Week 1- Part 1- Introduction- some content.

Question 1

What does drugs mean in this module?

Answer 1

Ones people take to- treat problems + psychological issues + recreationally (and beyond when they become addicted).

Question 2

What does psychopharmacology mean?

What does behavioural endocrinology mean?

What is the focus on?

Answer 2

How drugs affect the brain and behaviour.

How hormones affect behaviour.

Molecular mechanisms- what is going on at a molecular level- e.g. how drugs affects what happens at synapses.

Question 3

What are psychoactive drugs?

Give examples of psychological effects.

Essentially what?

How do they do this?

What do they usually influence?

Answer 3

Drugs that produce psychological effects.

Changing your mood, the way you perceive the world, consciousness, behaviour etc.

Essentially- do stuff to your psychological processes.

By altering biochemical processes in the brain.

Neurotransmission- the transmission of signals between neurons- e.g. cocaine.

Question 4

Do drugs working tell us what caused a disorder?

At the molecular level, what can you not tell apart?

Did some drugs use to be legal but are now illegal?

Answer 4

Yes.

Therapeutic and recreational drugs (legal and illegal drugs).

Yes.

Question 5

For the exam, how much time should you spend on each part?

What part do most people start with?

Answer 5

Should spend 1 hour on each question and one hour on the multiple choice section.

The multiple choice section.

Question 6

What is dopamine involved in?

What is GABA involved in?

What is serotonin involved in?

Answer 6

Pleasurable effects of many psychoactive drugs.

Involved in producing the sedative effects of many psychoactive drugs.

Therapeutic effects of certain drugs used to treat psychological disorders.

Question 7

What can be synthesised in the body and from what?

What kind of substances exist?

What two things can be considered a steroid?

Answer 7

Oestrogen - synthesised- from testosterone.

Substances which act like neurotransmitters in one part of the brain but behave like hormones throughout the body.

Cortisol + oestrogen.

Question 8

How do you know what things are considered benzodiazepines?

Answer 8

Most things that end in a pan or an are benzodiazepines.

Question 9

What approaches are we most interested in, in this module?

What is psychopharmacology?

What is physiological psychology?

Answer 9

Physiological psychology + psychopharmacology.

The study of how drugs affect the brain and behaviour.

Looking at what is going on in neurons (physiology)- studied by sticking electrodes into neurons.

Question 10

Research methods:

Name the 4 different research methods.

Answer 10

1) Human and nonhuman subjects.
2) Experiments and non-experiments.
3) In-vitro and in-vivo methods.
4) Pure (lab research) and applied/clinical research (e.g. giving people in a clinic a drug to treat their disorder and seeing if it works).

Question 11

What can you call what scientists do?

Why?

Answer 11

Pragmatic.

Aim of drugs = make people feel better. If it does this, then does it matter if we do not understand why it works?

Question 12

Experiments vs non experiments:

What do experiments involve?

What can they be?

Give the definition of between subjects using an example.

Give the definition of within-subjects using an example.

By manipulating independent variables, what can happen?

Answer 12

The manipulation of variables.

Between-subjects or within-subjects designs.

Giving some rats cocaine and giving others a salt solution.

The same rat getting cocaine one day and the salt solution the next, then comparing the days.

Establish a causation.

Question 13

Can everything be done in an experiment way?

What would this be considered?

Answer 13

No- E.g. you cannot make a group of people smoke cannabis for 20 years to see its effect- all you can do is get people who already do this and compare them to people who have not been.

A quasi experiment- not really an experiment.

Question 14

Non-experimental designs:

What does this include?

What can the researcher not do?

Give an example of one.

Answer 14

Using people who have been allocated to experimental conditions not by the experimenter but naturally, by life.

Control the variable of interest.

Quasi-experimental studies- studying groups who have been exposed to conditions of interest in the real world.

Question 15

Continuation from non-experimental designs:

Give another example.

Are these more rare?

Where is it particularly important?

What can you also have?

Answer 15

Case studies.

Yes.

Neuropsychology- e.g. naturally occurring human brain lesions.

Molecular lesions- e.g. missing enzymes which affects how they look + behave/ excess production of a molecule.

Question 16

Human and nonhuman subjects:

Can a lot be learned from studying the brain of other species?

What are the differences between our brains and the brain of other species like?

Explain this.

What are other similarities?

Why is this important?

Answer 16

Yes.

More quantitative than qualitative.

Other species have the same structure of the brain as humans (qualitative) but how much of each structure varies (quantitative).

Also have the same neurochemicals and neurotransmitters.

Because- if you want to know the effect of a drug on a human brain, can look at the same part of another species and see the effect there- this is more ethical.

Question 17

In-vivo and in-vitro methods:

What does in-vivo mean?

Give an example.

What does in-vitro mean?

Give an example.

Answer 17

Within living people or animals.

E.g. giving drugs to rats and seeing if it messes up their ability to get around a maze- a living rat.

Within the glass- like a petri dish.

E.g. taking a slice of a rats hippocampus and putting it in a petri dish- keeping it alive and giving it drugs to see the effect it has on it.

Question 18

Advantages of non human research:

Give four advantages of non human research and explain them if needed.

Answer 18

1) Simpler brains = easier to reveal brain-behaviour interactions (showing the relationship between brain and behaviour).
2) Comparative approach- gain insight by making comparisons between species.
3) Fewer ethical restrictions.
4) Can create “animal models” of psychiatric disorders- E.g. rats get anxious like humans- if animals display something like human psychological problems, you can treat this with drugs, if this works, you can use this on humans.