Chapter 1 (from the slides)

Question 1

What is Consciousness?

Answer 1

• Several phenomena involving the human brain that provide insights into the nature of the human mind.
• Awareness of, and the ability to communicate about one;s thoughts, perceptions, memories, and feelings.
• There is an awareness of environment and the creation of a strategy to communicate.

Question 2

What is Blindsight?

Answer 2

The ability of a person who cannot see objects in his or her blind field to accurately reach for them while remaining unconscious of perceiving them; cause by damage to the “mammmalian” visual system.

Question 3

How does consciousness differ from wakefulness?

Answer 3

Wakefulness is just a sense of “being” while consciousness requires more such as your ability to communicate your thoughts, perceptions, memories, and feelings

Question 4

What happens with Blindsight?

Answer 4

Indicates that consciousness is not a property of all parts of the brain.

• The cortex is damaged when this occurs.

Question 5

What is involved in the split-brain operation?

Answer 5

• This operation occurs when a person has an epilepsy.
• The corpus callosum is split during this surgery
• Remember: Right and left hemisphere communicate constantly; we can’t know what arises in the hemisphere,
• Simply resecting through the bundle white matter of the two hemispheres.
• Limits the seizures to one hemisphere

Question 6

What happens when the corpus callosum is split?

Answer 6

• People who have a resected corpus callosum often note that their left hand seems have a “mind of its own”.
• People will say they do not understand what is going on in their left hemisphere
• Experiment: RH is most likely mute. If you present a rose to the right nostril, they will not recognize it in the left. However, the left had would chose the rose since the right side in contralateral.

Question 7

Split-brain phenomena

Answer 7

• Show that information becomes conscious only if able to reach the left hemisphere (responsible for language)

Question 8

What is unilateral neglect?

Answer 8

• syndrome in which people ignore objects located toward their left and left sides of objects located anywhere.
• This is often associated with damage to the right parietal lobe.

Question 9

Rubber hand illusion

Answer 9

• shows that consciousness is “constructed” in the brain

Question 10

What are the Specialties of Neuroscience?

Answer 10

Physiological psychology, psychophamacology, neuropsychcology, psychophysiology, cognitive neuroscience

Question 11

Who is Pierre Flourens and what did he do?

Answer 11

• Physiologist who removed various parts of animals’s brains and observed their behavior.
• Experimental ablation: research method in which the function of part of the is inferred by observing the behaviors an animal can no longer perform after that part is damaged.

Question 12

Who is Paul BROCA and what did he do?

Answer 12

• Extended Flouren’s study to humans.
• Discovered Broca’s area
• If you have a lesion in left frontal lobe, then you will have issues producing language

Question 13

Who are Fritsch and Hitzig and what did they do?

Answer 13

• used electrical stimulation of the brain to understand function

Question 14

Who is von Helmholtz and what did he do?

Answer 14

• Responsible for developing the law of conservation of energy; developing the first measurements of the speed of nerve conduction.

Question 15

Natural Selection and Evolution

Answer 15

• Charles Darwin

- Formulate the principles of natural selection and evolution, which revolutionized bioology

Question 16

What is functionalism?

Answer 16

• best way to understand biological phenomenon is to try to understand its useful functions or organism
• What does it do and what is it useful for?

Question 17

Natural Selection

Answer 17

• Inherited traits that confer l advantage become more prevalent in population.
• Evolution is the result of natural selection of mutated traits
• Inherited traits that confer a selective advantage
• helpful mutations will better propagate (survival will occur)

Question 18

What is Neoteny?

Answer 18

• slowing of process of maturation, allowing more time for growth; important factor in development of large brains

Question 19

What is Mendel doing?

Answer 19

• genetic discovery based on his pea study

Question 20

Phenotype

Answer 20

• the organisms visible traits

Question 21

Genotype

Answer 21

• be They are the traits that can be passed on to children through genetic material
• some may not expressed

Question 22

Mendel’s Theory

Answer 22

• Breeding true white and true brown peas
• When the beans were cross-bred, and created an offspring of brown seeds (1st generation)
• look at slide 30 for diagram

Question 23

More of Mendel’s Theory

Answer 23

1) Two kind of inherited factors for each dichotomous trait
- Now referred to as genes.
2) Each organism possesses two genes for each of its dichotomous traits
- Two genes that control the same trait are alleles.
- Identical genes are homozygous
- Two different genes are heterozygous

3) One of the genes in heterozygous pair dominates the other in expression of the trait for each trait
4) Offspring radomly inherit on of the father’s two genes and one of the mother’s two genes

Question 24

DNA

Answer 24

• Deoxiribonucelic Acid
• Arranged in two strands, and form a code.
• 46 human chromosomes
• 2 meters DNA
• 3 billion DNA subunits (the bases: ATGC)
  
  • A attaches T
  • G attaches to C
• Approximately 30,000 genes code for proteins that perform most lift functions
• The two strands are complementary

Question 25

What is a karyotype

Answer 25

- exemplifies the human makeup | - 23 pairs of chromosomes

Question 26

Meiosis

Answer 26

- The chromosomes duplicate in this process - Duplication occurs, and they divide into two cells. - You will one from mom and one from dad

Question 27

What is Mitosis

Answer 27

- after cell division | - Cells multiply and pairs retain different sets

Question 28

Crossing Over

Answer 28

- The most important mutation occurs. - They cross-over, and exchange parts of their DNA This means that the genetic material from our ancestors is constantly shuffled - Which is why all genes are not always inherited

Question 29

What are gross errors?

Answer 29

- for example extra copies of inherited chromosomes

Question 30

Alterations in individual genes

Answer 30

- due to errors on replication, e.g., substitution, insertion, deletion.

Question 31

When does down syndrome occur?

Answer 31

- When ere are thee copies on chromosome 21? | - people can survive, but live with Down Syndrome

Question 32

DNA Replication Prior to Cell Division

Answer 32

- you get a strand from your parents, and then the strands split into new complementary strands.

Question 33

Gene Expression

Answer 33

1) The DNA molecule partially unravels, exposing the structural gene that is to be transcribed 2) A strand of messenger RNA is transcribed from of of the exposed DNA strands and carries the genetic code from the nucleus into into the cytoplasm of the cell 3) In the cytoplasm, the strand of messanger RA attaches itself to a ribosome. The ribosome moves along the strand translating each successive condon into the appriate amino acid, which added to the lengthening protein by a molecule to transfer RNA 4) When the ribosome reaches the end of the messenger RNA strand, a condon instructs it to release the completed protein

Question 34

DNA sequence variation?

Answer 34

- DNA sequence variation in a gene can change the protein produced by the genetic code.

Question 35

Human Genome Project

Answer 35

- Mapping of the human genome is now complete - the human genome contains 3.1647 billion chemical nucleotides - The average consists of 3000 bases, but the sizes vary greatly, with the largest being 2.4 million bases - About 25,00 genes code for proteins - Almost 99.9% nucleotide bases are exactly the same in all people - SNPs are likely to provide a map for location of diseases

Question 36

What are the human genome findings?

Answer 36

- A singe gene can produce more than one protein - Micro RNAs have a role of gene expression through the action of expession - Epigenome: part of the genome that is responsive to the environment

Question 37

What is epigenetics?

Answer 37

- Discovery of the non-active genome - The field of epigenetics is based on the recognition that DNA, while stable throughout life, is structurally much more complex than a simple string of nucleotides - a layer made of chemical chains is wrapped around the DNA sequence, and regulates the functions of the genome.

Question 38

What twin studies?

Answer 38

examine the impact of varying degrees of genetic similarity on behavioral similarity

Question 39

Difference between Identical twins and fraternal twins?

Answer 39

- Identical = monozygotic (share 100% of their genes) | - fraternal = dizygotic (share 50% of their genes)

Question 40

What are concordance rates?

Answer 40

- examines the likelihood of whether a twin shares a behavioral trait with another twin. - A higher concordance rate for MZ twins relative to DZ twins suggests a genetic influence for that trait.

Question 41

What does .74 heritability mean?

Answer 41

- 74% of the variability in intelligence is accounted for the variability in genetic factors.