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Introduction to Psychology > The Brain > Flashcards

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1
Q

who is Phineas Gage?

A

a blasting foreman who worked on a railway construction project.

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2
Q

what year did Phineas Gage get into the accident?

A

1848

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3
Q

What happened to Phineas Gage while he worked on the construction project in 1848?

A

he put the tamping iron into the hole and the powder exploded, leading the iron into his face where it entered the left side of his jaw, moving upward direction where it passes behind his left eye, and went through his left brain and out of his skull. Where it landed several feet from the clutter.

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4
Q

what happened to Phineas Gage after the iron went through his skull?

A

He lost consciousness for a little bit, then he got on his feet.

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5
Q

What happened to Phineas Gage after the whole incident?

A

he began acting strangely and horrifyingly, using foul language and showing no concern for others.

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6
Q

what job Phineas Gage ended up taking after the incident?

A

he worked at a traveling circus

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7
Q

by hearing Phineas Gage’s story what did we learn?

A

the brain is the source of mental life and damage to the brain can have a profound effect on who we are and what we are.

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8
Q

who named the ‘Astonishing Hypothesis?

A

Nobel Prize-winning biologist, Francis Crick

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9
Q

what does Astonishing Hypothesis mean?

A

you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are no more than the behavior of vast nerve cells and their molecules.

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10
Q

where can Dualism be found?

A

every religion and philosophy

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11
Q

what are the parts of Duality for humans?

A

we are part material, spiritual, separate, mental, and psychological.

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12
Q

who was the most thoughtful and articulate defender of dualism?

A

philosopher, Rene Descartes

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13
Q

what was Noam Chomsky’s critique of behaviorism?

A

he argued that humans respond to environmental stimuli

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14
Q

who claimed that our behavior’s far too complicated for that and that we can’t be machines?

A

Rene Descartes and Noam Chomsky

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15
Q

what is a method of doubt?

A

the claim that we don’t feel like bodies

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16
Q

who said “There’s one thing you can’t doubt. You can’t doubt your own consciousness. You can’t doubt your own existence”

A

Rene Descartes

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17
Q

what is Rene Descartes’s famous line?

A

“I think, therefore I am”

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18
Q

what does Rene Descartes mean when he said “I think, therefore I am”?

A

that you could doubt that you have a body, but you can’t doubt that you have a mind.

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19
Q

what raises the possibility of dualism?

A

as people age their consciousness follows their bodies, if the mind and body are separate it raises the possibility of dualism

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20
Q

who wrote the most famous short story of history?

A

Franz Kafka

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21
Q

Franz Kafka’s famous short story began with what sentence?

A

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

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22
Q

what is dualism?

A

the idea that you are not your physical body, that you can survive the destruction of the body.

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23
Q

the beliefs about personal identity, life after death, the existence of supernatural beings, about God, all rest to what extent of perspective?

A

Dualist Perspective

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24
Q

what is an audacious view and should be treated as such?

A

Materialism

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25
what is the root of mental life?
the brain
26
what kind of technology allows us to look directly into the brain?
fMRI scanner
27
what could an fMRI scanner tell us?
it could tell wether you are thinking about a language, music, or sex.
28
what is set to be the most complex mechanism in the known universe?
the brain
29
what color is the brain?
Gray
30
why is the brain red?
because of all the blood
31
what is the brain made out of?
meat
32
whats in the brain?
chemical stuff
33
what is the part of the brain that thinks, the part that is the focus of most research?
neurons
34
what is the study of biological basis called?
neuroscience
35
where do dendrites receive signals from?
other neurons
36
what is excitatory?
pluses
37
what is inhibitory?
minuses
38
when does neural firing work?
when you reach a certain amount of pluses
39
where does the neural firing take place?
through the axon
40
where does the axon run from?
runs from your spinal cord, all the way to your big toe
41
what is surrounding the axon?
myelin sheath
42
what is myelin sheath made out of?
protein and fatty tissue
43
where does the information come through?
the dendrites
44
what happens when the information passes through the dendrites?
it is summed up in the cell body where it is transmitted through the axon
45
what sum up and transmit information?
neurons
46
how many neurons are there?
billions upon billions of neurons
47
what do the neurons connect to?
it connects to tens of thousands of other neurons
48
why do people describe the brain as the most complicated machine in the universe?
the brain has such a degree of complexity, and structure, that there is no way to replicate it in any machines.
49
how many types of neurons are there?
3
50
what are the 3 types of neurons?
sensory neuron, motor neuron, and interneuron.
51
what are sensory neurons?
takes information from the environment which is the external world. if you touch something hot and feel the pain that is sensory neurons.
52
what are motor neurons?
goes from your brain out to your motor control. If you reach for something that is motor neurons.
53
what are interneurons?
it connects with different neurons without making a contact with the external world. Instead, it is through sensation or motor action.
54
how would we describe firing neurons?
it's like firing a gun or sneezing, it's all or nothing. Neurons either fire or they don't.
55
who will neurons communicate to?
one neuron will communicate with the dendrites of another neuron.
56
a long time ago, people used to think, what about neurons?
people used to think that neurons were wired up together like a computer but in fact, they don't even touch one another.
57
why don't neurons touch one another?
there is a gap between the axon terminal, a very tiny gap like 1/110,000 meters wide.
58
what do you call the gap between the axon terminal?
synapse.
59
what happens in synapse?
well, when one neuron fires, the axon releases neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that shoot out over the gap which then affects dendrites and other neurons.
60
who uses curare drugs?
south American Indians
61
what type of drug is curare?
is an antagonist drug, it blocks motor neurons from affecting their muscle fibers.
62
how can curare drugs kill you?
First, it paralyzes you, and in large enough doses it will kill you. Because motor neurons keep your heart beating. If you shut it down, you will die.
63
what effect does Alcohol have?
It has an Inhibitory effect. It inhibits part of your brain that does the inhibition.
64
what do Alcohol and Curare have in common?
they both bring things down but in different ways.
65
what do Amphetamines do?
amphetamines help to bring things up. It increases the amount of norepinephrine.
66
what is norepinephrine?
is another neurotransmitter that is responsible for genetic general arousal, this is how drugs such as speed or cocaine work.
67
how do drugs like Prozac or L-Dopa influence neurotransmitters?
it influences in ways that they increase the supply of dopamine or serotonin, either by directly pumping in more or by increasing the supply in different ways.
68
what type of drug will be good for increasing Dopamine and increasing Serotonin?
Prozac or L-Dopa
69
what is the issue with people who have Parkinson's disease?
they have too little of Dopamine
70
what is the issue with people who have depression?
they have too little of Serotonin
71
Reasons why the brain isn't wired up like a computer?
the brain works better than a computer. The brain is highly resistant to damage, if you get a knife to the brain and cause damage to it, the brain won't shut down the entire system. Do the same with a computer by pulling out its chip, and the whole system shuts down. Second thing is, the brain is very fast. if your brain is wired up like a computer, it will be so slow and unusable. It has to be wired up in a way that allows the neurotransmitters to work at a human level, which is blindingly fast.
72
parts of the brain are functionalized for what?
parts of the brain are functionalized for different purposes, where they do different things.
73
Does having damage to different parts of the brain have the same effect?
No, having damage to different areas of the brain has different effects.
74
how can we figure out where the activity is happening in the brain?
by using an fMRI scan, PET scan, or any other scan that can look into the brain.
75
since we do not need the brain for everything. What are the activities that can happen without one?
sucking in newborn babies, pulling your limb back from pain, and vomiting.
76
what are the highly relevant structures of the brain called?
Subcortical
77
what does Subcortical mean?
it means they are below the cortex, making it the center of the brain.
78
what controls certain automatic functions like your heart rate, blood pressure, swallowing, and so on?
The Medulla
79
what controls body balance and muscle coordination?
The Cerebellum
80
How many neurons are there in the cerebellum?
about 30 - 50 billion neurons
81
The hypothalamus is responsible for what type of desire?
is responsible for different appetites such as feedings, thirst, and sex.
82
what is responsible at making us distinctive to others, the part that makes us human?
The cerebral Cortex
83
how long is Cerebral Cortex?
the cerebral cortex is all crumpled up, if you were to straighten it all out its length would be around 2 feet square and 3 millimeters thick.
84
where does the action take place, the reasoning, language, and complex perception?
Cerebral Cortex
85
what type of animal doesn't have a cerebral cortex?
a fish
86
what type of animal have a little bit of cerebral cortex?
reptiles and birds
87
who has the most cerebral cortex?
primates and humans
88
when you look at the cerebral cortex what do you see?
it has a left half and a right half
89
what is it about the cerebral cortex that is interesting?
it includes maps.
90
what is Topographical maps?
is when two things that are close together in the brain are similarly close together in the body.
91
what is the primary somatosensory area?
it is a sense organ. If you have a patient laying on the operating table and you shock them, the person would experience things such as a sound, a flash of light, or even touch.
92
what do you have in the occipital lobe?
you have a map for vision
93
what do you have in the temporal lobe?
you have a map for sound.
94
how do we know what parts of the brain are involved?
we can use an MRI or any other high-frequency magnetic field to look at the activity of the brain.
95
What's another way to look at the brain activity and which part is activated, besides using a high-frequency magnetic field?
we can look at what's called a natural experiment. That is when we look at patients with tumors, strokes, and motorcycle accidents.
96
what is Apraxia?
apraxia is a problem of action, this is when you're unable to do an action like waving goodbye. You are not paralyzed, you can make the movements but you can't coordinate it into complex actions.
97
what is Agnosia?
Agnosia is a disorder of perception. It's not like you can't see, you just can't recognize what you are seeing.
98
who wrote a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat?
Oliver Sacks
99
what is the book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat about?
It's a series of people who had neurological disorders. The man had such an inability to recognize faces, he couldn't tell the difference between his wife's face and a hat.
100
what is Prosopagnosia?
it's when you could recognize faces as faces but you can't recognize whose face they are and it's very hard for you to recognize people.
101
if you ask someone with a prosopagnosia to draw a clock how will they draw it?
they will put all the numbers from 1-12 on the right side of the clock. As if they stopped thinking of the left side of the world again. Maybe it's not a sensory problem but an attentional problem.
102
what is Aphasia?
Aphasia refers to a disorder of language.
103
what is an expressive form of Aphasia?
the Broca's Aphasia. A famous case of someone who could only say the word 'tan', he would say 'tan' tan' 'tan', and nothing else.
104
what is Receptive Aphasia?
It's when you can talk but the things you say don't make any sense, and you have a very hard time understanding others.
105
Are brains symmetrical?
no
106
what is Lateralization?
is the difference between the two halves of the brain, which is the left side and the right side.
107
what does Ambidextrous mean?
is the people who can write using their left and right hand.
108
for the most part, people who are right-handed have language in which part of their brain?
in the left half of the brain
109
for people who are left-handed, they have language in which part of the brain?
they are evenly mixed, some have it in the right half, others on the left half of the brain
110
as common wisdom goes what does the left side of the brain is associated with?
the left side of the brain is associated with written language, spoken language, reasoning, logic, and science.
111
as common wisdom goes what does the right side of the brain is associated with?
the right side is more associated with insight, imagination, and music.
112
what principle does the discussion of the halves of the brain lay into?
principle of contralateral organization
113
what does the principle of contralateral organization mean?
it means that your right brain sees the left side of the world, and the left brain sees the right side of the world.
114
for motor control your right and left hemisphere controls which side of the body?
the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body.
115
what is Corpus Callosum?
It's a network of neurons that connect one half of the brain with the other half. Which allows the brain to talk to each other.
116
is everyone's brain in constant conversation with the other half of the brain?
not everyone, but for most people; yes.
117
how can you view epilepsy?
you can view it as an electrical storm in the brain.
118
what happen to those patients that had their corpus callosum cut off?
they ended up, unknowingly, breaking one person into two. What I mean by that is, you have 1 half of the brain that can speak and say what they want and the other half of the brain that can't.

Introduction to Psychology (6 decks)

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