readings Flashcards
(20 cards)
What are the three things that brain has been used to compare to?
hydraulic machine (18th century), a mechanical calculator (19th century) and an
electronic computer (20th century)
What is the popular metaphor of the brain today?
brain is like a
Swiss Army knife, with specialized modules for vision, language, facial recognition,
cheating detection, risk taking, spirituality and even God.
What is the metaphor that have been fuelled by fMRI?
Modularity metaphor
Who published the opinion piece entitled “This Is Your Brain on Politics”?
Marco Iacoboni
What are the two areas associated with anxiety and disgust?
amygdala and the insula
Why does a cognitive
neuroscientists who use the same brain imaging technology, we know that it is not
possible to definitively determine whether a person is anxious or feeling connected
simply by looking at activity in a particular brain region?
because brain regions
are typically engaged by many mental states, and thus a one-to-one mapping between a
brain region and a mental state is not possible
What is a better way to say mental module metaphors?
Neural networks
What is the conclusion of the reading about the “brain is not modular”?
neural networks associated
with psychological concepts is a worthy one, as long as we do not succumb to the siren
song of phrenology
What happens to Christina?
lost sense of proprioception
What happens when sensory stimuli are a certain type of stimuli and magnitude?
they activate a receptor atthe
end of a particular type of neuron in these
clusters, called a nociceptor, and the signals
register as pain. This “painful” part of the
process is known as nociception, the detection of
noxious stimuli.
What is the finding awarded by Nobel Prize?
They
discovered a single gene that made cells
sensitive to capsaicin, as well as hot
temperatures.
What did they find from the boy with “congenital insensitivity to pain” (CIP)?
theydiscoveredthe
root of the condition: a mutation in a gene
called SCN9A, which provides instructions for
making a sodium channel on nociceptors that
makes them fire.Without it, pain signals never
make it to the brain.
what’s the common findings of people with chronic pain, anxiety conditions and major depressive disorder?
They found several shared brain changes,
including similar decreases in brain volume
and consistent changes in how neurons were
connected in the prefrontal cortex and insula
What is another potential explanation for co-existence of chronic pain and certain
emotional conditions?
when the typical
balance between glutamate and GABA shifts,
producinga heightened sensitivity to potential
threats that makes the individual more prone to
pain and the urge to withdrawl into themselves,
What is Nociplastic pain?
The brain’s pain centre becomes hypervigilant and responds disproportionately to minor injuries or inflammation, converting them into excruciating pain.
What are the two routes to Nociplastic pain?
One is bottom-up, where
an“ordinary”pain trigger balloons beyond all
proportion. Clare’s started that way, with an
injury. The other is top-down, where there is
no obvious trigger.
What is the association between the pain and misfired signals?
The brain
interprets tissue
damage and
misfired signals
the same way
What’s the reason of drugs that selectively block the channels
fail to generate the full pain-blocking effect
because they lack SCN9A
What is the benefit from float tank
Similar decreases in default mode network (DMN) activity are often seen in altered states of
consciousness and during psychedelic experiences, which have been linked to improvements
in various mental health conditions, including alcohol misuse and obsessive-compulsive
disorder
