Bio psych - 3

CHAPTER 3 - BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY


Neurons (neuron, dendrite, myelin sheath, action potential, axon/ terminals):

  • Brain cells that are specialised in communicating with one another



Neuronal communication:

  • Neurotransmitters - chemical messengers that allow neuron to neuron communication

  • Synapse (synaptic cleft) - space between neurons where the neurotransmitters travel

  • Neurotransmission - (communication inside neurons is electrical)

Neurotransmission - (communication between neurons is chemical)

  • When neurotransmitters are released,they bind with receptor sites of the next neuron

  • Process is halted when they go back into axon terminal

  • Can be excitatory or inhibitory


  1. Resting potential (has to pass threshold)

  2. Action potential

  3. Hyperpolarization

  4. Resting potential


Glutamine & gaba

  • Most common in cns

  • Learning and memory

Glutamine = excitatory (toxic in high doses)

Gaba = inhibitory


Acetylcholine

  • Arousal, sleep, memory, selective attention

  • Connected to muscles + triggers movement


Monmines (one amino acid)

  • Norepineohrine - brain arousal, mood, hunger, sleep (ampetamine and methamphetamine)

  • Dopamine - motor function and rewards (parkinsons disease and schizophrenia)

  • Serotonin - mood, temperature regualtion, aggression and sleep cycles, hyper/ insomnia (treatment for depression, ssri)


Neuropeptides (short string amino acid)

  • Regulate hunger, learning and memory

  • Endorphins, relieve pain


Anandamines

  • Relate hunger, learning and memory

  • Bind to same receptors as thc



Central nervous system:

Central nervous system

  • Sensory information comes in, decisions go out

  • Protected by meninges and ventricles filled with cereebrospinak fluid (csf)

  • Cortex

  • Basal ganglia

  • Limbic system

  • Cerebellum

  • Brain stem

  • Spinal cord

Cerebral cortex - divided into systems

  • Frontal - forehead

  • Motor function, language, memory

  • Brocas area (speech production)

  • Parietal - top of the head

  • Somatosensory cortex (pressure, pain, temperature)

  • Communicates info to motor cortex each time we reach, grasp, or move our eyes

  • Temporal - side of head, next to ears

  • Hearing (auditory cortex), language comprehension (wernickes area)

  • Occipital - back of the head

  • Vision 


Basal ganglia

  • movement

Limbic system - emotion centre

  • Emotional centre (smell, motivation, memory)

  • Hypothalamus - internal bodily states, controls pituitary gand

  • Thalamus - relays info from sense organs to primary sensory cortex

  • Amygdala - fear, excitement, arousal

  • Hippocampus - spatial memory (damage impairs ability to make new memories)

Cerebellum - 

  • Little 

  • Balance/ stabilise/ coordinate movements, motor skill, memory/ spatial/ linguistic abilites

Brain stem - 

  • Connects cerebral cortex and spinal cord

  • Relay station between cortex and rest of the nervous system (basic bodily functions)

  • Midbrain - visual stimuli

  • Pons - dreams

  • Medulla - breathing, heartbeat

  • Reticular activating system - connects the forebrain and cerebral cortex, arousal

Spinal cord - 

  • Nerves convey signals from the brain to the body

  • Sensory nerves

  • Motor nerves

  • Interneuron



Peripheral nervous system - nerves that extend outside of the cns

  • Somatic - cns to muscles

  • Autonomic - involuntary actions (organs + glands)

  • Sympathetic - flight or flight

  • Parasympathetic - rest + digest


Neural plasticity - the nrevous systems aboility to change over time in response to development, learning, injury, degeneration

  • Growth, synaptogenesis, pruning, myelination




Brain mapping

  • Phrenology - bumps on the skull being linked to enlargements on the brain

  • Brain damage - psychological functioning after damage

  • Electrocephalopgraph (eeg) - measures electrical activity generated by the brain using multiple electrodes

  • Brain scans - 

  • Computed tomography (ct) & magnetic resonance imaging (mri)

  • Used to visualize the brains structure

  • Positron emission tomography (pet)

  • Measure changes in the brains activity in response to stimuli

  • Injection of radioative molecules

  • Functional mri (fmri)

  • Measures the change in blood oxygen level as an indicatior of brain activity

  • Magnetoencephalography (meg)

  • Measures electrical activity



Nature vs nurture 

  • Nature - genetics

  • Nurture - environment

  • learning

  • Nutrition

  • Stress

  • Attachment 


Heritability - percentage of the variability in a trait across individuals that is the rest of genes


Research - 

  • Family studies

  • Twin studies - monozygotic (mz) & dizygotic (dz)

  • Adpotion studies