Studies Flashcards
(34 cards)
What are some of the findings regarding the heritability of ADHD?
60-90% [Faraone]
Unaffected siblings perform better but worse than control [Slats-Willemse]
Sustained attention 46-72% [Groot]
Estimates change with age [Polderman]
What was [Davis et al]’s study about?
Twins in England and Wales. Geocoded by postcode (closer contributed more).
IQ, ADHD, achievement tested.
[Davis] What was the hypothesis about why non-shared environmental influences were more important in London?
More diversity of household income, therefore more diversity of kids.
This means more different types of friends for twins to fall into.
[Davis] Why are genes more important based on your environment in London?
Hayfever and field example.
Larger class sizes, more competition, lower resources. More variable environment.
[Barnes] what is the clinical benefit of MPH?
Blockade of the dopamine transporter (DAT).
[Bellgrove] what causes children to perform more poorly on sustained attention tasks?
Being homozygous for the 10 repeat allele.
What are the findings for the D4 receptor gene (DRD4)?
Mixed findings but 7-repeat good.
[Bellgrove][Johnson] Children with the 7-repeat allele made fewer errors.
[Langley] The opposite.
[Swanson] Children with the 7-repeat allele display extreme behaviour with no cognitive symptoms. Without it at risk for poorer cognition.
[Durston] what are the findings for the genotype influencing brain matter volumes?
Carriers of the 7-repeat allele had larger prefrontal volumes than those homozygous for the 4-repeat allele.
[Posner] What was Posner’s original spatial cueing task?
Look at computerised display
Flash arrow in centre (valid, invalid, neutral)
Stimulus up and to the right/left
Always maintain eye position, only allowed to use periphery.
[Goldberg] What was Goldberg’s study regarding attentional modulation of parietal neurons?
Monkey tries to detect the target briefly dimming. Fixates on target.
Found that the neurons turn up the volume before it even dims if in RF. Attention benefits.
[Beischel] What was Beischel’s study regarding feature based attention?
Look for a particular colour, cue in centre tells him which colour, he then searches for the colour.
Measure where his eyes are looking. He gets reward when he gets the target.
Recording from neurons in v4. Every time he moves his eyes, he moves the RF. When RF is over target but not looking at target, neuron fires maximally.
What happened when Ming used an electrical impulse on the growth cone being exposed to the chemorepellent?
It reversed the effect. The growth cone turned toward the chemorepellent.
What can we gather from Ming’s electrical impulse study?
Not that electrical impulses reverse the effect of chemoattractant/repellents but that it deeply influences the relationship. It is never clear cut always depends on context.
Explain the results of the cross-fostering study in rats.
All pups were low anxiety except those that were born of a low-licking mum and fostered by a low-licking mum.
This means that the genetic effect of having a low-licking mum can be offset by being raised by a high-licking mum.
Also means that high-licking mother’s pups are genetically protected from the negative effects of being raised by a low-licking mother.
What were the results of the breastfeeding study?
It promotes all emotional and social development aspects.
Also promotes myelination. Higher myelination in higher breastfeeding kids.
What were the results of isolating the newborn pups for 1h daily?
Decreased social structures and memory structures.
What did they do to minimise the effects of the 1hr isolation of pups?
They played back the calls of the mother. This actually seemed to mitigate the effects of the isolation (increased dopamine). Effect only in female pups.
What were the findings for the prairie voles study on monogamy?
Will always prefer the partner after mating. If there is no mating, there is not a significant preference.
What were the findings of injecting dopamine antagonist vs CSF in prairie voles?
Affliative behaviours decreased when antagonist injected.
Virgin males presented with a stranger attacked more often.
What were the findings of the oxytocin nasal spray study on social distance?
Whenever males were in a relationship and given oxytocin, the distance they felt comfortable was significantly different than in all other cases.
The M OXY Rel condition caused males to stand significantly further away.
Which studies are examples of endogenous cueing (top-down processing)?
The V-N-I cueing tasks. Be it Posner or any other task that has a cue that means to look in a certain direction for the stimulus.
What were the results of Owen et al’s study on consciousness?
They asked her to imagine playing tennis and to imagine walking around her house.
Found that the activation areas involved in these processes light up.
Her responses matched controls.
What was Goodhew’s study on visual masking?
Object substitution masking.
Fixation cross
Blank
3x3 w/ word or non-word
Dots around each word were coloured (sometimes matching)
Blank or dots remain
Respond colour of mask and word/non-word.
What were the results of Goodhew’s study on visual masking?
If dots stay on, impaired detection.
If dots went away, very high accuracy.
Faster to respond when compatible, then N then I.
Regardless of whether you got the word task correct, you still had the same speed increase. So even if you don’t process word consciously, you process it semantically.
