PSY101

Intro to Psychology / Psychology 101

consciousness

our awareness of ourselves and our environmen

our sensation of the world

sensation, perception

sensation

our sense organs' detection of and responses to external stimulus energy

Perception

the way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. which includes how an individual recognizes and interpreter sensory information

sensation without perception

-Blindsight -Asomatognosia

perception without sensation

-hallucinations -phantom limbs

If brain activity is responsible for consciousness, what happens when the brain dies?

-coma -consciousness

What is sleep?

period of rest/ natual loss of consciousness

How many stages of sleep are there?

5 stages

Stage 1 sleep

-Light sleep -The brain emits theta waves--> consistent with a relaxed state of wakefulness

Stage 2 of sleep cycle

small bursts of activities spindles, nonrem sleep

stage 3 and 4 of sleep cycle

Delta waves, deep sleep, night terrors, sleep walking, and talking

Stage 5 of sleep

REM sleep

function of sleep

• energy conservation,

• body restoration,

• memory consolidation

Function of REM sleep

-give brain opportunity to analyze day's events and work through emotional events or problems(threat rehearsal)

• Activation synthesis : explains why humans have dreams

biological rhythms

periodic physiological fluctuations-- circadian rhythm

• factors in the environment; sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone secretion, and more.

how do drugs affect behaviour

interfere with the way neurons send, receive, and process signals via neurotransmitters

Mechanism of drug action

drugs can be agonists and antagonists

Drugs can be agonists

• activates certain receptors in the brain.

• mimic actions of neurotransmitters

ex: heroin, oxycodone, methadone, block reuptake of transmitters

drugs can be: antagonists

• stop neural firing

• block or decrease the action of neurotransmitters

ex: block reception, speed up metabolism

catergories of psychoactive drugs

drugs that change your mental state

• depressants -stimulants -opioids -hallucinogens

depressants

drugs that reduce neural activity and slow body functions

stimulants

increase neural activity and speed up body functions

• agonist for various transmitters

Hallucinogens

Drugs that alter moods, thoughts, and sense perceptions including vision, hearing, smell, and touch

factors that influence effect

context, past experiences with drug, user physical and psychological state

why do we have sensory system processing

-processing sensory information

• All sensory systems are related to a long history of previous adaptations to environmental conditions.

steps of sensory system

5 steps

step 1 sensory system

stimulus

step 2 sensory system

sensation

step 3 sensory system

transmission

• APs travel to the primary cortical area for poressing

step 4 sensory system

translation

step 5 sensory system

perception and attention

chemical senses

taste (gustation) and smell (olfaction)

How do we taste things?

1. food particles dissolve in liquid (saliva, ingested)

2. enter taste pores (central pore surrounded by sensory neurons)

3. bind to receptor, causes depolarization

4. allows us to differentiate between the tastes

How do we smell things?

We breathe in the chemicals in the air, the chemicals dissolve in our mucus, the stimulate the smell receptors that produce messages and the messages are sent to our brains to give us the scent of the object(perception)

Proprioception

The ability to tell where one's body is in space.

• our sense of body position

Somatosensation

The body senses, including body position, touch, skin temperature, and pain. -association with proprioception and interoception

vestibular sense

the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance

sensation of pain

Means by which body is made urgently aware of the presence of tissue damage

how do we experience touch

• Sensations begin as signals generated by touch receptors in your skin.

• They travel along sensory nerves made up of bundled fibers that connect to neurons in the spinal cord.

• Then signals move to the thalamus, which relays information to the rest of the brain

Pain receptors are called

Fast fibres register sharp, fast pain - Slow fibres register duller, more diffuse pain

auditory system

Responsible for hearing, balance, equilibrium, and communication skills

sensory organs

receive impulses from environment and relay impulses to brain including skin, tongue, nose, eyes, and ears

pitch perception

the aspect of hearing that allows us to tell how high or low a given tone is by its sound wavelength

2 theories of pitch perception

place theory and frequency theory

place theory of pitch perception

different portions of the basilar membrane are sensitive to sounds of different frequencies

frequency theory of pitch perception

nerve impulses sent to the brain match the frequency of the sound wave

visual system

Includes photoreceptors -light/dark and colors stem from different parts of the eye

• the part of the central nervous system that is required for visual perception - receiving, processing and interpreting visual information to build a representation of the visual environment.

cones

color vision and fine detail

Rods

retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond

bottom-up processing

the analysis of the smaller features to build up to a complete perception

top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

• uses models, ideas to interpret sensory information

Gestalt

an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Examples of Gestalt Principles

proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, symmetry, figure-ground

Paredolia

tendency to perceive meaningful images in meaningless/random visual pattern

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, understanding, remembering, and communicating

role of attention

involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events depending on our goals, past experience and areas of interes

role perception

an individual's view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation before the mind takes action

selective attention

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus at one time

Authomaticity

fast, effortless processing requiring little to no information

pre-attentive processing

the non conscious processing of stimuli in peripheral vision before the conscious mind starts to pay attention to any specific objects

attentive process

one that requires searching through the items in series

auditory attention

being able to focus on a single sound in the presence of many other sounds

3 types of learning

non associative, associative, observational

associative learning

learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).

two types of associative learning

classical conditioning and operant conditioning

Two types of nonassociative learning

habituation and sensitization

nonassociative learning

responding after repeated exposure to a single stimulus, or event

Habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation.

Sentization

increase in behavioural response after repeated exposure to a stimulus

observational learning

learning by observing others

contiguity

the tendency to perceive two things that happen close together in time as being related

contingency

a predictive relationship between two events such that the occurrence of one event predicts the probable occurrence of the other

stimulus generalization

the tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only similar to the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response

• ability to behave in a new situation in a way that has been learned in other similar situations.

stimulus discrimination

a learned ability to differentiate among similar products

• both classical and operant conditioning

shaping (operant conditioning)

The reinforcement of closer and closer approximations of a desired response.

Chaining (operant conditioning)

reinforcing combinations of learned behaviors that are the paired together form a complex behavior.

• An easy task for a normally intelligent individual but a complex, multi-step task for someone of below-average intelligence.

Malaptive Behavior

actions that prevent people from adapting, adjusting, or participating in different aspects of life

examples of malaptive behaviour

• Objects / "habits"

• Food (both approach and avoidance)

• Exercise regimes

• Hoarding

• Gambling

• Sex

drug addiction

the uncontrollable use of a drug to a point where it affect your brain and behaviour

motivated behavior

appetitive phrase; consummatory phrase

appetitive phase

-Characterized by person's interest in sexual activity

• nonspecific

consummatory phase

• direct interaction with the motivational stimulus

• behavior pattern that occurs in response to a stimulus and that achieves the satisfaction of a specific drive -specifc

Wanting in the brain

The subjective experience of needing or desiring something

"Liking" in the Brain

the subjective experience of a sensation as pleasurable

• endogenous opioid and oxytocin

how do we measure wanting?

• operant conditioning

• more dopamine in the synapse = change of behaviour

single injection of d-amphetamine

• increase release of dopamine

• Blocks reuptake of dopamine

when stimulated repeatedly, the DA system become sensitized

... so does behaviour

Why don't all durg encounters lead to repeated use?

Conditioned control of wanting and drug taking behaviour

• post surgical pain

• veteran

• casual experimentation -bar smokers

what happens when animals are given drugs in a specific place

• Increased initial response to the drug

• Enhanced sensitization to the drug

• strong , long lasting conditioned responses to that environment

Why do people relapse?

-Exposure to the environment of previous drug use -Taking the drug again (same or another) -Stress

Spontaneous Recovery

the reappearance of a learned response after extinction has occurred

observational study

-social learning

• modelling

• lmitating

Modelling

the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior

vicrarious learning

• way of learning that allows individuals to learn from the experience of others; rewarded or punished for performing an action

how do we measure the effects of context?

classical conditioning