Bio Psych Exam 4

1. Dissociative Thinking
2. Auditory Hallucinations
3. Personalized Delusions
4. Changes in Emotion

Core symptoms of schizophrenia

Nature: higher incidence among biological relatives
Nurture: environmental influences
Both: developmental difficulties (low birth weight and impaired motor coordination)

Nature vs nurture regarding schizophrenia

Older fathers are more likely to have a child with schizophrenia

Role of paternal age in schizophrenia

1. Enlarged cerebral ventricles (especially lateral ventricles)
2. Smaller hippocampus and amygdala
3. Thicker corpus callosum with altered function

Differences in brain structures in people with schizophrenia

Lobotomies

Surgeries that detach the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain to treat schizophrenia

Hypofrontality Hypothesis

Theory for the development of schizophrenia that suggests that schizophrenia may be caused by under-activation of the frontal lobes

Dopamine Hypothesis

Theory for the development of schizophrenia that states that schizophrenia results from excess synaptic dopamine or dopamine receptors

Glutamate Hypothesis

Theory for the development of schizophrenia that suggests that schizophrenia is caused by under-activation of glutamate receptors

Bipolar Disorder

Disorder characterized by periods of depression alternating with expansive mood or mania

Cyclothymia

A milder form of bipolar disorder where patients cycle between dysthymia and hypomania

Lithium

Mood-stabilizing drug used to treat bipolar disorder; interacts with the circadian clock

Depression

Most prevalent mood disorder

1. Unhappy mood
2. Loss of interests
3. Low energy and appetite
4. Difficulty concentrating
5. Restless agitation

Symptoms of depression

1. Increased blood flow in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala
2. Decreased blood flow in the parietal and posterior temporal cortex and anterior cingulate

PET scans show these blood flow patterns in people with depression

1. Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
2. Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors
3. Tricyclics
4. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors
5. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)
6. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Treatments for depression

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Disorder where unpleasant memories repeatedly plague the victim

1. Decreased volume in the right hippocampus
2. Long term reduction in cortisol levels
3. Flashbacks

Symptoms of PTSD

Fear Conditioning

Learning in which fear is associated with a previously neutral stimulus; involves the amygdala

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Disorder marked by recurring repetitive acts that are carried out without rhyme, reason, or the ability to stop

1. Routine acts become compulsions
2. Recurrent thoughts become obsessions
3. Increased metabolic rates in orbitofrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and caudate nuclei

Symptoms of OCD

1. Suffered from severe epilepsy
2. Had anterior temporal lobes on both sides, amygdala, hippocampus, and some cortex removed
3. Had severe anterograde amnesia
4. able to improve motor skills with practice but could not remember performing them

H.M. (Henry Molaison)

1. Profound anterograde amnesia
2. Damage to the thalamus and hypothalamus
3. Loss of connections to the hippocampus, dorsomedial thalamus, and both mammillary bodies

N.A.

Cannot retrieve episodic memory due to damage to the cortex and severe shrinkage of the hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex

K.C.

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memories formed before onset of amnesia and is not uncommon after brain trauma

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new memories after onset of a disorder

Recollection

Retrieval that involves the hippocampus

Familiarity

Retrieval that involves the perirhinal cortex

Korsakoff's Syndrome

Memory deficiency caused by a lack of thiamine; patients often confabulate

Confabulate

Filling in a gap in memory with a falsification that the person accepts as true

Sensory Memory

Holds brief memories in sensory buffers that only last a few seconds

Short-Term Memory (Working Memory)

Holds memory for up to 30 seconds or throughout rehearsal

Long Term Memory

Holds memory for days to years

Declarative Memory

Memory that deals with facts and information acquired through learning that can be stated or described

Episodic Memory

Type of declarative memory that involves detailed autobiographical memory

Semantic Memory

Type of declarative memory that involves generalized memory

Nondeclarative Memory

Procedural memory that deals with shown performance rather than conscious recollection

Skill Learning

Type of nondeclarative memory that involves learning to perform a task requiring motor coordination

Priming

Type of nondeclarative memory that involves a change in stimulus processing due to prior exposure to the stimulus

Associative Learning

Type of nondeclarative memory that involves the association of two stimuli or of a stimulus and a response

Primacy Effect

The better recall for items at the beginning of a list

Recency Effect

The better recall for items at the end of a list

Encoding

Process where sensory information is passed into short-term memory

Consolidation

Process where short-term memory information is transferred into long-term storage

Retrieval

Process where stored information is used

1. Treatments that block chemicals acting on the basolateral amygdala
2. Propranalol

Treatment for PTSD

1. Increased neurotransmitter release and/or a greater effect due to changes in neurotransmitter-receptor interactions
2. Structural changes that provide long-term storage
3. Synaptic reorganization as a result of training

Synaptic changes as a result of learning

1. Heavier, thicker cortex
2. Enhanced cholinergic activity
3. More dendritic branches with more dendritic spines

Lab animals housed in enriched conditions developed...

Aplysia

Used to study plastic synaptic changes in neural circuits

1. Fewer nerve cells
2. Can create detailed circuit maps for particular behaviors
3. Little variation between individuals
4. Habituation is seen in Aplysia

Advantages of working with Aplysia

Habituation

A decreased response to repeated presentations of a stimulus

Long Term Potentiation (LTP)

A stable and enduring increase in the effectiveness of synapses

Time course of LTP is similar to that of memory formation

Correlational observations that are evidence that LTP may be one part of memory formation

Pharmacological treatments that block LTP impair learning

Somatic intervention experiments that are evidence that LTP may be one part of memory formation

Training an animal in a memory task can induce LTP

Behavioral intervention experiments that are evidence that LTP may be one part of memory formation

Ampakines

Glutamate receptors that improve LTP in the hippocampus

Lateralization

Means that the cerebral hemispheres are specialized for different functions

Split-Brain Individuals

People who have hemispheres that are disconnected due to surgical severing of the corpus callosum to alleviate seizures

Right Ear Advantage

The idea that right-handed people identify verbal stimuli delivered to the right ear more accurately than verbal stimuli delivered to the left; only evident in simultaneous presentations and is restricted to consonants

Tachistoscope Test

Test that measures visual perception of linguistic stimuli

1. The left hemisphere shows better recognition of words and letters
2. The right hemisphere shows better recognition of faces and geometric forms

Results of the tachistoscope test

Wada Test

Test that determines involvement of hemispheres in language by anesthetizing each hemisphere separately using sodium amytal

Prosopagnosia

Face blindness; people fail to recognize familiar faces, including their own; can be caused by bilateral damage to the fusiform gyrus

Acquired Prosopagnosia

Face blindness that results from brain damage

Congenital Prosopagnosia

Lifelong face blindness not due to brain damage

Aphasia

An impairment in language ability caused by brain injury, usually to the left hemisphere

Paraphasia

Impairment in language ability that involves insertion of incorrect sounds or words

Nonfluent Aphasia (Broca's Aphasia)

Impairment in language ability that is characterized by difficulty producing speech but good comprehension; result of damage to Broca's Area (speech production)

Fluent Aphasia (Wernicke's Aphasia)

Impairment in language ability that involves complex verbal output with many paraphasias that make speech unintelligible

Global Aphasia

Impairment in language ability that involves the total or near-total loss of the ability to understand and produce language; results from large left-hemisphere lesions

Conduction Aphasia

Impairment in the ability to correctly repeat words that are heard

Connectionist Model of Aphasia

Attributes language deficits to disconnections between regions of the brain's language network

Sensitive Period

Time when an organism can be permanently altered by a particular experience or treatment

Dyslexia

Reading disorder attributed to brain impairment

Acquired Dyslexia

Reading disorder that can occur in adults after injury to the left hemisphere

Deep Dyslexia

An acquired dyslexia in which a person reads a word as another semantically related word

Surface Dyslexia

Acquired dyslexia in which the person attends only to the fine details of reading (which letter makes which sound)

Hemispherectomy

Surgery that removes the malfunctioning brain tissue and saves the life of the child but also produces complete paralysis of one side, speech loss, and visual impairments