Biopsychology - studies

Taylor (2000) (Fight or Flight)

Females are more likely to ‘tend and befriend’. This involves protecting themselves and their young through nurturing behaviours and forming protective with other women. Women may have a completely different way of coping with stress as their responses in the context of a primary caregiver.

Von Dawans et al (2012) (Fight or Flight)

Challenges the view that men respond with fight or flight, whereas women tend and befriend. Acute stress can lead to greater co-operative and friendly behaviour, even in men. Could explain the connection that happened after 9/11.

Petersen et al (1988) (Localisation/lateralisation)

• Used brain scans

• Wernicke’s area was active during a listening task

• Broca’s area was active during a reading task.

Lashley (1950) (Localisation/lateralisation)

• Intact areas of the cortex could take over cognitive functions following injury

• Studied rats ability to learn a maze and found that basic motor and sensory functions were localised, but that higher mental functions were not

• Deliberate damage to the rat’s cortex was determined by the extent of the damage

• The more cortex he removed, the more the rats ability to learn the maze was affected

Aphasia studies (Localisation/lateralisation)

• Broca’s aphasia is an impaired ability produce language, produced by damage to Broca’s area.

• Wernicke’s apahsia is an impaired ability to understand language, result of damage to Wernicke’s area.

Sperry (Localisation/lateralisation)

• Split brain research

• Cut corpus callposum in epileptic patients

• Picture of an object was shown to patient’s right visual field, the patient could easily describe what was seen

• Same object was shown to the left visual field, the patient could not describe what was seen

Kemperman (1998) (Plasticity)

• Rats housed in a complex environment showed an increase in neurons in the hippocampus

Maguire et al (2000) (Plasticity)

• Brains of London taxi drivers found significantly more volume of grey matter in the hippocampus

Ballantyne et al (2008) (Plasticity)

• More plasticity for recovery after a stroke in infancy and childhood than in adulthood

Schneider (2014) (Plasticity)

• Patients with the equivalent of a college education are 7 times more likely than those who didn’t finish high school to be disability-free one year after brain injury

Siffre (1975) (Circadian Rhythms)

• Spent 6 months inside a cave

• No zeitgebers such as natural light or time

• No idea what time it was

• When he was awake, researchers put the lights on and when he went to bed, they turned the lights off

• Sleep/waking cycle was erratic at first but settled into a fairly regular cycle of about 25 hours

• He emrged on the 179th day, it was only his 151st ‘day’

Morgan (1995) (Circadian Rhythms

• Studies of hamsters

• Established circadian rhythms

• Then removed their SCN

• They still ate, slept etc. But their circadian rhythms disappeared.

• Transplanted SCN tissue from hamster foetuses, and found that circadian rhythms re-established

Miles et al (1977) (Circadian Rhythms)

• Man blind from birth (lacking zeitgeber of light) had a circadian rhythm of 24.9 hours which he found difficult to modify

• He had to take stimulants and sedatives in order to get his biological rhythm in time within a 24 hour day

Russell et al (1980) (Circadian Rhythms)

• Applied the pheromones of one women to a group of 5 women

• A swab was taken from the donor’s armpits daily and the pads were rubbed on to the upper lips of the wpmen

• 4/5 of the women had menstrual cycle that had synchronized to within a day of the odour donor

Dement et al (Circadian Rhythms)

• Participant wired up to Polysomnograph

• Participants spends several nights in the sleep lab

• 9 participants were studied for up to 61 nights

• The mean time of a NREM/REM cycle was 92 minutes