Psych Midterm Vocab

How is the nervous system divided?

The nervous system contains two main divisions the Central Nervous System CNS and the Peripheral Nervous System PNS. The PNS is divided into the Somatic and the Autonomic Nervous Systems. The Autonomic Nervous System is divided into the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic Nervous Systems.

What is the Central Nervous System?

Composed of the brain and the spinal cord. It receives and processes sensory information from the external world and commands the skeletal and muscular systems for action.

What is the Peripheral Nervous System?

It is the nervous system that connects the CNS to the body’s organs and muscles.

What is the Somatic Nervous System?

Part of the Peripheral Nervous System, it conveys information into and out of the CNS

What is the Autonomic Nervous System?

Part of the Peripheral Nervous System, it carries out the involuntary and automatic commands that control blood vessels, body organs, and glands.

What is the Sympathetic Nervous System?

Part of the Autonomic Nervous System, it prepares the body for action in threatening situations.

What is the Parasympathetic Nervous System?

Part of the Autonomic Nervous System, it helps the body return to a normal resting state

What is the Sympathetic Response?

The Fight or Flight response. Fight, Flight or Fright. Increased heart rate, blood pressure, sweat, blood flow, adrenaline

What are spinal reflexes in the CNS?

simple pathways in the nervous system that rapidly generate muscle contractions

What is a reflex arc?

a neural pathway that controls reflex actions?

Where do reflexive responses come from?

the spine

Reflex example

Touching fire and jerking your hand away when you feel pain, before you even think about it

What are the three major divisions of the brain?

The hindbrain, the midbrain, and the forebrain

What is the hindbrain?

the bottom of the brain and top of the spinal cord. coordinates information coming into and out of the spinal cord, also controls the basic functions of life

What are the parts of the hindbrain?

The medulla, reticular formation, pons, and cerebellum

What is the midbrain?

right above the hindbrain, important for orientation and movement

What are the parts of the midbrain?

Tegmentum and tectum

What is the forebrain?

The highest level of the brain, critical for complex cognitive, emotional, sensory and motor functions

What are the parts of the forebrain?

cerebral cortex and subcortical structures

Subcortical structures?

Thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, the limbic system

What is the thalamus?

relays and filters information from the senses and transmits the information to the cerebral cortex. receives info on all of the senses except smell, part of the limbic system

What is the hypothalamus?

located below the thalamus, regulates body temperature, hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior. also a part of the limbic system

What is the limbic system?

Group of forebrain structures involved in motivation, emotion, learning and memory

What are the parts of the limbic system?

hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus

What is the amygdala?

The amygdala plays a central role in emotional processes, especially the formation of emotional memories

What is the hippocampus?

Critical for creating new memories and integrating them into a network of knowledge so that they can be stored indefinitely in other parts of the cerebral cortex

What is the basal ganglia?

a set of subcortical structures that directs intentional movements

What is the endocrine system?

a network of glands that produce and secrete hormones into the bloodstream

What is the pituitary gland?

the gland that releases hormones that direct the functions of many other glands in the body— the master gland

How does stress affect the body?

headaches, muscle tension, trouble digesting, impotence

What are the parts of the cortex?

There are four lobes: The Occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the frontal lobe

gyri

smooth parts of the cortex

sulci

the indentations in the cortex

How do the hemispheres work?

The left and right hemispheres each control the opposite side of the body— they communicate with each other via the corpus callosum. Each hemisphere contains each of the lobes

What is the corpus callosum?

a thick band of nerves that connects the two hemispheres that supports communication across the two sides

Occipital lobe

processes visual information

Temporal lobe

responsible for hearing and language

parietal lobe

processes information about touch

frontal lobe

specialized areas for thinking, movement, planning, memory and judgement

Homunculus

shows how much of the somatosensory and motor cortexes are devoted to each body part

Association areas

lobes have these to help provide sense and meaning to information registered in the cortex

Mirror neurons

important in observational learning— activate when people do an action or watch someone else do that action

Brain plasticity

Things normally assigned to one part of the brain can be reassigned to other parts of the brain to accommodate for changes to the environment

Neurodevelopment

The primitive parts develop first, the brain gets its fissures as it develops more

Epigenetics

study of how genes are expressed without changing the DNA sequence

Twin studies

help researchers determine the extent to which genetics is responsible for something

Phineas Gage

pole through head— showed structure/function relationship of the brain.

Left and Right Hemispheres

Distinct roles, left is more verbal, right is more spatial

EEG

a device used to record electrical activity in the brain

CT scan

show the tissues in the brain and help locate lesions and tumors

MRI

They provide a more detailed image than a CT scan

PET scan

detect a harmless radioactive substance injected into a person as they do tasks so that researchers can see how the brain works during those tasks

fMRI

detects the difference between oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin— helps show accurate localized changes in brain activity (functional MRI)

Consciousness

A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind

What are the 4 properties of consciousness?

Intentionality, Unity, Selectivity and Transience

Intentionality

the quality of being directed towards an object

Unity

resistance to division and the ability to integrate information from all of the body’s senses into one coherent whole.

Selectivity

Capacity to include some objects but not others

Transience

Tendency to change

Cocktail party phenomenon

People are able to tune into one conversation while filtering out many others happening close by

What are the 3 levels of consciousness?

Minimal, Full, and self-consciousness

Minimal consciousness

Low-level kind of sensory awareness and responsiveness that occurs when the mind inputs sensations and may output behavior. Ex: when you’re asleep and someone pokes you and you move over

Full consciousness

when you know and are able to report your mental state. Ex: thinking about the fact that you are thinking

Self-consciousness

Distinct level of consciousness where the person’s consciousness is drawn to the self as an object

What is daydreaming?

a state of consciousness in which a seemingly purposeless flow of thought comes to mind. A way of keeping the brain active and preventing boredom

What is the hypnagogic state of sleep?

It is the pre-sleep consciousness

What is the hypnic jerk?

a sudden sensation of falling or dropping as you fall asleep, or sometimes right before you wake up

Hypnopompic state

The post-sleep consciousness

What is the circadian rhythm?

A naturally occurring 24-hour sleep-wake cycle

How does the brain look on an EEG during the sleep cycle?

there are beta, alpha, theta, and delta waves as the brain cycles through all the different stages of sleep.

REM sleep

The rapid eye movement state of sleep, the body is immobile except for the eyes. Characterized by high brain activity— extremely important, if the body misses any REM sleep it will make up for it in later stages. Dreaming occurs most often in this stage.

Know what waves happen in each stage of sleep

Awake = beta waves, drowsy = alpha waves, Theta waves = stage 1, K-complexes and sleep spindles = stage 2, Delta waves = stages 3&4, REM= sawtooth waves

You cycle through all the stages several times while you sleep.

Chart!

What happens when we’re deprived of sleep?

Our memories deteriorate, when we do sleep we have sleep debt which means that we spend more time in REM or delta wave stages

Insomnia

difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep

Sleep apnea

stopping breathing briefly while asleep

Somnambulism

sleepwalking

Narcolepsy

when sudden sleep attacks occur during waking periods

Sleep paralysis

experience of waking up unable to move

Night terrors

abrupt wakings involving extreme panic

What are the 5 major characteristics that distinguish dreaming from the waking consciousness?

Intense emotion, illogical thought, meaningful sensation, uncritical acceptance, difficulty recalling dreams once awake

Freud’s theory on dreams

Dreams had symbolic meaning, latent content: dream’s true underlying meaning, manifest content: dream’s surface level meaning. Dreams fulfill wishes that life can’t

Activation synthesis model

the brain has random neural activity, so it tries to impose meaning on it— thus we have dreams

Learning

The acquisition from experience of new knowledge skills or responses that result in a relatively permanent change in the state of the learner

Habituation

a general process in which repeated or prolonged exposure to a stimulus results in a gradual reduction in responding

Sensitization

A simple form of learning that occurs when presentation of a stimulus leads to an increased response to a later stimulus

Who came up with classical conditioning?

Pavlov

Classical conditioning

A type of learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus produces a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally produces a response

What are the basic principles of classical conditioning?

An unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response

Unconditioned stimulus

something that reliably produces a naturally occurring reaction in an organism

unconditioned response

reflexive reaction that is reliably produces by a US

conditioned stimulus

something that is initially neutral but produces a reliable response in an organism when paired with a US

conditioned response

a reaction resembling an unconditioned response but is produced by a conditioned stimulus.

Forward pairing (Delay and Trace conditioning)

CS is introduced before the UCS (best for classical conditioning). Ex: a bell is rung before a dog is given food

backward pairing

UCS before CS (pretty ineffective)

simultaneous pairing

UCS and CS introduced at the same time

acquisition

the phase of classical conditioning when the CS and US are paired together.

extinction

the gradual elimination of a learned response that occurs when the CS is repeatedly presented without the US

spontaneous conditioning

the tendency for a learned behavior to recover from extinction after a rest period.

second order conditioning

a type of learning whereby a CS is paired with a stimulus that became associated with the US from an earlier procedure.