Bio psychology 2

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  • Biopsychology
    • Excitation-  excitatory neurotransmitters stimulate brain, include adrenaline and noradrenaline-implicated in conditions e.g. anxiety
    • Inhibitory- calm brain, create balance mood, easily depleted when excitatory neurotransmitters are overactive. E.g. GABA-produce natural anti anxiety effect and serotonin
    • Summation- elective impulse in neuron triggers release on inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters. I vs E released to post synaptic neuron affects whether neuron will fire . I-E=net potential, if reaches threshold neuron fires
    • Localisation- specific areas of brain associated with particular functions- evidence comes from split brain research
      • Evaluation:-higher cog functions not localised-Lashley, intact areas of cortex can take over cog functions after injury. Rats learn a maze, motor and sensory functions localised, higher metal functions not
        • Communication more important process to study than localisation-Dejerine, ability to read lost through damage to connection of visual and Wernick’s area
        • Support for language centres from aphasia studies- brocas and wenick’s areas demonstrate importance of brain regions in language productions and comprehension
        • Brain scans-Peterson et al- brains scans to show Wernick’s area active in listening, Broca’s active in reading tasks
        • Plasticity- Brian damage, rest of brain reorganises in attempt to recover.Lashley, brain circuits ‘chip in’-doesn’t always happen
      • Split brain research-treatment for epilepsy, cut corpus callosum, prevent electrical activity causing seizure
        • Sperry- image/word projected to right visual field, did/same image projected then to left field.Normal brain-corpus callosum share info between hemis. In split brain- info not conveyed between hemis
          • Describe what you see- pic shown to right visual field, could describe image, Same image on left field, couldn’t describe -saw nothing there.Language centres mostly in left hemi, lack of language centres in right hemi
          • Evaluation- high control- scientific methods, standardised procedures-findings objective and valid
            • Greater understandingof brain processes
            • Issues with generalisation -usual sample, 11 ps, all had history of epilepsy, caused unique changes in brain, influences findings
    • Hemispheric lateralisation- each hemi responsible for specific functions
      • Language receptors only found on left side- Broca= speech, Wernick= understanding of speech
        • Damage to these areas results in aphasia- inability to understand or produce speech
      • Parietal lobe-sensations, frontal lobe=motor area and each hemi responsible for opposite side,occipital lobe=Vision, temporal lo be=auditory and memory acqyuisition
      • Hemis connected through corpus callosum. Right hemi=language, right=visual
      • Evaluation- lateralisation changes with age- younger people switch to bilateral patterns in adults, language became more lateralised to eft increasing in age, decreased after each decade
        • Individual differences- person’s preferred hand no clear indication of location of function. But 95% right handed have left hemi language dominance
    • Brain areas
      • Auditory area- hearing, in temporal lobe, auditory pathways in cochlea, sound waves converted to nerve impulses, travel via auditory nerve to auditory cortex
        • Auditory pathway:cochlea, brain stem(basic decoding), thalamus (relay station),  auditory cortex(recognition of and response to sound)
      • Wernick’s area- left temporal lobe, patients with lesion on area could speak, not understand language. Separate motor and sensory regions in cortical regions- responsible from processing language
      • Somatosensory cortex- parietal lobe, detects sensory events from regions of body, info from skin, produces sensations of touch, pressure, pain and temp- localised to body regions. Hemi receives info from opposite sides of body
      • Broca’s area- patient could only say ‘tan’, post-mortems found lesion to frontal lobe on left hem- area essential for speech production
      • Visual centre- visual cortex and occipital lobe. Processing in retina, info sent to brain via optic nerve, info travels to thalamus (relay station), passes info to visual cortex
        • Each hemi receives info from opposite visual fields. Contains different areas for colour, shape, etc.

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