Behavioral Neuroscience-Exam 2

In the human cortex does dendritic growth occur mainly before or after birth?

after birth, postnatal (pruning)

Are factors(neurotrophic) needed to keep neurons alive? Do they stop apoptosis?

yes, and they prevent programmed cell death

Following the loss of a synaptic input to a neuron, what would sprout?

axon from a nearby adjacent neuron (collateral)

Which brain structures exhibit neurogenesis in adulthood?

the denate gyrus of the hippocampus

Which brain region maintains its volume and structure throughout adulthood?

piriform cortex

In adolescence and adulthood which brain region which is a white matter structure will not decrease?

corpus callosum

In what kind of interaction do cells become distinctive types of neurons?

cell differentiation

What is methylation and what does it do?

a chemical modification of DNA without changing the nucleotide sequence, genes are less likely to be expressed

What is the James Lange theory?

bodily response/autonomic reaction precedes emotional feeling

What is the Schachter-Singer experiment, and what was done in the study?

• idea that autonomic responses can intensify our emotions, but our cognitive analysis affects which emotion we experience 

• in the study, participant’s received epinephrine or placebos and were paired up with a playful or angry person

• discovered that emotional labels are attributed to sensations of physiological arousal, emotion we feel depends on cognitive systems 

What are the eight distinctive facial expressions that are part of the Ekman theory?

1. anger

2. sadness

3. happiness

4. fear

5. disgust

6. surprise

7. contempt

8. embarrassment

What theory says that facial expressions influence emotional experience?

facial feedback hypothesis

What two parts of our brain regions show reduced activity in response to romantic love?

posterior cingulate & amygdala

What is the high road, and how does it affect emotional processing?

projections through sensory cortex after the thalamus, signaling the hippocampus and affects cognitive abilities slower but consciously

What is the low road, and how does it affect emotional processing?

thalamus route that signals the amygdala and allowing automatic response to stimuli, bypasses conscious processing

What kind of feedback system is the HPA axis?

negative feedback system

What are the common pathological symptoms of prolonged stress?

fatigue, hypertension, ulcers, apathy, impaired disease resistance, and psychogenic dwarfism, suppression of ovulation, accelerated neural degeneration

What does the graph about the heritability of schizophrenia in family studies suggest? twins, first degree, etc.

more closer you are related to someone with schizophrenia, the greater the person’s chances of also developing it

• highest lifetime risk in monozygotic twins (50%)

• roughly 17% risk in dizygotic twins/siblings

What is a common movement disorder associated with a class of medication used to treat mental health conditions?

Tardive dyskinesia, occurs after prolonged drug treatment

• repetitive, involuntary movements

What is the main neurotransmitter associated with the PCP study, preventing it from acting normally?

acts as a NMDA receptor antagonist, prevents glutamate from acting normally

In people with depression what brain regions have increased activity and decreased activity?

• increased-prefrontal cortex(frontal lobes) and amygdala

• decreased-parietal/posterior temporal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex

CBT can be effective as SSRIs, but are they more effective when used together or alone?

more effective when they are used together

What are tricyclics and what do they do?

second-gen antidepressant, that inhibits reuptake of monamines(norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine)

Is the prevalence of mental illness greater in women or men?

women

What is postpartum depression, and how severe is it?

depression that immediately follows childbirth, 1 in 7 women show symptoms of depression

What is the effect of benzodiazepines on the GABAergic synapses?

bind to GABAa receptors and enhance GABA’s inhibitory actions, increasing neurotransmission in the brain

Which hormone do people with PTSD exhibit a long-term reduction?

cortisol

Which age group has the greatest prevalence of mental illness?

18-24, college adults

Schizophrenia and the hypofrontality hypothesis: What happens to the frontal lobes in people with schizophrenia?

decreased blood flow and underactive in the frontal and temporal lobe, and neurons have a reduced dendritic density

Schizophrenia is caused by an excess of what?

dopamine release or dopamine receptors

What is the percentage of young adults who experience depression?

19%

What is declarative memory?

explicit memory, facts you know that you can describe or tell others

What is nondeclarative memory?

procedural memory, things you know you can show by doing or performing 

What kind of memory is the delayed non-matching-to-sample task testing?

declarative memory, a test of object recognition

Which brain region did Patient KC damage?

left frontoparietal and parieto-occipital cortex

What is the difference between episodic memory and semantic memory?

• episodic: autobiographical memory, a particular incident or time/place

• semantic: generalized declarative memory, knowing the meaning of a word

What is your recollection of your personal experiences/memories called?

episodic memory

What is priming, and what type of memory it is?

a change in stimulus processing due to prior exposure to the stimulus, nondeclarative memory

People with damage to which brain region, have difficulty with skill learning (Tower of Hanoi)?

damage to the basal ganglia

What is operant conditioning?

• association is made between a behavior(instrumental response), and the consequences of the behavior(reward)

ex: positive reinforcement- giving a reward increases the likelihood of the behavior

During the memory stages, what would happen to consolidation if you prevent encoding?

consolidation cannot occur, there would be no memory trace

What are the memory stages?

encoding (iconic→short term)

consolidation (short term→long term)

retrieval (long term→short term)

Where are the place cells located?

the hippocampus

What are the basic functions of place cells?

• selectively encode spatial location

• activate when animals are in/move toward a particular location

• formation of a mental “cognitive map”

• contribute to spatial and episodic memory formation

Long-term potentiation: What is the neurotransmitter associated with activating the AMPA receptor?

glutamate