AP Psychology-Unit 1

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from AP Psychology Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior, based on the provided lecture transcript.

Heredity

The passing on of different physical and mental traits from one generation to another.

Nurture

Environmental factors such as family life, social groups, education, or societal influences.

Evolutionary Approach

Uses Darwin's theory of evolution as a basis and leans more towards the nature side of the debate.

Natural Selection

Evolution happens by this process, where beneficial traits survive and are passed on, while undesirable traits die off.

Eugenics

The belief in improving the genetic quality of the human population by selectively breeding for desirable traits and discouraging reproduction among those with traits considered undesirable.

Epigenetics

Focuses on how the environment and a person's behavior affect a person's genes and how they work.

Plasticity

The brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experiences.

Central Nervous System (CNS)

Made up of the brain and spinal cord.

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

Consists of different nerves that branch off from the brain and spine, connecting the CNS to all of the body's organs and muscles.

Afferent Neurons (Sensory Neurons)

Send signals from the sensory receptors to the central nervous system.

Efferent Neurons (Motor Neurons)

Send signals from the central nervous system to the peripheral nervous system.

Somatic Nervous System

Includes your five senses and skeletal muscle movements, which happen consciously and voluntarily.

Autonomic Nervous System

Controls involuntary activities, such as heart beating, stomach digesting, and breathing.

Sympathetic System

Mobilizes your body and gets it ready for action, increasing heart rate, dilating eyes, and increasing breathing.

Parasympathetic System

Relaxes the body, slowing heart rate, increasing digestion, and helping to save and store energy.

Glial Cells

Provide structure, insulation, communication, and waste transportation to neurons.

Neurons

The basic functional unit of the nervous system, communicating with each other by using electrical impulses and chemical signals to send information throughout the nervous system.

Reflex Arc

A nerve pathway that allows the body to respond to a stimulus without thinking.

Interneurons

Neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate internally and connect the sensory neurons to motor neurons within the CNS.

Action Potential

Occurs when a neuron fires and sends an impulse down the axon.

Resting Potential

When a neuron is not sending a signal, it has more negative ions on the inside than the outside.

Depolarize

Happens when an outside stimulus is strong enough to meet the threshold that causes depolarization to occur and the neuron then fires an action potential.

Repolarization

Brings the neuron back to resting potential after an action potential.

Refractory Period

A time period when the cell cannot fire and needs to wait until repolarization occurs and the cell goes back to resting potential.

Synapse

A small pocket of space between the axon terminal of one neuron and the dendrite of another neuron.

Neurotransmitters

Chemical messengers that send messages through the nervous system.

Synaptic Gap

A narrow space between two neurons, specifically the presynaptic terminal of one neuron and postsynaptic terminal of another neuron.

Presynaptic Terminal

The axon terminal of the neuron that converts the electrical signal to a chemical one and sends the neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap.

Postsynaptic Terminal

Where the neurotransmitters are accepted in the dendrite of the receiving neuron.

Reuptake

The process of taking excess neurotransmitters left in the synaptic gap, where the sending neuron reabsorbs the extra neurotransmitters.

Excitatory Neurotransmitters

Increase the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential through the depolarization process in the postsynaptic neuron.

Inhibitory Neurotransmitter

Decrease the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential, leading to hyperpolarization.

Acetylcholine

Enables muscle action, learning, and helps with memory.

Substance P

Helps with transmitting pain signals from the sensory nerves to the CNS.

Dopamine

Helps with movement, learning, attention, and emotion.

Serotonin

Impacts an individual's hunger, sleep, arousal, and mood.

Endorphins

Help with pain control and impact an individual's pain tolerance.

Epinephrine

Helps with the body's response to high emotional situations and helps form memories. Also known as Adrenaline.

Norepinephrine

Increases your blood pressure, heartbreak and alertness.

Glutamate

Involved with long term memory and learning.

GABA

Helps with sleep, movement and slows down your nervous system.

Leptin

Helps regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger, signaling to the brain that the body has enough stored fat.

Ghrelin

Signals to the brain that we are hungry and also help promote the release of growth hormones.

Melatonin

Produced by the pineal gland in the brain and helps regulate the sleep wake cycles, also known as circadian rhythms.

Oxytocin

Produced in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary gland, promotes feelings of affection and emotional bonding, also known as the love hormone.

Agonist Drugs

Increase the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter.

Antagonist Drugs

Decrease the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter.

Stimulants

Generally excite and promote neural activity, giving an individual energy, reducing a person's appetite and can cause them to become irritable.

Depressants

Drugs that reduce neural activity in an individual, causing drowsiness, muscle relaxation, lowered breathing, and if abused, possibly death.

Hallucinogens

Drugs that cause an individual to sense things that are not actually there and can also reduce an individual's motivation and can lead to an individual to panic.

Opioids

Give an individual pain relief, though have their own category of drugs due to their addictive nature.

Hindbrain

The bottom of the brain.

Midbrain

Located in the center sitting above the base of the brain.

Forebrain

The top of the brain.

Spinal Cord

Connects your brain to the rest of your body.

Brainstem

Located at the base of your brain on top of the spinal cord, it includes the medulla, the pons and the midbrain.

Medulla Oblongata

Right above the spinal cord and below the pons, helps with the regulation of a person's cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

Pons

The bridge between different areas of the nervous system, and helps with coordinating movement, sleep and dreams.

Reticular Activating System

A network of nerve cell bodies and fibers within the brain stem that is involved in the regulation of arousal, alertness, and sleep wake cycles.

Cerebellum

Located in the back of the brain, just below the occipital lobes and behind the pons, it helps with coordinating voluntary movements, maintaining posture and balance and helps refine motor skills.

Cerebrum

Deals with complex thoughts.

Cerebral Cortex

A thin outer layer of billions of nerve cells that cover the whole brain.

Corpus Callosum

A thick band of nerve fibers that connect the two cerebral hemispheres, allowing them to communicate with each other.

Frontal Lobe

Deals with higher level thinking.

Prefrontal Cortex

Deals with foresight, judgment, speech and complex thought.

Motor Cortex

Deals with voluntary movement located in the back of the frontal lobe.

Broca's Area

Found only in the left hemisphere in front of the motor cortex, crucial for language production.

Parietal Lobe

Located in the upper part of the brain right behind the frontal lobe, deals with receiving sensory information.

Somatosensory Cortex

Situated parallel to and directly behind the motor cortex and is responsible for processing touch, pressure, temperature, and body position.

Temporal Lobe

Located right above your ears and is involved in processing auditory and linguistic information, recognizing faces and assists with memory.

Hippocampus

Located within the temporal lobe that helps us learn and form memories.

Amygdala

These two round clusters are where you get your emotional reactions from.

Auditory Cortex

Located in the superior temporal gyrus of the temporal lobe, processes the different sounds that you hear and allows you to recognize things like music and speech.

Wernicke's Area

Typically located in the left temporal lobe, responsible for creating meaningful speech.

Occipital Lobe

Located at the back of the brain just above the cerebellum and is responsible for processing visual information.

Thalamus

Located deep within the brain just above the brainstem, receives sensory information from your sensory organs for everything except for the sense of smell.

Limbic System

Located on both sides of the thalamus made up of different brain structures and whose main function is emotions, learning, memory and some of our basic drives.

Hypothalamus

Helps keep your body balanced and allows you to have homeostasis, also controls your drive such as thirst, hunger, temperature and sex.

Pituitary Gland

Produces and releases hormones that regulate many bodily functions and controls other endocrine glands throughout the body.

Brain Lateralization

The differing functions of the left and right hemisphere and essentially it is the division of labor between the two hemispheres.

EEG (Electroencephalogram)

Uses electrodes that are placed on the individual scalp and allows researchers to record electrical signals from neurons firing, which can help with sleep and seizure research.

fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

Similar to an MRI but show metabolic functions and can help with better understanding brain activity.

Consciousness

Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.

Cognitive Neuroscience

Studies how brain activity is linked with cognition.

Circadian Rhythm

Your biological clock that is about a twenty four hour cycle and involves changing your blood pressure, internal temperature, hormones and regulating your sleep wake cycle.

Alpha Waves

Slower waves that have a high amplitude.

Beta Waves

Low in amplitude and are the fastest brain waves, generally occur when we're engaged in mental activities.

Theta Waves

Have a greater amplitude compared to beta waves and alpha waves and even a slower frequency, strong during times of relaxation.

Delta Waves

Have the greatest amplitude and the slowest frequency that occur when you are most relaxed, oftentimes during the deepest levels of sleep.

Insomnia

A sleeping disorder where an individual will have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep.

Sleep Apnea

When an individual has a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep because they are struggling with their breathing.

REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD)

A condition where a person acts out their dreams during REM sleep.

Somnambulism (Sleepwalking)

A disorder where a person gets up and walks around while still sleeping.

Sleep Terrors (Night Terrors)

When an individual will experience intense fear while sleeping which can cause an individual to experience sleep deprivation and a disrupted sleep schedule.

Narcolepsy

Here individuals will struggle to sleep at night and will uncontrollably fall asleep during the day.

Sensation

The process of detecting information from the environment.

Sensory Adaptation

Happens when we have a stimulus that is continuous and doesn't change.

Habituation

When you are repeatedly exposed to a stimulus and start to have a reduced response to the stimulus.

Difference Threshold

The minimum change between two stimuli that is needed to cause an individual to detect the change.

Weber Fetchener Law

The idea that for us to notice a difference between two stimuli, the two stimuli must differ by a constant percent, not a constant amount.