Unit 1B
Biological Psychology: The study of how biological processes, particularly in the brain and nervous system, influence behavior and mental processes.
Biopsychosocial Approach: An approach that considers biological, psychological, and social factors in understanding health, illness, and behavior.
Levels of Analysis: Different perspectives, from biological to social-cultural, used to understand behavior and mental processes.
Brain Plasticity (Neuroplasticity): The brain’s ability to reorganize and form new neural connections in response to learning or injury.
EEG (Electroencephalography): A technique that records electrical activity of the brain to study brain function.
MEG (Magnetoencephalography): A brain-imaging technique that measures magnetic fields from the brain’s electrical activity.
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging): A technique that uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce detailed images of the brain’s structure.
CT (Computed Tomography) Scan: A series of X-ray images that provides cross-sectional views of body tissues, including the brain.
PET (Positron Emission Tomography): An imaging technique that shows active brain areas by detecting radioactive tracers.
fMRI (Functional MRI): An imaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.
Lesions: Damage to brain tissue that can help in studying the effects on behavior and function.
Brain Stem: The oldest part of the brain, responsible for basic life functions like breathing and heart rate.
Hindbrain: A lower region of the brain that includes the cerebellum, medulla, and pons, responsible for motor coordination and vital functions.
Midbrain: A small region of the brain that coordinates sensory information with motor responses.
Forebrain: The largest brain region, involved in complex behaviors and higher mental processes.
Medulla Oblongata: Controls vital functions such as heartbeat and breathing.
Reticular Activating System (Reticular Formation): A network in the brainstem involved in arousal and attention.
Cerebellum: Controls fine motor skills, balance, and coordination.
Cerebral Cortex: The outer layer of the brain, responsible for complex thinking, perception, and decision-making.
Limbic System: A group of structures involved in emotion, memory, and motivation, including the hippocampus and amygdala.
Thalamus: The brain’s relay station, transmitting sensory information to the appropriate brain areas.
Hypothalamus: Regulates body functions like hunger, thirst, temperature, and emotions.
Pituitary Gland: Known as the “master gland,” it regulates hormones.
Hippocampus: A limbic system structure essential for memory formation.
Amygdala: Processes emotions, especially fear and aggression.
Corpus Callosum: The bundle of fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres.
Split Brain: A condition where the corpus callosum is severed, isolating the brain’s hemispheres.
Broca’s Area: Controls speech production, typically in the left hemisphere.
Wernicke’s Area: Involved in language comprehension, typically in the left hemisphere.
Cortex Specialization: The functional specialization of different areas in the cerebral cortex.
Contralateral Hemispheric Organization: Each hemisphere of the brain controls the opposite side of the body.
Aphasia: A language disorder caused by brain damage affecting communication.
Occipital Lobe: Processes visual information.
Temporal Lobe: Involved in processing auditory information and memory.
Parietal Lobe: Integrates sensory information, especially related to touch.
Association Areas: Regions involved in higher-level processing, integrating information from different sensory modalities.
Somatosensory Cortex: Processes body sensations, located in the parietal lobe.
Frontal Lobe: Associated with reasoning, planning, movement, and problem-solving.
Prefrontal Cortex: Involved in decision-making, social behavior, and personality.
Motor Cortex: Controls voluntary muscle movements.
Sensation: The process by which sensory receptors detect physical stimuli and send the information to the brain.
Sensory Receptors: Cells that detect sensory stimuli and convert them into neural impulses.
Absolute Threshold: The minimum stimulus intensity needed for detection 50% of the time.
Just-Noticeable Difference (Difference Threshold): The smallest change in a stimulus that can be detected.
Weber’s Law: The principle that the JND is proportional to the magnitude of the original stimulus.
Sensory Adaptation: The process where sensory receptors become less responsive to unchanging stimuli.
Sensory Interaction: When different senses influence each other, like how smell affects taste.
Synesthesia: A condition where one sense is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses.
Embodied Cognition: The influence of bodily sensations and gestures on cognitive preferences and judgments.
Subliminal: Stimuli that are below the threshold for conscious perception.
Priming: Exposure to a stimulus influences the response to a later stimulus.
Wavelengths: The distance between peaks of light waves, determining color.
Hue: The color perceived based on wavelength.
Intensity: The brightness of light, determined by wave amplitude.
Cornea: The clear front surface of the eye, which focuses light.
Pupil: The adjustable opening in the center of the eye.
Iris: The colored muscle that controls the pupil’s size.
Retina: The light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye.
Blind Spot: The point where the optic nerve exits the eye, creating a gap in the visual field.
Optic Nerve: Transmits visual information from the retina to the brain.
Lens: Focuses light on the retina by changing shape.
Accommodation: The lens’ adjustment to focus on near or distant objects.
Nearsightedness: Close objects are seen clearly, but distant ones are blurred.
Farsightedness: Distant objects are seen clearly, but close ones are blurred.
Fovea: The central area of the retina, providing the sharpest vision.
Photoreceptors: Cells in the retina (rods and cones) that detect light.
Transduction: Conversion of physical stimuli into neural signals.
Rods: Photoreceptors sensitive to dim light but not color.
Cones: Photoreceptors that detect color and fine detail.
(Young-Helmholtz) Trichromatic Theory: Theory that color vision is based on the activity of three color-sensitive cones.
Opponent-Process Theory: Theory that visual neurons are stimulated by one color and inhibited by another (e.g., red-green).
Frequency: Determines pitch; the number of waves that pass a point in a given time.
Amplitude: Determines loudness; the height of the sound wave.
Cochlea: A spiral-shaped structure in the inner ear where sound is transduced into neural signals.
Inner Ear: Contains the cochlea and structures for balance.
Place Theory: The theory that different sound frequencies stimulate different places on the cochlear membrane.
Volley Theory: Groups of auditory neurons fire in volleys for high-frequency sounds.
Frequency Theory: The theory that the rate of nerve impulses matches the frequency of a tone.
Perception: The process by which the brain organizes, interprets, and makes sense of sensory information to recognize objects, events, and patterns in our environment.
Bottom-Up Processing: A method of perception that begins with sensory input, where the brain pieces together information from the senses to form a coherent understanding without prior knowledge.
Top-Down Processing: A method of perception driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and experiences to interpret sensory information.
Schemas: Cognitive frameworks or concepts that help organize and interpret information based on previous experiences and knowledge.
Perceptual Set: The predisposition to perceive things in a certain way, influenced by expectations, culture, or emotions.
Attention: Focusing cognitive resources on a particular object, event, or task, allowing us to process certain stimuli while ignoring others.
Selective Attention: The ability to focus on one specific piece of information while filtering out other distractions.
Cocktail Party Effect: The phenomenon of focusing on a particular auditory stimulus (like a conversation) in a noisy environment, especially when hearing something personally relevant, like your name.
Inattentional Blindness: The failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object or event when attention is focused elsewhere.
Change Blindness: A perceptual phenomenon in which people fail to notice large changes in a visual scene when those changes occur during a visual disruption, like a blink or a camera cut.
Gestalt Psychology: A psychological approach that emphasizes that the whole of perception is greater than the sum of its parts, focusing on how we naturally group stimuli to form meaningful wholes.
Closure: The tendency to complete incomplete figures or objects to see them as whole.
Figure and Ground (Figure-Ground): The tendency to distinguish an object (figure) from its background (ground), a critical aspect of visual perception.
Grouping: The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups based on shared attributes or relationships.
Proximity: The tendency to perceive objects that are close to each other as part of a group.
Similarity: The tendency to perceive objects that look similar as belonging together in a group.
Depth Perception: The ability to judge the distance of objects and see them in three dimensions, despite the images projected on the retina being two-dimensional.
Visual Cliff: An experiment setup used to study depth perception in infants and animals, involving a checkered surface that appears to “drop off,” creating a visual cliff.
Binocular Cues: Depth cues that require the use of both eyes to perceive depth, particularly for objects that are close.
Convergence: A binocular cue for depth perception; the extent to which the eyes turn inward when looking at an object, signaling the brain about distance.
Retinal Disparity: A binocular depth cue based on the slightly different images each eye receives; the brain uses the difference to judge depth.
Monocular Cues: Depth cues that can be perceived with one eye alone, useful for judging the distance of faraway objects.
Relative Clarity: The tendency to perceive clearer, sharper objects as closer, while hazier objects appear more distant.
Relative Size: The tendency to interpret objects that produce smaller retinal images as farther away if we assume objects are of similar size.
Texture Gradient: A monocular depth cue where closer objects appear more detailed, while distant objects appear smoother.
Linear Perspective: Parallel lines appear to converge in the distance, helping us perceive depth.
Interposition: When one object partially covers another, it’s perceived as closer to the observer.
Perceptual Constancies: The tendency to perceive objects as unchanging in shape, size, and color, despite changes in perspective, distance, or lighting.
Color Constancy: Perceiving colors as stable even under varying illumination conditions, so objects appear the same color in different lighting.
Perceptual Adaptation: The brain’s ability to adjust to changes in sensory input, often seen in visual adjustments to altered environments or sensory shifts.
Apparent Motion: The perception of movement in static images when they are presented in succession, as in films or animations (e.g., the illusion of motion created by flashing lights in a sequence).
Conduction Deafness: A type of hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea, such as the eardrum or ossicles.
Sensorineural Deafness: Hearing loss resulting from damage to the cochlea’s hair cells or to the auditory nerves, often caused by aging, exposure to loud noise, or genetics.
Cochlear Implant: A medical device that bypasses damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulates the auditory nerve to provide sound to individuals with severe sensorineural hearing loss.
Sound Localization: The ability to determine the origin of a sound in the environment by processing differences in timing and intensity of sound waves reaching each ear.
Olfactory System (Olfaction): The sensory system responsible for the sense of smell, which detects airborne chemicals through receptors in the nose.
Thalamus: A structure in the brain that relays sensory information (except for smell) to the appropriate cortical areas for processing.
Pheromones: Chemical signals released by organisms that affect the behavior or physiology of others of the same species, often related to attraction or communication.
Gustation: The sensory system responsible for the sense of taste, which detects chemicals in food through receptors on the tongue.
Taste Receptors: Specialized cells on the taste buds that respond to different flavors, such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, and potentially oleogustus.
Umami: One of the basic taste sensations, often described as savory or meaty, associated with foods containing glutamate.
Oleogustus: A proposed taste sensation for the flavor of fatty acids, distinguishing fats in foods.
Supertasters: Individuals with an unusually high number of taste buds, making them more sensitive to certain flavors, especially bitter ones.
Medium Tasters: People with a moderate number of taste buds, experiencing flavors more intensely than nontasters but less than supertasters.
Nontasters: Individuals with fewer taste buds, making them less sensitive to certain flavors, particularly bitter ones.
Gate Control Theory: A theory suggesting that the spinal cord has a "gate" that either blocks or allows pain signals to pass to the brain, influenced by psychological factors and other sensory input.
Phantom Limb Sensation: The perception of sensations, often pain, in a limb that has been amputated, caused by neural pathways in the brain that are still active.
Vestibular Sense: The sense of balance and spatial orientation, provided by structures in the inner ear, that helps maintain posture and coordinate movement.
Semicircular Canals: Three fluid-filled structures in the inner ear that detect head movement and contribute to balance and spatial orientation.
Kinesthesis: The sense of movement and position of body parts, provided by receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints.
Gestalt Psychology: A psychological approach that emphasizes seeing the whole as more than the sum of its parts, focusing on how we naturally organize stimuli into meaningful patterns.
Closure: The perceptual tendency to complete incomplete figures or objects to form a whole.
Figure and Ground (Figure-Ground): The organization of visual information into objects (figures) that stand out from the background (ground).
Grouping: The tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups based on similarities, proximity, continuity, or connectedness.
Proximity: The tendency to perceive objects that are close to each other as part of the same group.
Similarity: The tendency to perceive similar-looking objects as belonging together in a group.