PSYC 1650 Exam 2: Stress Psychology, Health, PNI, and Sensation & Perception

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering health psychology, stress physiology, psychoneuroimmunology, cardiovascular dynamics, and sensory perception concepts from the provided notes.

Germ Theory

The historical medical view assuming all illnesses were caused purely by bacterial infection, which has since been expanded by models incorporating psychological, behavioral, and lifestyle factors.

Health Psychology

A field of study focused on how biological, psychological, and lifestyle factors influence health, wellness, and disease, emerging because major modern causes of death are lifestyle-related.

Health-Promoting Behaviors

Positive lifestyle choices that enhance physical health and longevity, including maintaining a good diet, exercising regularly, and getting adequate sleep.

Health-Defeating Behaviors

Harmful lifestyle habits that increase disease risk, such as smoking, sleep deprivation, and poor diet.

Illusion of Invulnerability

A cognitive bias in which an individual underestimates their personal probability of experiencing negative events or illnesses.

Optimism Bias

A cognitive bias where a person acknowledges that bad things happen to others but assumes good things will happen to oneself.

Biopsychosocial Model

An integrative model of health proposed by George Engel (1977) stating that biological, psychological, and social factors all contribute to health and illness.

Placebo Effect

A measurable positive physical or psychological outcome resulting from an individual's expectation of treatment benefit, even when given an inactive substance or sham procedure.

Nocebo Effect

The occurrence of adverse side effects or negative symptoms resulting from an inert substance or sham treatment due to negative expectations.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Hans Selye's model describing the physiological response to prolonged stress across three stages: Alarm, Resistance/Adaptation, and Exhaustion.

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

The branch of the peripheral nervous system regulating involuntary functions, split into the sympathetic system (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic system (rest-and-digest).

Neurohormones

Chemical messengers secreted directly from endocrine glands into the bloodstream.

Neurotransmitters

Chemical messengers released by neurons across synaptic gaps to communicate with adjacent target cells.

Cortisol

The primary steroid stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands that enhances immune function during acute stress but suppresses immunity and elevates blood pressure under chronic stress.

Challenge Appraisal

Evaluating a stressor as a manageable task ("This is awful, I can do it"), leading to a healthier physiological and cortisol response.

Threat Appraisal

Evaluating a stressor as unmanageable ("This is awful, I can't do it"), which leads to elevated distress or physiological shutdown.

Tend-and-Befriend

A female-typical stress response pattern conceptualized by Shelley Taylor, mediated by oxytocin, where individuals seek social support and protect young under stress.

Fight or Flight

A male-typical stress response driven by higher testosterone levels disposed toward physical confrontation, social withdrawal, or solitude.

Atria

The upper receiving chambers of the heart; the right atrium receives deoxygenated blood from the body, and the left atrium receives oxygenated blood from the lungs.

Ventricles

The lower pumping chambers of the heart; the right ventricle pumps deoxygenated blood to the lungs, and the left ventricle pumps oxygenated blood into systemic circulation.

Systole

The peak force exerted against blood vessel walls when blood is pumped out during ventricular contraction.

Diastole

The resting pressure exerted against blood vessel walls when the heart refills between contractions.

Hypertension

Chronically elevated high blood pressure, serving as the foundational step in cardiovascular disease.

Points of Bifurcation

Y-shaped branch points where blood vessels divide, making them prime locations for micro-tears and inflammatory plaque formation under chronic high blood pressure.

Left Ventricular Hypertrophy (LVH)

Pathological enlargement and muscular thickening of the heart's left ventricle caused by chronic hypertension; the single strongest predictor of cardiovascular death.

Atherosclerotic Plaque

A buildup of cholesterol, platelets, foam cells, and inflammatory fluids at vascular injury sites that narrows blood vessel passages.

C-Reactive Protein (CRP)

An inflammatory protein produced by the liver in response to tissue damage; serves as a superior predictor of cardiovascular disease compared to cholesterol.

Thrombus

A blood clot in the vascular system that can block arterial flow, causing a heart attack if located in coronary arteries or a stroke if located in cerebral vessels.

Angina Pectoris

Severe chest pain resulting from temporary ischemia or reduced blood flow to the heart muscle.

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)

The interdisciplinary field studying the complex, bidirectional communications between psychological factors, the central nervous system, and the immune system.

Helper T Cells

White blood cells that coordinate immune responses by releasing chemical signals and enabling B cells to produce antibodies.

Cytotoxic T Cells

Immune T cells specialized in targeting and destroying virally infected cells and altered cancerous cells.

Macrophages

Phagocytic immune cells that destroy foreign antigens by engulfing them and present antigen fragments to T and B cells.

Robert Ader

The behavioral psychologist who founded modern PNI by demonstrating classical conditioning of immunosuppression in rats using sugar water paired with Cytoxan.

Sheldon Cohen's Cold Study

A landmark quarantine study in London showing that self-reported psychological stress directly predicted clinical infection rates when exposed to cold viruses.

Transduction

The process by which biological sensory receptors convert physical energy from environmental stimuli into electrical neural impulses.

Sensory Threshold

The minimum level of physical stimulation required to trigger an action potential in a sensory neuron.

Absolute Threshold

The minimum intensity of a stimulus required for an organism to detect it $50\%$ of the time.

Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

The smallest detectable difference or change between two physical stimuli.

Habituation

A progressive decrease in behavioral or sensory responsiveness to a continuous, unchanging stimulus over time.

Feature Positive Effect (FPE)

The perceptual learning principle establishing that organisms detect and learn signals defined by the presence of a feature far more easily than signals defined by an absence.

Bottom-Up Processing

Data-driven sensory processing that begins at sensory receptors and builds upward to complex neural perception without reliance on prior expectations.

Top-Down Processing

Conceptually driven perception guided by higher-level expectations, prior knowledge, perceptual sets, and contextual clues.

Apoptosis

Programmed cell death during neural development that prunes weaker or unused neuronal connections.

Synesthesia

A neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second pathway.

Grapheme-Color Synesthesia

A form of synesthesia where numbers or letters automatically evoke specific, consistent color perceptions.

Rods

Retinal photoreceptor cells specialized for peripheral vision, movement detection, and seeing in low-light conditions.

Cones

Retinal photoreceptors concentrated in the fovea responsible for high-acuity detail vision and color perception in bright light.

Optic Chiasm

The X-shaped anatomical structure where optic nerve fibers from the nasal half of each retina cross to the opposite cerebral hemisphere.

Trichromatic Theory

The theory of color vision stating that color perception derives from the relative response rates of three distinct types of retinal cones.

Opponent-Process Theory

The theory proposing that color vision is processed by paired oppositional channels (red-green, blue-yellow), explaining visual afterimages.

Retinex Theory

A visual processing theory explaining color constancy by showing that the brain compares and subtracts ambient light across a scene.

Conductive Hearing Loss

Hearing loss caused by mechanical blockages or structural problems in the outer or middle ear, which are often medically or surgically fixable.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Permanent hearing loss caused by irreversible damage to inner ear hair cells or the auditory nerve.

Anosmia

The partial or complete loss of the sense of smell.

Kinesthetic Sense

The somatic sense tracking body posture and movement via proprioceptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints.

Vestibular Sense

The sensory system providing balance and spatial orientation, mediated by fluid-filled semicircular canals in the inner ear.

Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA)

A rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder causing complete insensitivity to pain, inability to feel temperature extremes, and inability to sweat.

A-Delta Fibers

Myelinated nerve fibers that rapidly transmit fast, sharp pain signals at speeds of $12\text{--}30\,\text{m/s}$.

C Fibers

Unmyelinated nerve fibers that slowly transmit dull, aching pain signals at speeds of $0.5\text{--}2\,\text{m/s}$.

Substance P

A neurotransmitter that conducts pain impulses up the spinal cord to the brain, connecting to the amygdala to process emotional responses to pain.

Endorphins

Endogenous opioid neurotransmitters released by the central nervous system that bind to opioid receptors to inhibit pain signaling.

Figure-Ground Perception

A Gestalt perceptual principle where visual scenes are automatically parsed into a primary object of focus (figure) standing out from a background (ground).

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive sensory information in a specific way based on expectations, context, and prior learning.