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| Branch of science that explains behavior in terms of biological activity in the brain. |
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| the body's system of nerves, includes the brain |
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| detects sensory impulses. Acts like the electrical wiring of the body. |
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| Three purposes of the nervous system. |
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| Input, Processing, Output |
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| Input comes from our enviornment and is detected by our senses. Our sensory impulses are dictated by our nervous systems. Example: when our eyes see something, the eye nerves send electrical signals to the brain. The nerves do NOT send a "picture" of what we see, they only send electrical impulses. |
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| This is the brain trying to make sense of the information that comes in. Example: after the brain receives the electrical signal from the brain, the brain processes the signal and creates an image. |
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| Thoughts, emotions and behavior |
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Different parts of the brain do different jobs. We know this for sure because people who receive brain damage in the same areas of the brain often lose the same sense. For example, if two people receive brain damage in area X of the brain, they will both have trouble with Y sense (could be sight, hearing etc). If one side of a person's brain is damaged, he or she will lose control of the opposite side of the body.
There is a part of your brain that controls the images that you see, and there is a part of your brain that interprets the meaning of things that you see. For example, there is one part of your brain that allows you to see the shape of these letters. It lets you see that a letter "C" is curved and a letter "T" is straight. There is a different part of your brain that lets you know the actual meaning of these words. |
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| Damage to the part of the brain that creates a visual image, but no damage to any other part. A person with blindsight is legally blind. The person's brain does not process images. If you hold up an object in front of a person with blindsight, he or she will say they cannot see the object. BUT if you ask what color the object is, the person will know. If you throw the object to the person, he or she will catch it. This is b/c the parts of the brain that process color and motion are different than the parts of the brain that process visual images. People with blindsight have no conscious experience of anything visual. There is nothing wrong with their eyes or their ocular nerves. The damage is in their brains. People with blindsight also do not have visual dreams b/c the part of the brain that generates dream images is the same part that generates all images, and that part no longer works properly. |
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| Ability of other parts of the brain to take over for the damaged part of the brain. If people are born with damage to the visual part of the brain they will develop normally b/c of plasticity. Childrens brains have much more plasticity than adult's brains, so they develop normally. Plasticity decreases as you get older. If you damage your brain as a child you will always have that brain damage, but the plasticity of your brain ensures the other parts will take over. As an adulut, you will probably lose those abilities permanently bc your brain does not have as much plasticity. |
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| Removal of one half of the brain. This is done in the even t of a big tumor or very sever epilepsy. If young children get this done, they more than likely will develop normally, b/c their remaining half will take over all the functions of the missing half. |
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| Sleep follows this rhythm, which means it occurs naturally and repeatedly on a 24 hour cycle. Body temperature also follows a circadian rhythm. 98.6 degrees is the average body temperature for the daytime hours. Temperature lowers during sleep. Rises and falls during the day. Body temperatture falls when it is time to sleep and rises when it is time to wake up. Your body will wake up naturally on its own b/c your temp will rise. If you are well- rested than your ups and downs in temp will be less pronounced. Bright lights and sunlight reset circadian rhythms. Your body wants to sleep when it is dark. You can fool your body into thinkin git is daytime by using bright lights. Useful when trying to overcome jet lag. Light actually changes the chemicals in the brain that control sleep and mood. |
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| Seasonal affect Disorder (SAD) |
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| During the winter, especially near the poles, there is less sunlight and this makes people depressed b/c their brain chemistry is telling them to slow down and sleep a lot more. Treated by light therapy. |
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| Exposure to artificial lights. Sometimes people even wear visors with little lights in them that shine on their faces. This works to combat SAD. LIght therapy works on the capillaries under your skin, not your eyes. You can shine the light anywhere, even on the backs of your legs or other places where you cannot see it and will have the same effect. |
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| The processes that occur while you are sleeping; stages of sleep. For each stage, there are different brain waves. You can tell which stage of sleep a person is in by looking at his or her brain waves. |
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| Occurs during stage 1 and 2. Easy to wake a person up when he or she is in light sleep. If he or she is woken up, he or she will have no problem being alert. |
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| Occurs during 3 and 5, difficult to wake a person up. If a person is awakened, he or she will be groggy and may not really wake up, may just be sleep-talking or sleep-walking. Deep sleep is NOT when dreams occur. Deep sleep is when sleep-walking and talking occur. Stage four is only achieved once or twice per night. |
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| stages 1, 2,3 and 4 collectively |
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| Also known as rapid eye movement stage, the stage when dreams occur. Brainwaves look the same as the brainwabes we have when we are awake. If a person is deprived of REM sleep repeatedly, they will go psychotic. Everyone dreams every single night in every cycle of REM sleep. You may have a hundred dreams per night. You don't remember them b/c your body naturally wakes itself up when it is NOT in REM stage. If you wake up and can remember your dreams, you probably woke up during a REM stage. The way we know that dreams occur during REM is b/c when people woh are in REM sleep are awakened, they will say they were dreaming right before being awakened. A person in any other stage will say they were just sleeping before being awakened. |
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| REM sleep is also known as paradoxical sleep b/c it is both light and deep sleep. It is light b/c your brain is active and it occurs during the light stage. I tis deep b/c it is hard to awake someone during REM stage. If your alarm goes off and you are in REM, you may start dreaming of a siren or a noise in your dream before you actually wake up. |
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| two types of studies done where people are deprived of sleep: total sleep deprivation and selective. |
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| NO sleep at all. You become physically and mentally tired and all your functions are sluggish. You are physcially and mentally weaker. |
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| You are deprived of only certain stage(s) of sleep. For example, an experimenter can deprive you of only REM sleep by waking you up each time your brain waves show that you have entered REM. After being woken up, you are allowed to go back to sleep. You can return to stage 1 sleep and go through the cycle of sleep again but when you get to REM, you are woken up again. Or you can be deprived of stage 4 sleep by being woken up each time your brainwaves show you have entered stage 4. You CANNOT bed dperived of stage 1 sleep. That is the same as total sleep deprivation, since stage 1 always comes first. You CANNOT skip stages in sleep. In stage 4 deprivation studies, however, after being derprived of stage 4 many times during the night, if you are a normally well-rested person, your body will skip stage foru and go into 1,2,3 and back to 2,3,1 your body will realize thaht it will not get stage 4 even if it tries, so it stops trying. REM sleep can then be accomplished by your body. |
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| Results of two selective deprivation studies are different. |
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If you are deprived of stage 4 sleep, but still get REM sleep, you will have the physical problems associated with sleep deprivation, but none of the mental problems. You will be sluggish, have poor hand-eye coordination, bad balance and stamina, but you will be able to conentrate and remember things normally.
If you are deprived of REM sleep but not stage 4 sleep, you will have no physical problems but you will have mental problems. You will have a hard time remembering things and not be able to concentrate. |
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| The effects of alcohol on sleep |
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| Alcohol-induced sleep is not normal sleep. Alcohol has chemical effects on your brain. It depresses activity in the part of your brain that inhibits your actions. Since the part of your brain that normally stops you from doing stupid things is not functioning properly, you do stupid things. You are less inhibited, so sometimes this is interpreted as being more "active", but really you are just less inhibited. With enough alcohol, however, all your brain functions are depressed and you just pass out. Alcohol also depresses the part of the brain that causes you to have REM sleep. Drinking and then going to sleep is just like laboratory REM sleep deprivation. Even cough syrup, since it contains alcohol, has effects on your REM sleep, but it is not as much as booze. |
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| Influence of daily activities on sleep |
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| If you do a lot of physical activies during the day, you will have more and longer stages of 4 sleep, since 4 stages are associated with pyschical activity. If you do a lot of studying or mental activities during the day , you will have more andloger stages of REM sleep. College students who are studying a lot (like during finals) have as much REM sleep as babies, which is a lot. |
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| Why do your eyes move during REM? |
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| Achee doesn't really know why. It may be because of dreams or it may be because general eye mobements help your brain remember things or process things. People who are blind still have Rapid eye movement and still have visual dreams. |
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| Idea of catching up on sleep you have missed or been deprived of. Depending on the type of sleep missed (stage 4 or REM), you will get much more of that type of sleep the next time you sleep. If you are, for example, alcoholic, and you chronically go to sleep with alcohol in your system, you will constantly deprive yourself of REM sleep and you cannot catch up on chronic deprivation. |
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| Dreams usually occur in REM sleep, but there is evidence that dreamlike phenomena occur in stage 1 or4 sleep. This phenomena is kind of like a dream, but it is different. REM dreams involve action and movement; maybe even noises, smells and tastes. Stage 1 or 4 dreams are more like photographs. |
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| Believed in two types of dreams: latent content and manifest conent. His theories are bad science b/c they cannot be tested at all b/c we have no way of knowing since we supposedly cannot remember our latent dreams. Also his daughters dreams were interpreted as non sexual but someone with a similar dream was sexual. The point is Freud's theories are only theories. |
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| Latent content dreams are your real dreams. They are hidden from you, and you do not remember your latent dreams. Usually about something that would be too embarrassing or shameful for your mind to handle, like sex. Your mind distorts these dreams into manifest dreams, the dreams you remember. Freud thought that subconsciously, everyone wants to have sex w/ everyone else (regardless of gender or if you think you are attracted to a pearson you still want to have sex w/ them) Latent dreams are usualy about fulfilling those desires and satisfying that part of you. You could not pursue these desires in waking life and your mind cannot even allow you to remember them because you would feel morally wrong and not be able to function. |
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| MAnifest content dreams are the dreams you remember. They are what your mind creates to cover up your latent dreams and are distorted versions. Freud would look for symbols in manifest dreams to discover what the latent dream was. ex he would look for phallic symbols. And if you dreamt that you had sex w/ someone then Freud would say that your latent dream must have been even more sexual and embarrassing than what you remember. |
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| Any sort of cylindrical and erect object that may resemble a penis |
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| Another theory that explains dreamiing. It says your dreams don't mean anything, they are random and meaningless. Your mind tries to synthesize totally random things into a coherent storyline. For example, if you dream about a talking purple goat, your mind had generated the image of purple, a goat, and a conversation and just synthesized them into one thing. |
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| Extension of Waking Life theory |
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| What you did during the day and thought about get into your dreams. For example, college students often have dreams about college. People who have never been to college don't usually dream about it. This is related to the theory that REM sleep hones your memory. During REM sleep, your brain reviews the day and decides what is important and what is not. Two ways to theorize this: You dream about what your brain wants to remember OR you dream about the things your brain is throwing out. WE have no way of knowing which one, if either, is correct. |
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| A psychological disorder is any way of thinking, acting, or feeling that keeps you from leading a normal life. Sleep disorders are both medical and psychological. |
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| Most common sleep disorder. You either cannot fall asleep or you wake up throughout the night and cannot fall back asleep. Acute- short term insomnia, usually caused by stress, very common, pretty much happens to everyone once or twice in their lives, cured whn the stress is alleviated. Chronic- long term. Usually treated with medication. If you have trouble falling asleep, do NOT just lay there, go read a boring book. |
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| Sleep walking. Stressed people sleepwalk more. Usually you don't know you were sleep walking, other people tell you. You may know you sleep walk if you wake yourself up during sleep walking, like if you try to take a shower in your sleep , or if you wake up in different places. Sleep walking occurs during stage 4, NOT during REM. During REM sleep, a part of your brain shuts down the big muscles in your body so you can't move around and act out your dreams. Your fingers or toes may twitch around, but your big muscles are paralyzed and you can't get up. (this is why you never sleep walk in REM). Some experiments have been done w/ animals where the part of their brain that shuts their muscles down during REM was removed. Their muscles were not paralyzed during REM, so they ran around and acted out their dreams. Cats can sleep erect during stage1,2,3 and 4 but during REM lose muscle tone just like everyone else. It is not dangerous to wake up a sleep walker, it is just difficult b/c they are in deep sleep. Sleep walking does not result in sleep deprivation or tiredness. When you are sleep walking, a part of your brain knows what is going on, but a different part of your brain does not make you aware of it. This is why sleep walkers don't run into things. |
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| General feeling of terror and fright that occur during stage 4 sleep. They are not dreams. These are not the same as the feeling of falling and then jerking awake. That occurs in stage 1. It is hard to wake up in the middle of a night terror, their descriptions are often photographic, not like dreams, or they may just describe general feelings of terror. People scream, ccry, fight, etch during night terrors, but usualy d on't wake themselves up w/ it. They have to have someone else tell them they have night terrors.After the fit of screaming they go back to sleep like nothing happened and wake normally. People w/ night terrors are not sleep deprived. |
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| Sleep attacks. Actually a form of epilepsy. Epilepsy occurs when your brain has uncontrollable activity. Narcolepsy is a seizure in the part of your brain that controls REM sleep. It randomly fires and makes you go directly into REM stage. People w/ narcolepsy may go limp right before they fall asleep since during REM your major muscles are paralyzed. They may feel themselves go limp and they know they are about to fall asleep. They may even begin to dream before falling asleep, and see hallucinations mixed in w/ the regular world. Treatable w/ medication. Really hard to wake someone up froma narcoleptic attac k. |
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| Period of not breathing during the night. There are two different types: Adult apnea- usually happens in adults. Caused by a physical blockage in the air passage. Not everyone who snores has apnea, but everyone who has adult apnea snores due to the blockage. A lot of people wake up when they hit the apnea period, so apnea is associated w/ poor sleep Being overweight is a strong contributor. Treatable w/ surgery, various devices you can wear during sleep, etc. Infant apnea- caused by underdeveloped lungs or part of the brain related to pulmonary system. Brain forgets to tell lungs to breathe. Happens in premature babies. Primary cause of infant death syndrome. Everything seems fine, the baby just dies in sleep. Premature babies often spend more time in hosbital since their lungs or brains did not develop all the way in the womp. Eventually the will develop all the way and be normal. |
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| Study of the nervous systm. |
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| The brain and spinal cord |
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| peripheral Nervous system |
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Comprised of two parts:
Somatic nervous system comprises nerves that are related to voluntary control.
Autonomic nervous system comprises nerves that control involuntary actions, such as your heart contractions, pupil dilation, etc. The autonomic nervous system is dived into three parts: sypathetic nervous systme, parasympathetic nervous system, endocrine system. |
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| Sympathetic nervous system |
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| Increases phsyciological activity of your body. Increases heart rate, blood pressure, etc. When you are scared, your sympathetic nervous system trigger the fight or flight response. Your increased heart rate and blood pressure prepares body for unning or fighting. The fight or flight response also slows down your digestion and sexual activity and loosens your bladder |
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| Parasympathetic Nervous system |
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| Slows heart rate back down, increases digestion and sexual activity. Basically slows down the stuff that the sympathetic speeds up and speeds up what the sympathtic slows down. |
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| Sympathetic and parasympathetic are part of homeostasis, which is the physical body systems trying to maintain a balance. |
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| The system of glands that secrete hormones into your bloodstream. The chemicals cause the effect on your body, but the chemicals are controlled by the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. |
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| The 'building block' of the nervous system. A neuron is a nervous system cell, just like any other cell, except specialized to the nervous system and shaped differently than a traditional cell. When a neuron does its job, an electrical signal goes from one end to the other. Neurons are lined up one after the other in a chain. |
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| the first neuron in the chain, the one that is stimulated by the enviornment and cause the other neurons to fire. |
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| The last in the chain, the one that stimulates the muscles or glands |
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| all the neurons in between the sensory and motor. Some single neurons can actually be several feet long. So, one nerron can be both the sensory and the motor neuron. |
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| Part of the cell that sends the signal from the dendrites on down the chain. The Myelin Sheath is a coating of protein around the axon that helps the signal move faster. |
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| Also called vesicles, they are little packets of chemicals. The chemicals are referred to as neurotransmitters. The electrical signal causes the vesicles to release their chmicals to the next neuron's synapse. |
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| Also called synaptic cleft. Each neuron is physically seperated from the other neuron by a space in between called the synapse. The chemicals from the vesicles are released into the synapse, and the synapse passes the chemicals on to the dendrites of the next neuron. For every neurotransmitter chemical, there is a specially-shaped receptor in the dendrites of the next neuron. The neurotransmitter is like a key, the receptor on the nex neuron is like the lock . When the interneuron has collected enough chemicals, it fires and passes the singal along to to the next neuron. |
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| Types of neurotransmitters |
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Excitatory- make the neuron more liekely to fire
Inhibitory- make the neuron less likely to fire
If a neuron fires and releases on inhibitory chemicals, the next neuron won't fire. You take excitatory chemicals and subtract inhibitory chemicals and if the resulting diference is high enough, the neuron will fire. |
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| Organized into different parts that do different things. Brain imaging- techniques used to observe the brain while it operates. Different parts of brain are stimulated by different things. For example, a picture of gridlines will stimulate one part of your brain, a picture of a person will stimulate another part. The brain is the source of the mind. Evidence of this from: damace, imaging, manual stimulation during open-skull surgery. |
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| Different parts of the brain are specialized for different things. When you performm a task, not all of your brain is involved, only parts of it at a time. |
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| Old technique in which people used to "read" the lumps on a person's skull to tell what that person was good at, what they were like, and wheter they were a murderer or not. People used to think that if you used one part of your brain a lot, your skull would bulge out over that part. It is true that when you use one part of your brain a lot , it gets bigger and denser, but your skull does not bulge. |
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| General parts of the brain |
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| Hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain. The names are references to the phsycial location of each part. These parts are further broken down. |
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| connects w/ spinal cord and comprises the brainstream. Controls involuntary bodily functions such as breathing and heart rate; is connected with the autonomous nervous system; often called the 'reptilian' part of the brain since its functions are so basic. |
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| On the inside. There are structures in the midbrain that help process memories (although memories are not stored in the midbrain); creates basic emotional reactions. |
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| The front AND the wrinkly covering on the outside of the whole brain. The bulk of the human brain is the forebrain. Thinking and higher cognitive functions; structures in the forebrain create visual images; things that humans do that other animals cannot do are located in the forebrain, such as math and language. Generally speaking, the forebrain is divided into a left and right half (only in humans, not in animals). Physical split that you can see. The stuff that your forebrain does the other animals CAN do is located in the right half (recognizes faces); stuff we do that animals CANNOT is in left (math, language, remembering maps) |
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| The primary structure of the forebrain, it is all the wrinkly stuff covering the brain. The cortex holds memories, thinking, imagery, face recognition, speaking etc. Divided into left and right by a phsycial space. Two important parts of cortex: thalamus and amygdala |
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| Switchboard of the brain, deals with the input from the senses. The signals flowing along your neurons go to your thalamus first, and then the thalamus sends the information off the correct parts of brain. If the thalamus is damaged, it may send signals to more than one location. For example, some people have a disorder that if their eyes are stimulated 9by light movement, etc) they hear a buzz or tone. Once they shut their eyes, noise stops. The signal comes from their eyes and goes to the thalamus, but the thalamus sends signal to visual and auditory portions of the brain. Same occurs when people experience taste sensations when they hear certain noises or words. |
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| Part of the forebrain that processes emotions. |
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| Each hemisphere of the cortex has four lbes, making eight lobes total in the brain. These lobes can also physically be seen because there are indents separating them but not spaces. The parts are the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital. |
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| In the front. There is a part called Broca's area that produces speech. Another part of the frontal is the motor cortex, which moves the muscles of your body. |
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| by the temples. Also called the auditory cortex. It is associated with out of body experiences, near death and spiritual. |
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| Back top of brain. Wernecke's area allowas us to understand speech. Also houses the sensory cortex also known as somato sensory cortex. |
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| Back of head. Also known as the visual cotex. visual image processing. This is the part of the brain damaged ina person with blindsight. This area of the brain is the MOST metabolically active part of the whole body, since we use our visual sense so often. |
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| If you are pricked by two needles at the same time, how close do those needles have to be for you to feel only one prick as opposed to two? On your fingers, the needles can be very close and you will still feel two pricks b/c there are many nerve endings. On your back , there are fewer so the needles may be wide apart and you will only feel one prick b/c only one needle will hit a nerve. |
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| Controls muscle movement. The size of the cortex devoted to each body part depends on the amount of muscles in that body part, not the size of the muscle. For example , the part of the motor cortex devoted to the face is much bigger than that devoted to the hips. The face has many small muscles, the hips have only a few large muscles. Right next to the sensory cortex so messages can transfer quickly. |
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| The cortex is divided into two hemispheres only in humans, not animals. The hemispheres perform different functions. |
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| Contralateral Reperesentation |
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| Left half of cortex is connected with the right side of the body and vice versa b/c the big nerves that come up from your spine cross. |
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| Even though there is a space b/w the two hemispheres of the brain they are connected by a big neural structure called corpus callosum. If you recognize someones face (right brain function) and call their name (left brain function) you are using the corpus callosum. Someone who has had a split- brain procedure has had their corpus callosum cut, disconnecting the two halves. This is often done for severe epilepsy. |
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| For each eye, a visual field exists. The visual field is the sum of the things you see when your eyes are open, the field of vision in front of you. For each individual eye, the left half of that eye's visual field is connected to the right brain, and the right half of the field of vision is connected to the left half of the brain. |
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