UW Psych 202 Exam 2

What is a specialized cell that responds to a particular energy or substance in the internal or external environ, & converts this energy into a change in the electrical potential across its membrane?

receptor cell

What is the concept that each nerve input to the brain reports only a particular type of info?

labeled lines

What is transduction?

translation of an external stimulus into a neural signal

What is the external stimulus for touch?

mechanical pressure

External stimulus for taste and smell

chemical molecules

External stimulus for sound

vibrations of air molecules

External stimulus for sight

photons

What is the skin receptor cell type that detects vibration and pressure?

Pacinian corpuscle

What is a skin receptor cell type that detects light touch, responding especially to edges and isolated points on a surface?

Meissner's corpsucle

What is a skin receptor cell type that detects light touch, responding especially to changes in stimuli?

Merkel's disc

Where is the Pacinian corpuscle located?

innermost layer of skin

Which are more numerous, Meissner's corpuscles or Merkel's discs?

Meissner's corpsucles

What is a skin receptor cell type that detects stretching of the skin?

Ruffini corpsucle

What is an axon that terminates in the skin and has no specialized cell assoc w/ it. Detect pain and/or changes in temperature.

free nerve ending

What is a set of specialized receptors and neural mechanisms responsible for body sensations like touch and pain?

somatosensory system

What is the stimulus region and features that affect the activity of a cell in a sensory system?

receptive cell

What is the progressive loss of receptor sensitivity as stimulation is maintained?

adaptation

What is a relay station for most sensory systems?

thalamus

What is the condition in which stimuli in one modality evoke the involuntary experience of an additional sensation in another modality?

synesthesia

What is sensation?

detection of our environment by our bodies and brains

What is perception?

subjective experience of our environment

Thalamus routes info to ____ except in ____

sensory cortex; smell

Why don't our brains get senses confused?

labeled lines

____ of the pop have synesthesia

4%

People with synesthesia usually have ____ and pairings of senses are ____

better memories; made for life

Synesthesia results from ____ and is more common in ____

just 1 nucleotide difference; artists

What is amplitude/loudness/sound intensity measured in?

decibels

What is frequency/pitch measured in?

hertz/cycles per second

The part of the sensory world that stimulates a neuron is called its _________?

Receptive field

Frequency of sound waves roughly corresponds to our perception of ________?

pitch

Decibels are a measure of __________?

sound amplitude

What does it mean for a tone to be 50 Hz (Hertz)?

The sound wave cycles 50 times per second

An 18,000 Hz tone is likely to be coded closest to _______ of the cochlea?

base

The thalamic relay nucleus for the auditory system is the ________________ nucleus?

medial geniculate nucleus

Sound is transduced into a neural signal mechanically by which part of a hair cell?

Stereocilia and/or tip links

Name two ways the frequency of a tone can be coded by the auditory system

Place coding and temporal coding

The medial geniculate nucleus receives signals coming from what brain area?

inferior colliculus

How many semicircular canals does a person have?

six; three per ear

Provide three examples of cortical deafness

Amusia, auditory agnosia, auditory verbal agnosia

Which proprioceptive receptor detects changes in muscle length?

muscle spindles

These somatosensory receptors detect vibration or pressure.

pacinian corpuscles

These somatosensory receptors detect the stretching of the skin.

ruffini corpuscles

This refers to unspecialized cells whose axons terminate in the skin, and are involved in detecting painful stimuli or changes in temperature.

free nerve ending

Name the hormone that converts glycogen into glucose.

glucagon

Name four physiological hunger signals

Blood glucose (circulating nutrients), insulin (circulating hormones), stomach contractions, hypothalamic activity

This type of diabetes mellitus is characterized by a loss of sensitivity to insulin.

type II

_______ are created from surplus carbohydrates and used for long-term storage of energy.

lipids

Energy use for basic physiological processes such as regulating body temperature, restoring resting membrane potentials of nerve cells, and other normal cellular activity is referred to as _________ __________.

basal metabolism

Name three types of eating disorders.

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating

A graph of an auditory cell's sensitivity to a range of frequencies gives a visual representation of it's ______________.

tuning curve

Place these parts of the auditory system in the order that sound information travels:

Stereocilia, inferior colliculus, ossicles, pinna, basilar membrane, eardrum (tympanic membrane), MGN (medial geniculate nucleus), oval window, hair cells

Pinna, eardrum, ossicles, oval window, basilar membrane, hair cells, stereocilia, inferior colliculus, medial geniculate nucleus (MGN)

The flavor of your food is a combination of its _____ and ______.

taste and smell

Taste cells last roughly _______ before being replaced.

a. 24 hrs

b. 1 ½ - 2 weeks

c. 1 month

d. 1 year

B

If researchers magically (or scientifically) transplanted all of your taste receptor cells (TRCs) for the sour lemon taste onto the TRCs that are normally activated by bitter compounds, how would you perceive a bite of lemon? What about a sip of coffee?

Lemon would taste bitter, coffee would taste the same since those receptors didn't move.

A male rat catches the scent of a female rat and can tell that she's particularly fertile. What type of chemical is he sensing? What is he using to sense/perceive this information?

Pheromone; vomeronasal organ/system

An on-bipolar cell is _______ by light and ________ by glutamate. (Depolarized or hyperpolarized)

Depolarized; hyperpolarized

Myopia, more commonly known as nearsightedness, is generally caused by ______?

An elongated eyeball (images are in focus in front of the retina, not on it)

Your ____ muscles are responsible for the process of accommodation, which allows you to _____.

Ciliary muscles; adjust your lens's shape to bring objects at different distances into focus

In the visual system, what is the first cell type to generate an action potential?

Ganglion cells (photoreceptors and bipolar have graded responses)

After ganglion cells, describe the pathway that visual information takes to be processed.

Ganglion cells to optic nerve to optic chiasm to optic tract (same axons as optic nerve to lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN, in the thalamus) to striate cortex (primary visual cortex) to extrastriate cortex (association visual cortices)

If a patient with a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) is able to identify a cup of coffee on the table, but can't seem to pick it up, their doctor might suspect damage to what part of the brain?

Dorsal stream of the visual cortex (dorsal parietal cortex) - the "where" stream

In biopsych, "free running" refers to...

a. Some really nifty Parkour!

b. The behavioral changes that occur when you lesion a subject's SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus)

c. The timing of a subject's activity cycle when you remove light changes from the environment

C

A sharp decrease in hypocretin receptors in the brain might lead to __________ (sleep disorder).

narcolepsy

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) is caused by an absence of __________ in individuals with (XX/XY) chromosomes

Androgen receptors; XY

external part of the ear

pinna

What do the pinna do?

funnel sound waves into the second part of the external ear

the partition between the external ear and the middle ear

tympanic membrane or eardrum

How does the tympanic membrane work?

sound waves in the air strike tympanic membrane and cause it to vibrate with same frequency as the sound, making ossicles move too

3 small bones that transmit vibration across the middle ear, from the tympanic membrane to the oval window

ossicles

What are the three small bones that make up the ossicles?

incus; malleus; stapes

Because of how they are ____, the ossicles ____ and ____ the vibrations , ____ the _____ collected from the larger tympanic membrane onto the smaller ____. This is crucial for ____.

attached to eardrum; concentrate; amplify; oval window; converting vibrations in air into movements of fluid in inner ear

Latin for "hammer." Middle-ear bone that's connected to tympanic membrane.

malleus

Latin for "anvil." A middle-ear bone situated between malleus and stapes.

incus

Latin for "stirrup." A middle- ear bone that's connected to the oval window.

stapes

The cavity between the tympanic membrane and the cochlea.

middle ear

What 2 things does the middle ear consist of?

tympanic membrane; ossicles

The opening from the middle ear to the inner ear; special patch of membrane

oval window

The cochlea and vestibular apparatus make up ____

inner ear

a snail-shaped structure in the inner ear that contains the primary receptor cells for hearing

cochlea

What does the cochlea do?

converts vibrations from sound into neural activity

3 parallel canals in the cochlea coil

vestibular canal; middle canal; tympanic canal

membrane in the cochlea that contains principal structures involved in auditory transduction

basilar membrane

When the stapes ____ as a result of ____, it sets in motion ____ in the ____of the ____, which in turn cause the ____ to ____.

moves in and out; sound waves hitting the eardrum; waves or ripples; fluid; vestibular canal; basilar membrane; ripple

one of the receptor cells for hearing in the cochlea

hair cell

What do the hair cells do?

transduce movements of basilar membrane into electrical signals

2 types of hair cells

inner; outer

Compared to outer hair cells, inner hair cells are ____

positioned closer to central axis of the coiled cochlea

When sounds induce ____, the movement of the ____ relative to the ____ causes the ____ to ____. Even a tiny deflection of stereocilia is enough to produce a ____.

basilar membrane to ripple; hair cell bases; tectorial membrane; stereocilia; bend; large depolarization of hair cells

2 membranes of inner ear

basilar membrane; tectorial membrane

Air molecules push against ____, which pushes against ____, which push against ____, which _____ causing ____ to move, bumping up ____ which bump into ____.

eardrum; ossicles; oval window; vibrates in pattern of sound; basilar membrane; inner hair cells; tectorial membrane

Stereocilia move because they're ____ and when they ____, ____. When ____ are ____, _____ and ____ and ____.

sitting against a membrane; move; ion channels open; tip links; stretched; ion channels open; ions flow in; cell sends signal neurons understand

a relatively stiff hair that protrudes from a hair cell in the auditory or vestibular system

stereocilium

____ convey to the brain the APs that provide the perception of sounds; make up 95% of fibers leading to the brain

IHC afferents

lead from the brain to the IHCs - thru which the brain can control the responsiveness of IHCs

IHC efferents

thought to convey info to the brain about the mechanical state of the basilar membrane, but not the perception of the sounds themselves.

OHC afferents

lead from the brain to the OHCs, allowing brain to activate a remarkable property of the OHCs - changing their length in response to commands from the brain, thus controlling the stiffness of regions of the basilar membrane to sharpen its tuning

OHC efferents

a graph of the responses of a single auditory nerve fiber or neuron to sounds that vary in frequency and intensity

tuning curve

Each IHC afferent has a ___ of a ____ but will also respond to ____ if the ____.

maximum sensitivity to sound; particular frequency; neighboring frequencies; sound is loud enough

paired gray matter structures of the dorsal midbrain that process auditory info

inferior colliculi

The superior olivary nuclei pass info derived from both ears to the ____, which are the ____.

inferior colliculi; primary auditory centers of the midbrain