1
Q
Cerebral Cortex
A
• Part of the forebrain (outer layer)
• Largest part of the brain, separates us from animals
• Divided into four anatomical areas (lobes)
o Frontal
o Parietal
o Occipital
o Temporal
2
Q
Frontal lobe
A
- Personality
- Higher order processes (attention, impulse, organization etc)
- Contains the following functional areas: primary motor cortex and brocas.
3
Q
Frontal lobe
primary motor cortex
A
o Located at the back of the frontal lobe
o Different areas responsible for different body parts
• Laid out in the order of body parts
• Body parts involved in fine motor movement have more area dedicated to them
4
Q
Frontal lobe
broca’s
A
o Located on the left side of the frontal lobe o It controls; • Muscles responsible for fluent speech • Structures that understand grammatically rules o If damaged; • Speech isn’t fluent • Grammatically incorrect • However speech usually makes sense
5
Q
Temporal lobe
A
o Contains the primary auditory cortex and Wernicke’s areas
o Responsible for creation of new memories
6
Q
Temporal lobe
Primary auditory cortex
A
- Left hemisphere is responsible for verbal sounds
* Right hemisphere is responsible for non verbal sounds
7
Q
Temporal lobe
Wernicke area
A
o Left side of temporal lobe o Language comprehension center- retrieves meaning of words from memory o If damaged: • Unable to understand speech of others • Unable to produce meaningful speech • Fluent gibberish
8
Q
Occipital
A
- Contains primary visual cortex
* Responsible for vision
9
Q
Occipital
Primary vision cortex
A
- Receives visual information and transforms it
- Right to left side, left to right
- If damaged:
- Tumors
- Schizophrenia
10
Q
Parietal lobe
A
o Contains primary sensory cortex
o Therefore responsible for sensations
11
Q
parietal lobe
Primary somatosensory cortx
A
- Similar layout to the primary motor cortex
- Areas which are more sensitive (mouth, fingers etc) have more area dedicated to them
- Creates meaning from raw sensory information (ie touching something that gets translated to pain)
- Damage results in:
- Problems with co-ordination, as well as sensation
- Hemi spatial neglect
- Other issues with spatial awareness
12
Q
CNS
A
- Also known as CNS
- Includes the brain and spinal cord
- Integrate and co-ordinate all in coming neural information and to initiate messages sent to different parts of the body.
- It does not have contact with the outside of the body and therefore relies on the PNS.
13
Q
spinal cord
A
- Passes sensory information from the PNS to the brain
* Passes motor information from brain to PNS
14
Q
peripheral nervous system
A
- Complete set of neurons outside the brain
- Links the central nervous system to the rest of the body
- Divided into two sections; somatic and autonomic
- Responsible for; carrying information to the CNS from the body’s muscles, organs and glands (about internal body) and from sensory organs; carry information from the CNS to the body’s muscles, organs and glands.
15
Q
somatic
A
- Transfer sensory information from the environment to the central nervous system
- Afferent (sensory) neurons receive information from the environment and send them inwards towards the CNS
- Efferent (motor) neurons transfer information outwards from the CNS to co-ordinate movement
- Controls voluntary muscle only
16
Q
autonomic nervous system
A
- Non voluntary body functions, glands, non skeletal muscles
- Unconsciousness
- Consists of the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic
17
Q
sympathetic nervous system
A
- Involved in fight or flight response
- When activated; heart rate increases, breathing rate increases, sweat glands increases, digestion decreases and pupils dilate.
18
Q
parasympathetic nervous system
A
- Responsible for bringing the body back to homeostasis after the sympathetic nervous system has been activated
- When activated; heart rate decreases, breathing rate decreases, sweat glands decrease and digestion increase.
19
Q
neural transmission
A
• Chemicals in the brain, which aid in the transmission of activity between neurons.
• Serotin and dopamine
• Neurotransmitters are created in cell body and are stored in synaptic vesicles.
• An action potential occurs and transports the vesicles down the axon.
• The neurotransmitters are released into the synapse.
• Neurotransmitter cross the synaptic cleft and attach to receptor sites on the dendrite of the post synaptic neuron
• Neurotransmitters have an inhibitory or excitatory effect, and if the action potential is strong enough, the process then continues in the next neurons.
• Excess neurotransmitters are then re-up taken to the presynaptic neuron and recycle.
o Inhibitory effect: calm neural activity balancing mood
o Excitatory effect: stimulates brain activity
20
Q
serotonin
A
• Regulation of mood, sleep, appetite
• Neurotransmitter
• Too little= depression,, increased appetite, sleep problems, OCD
• Too much= anorexia
• Factors influencing production:
o Antidepressants prevent the reuptake, increase the availability.
o Ecstacy increases short term decreases long term
21
Q
dopamine
A
- Involved in the rewards pathway and motor control
- Neurotransmitter
- Create feelings of pleasure and linked to formative of addictions
- Problems associated with balance
- Too little= Parkinson’s, Anxiety, depression
- Too much= schizophrenia
- Factors influencing production
- Alcohol and drug use
22
Q
physiological effect
A
- An effect on the body
- A change in neurotransmitters levels
- Cause psychological effects
23
Q
psychological effect
A
o An effect on the mind
o A change in behavior
o Caused by physiological effects
24
Q
hormones
A
- Chemical messengers created by the endocrine system
- Adrenaline and Noradrenaline
- Both produced by adrenal gland in the kidney
- Both involved in fight or flight response
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adrenaline
```
o Physiological
o Increased heart rate
o Raises blood pressure
o Psychological
• Anxiety
• Increases alertness
• Fear
```
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noradrenaline
```
o Physiological
• Increased heart rate
• Increases rate in muscles contracting
o Psychological
o Anxiety
o Increase alterness
o Fear
```
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empirical research
o Mezzacappa
o Sample of male university students
o Control group injected with saline
o Experimental group injected with adrenaline
o Showed them a series of clips
o Overall, experimental group showed a more intense emotional response (measure by facial expressions)
o The experimental group also showed significally more fear during the ‘fear’ clips, no difference during ‘amusement’ and ‘anger’ clips
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psychoactive drug
• Drugs that alter the activity of the central nervous system and cause a change in behavior, thoughts and emotion.
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Depressant
• Psychoactive drugs which decrease activity of the CNS
• Example is alcohol
• Physiological effects include:
o Increased endorphins
o Long term decreases regulation of dopamine
o Decreases activity in the cerebral cortex
o Use in adolescence impairs the development of frontal lobe
• Psychological effects include:
o Relaxation
o Addiction
o Decrease inhabitation
o Impairment of working memory
• Empirical research:
o Tapert et al
o Sample of young women
o Experimental group were alchoholics
o Control groups were no drinkers
o Conducted FMRIs while participants completed memory tests
o Less activity was found in the frontal lobe and more performance in experimental group
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stimulant
• Psychoactive drugs which increase activity of the CNS
• Example is Ecstasy
• Physiological effects include:
o Increased heart rate and blood pressure
o Increased production of serotonin in short term
o Long term destroys neurons which create serotonin
• Psychological
o Euphoria in short term
o Depression in long term
o Decreased attention and memory
o Hallucinations
• Empirical research
o Mc Cardle
o Experimental group was long term ecstasy users
o Control group was non ecstasy users
o Conduction of memory tests and attention tests and surveys on depression level
o It was found that ecstasy users reported higher levels of depression, poor performance on attention and memory tasks
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hallucinogens
* Psychoactive drugs which cause an altered state of consciousness
* Example is ecstasy
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hereditary
• The fact that genes are passed fro parents to children
• Genotype (the genes/alleles)
• Phenotype (physical expression of genes)
• Research has indicated that our genes influence the way we blame, think and feel in several ways, including:
o Intelligence (Bouchard twin study)
o Personality
o Psychological disorders
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epigenetics
• How your environment effects how your genes are expressed, without changing your DNA.
• Research: Yehuda et al
o Did a series of studies on pregnant women who had been involved in 911 and had developed PTSD
o They had lower Cortisol levels and therefore children were born with lower cortisol levels
o 16 of the childrens genes were expressed differently compared to those with PTSD
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memory
• The storage, organization and retrieval of information
35
multi model of memory
• Created by Atkinson and Schiffiren
• Includes capacity, duration and encoding.
• Capacity is how much information can be stored in your memory.
• Duration is how log information can be stored in your memory.
• Encoding is the process of transforming sensory information into a form where it can be stored in your memory. There are four types which include:
o Acoustic: encoding information verbally, for example, repeating the information you are trying to process.
o Visual: usually used for processing visual information, involves creating a mental image of the information youre trying to process.
o Sematic: adding context or meaning to the information youre trying to process, for example, chunking information into categories.
o Elaborative: relating new information to old information or past experiences.
• Therefore according the multi model of memory there are three types, sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory.
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sensory memory
* Information enters through your sensory organs.
* If you pay attention to this then it goes to your short term memory.
* Two types are Iconic and echoic.
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iconic memory
• The visual component of sesnort memory, allows you to hold on ‘icon’ which is an unprocessed image in your mind for a brief period of time.
• Structural features include
o Capacity: theoretically unlimited
o Duration: 0.2 seconds-0.4 seconds
• Research includes Sperling
o Showed participants a set of 12 letters for 0.2 seconds, he then asked them to verbally recall.
o Participants only recalled 3-4 letters.
38
echoic memory
• The verbal component of sensor memory
• Structural features include
o Capacity: Theoretically unlimited
o Duration: 3-4 seconds, longer duration allows us to hear spoken language as complete words, and not individual symbols.
• Research by Cowan:
o Got participants to read a story while numbers were read aloud.
o Participants were able to recall more of the later numbers, than the earlier numbers.
o Also better recall if participants were asked to recall straight away.
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short-term memory
* The most active part of the memory, which can store a limited amount of information for a limited amount of time.
* Encoding is predominantly acoustic and some visual
* Information is transferred to long-term memory via rehearsal.
* Duration is 18-30 seconds
* Capacity: 7 pieces of information
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chunking
o Capacity of STM increased if info in ‘chunked’ together
o For example remembering the phone number as
0420 706 344 instead of 0420706344.
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baddeley and hitch working memory model
| - central executive
* The control Centre of working memory
* Decides what information is paid attention to
* Co-ordinates the visospatial sketch pad and phonological loop
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baddeley and hitch working memory model
| visvospatial sketch pad
* Visual part of working memory
* Allows us to process and manipulate visual information from sensory information and long term memory.
* Involved in remembering where objects are in space- navigation.
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baddeley and hitch working memory model
| phonological loop
• Verbal part of working memory
• Is what allows us to store phone numbers for a short period of time
• Two parts:
1. Phonological store: involved in speech perception and stores verbal info for 1-2 seconds
2. Articulatory control process: involved in speech production and reherses info from the phonological store.
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advantages of working memory model
o Identifies that short memory is an active process, hence the term working memory.
o Identifies that STM is complex and consists of several processes
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disadvantages of working memory model
o Doesn’t explain how the central executive functions
| o Only focuses of STM
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long-term memory
• The store memory, which can hold a large amount of information for a long period of time.
• Capacity; theoretically unlimited
• Encoding; semantic
• General meaning is remembered but nit specific details
• Research; Sach
o Method; participants listened to recordings of sentences and were then showed written sentences and asked to identify which they heard exactly.
o Results; decreased dramatically after 30 seconds
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procedural memory
o Remembering how to do something, i.e. tie shoe laces
o Implicit
o Relatively resistant to forgetting
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declarative memory
o Remembering factual information
o Explicit
o Two types; episodic and semantic
o Episodic: remembering events such as birthdays
o Semantic: general knowledge of the world such as the things you learn at school
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forgetting
* Retrieval failure- information is still stored in long-term memory, but cannot be retrieved due to lack of retrieval cues.
* Therefore retrieval cues are hints of prompts that help us recall information from long-term memory. There are two types, context (external) and dependent (internal).
* Context (external) cues: dependent on environment or situation in which you encode information.
