Psychoactive Drugs and Learning Overview

Flashcards covering key concepts from the lecture on psychoactive drugs and learning.

Psychoactive Drugs

Any substance that alters mood, perception, awareness, or thought.

Tolerance

A decrease in responsivity to a drug, requiring larger doses to feel the same effect.

Withdrawal

Compensatory responses that occur after drug use is discontinued.

Compensatory Responses

Physiological reactions that oppose the effects of a drug as the body attempts to maintain homeostasis.

Conditioned Drug Responses

Tolerance for a drug influenced by familiarity of the drug setting; can lead to overdose in unfamiliar settings.

Depressants

Psychoactive drugs that decrease nervous system activity and can produce euphoria or reduce anxiety.

Stimulants

Psychoactive drugs that increase neural firing, arousal of the nervous system, BP, HR, and alertness.

Hallucinogens

Psychoactive drugs that produce sensory or perceptual distortions called hallucinations.

Reward Learning Pathway

A brain pathway activated by psychoactive drugs, linked to the experience of pleasure.

Learning

A lasting change as a result of practice, study, or experience, allowing adaptation to the environment.

Associative Learning

A change that results from experience where two or more stimuli become linked.

Non-associative Learning

Learning that does not involve forming associations between stimuli; involves repeated exposure to a single stimulus.

Habituation

A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.

Sensitization

An increase in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.

Classical Conditioning

Associating stimuli with each other, where the first stimulus can signal the arrival of the second.

Operant Conditioning

Associating responses with consequences to learn what outcomes follow specific actions.