The Brain and Behavior Video Psych
Card 1
Front: What is behavioral neuroscience (or biological psychology)?
Back: The study of the brain's role in behavior, emotions, thoughts, and consciousness. It has expanded to study behavior from molecular interactions to large networks of nerve cells.
Card 2
Front: What are the three components of the brain?
Back: The brain is a complex triad of architectural, electrical, and chemical components working in concert.
Card 3
Front: What is emergence in the context of the brain?
Back: Emergence occurs when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, meaning the whole has properties its parts do not have. For example, consciousness emerges from the complex exchanges of chemical and electrical signals within the vast network of brain cells.
Card 4
Front: What is the function of the medulla?
Back: The medulla controls basic life functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood circulation, and balance.
Card 5
Front: What is the function of the pons?
Back: The pons controls attentiveness and the timing of sleep and dreaming. Damage to certain parts of the pons can put a person into a semi-permanent sleep-like state. REM sleep may also originate in the pons.
Card 6
Front: What is the function of the reticular formation?
Back: The reticular formation plays a role in autonomic functions like circulation, respiration, and digestion, as well as in pain modulation, sleep, and consciousness.
Card 7
Front: What is the function of the midbrain?
Back: The midbrain helps orient an organism in the environment, guide movement toward or away from stimuli, regulate the experience of pain, modulate mood, and shape motivation.
Card 8
Front: What is the function of the cerebellum?
Back: The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, and coordination, resulting in smooth and balanced muscular activity. It may also help judge time, modulate our emotions, discriminate sounds and textures, spatial reasoning and integrate sensory input.
Card 9
Front: What is the function of the thalamus?
Back: The thalamus is involved in sleep, wakefulness, and relaying motor and sensory signals to the cortex. It also closes pathways of incoming sensations during sleep.
Card 10
Front: What is the function of the hypothalamus?
Back: The hypothalamus controls motivated behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sexual activity, as well as involuntary rhythms such as the sleep/wake cycle, and detecting when the body is too cold or too hot.
Card 11
Front: What is the function of the amygdala?
Back: The amygdala plays a role in emotional response, specifically anger, and in determining whether a stimulus is a threat.
Card 12
Front: What is the function of the hippocampus?
Back: The hippocampus plays an important role in learning, memory, spatial orientation, and creating new memories.
Card 13
Front: What is the function of the cerebral cortex?
Back: The cortex is involved in every thought and perception, as well as our ability to produce and understand language and to construct and experience emotion.
Card 14
Front: What are the sensory areas of the cortex?
Back: Areas that receive and interpret information from the eyes, ears, and other sense organs.
Card 15
Front: What are the motor areas of the cortex?
Back: Areas that control our behaviors. The primary motor cortex is located in the back of the frontal lobe.
Card 16
Front: What are the association areas of the cortex?
Back: Areas involved in many complex processes including those broadly referred to as thinking.
Card 17
Front: What is the function of the prefrontal cortex?
Back: The prefrontal cortex is involved in planning, decision-making, mood, personality, and self-awareness.
Card 18
Front: What are neurons?
Back: Communication cells contained within the brain and spinal cord.
Card 19
Front: What are glia?
Back: Cells in the brain that provide nourishment for the neurons, control the nutrient supply, are sensitive to the activity level in each neuron, and increase blood flow. They also guide the migration of newly created neurons and help shut down the process of neural growth.
Card 20
Front: What is an action potential?
Back: An electrical signal that is the neuron's main response to stimulation and the fundamental information carrier of the nervous system.
Card 21
Front: What is myelin?
Back: A fatty substance made of glial cells that wraps around the axons of neurons, increasing the speed of neuronal communication.
Card 22
Front: What are the nodes of Ranvier?
Back: Gaps between the myelin wrappers on the axon that allow ions to move into or out of the axon, speeding up the nerve impulses.
Card 23
Front: What are neurotransmitters?
Back: Chemicals released into the synaptic cleft that transmit signals from one neuron to another.
Card 24
Front: What is synaptic reuptake?
Back: The process by which neurotransmitter molecules are vacuumed up by molecular pumps back into the presynaptic axon terminals and repackaged for future use.
Card 25
Front: What is the role of glutamate in the central nervous system?
Back: Glutamate rapidly excites neurons, increasing the odds that they will talk with other neurons. It is associated with enhanced learning and memory.
Card 26
Front: What is the role of GABA in the central nervous system?
Back: GABA inhibits neurons by dampening neural activity. It plays critical roles in learning, memory, and sleep.
Card 27
Front: What is a neurotransmitter agonist?
Back: Chemicals that enhance a neurotransmitter's activity.
Card 28
Front: What is a neurotransmitter antagonist?
Back: Chemicals that diminish a neurotransmitter's activity.
Card 29
Front: What is degeneracy in the context of the brain?
Back: The concept that many combinations of neurons can produce the same outcome.
Card 30
Front: What is a core system in the context of the brain?
Back: A single brain area or network that contributes to many different mental states and behaviors.