among variables, and are empirically tested”?
A hypothesis.
What is required in an “operational definition”?
A definition of the term that specifies the operations for observing AND measuring the term in question.
What was the very important principle that Karl Popper established as a requirement for scientific theories?
The “Principle of Falsifiability”:
- Theories must make predictions that are specific enough that they CAN be disproved.
- Theories must predict what WILL happen, and what will NOT happen.
In scientific research, what is reliability? What is Validity? and which is a requirement for the other?
Reliability refers to the CONSISTENCY of a measurement.
Validity refers to the fact that the measure truly measures what it is supposed to.
Reliability is needed before validity, because first you need to make sure your measure repeatedly assesses the same thing –> THEN you need to make sure the thing being repeatedly measured is the RIGHT thing.
What exactly is the “correlation coefficient”?
A measure of how strongly two variables are related to one another - goes from -1 to 1.
What exactly is the “correlation of determination”?
An index of the predictive power of the correlation. A simple measure of “effect size”. It’s the square of the correlation coefficient.
What is the biggest pitfall of experimental studies?
There can be confounding variables that interfere with making valid conclusions from results.
What is “hindsight bias”?
The feeling that “I knew it all along!”
What is a way of preventing the placebo/nocebo effect aside from blinding?
Using a “switched-over” design where subjects receive the control AND experimental condition at different timepoints.
What is the “Hawthorne Effect”?
When subjects’ knowledge that they’re being studied affects their behavior.
If your sample isn’t representative of the population, is the validity of your study completely ruined?
Not completely - You can’t generalize with much certainty, but if the effect size is very large then it is a good indication that something is going on.
In a normal distribution, how far from the mean do most scores fall?
68% of scores will fall within plus or minus 1 standard deviation.
What do inferential statistics allow us to do?
Determine whether we can generalize from the study sample to the population.
What does “statistical significance” refer to?
The probability that the finding has occurred by chance (ex. p<0.05 means that the finding would occur by chance less than 5% of the time).
What is an “alpha error”?
A finding from the sample NOT being generalizable to the population (finding something that’s not real).
What is a “beta error”?
Missing something in the sample that IS present in the population.
What does the T-test evaluate?
Whether the difference between two means is statistically significant.
Think of a dog standing on its four legs:
- How do you refer to something towards the dog’s nose?
- How do you refer to something towards its tail?
- How do you refer to something towards its back?
- How do you refer to something towards its tummy?
- Rostral/anterior (“in front”)
- Caudal/posterior (the furthest from the head)
- Dorsal/superior
- Ventral/inferior
What are the 3 protective layers of the CNS and why is so much protection needed?
Because the CNS is all-important and needs to be protected against infection and toxicities.
What structures are in the hindbrain?
- Cerebellum
- Pons
- Medulla
- Reticular formation
Where are the tectum and tegmentum located?
The midbrain.
What are two dopamine-related structures located in the midbrain?
Periaqueductal gray and substantia nigra
Where is the diencephalon located and what structures does it contain?
The diencephalon is in the forebrain and contains the thalamus and hypothalamus.
Where are the basal ganglia, limbic system, and cerebral cortex located specifically and generally?
In the telencephalon of the forebrain.
What structures are referred to as the basal ganglia, and what neurotransmitter seems to be important to them?
- Caudate nucleus
- Putamen
- Globus Pallidus
DOPAMINE.
What are some VIP structures of the limbic system?
- Hypothalamus
- Hippocampus
- Amygdala
What seem to be the main tasks of the limbic system?
Emotion, learning, and memory. Could say that “learning is embedded in memory, and emotion helps”.
What has called into question the traditional idea that activation of the SNS and the parasympathetic NS are mutually exclusive?
Activation of BOTH during things that are very pleasurable or mild intensity exercise.
How many times more glial cells are there than neurons?
10-50x more.
These structures are all located in the ________ :
- Nucleus
- Nucleoleus
- Smooth ER
- Rough ER
- Mitochondria
- Microtubules
- Golgi apparatus
- Ribosomes
Cell BODY of neural cells (AKA the soma).
Bipolar neurons seem to be located in places with a specific function - what do these functions have in common?
They are part of sensory systems.
Do afferent or efferent neurons take information TO the CNS?
Afferent.
What is an interesting function that astrocytes accomplish, aside from provide energy to neurons?
They uptake excess neurotransmitters from synaptic clefts, store it, and can re-release it later to be taken care of (for example during dreaming!)
Are there more chemical or electrical synapses in the brain?
Chemical.
What are some advantages of chemical SYNAPSES (neurotransmitters) over electrical?
- Chemical effects are generalizable, can be wide-spread on multiple neurons rather than just from a single neuron to a single other neuron.
Which are the two most common neurotransmitters in the brain and each are exclusively excitatory OR inhibitory?
Glutamate and GABA.
How does tetanus work?
The tetanus toxin infiltrates the CNS thru retrograde transport in neurons. Then it binds to GABA receptors, blocking them. GABA can no longer bind to them and provide inhibition, so the cells fire too much causing muscle spasms.
What is the name of the most popular model of neuronal communication?
The “Neural Network” model.
What is the definition of a hormone? Try to include:
- What exactly it is
- Where it’s created
- The way it has its effects
- A chemical messenger that’s effective in minute quantities
- Synthesized generally in ductless glands, but can be in other places also (just need the proper enzyme)
- Usually transported in the blood to have regulatory effects on other bodily tissues
What does “paracrine” mean? “autocrine”?
Paracrine: Acts as a neurotransmitter, locally
Autocrine: Has effects on the cell that released it