Social Behavior, Neuropsychopharmacology, Mood Disorders, Attention, Emotion, Learning & Memory

Flashcards covering social behavior, mental disorders, aggression, neurotransmitters, drug actions, emotion, attention, and memory, based on lecture notes.

Social Anhedonia

Inability to experience pleasure from social interactions, often seen in schizophrenia.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Can lead to hypersociability, such as in Williams-Beuren Syndrome.

Aggression

Behavior intended to cause pain or harm, possibly with an evolutionary basis.

Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH)

Small nucleus in the hypothalamus involved in triggering aggressive behavior; motivational and action phases are separately controlled.

Psychopathy

Condition characterized by extreme aggression, often without remorse, and linked to thinning of the cortex in frontal areas.

Oxytocin

Synthesized in the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus; implicated in milk-letdown reflex and maintenance of pair bonds.

V1aR

Promotes monogamy in prairie voles (Nair and Young, 2006).

Social Amnesia

Observed in oxytocin knockout mice, where they continue to investigate a mouse each time it's presented.

Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)

Injection of oxytocin into the VTA reduces the number of times hamsters enter a social chamber, increasing social reward value.

Enterococcus faecalis

An antibiotic that contributes to the drive to seek out social contact (Wei et al., 2021).

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC)

Activation increases during adolescence when teens think about or view pictures of their friends.

Prelimbic Cortex (PrL)

A portion of the mPFC; leader rats had much higher activation of the PrL (Conde-Moro et al., 2024).

Psychoactive Drug

Any non-food chemical substance that can alter an organism’s behavior or physiology.

Neuropsychopharmacology

Interdisciplinary field combining neuroscience with psychopharmacology to study the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the effects of drugs on mood, cognition, and behavior.

Bioavailability

Refers to how much of the drug reaches the circulatory system.

Prodrugs

Drugs that are inactive until metabolized (e.g., codeine to morphine).

Half-life

The time it takes for a drug’s blood concentration to fall to 50% of its starting value.

Ligand

A molecule that binds to a receptor’s binding site.

Agonists

Activate the receptor.

Antagonists

Block activation of the receptor by preventing its agonist ligands from binding.

Inverse Agonists

Turn off constitutively active receptors, which are always active even without ligand binding.

Allosteric Modulators

Regulate receptor activity without interacting with the binding site; can be positive or negative.

Treatment-Resistant Depression

Occurs when people don’t respond to two or more different antidepressants.

Mesolimbic Pathway

Dopamine cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) project to the nucleus accumbens (NAc; mesolimbic) and to the prefrontal cortex (PFC; mesocortical).

Renarcotization

Can occur if the opioid out-competes naloxone, resulting in a second overdose.

Addiction

Substance use disorder (SUD) classified by uncontrolled or hazardous substance use despite negative outcomes.

Drug Dependence

Physical and/or psychological state wherein drug use is necessary to avoid withdrawal; interrelated with tolerance but not necessarily indicative of addiction.

Papez Circuit

Crucial for emotion generation and regulation, involving thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, insular cortex, OFC, and ACC.

Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

Used by psychologists to diagnose mental disorders.

Anhedonia

Not enjoying things you used to like; associated with depression.

State Anxiety

Reflects the current situation.

Trait Anxiety

Reflects a person’s more permanent tendency.

Obsessions

Persistent, intrusive, or inappropriate thoughts that cause anxiety.

Compulsions

Repetitive acts that the individual feels compelled or driven to perform.

Limbic Leucotomy

An early treatment for OCD and other anxiety disorders; surgeons make bilateral lesions to parts of the ACC and lower medial OFC.

Methylphenidate (Ritalin)

Blocks dopamine and norepinephrine transporters, increasing catecholamine transmission, often prescribed for ADHD.

Inhibitory Control

Suppressing unhelpful thoughts or actions.

Stimulus (psychology)

A thing or event that evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue.

Arousal

General state of readiness or alertness, influenced by factors like sleep, interest, and energy levels.

Vigilance

Ability to maintain focus on specific information over time; it varies across tasks and individuals.

Selective Attention

The process of choosing which information to focus on, given the constant flood of sensory input.

Endogenous Attention

Intentionally (consciously) shifting attention from one thing to another (top-down process).

Exogenous Attention

When a stimulus automatically captures our attention (bottom-up attentional control).

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to notice obvious things in plain sight when attention is occupied elsewhere.

Default Mode Network (DMN)

Helps tune out the outside world for internally-directed cognitive processes like daydreaming.

Dorsal Attentional Network (DAN)

Responsible for endogenous shifts in attention, especially in goal-directed behavior.

Ventral Attentional Network (VAN)

Responsible for exogenous shifts in attention, particularly when responding to novel or salient stimuli.

Executive Functions

Processes that allow us to plan and achieve goals, maintain or shift focus, and prevent impulsive or inappropriate actions.

Cannon-Bard Theory

Implies that the conscious feeling of emotion and the physiological response to the stimulus are generated simultaneously.

Constructionist Theories of Emotion

Believes the memories representing our previous encounters play an important role in generating emotions.

Appraisal Theories of Emotion

Emotional reactions are not driven by the external stimuli we encounter, but rather how we subjectively interpret (==appraise) them.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory

Suggests we first experience arousal and then make a cognitive appraisal.

The James-Lange Theory

Suggests that the experience of emotion arises after our body has perceived and physiologically responded to external stimuli.

Urbach-Wiethe’s disease

Is a rare disorder that causes gradual bilateral destruction of the amygdala.

Kluver-Bucy syndrome

The range of behavioral deficits associated with bilateral temporal lobe surgery (including the removal of the Papez circuit regions).

Memory

The ability to store and retrieve information.

Sensory Memory

The shortest duration memories; Iconic (visual information) , Haptic (somatosensory information), Echoic (auditory information).

Echoic

Auditory information.

Haptic

Somatosensory information.

Iconic

Visual information.

Associative Learning

Classical conditioning (e.g., Pavlov’s dogs) and operant conditioning (e.g., rat lever pressing for food).

Consolidation

Information can then be encoded into long-term memory through the process of consolidation.

Priming

Exposure to a stimulus biases future thought/behavior (usually unconsciously).

Anterograde Amnesia

Difficulty forming new memories beginning at the onset of a disorder.

Retrograde Amnesia

Difficulty retrieving memories formed before the onset of amnesia.

LTP

Long-Term Potentiation; a higher level of activity persisted for at least 6 hours!

LTD

Long-Term Depression; is associated with the removal of AMPA receptors from the synapse when there are very low levels of stimulation.