Lecture Notes Flashcards

Flashcards generated from lecture notes

What are efferent neurons?

Neurons that send signals from the central nervous system to the peripheral nervous system.

What are afferent neurons?

These neurons send signals from the sensory receptors to the central nervous system.

What is the somatic nervous system?

Includes your five senses and skeletal muscle movements, movements happen consciously and voluntarily.

What is the autonomic nervous system?

Controls involuntary activities.

What is the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system?

Mobilizes your body and gets it ready for action, increasing heart rate, dilating eyes, and increasing breathing.

What is the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system?

Relaxes the body, slows your heart rate, increases digestion, and helps you focus on saving and storing energy.

What are glial cells?

Provide structure, insulation, and communication, and waste transportation to the nervous system; they do not process information.

What are neurons?

The basic functional unit of the nervous system.

What is a reflex arc?

A nerve pathway that allows the body to respond to a stimulus without thinking.

What is action potential?

Occurs when a neuron fires and sends an impulse down the axon.

What is resting potential?

When a neuron is not sending a signal and has more negative ions on the inside than the outside.

What is permeability?

A trait where some ions can cross the membrane more easily than others.

What is repolarization?

The process that brings the neuron back to resting potential.

What is reuptake?

Process that involves taking excess neurotransmitters left in the synaptic gap, where the sending neuron reabsorbs the extra neurotransmitters.

What are excitatory neurotransmitters?

Increase the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential.

What are inhibitory neurotransmitters?

Decrease the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential.

What is myasthenia gravis?

An autoimmune disorder that affects communication between nerves and muscles, where antibodies block or destroy acetylcholine receptors, preventing muscle contraction.

What is multiple sclerosis?

Occurs when the myelin sheath is damaged, which disrupts the transmission of electrical signals.

What is the function of Acetylcholine?

Enables muscle action, learning, and helps with memory.

What is the function of Dopamine?

Helps with movement, learning, attention, and emotion.

What is the function of Serotonin?

Impacts an individual's hunger, sleep, arousal, and mood.

What is the function of Endorphins?

Helps with pain control and impacts an individual's pain tolerance.

What is the function of Epinephrine?

Helps with the body's response to high emotional situations and helps to form memories.

What is increase?

Agonist drugs the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter; antagonist drugs decrease the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter.

What are stimulants?

These drugs excite and promote neural activity, give an individual energy, reduce a person's appetite, and can cause them to become irritable.

What are depressants?

Drugs that reduce neural activity in an individual, cause drowsiness, muscle relaxation, lowered breathing, and if abused, possibly death.

What are hallucinogens?

These drugs cause an individual to sense things that are not actually there; reduce an individual's motivation and can lead to an individual to panic.

What is the brain stem?

Includes the medulla, the pons, and the midbrain; if severely damaged it will most likely result in death since it controls autonomic functions.

What is the medulla oblongata?

This helps with the regulation of a person's cardiovascular and respiratory systems and takes care of autonomic functions.

What is the hippocampus?

Helps us learn and form memories, but it is not where memories are stored.

What is the hypothalamus?

Help with keeping your body balanced and allow you to have homeostasis and controls your drives such as thirst, hunger, temperature, and sex.

What is the pituitary gland?

This is often referenced as the master gland because it produces and releases hormones that regulate many bodily functions and controls other endocrine glands throughout the body.

What is Broca's area?

Damage to this area causes the loss in the ability to produce language.

What is Wernicke's area?

Damage to this area results in loss the ability to create meaningful speech.

What is blindsight?

Phenomenon when there is damage to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe, were individuals appear to be blind in part of their visual field and cannot consciously see or respond to stimuli.

What is the vestibular sense?

When are you move your head, the fluid inside the semicircular canals move, causing the hair cells in the canals to bend, ultimately allowing you to maintain your balance.

What is kinesthesis?

Provides information about the position and movement of individual body parts.

What is frequency?

A measure of the number of waves per second of a brainwave.

What is REM sleep?

This part of sleep has brain waves that are similar to wakefulness, but the body is at it's most relaxed.

What is the restoration theory of sleep?

We sleep because we get tired from daily activities and we sleep to restore our energy and resources

What is Phantom Limb Sensation?

Phenomenon when an individual has lost a body part experiences pain were the body part they lost use to be.

What are hypnagogic sensations?

Is when an individual experiences sensations that you imagine are real that happen when you are in a light sleep.

What is REM sleep behavior disorder?

Is a condition where a person acts out their dreams during REM sleep.

What is sensation?

Is the process of detecting information from the environment.

What is sensory adaptation?

Happens when we have a stimulus that is continuous and doesn't change.

What is the difference threshold?

The minimun change between two stimuli that is needed to cause an individual to detect the change.

What is the Weber Fetchener Law?

The idea that for us to notice a difference between two stimuli, the two stimuli must differ by a constant percent not a constant amount.

What is synthesia?

A neurological condition where one sense is experienced through another.

What is accomodation?

The inability to change shape to focus light onto the retina allowing us to see objects clearly and different distances.

What is nearsightedness?

Means that you have lens focus the image in front of the retina.

What is farsightedness?

Have to lens focuses light behind the retina.

What is prosopagnosia?

Results from damage to the occipital and temporal lobes, where individuals lose the ability to recognize faces, even those of close friends and family.

What is the place theory of sound?

States that certain hair cells respond to certain frequencies.

What is the frequency theory of sound?

States that the frequency of the auditory nerves, impulses correspond directly to the frequency of the sound wave.

What is sensorineural deafness?

Is when the decline in the clarity loudness and the range of sounds, meaning you are no longer able to hear as you want to see.

What are phermones?

Chemical signals released by an individual that affect the behavior or physiology of other individuals.

What are proprioceptors?

Sensory receptors that are located in various muscles and tendons that allow for the brain to gain a better sense of position and movement of our limbs.