Biological Psychology 1650 UNT Exam 2 Review - Kelly

Lifestyle behaviors

health-defeating or promoting behaviors

Health-defeating behaviors

Habits like smoking and poor diet.

Health-promoting behaviors

behaviors that decrease the chance of illness, disease, or death

Adolescent death decline

Reduced deaths due to vaccines.

Illusion of invulnerability

Underestimating personal risk of harm

Optimism bias

Belief bad events happen to others but not to self

Biopsychosocial model precursor

Engel’s 1977 Science article and the acknowledgment that biological factors alone could not account for all illness

Placebo effect

Positive outcomes from non-active treatments

Where are placebo effects most often observed?

mood disorders and diseases with a mental component

Nocebo effect

unwelcome negative effects of a placebo

Active placebo

mimics some of the noticeable physiological characteristics of the drug without the brain effects that the researcher is interested in

Yellow pill effectiveness

Yellow pills perceived as most effective

Cost perception

Higher prices lead to higher perceived effectiveness

Endorphins

Natural pain relievers released during stress

Placebo pain cream study

MRI shows endorphin release with placebo pain cream

Sham surgeries

Fake surgeries yield similar recovery results

Classical conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Three-stage stress response: alarm, resistance, exhaustion

What stage of the GAS did Selye get wrong?

exhaustion

alarm stage

the body and mind become very alert in response to stressors

resistance / adaptation stage

stress response and return to homeostasis

exhaustion stage

weakened resistance and possible deterioration

Sympathetic nervous system

Activates fight or flight response; originates in brain and goes through the spine, organs, blood vessels, and sweat glands

Norepinephrine (NE)

primary neurotransmitter in the sympathetic nervous system

Prefrontal cortex

shut off during the stress response

Why is the prefrontal cortex shut off during the stress response?

to quicken the fight or flight response

amygdala

heightened operation during stress response

Why is the amygdala heightened during the stress response?

it is responsible for fear memories, so its heightened state helps us remember what is scary and to be avoided in the future

Cortisol

Primary stress hormone, peaks about 20 MINUTES AFTER stress and starts to become immunosuppressant

Glucagon

Hormone breaking down glucose for energy

Prolactin

Hormone that suppresses reproduction

Stress appraisal

Perception of stress as threat or challenge

challenge appraisal

bad but doable

threat appraisal

harm or loss is anticipated

what happens when stress is viewed as a challenge?

cortisol goes up in males and goes down in females

what happens when stress is viewed as a threat?

males give up before it even starts and cortisol goes down in females

what hormone modifies the female stress response?

oxytocin

what is the variant of fight or flight observed in females as a result of evolution?

tend-or-befriend

Hyperphasia

Overeating triggered by stress; need to refuel in a fight or flight response

Visceral fat

Abdominal fat linked to health risks; more sensitive to cortisol

Does exercise or diet (caloric restriction) have a larger influence on weight loss?

diet; exercise helps us get in shape while losing weight

what do we want after we work out

carbs and sugars; these treats normally have more calories than we burned while working out

does muscle or fat weigh more

muscle

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)

Study of interactions between psychology and immune system

ability to differentiate self from non-self and to exhibit specificity and memory

What are the immune system's two major characteristics?

differentiate between self and non-self application

People who have gotten organ donations have to be on immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives because their bodies try to kill the donor organ

specificity

immune cells create antibodies after you have gotten an infection or virus; these antibodies only protect against the virus they were formed for

antigen

substance that triggers an immune response

memory cells

immune cells that remember what they were produced to protect against and react quickly when that antigen comes back

60 years

how long do scientists think memory cells can last?

T-cells

Immune cells that help fight infections

helper t-cells

help almost every other immune cell you have

cytotoxic t-cells

kill infected body cells and cancer cells

B-cells

Produce antibodies against specific antigens

Macrophage

First responders to pathogens in the body

Taste aversion

Developing dislike for foods after negative experience

can you condition an immune response?

yes

1 multiple choice option

immune system also has receptors for and produces:

epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and cortisol

who did the rat experiment?

Ader

what hormone is neurotoxic?

cortisol

3 multiple choice options

Clinical cold

Infection while showing symptoms

what was the only factor that mattered in the cold virus study?

stress

3 multiple choice options

___ stress caused a high infection rate, and vice versa

high

1 multiple choice option

what two types of stress were important in the study

interpersonal and workplace

Instrumental social support

Help with tasks affected by illness

Cancer rejection study

Rats with control box had higher tumor rejection

Cortisol in brain

Enhances immune function in central nervous system

Stress and infection

Higher stress correlates with increased infection rates

Autoimmune diseases

Conditions where immune system attacks the body

what is the main cure for autoimmune disease?

immunosuppressant

3 multiple choice options

olfactory

relating to the sense of smell

What sense do humans rely on the most?

sight

1 multiple choice option

what sense do dogs rely on the most?

smell

3 multiple choice options

transduction

when sensory information is turned into neural activity

sensory threshold

minimal amount of sensory information required for our senses to register it

absolute threshold

point at which a sense can be detected 50% of the time

human vision absolute threshold

candle flame at 30 miles away

3 multiple choice options

Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

the smallest change in the intensity of a stimulus that we can detect

signal detection

this theory predicts how and in what circumstances we can detect a stimulus; assumes there is no single threshold

feature positive effect

We detect signals, rather than a lack of signal; study designed to observe signal detection

bottom up processing

the analysis of the smaller features to build up to a complete perception

top down processing

perceiving the world around us by drawing from what we already know to interpret new information

do we start out with a lot more or a lot less neurons than we need?

a lot more

1 multiple choice option

Neural Darwinism

only the best neurons survive, so we are born with the fittest and strongest neurons

what is the pruning of the extra neurons called?

programmed cell death

what phenomenon do scientists think is caused when neurons are not pruned properly?

synesthesia

synesthesia

stimulation of one sense --> involuntary response from another sense

graphemes synesthesia

seeing colors in numbers and letters; yellow C's and Red A's

do brain scans show differences in people with synesthesia?

no

1 multiple choice option

what sense do we know the most about?

vision

where are visual sensory neurons located?

on the retina at the back of our eyes

what are rods responsible for?

vision in dim light and detecting motion

what are cones responsible for?

color vision and most everything else

what forms the optic nerve?

axons of retinal cells

Where do the optic nerves exit the eye?

the blind spot

where do the optic nerves cross over?

optic chiasm

what crosses over at the optic chiasm?

half of visual information from each eye; this is important for contralateral control

trichromatic theory

argues that we have 3 different types of cones

opponent processing theory

the theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision; explains negative after-images

retinex theory

developed to discover color constancy; brain subtracts primary lighting