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83 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Neurons |
Nerve cells |
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Central Nervous System |
Brain and spinal cord |
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Peripheral Nervous System |
Extensions from CNS, made up of nerves |
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Nerves |
Bundle of neurons |
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Sensory neurons |
Nerves that carry information from sensory organs |
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Motor neurons |
Nerves that carry messages from the CNS to muscles and glands |
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Interneurons |
Exist entirely within the CNS and carry messages from one set of neurons to another |
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Parts of a neuron |
Cell body (widest part), dendrites (thin, tubelike extensions that branch extensively and receive input going to the neuron, axon (thin, tubelike extension that carries messages to other neurons), axon terminals (release chemical transmitter molecules onto other neurons or for motor neurons, onto muscles or glands) |
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Myelin sheath |
Formed of separate glial cells, wrapped around the axon, allows for faster movement of neural impulses |
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PNS components |
Autonomic system: sympathetic (stimulus responding) and parasympathetic (calming) nervous systems |
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Neurons in the CNS |
Nucleus (cluster of cell bodies) and tracts (cluster of axons) |
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Spinal Cord |
Ascending tracts (carry somatosensory info up to the brain) and descending tracts (carry motor control commands down from brain to spinal cord to muscles) |
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Somatosensation |
Set of sensations that derive from the whole body |
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Pattern generators |
Bursts of action potentials that activate motor neurons in the spinal cord to produce the rhythmic sequence of muscle movements that result in walking or flapping |
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Brainstem |
Medulla & pons (postural reflexes, vital reflexes), midbrain (species typical movement patterns, speed of locomotion) |
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Limbic system |
Border dividing evolutionarily older parts of brain from newer parts, connected to nose - influence of smells on drive states |
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Amygdala |
In limbic system, controls basic emotion and drive states |
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Hippocampus |
In limbic system, spatial recognition, long term memories (without it, cannot make new memories) |
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Hypothalamus |
Directly beneath the thalamus, regulates internal environment of the body - influences autonomic system, controls hormone release, affects certain drive states (hunger & thirst) |
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Thalamus |
Relay station, connects different parts of the brain to others, controls brain arousal |
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Cerebellum |
Required to perform rapid, well timed muscle movements, feed forward |
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Basal ganglia |
Required to do slower, deliberate movements, feedback, Parkinson's disease affects it, "tremor at rest" |
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Cerebral cortex |
Evolutionarily newest part of the brain |
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Lobes of the cerebral cortex |
Occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal |
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Primary sensory areas |
Receive signals from sensory nerves by relay nuclei from thalamus (auditory to temporal, visual to occipital, and somatosensory to parietal) |
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Primary motor area |
Sends axons to motor neurons |
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Association areas |
Receive input from the sensory areas and lower parts of the brain, involved in perception, thought, and decision making |
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Primary motor cortex |
Controls movements, receives input from basal ganglia and cerebellum, fine tunes signals going to small muscles |
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Somatosensory cortex |
Registers body sensations |
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More cortex devoted to... |
Fingers, mouth, tongue, more precision |
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Contralateral organization |
Each hemisphere does work on the opposite side of the body |
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Corpus callosum |
Fibers that connect the two brain hemispheres, allows information to travel between the two hemispheres |
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Left hemisphere responsible for... |
Language |
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Right hemisphere responsible for... |
Visuospatial analysis, facial recognition |
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Issues in brain imaging... |
1. Spatial resolution - how close to the target brain area you can get 2. Temporal resolution - how close in time you can get to when the neurons fire |
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Electroencephalogram |
Place electrodes on the scalp and detect and amplify neurons' electric chatter, best temporal resolution, poor spatial resolution |
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ERP |
Event related potential - the change in EEG brought about by a stimulus |
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Computed tomography (CT) scan |
Fair spatial resolution, poor temporal, version of an x-ray for the brain |
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Functional magnetic resolution imaging (fMRI) |
Excellent spatial resolution, fair temporal resolution; magnetic field around brain causes hemoglobin to give off radio waves of a certain frequency - helps detect amount of blood flowing in brain |
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Neural development |
Occipital lobe develops first, frontal lobe finishes developing last, brain continues developing until 18 yrs or so |
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Plasticity |
Neural tissue can reorganize in response to brain damage (in young people) |
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Action potential |
Brief electrical charge that travels down the axon and releases neurotransmitters between the synapse, to the next neuron |
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Neurotransmitter |
Chemical messengers that travel between synapses, released after action potential travels down the axon; can either have an excitatory or inhibitory effect on the receiving neuron |
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Agonists |
Drugs that increase the effect of a neurotransmitter |
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Anatagonists |
Drugs that interfere the effect of a neurotransmitter |
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Psychoactive drugs |
Alter synaptic communication, can block a neurotransmitter from attaching or can mimic a neurotransmitter |
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Sensation |
Process by which sense organs gather information and send it to the brain |
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Transduction |
Transforming physical stimuli into neural signals to the brain |
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Major senses |
Sight, Touch, Hearing, Taste, Smell, Pain |
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Major parts of the ear |
Outer ear - directs sound to inner strcutures Middle ear - amplifies sound Inner ear - translate sound into neural response |
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A delta fibers and C fibers |
A myelinated (feel pressure), C unmyelinated (feel pain) |
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Gate Control Theory |
Spinal cord has gate to where pain signals can or cannot pass, gate opens when ill, closes more when endorphins in the brain are released |
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Phantom limb pain |
Brain does not need sensory input to have pain |
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Different eyes |
Compound (multiple lenses), simple (one lens) |
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Photoreceptors |
Translate light into neural signals |
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Cones |
Concentrated in the fovea (center), color vision, |
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Rods |
Permit vision in dim light, everywhere but the fovea and blind spot |
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Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision |
Three colors makeup everything: red, green, and blue |
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Monochromats |
Have one or no functioning cones, respond to black and white films |
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Dichromats |
Have two functioning cones (usually either red or green is not functioning) |
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Hering's Theory of complementary afterimages: Opponent-Process Theory |
Opponent cells (red-green, blue-yellow, black-white) |
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Visual receptive fields |
Areas of visual space to which neurons are receptive |
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Perception |
Process of using prior knowledge to interpret sensory information |
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"What" pathway |
Primary visual area -> Temporal lobe |
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"Where" pathway |
Primary visual area -> Parietal lobe |
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Visual form agnosia |
When people can identify some elements of an object, but not exactly what it is |
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Visual object agnosia |
When people can describe the shape of the object but can't identify it |
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Geons |
Basic 3D components with which our visual system organizes input |
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Prosapagnosia |
Visual agnosia in which people cannot identify faces |
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Top down processing |
Influence of preexisting knowledge on sensory information |
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Gestalt Psychology |
We automatically perceive whole, organized patterns and objects |
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Gestalt Principles |
Proximity, similarity, closure, good continuation, common movement, and good form |
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Figure and ground |
Tendency to divide images into figure (object that attracts attention) and ground (background), based on circumscription (circumscribing thing is the ground), helps define important parts of a scene |
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Ames room |
Gives the illusion that two people are the same distance away from the viewer, when they are not, depth perceptiong |
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Depth perception cues |
Used to view images in 3D |
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Binocular depth cues |
Binocular disparity - each eye has a different angle on viewing things, helps for depth perception, eye convergence (minimal) |
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Monocular depth cues |
Motion parallax (changed view one eye has when head moved sideways), pictorial cues for depth |
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Pictorial cues for depth |
1. Occlusion - near objects occlude far ones 2. Relative image size for famliar objects - woman taller than mountain because closer to us 3. Linear perspective - parallel lines converge as they go further away 4. Texture gradient - textures get more packed as they get further away 5. Position relative to the horizon - things closer to horizon are farther away 6. Differential lighting of surfaces |
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The Stroop Effect |
Highly automatized actions supersede others, cannot help but to read words (Incongruent condition) |
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Treisman Feature Integration Theory |
Parallel processing - our visual system picks up primitive features of objects first Serial processing - integration of features (takes more time) |
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Continued Feature Integration Theory |
Preattentive processing - automatic registration of basic features Focused attention - integration of features, effortful |
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Left visual neglect |
Inability or difficulty to attend to the left side of visual space or an object, caused by lesion in right parietal lobe |
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Cherry experiment |
Dichotic listening, subjects reported to hear a difference only in pitch or lack of reading, did not notice change in language or content |
