Unit 3 Flashcards
(51 cards)
What makes up the CNS(Central Nervous System)
Brain, Spinal cord
What makes up the nervous system
CNS and PNS(peripheral)
What makes up the PNS
The SNS(somatic) and the ANS(autonomic)
What does the SNS do
Controls skeletal muscles through sensory and motor neurons. Controls Mainly voluntary actions. Responsible for reflex actions.
What does the ANS do
Controls automatic things like heart rate, breathing rate, intestinal secretions, Peristalsis, Split into sympathetic and parasympathetic systems that are antagonistic to each other.
What does the sympathetic system do
fight or flight when the body is excited and active: increases heart rate, increases breathing rate, decreases intestinal secretions, decreases peristalsis
What does the parasympathetic system do
rest and digest when the body is relaxed: decreases heart rate, decreases breathing rate, increases intestinal secretions, increases peristalsis
What are converging neural pathways
Impulses from several neurons travel and converge to one. E.G retina in the eye. Increases sensitivity to excitatory or inhibitory signals.
What are diverging neural pathways
Impulses from one neuron travel to several neurons affecting more than 1 destination at the same time. Allows fine motor control of fingers
What are reverberating neural pathways
Neurons later in the pathway link with neurons earlier in the pathway and impulses repeat over and over. E.G breathing
What does the cerebral cortex have
Localisation of brain functions. Sensory areas, motor areas, Association areas, Language, Personality, Imagination, Intelligence
What does the left hemisphere of the brain deal with
information that comes from the right visual field(eye) and controls the right side of the body
What controls the transfer of info from each side of the brain
Corpus Callosum
What is the cerebral cortex
center of conscious thought and recalls memories and alters behaviour in light of experience
What is the function of sensory neurons
They take impulses from sensory receptors to the CNS
What is the function of sensory neurons
They take impulses from sensory receptors to the CNS
What does memory involve
memory involves the encoding, storage and retrieval of info
What are the properties of the STM(Short term memory)
It has limited capacity and can hold about 7 items of info for about 30 seconds.
How can you lose information in STM
Displacement, where new info pushes out “old” info.
Decay, where memory fragments are forgotten until gone
How can information be transferred from the STM to the LTM(Long term memory)
rehearsal, organisation and elaboration
How can you remember the start and end of a long number but not the middle
start is remembered because there is enough time for rehearsal, the end is remembered because they haven’t been displaced yet, the middle is forgotten because of displacement or the STM is too crowded
How can the capacity of STM be increased
Chunking which is organising pieces of info into smaller chunks
What are the properties of the LTM
It has an unlimited capacity and can hold info for a long time
What is encoding
Encoding is transferring info into the STM to the LTM, transfer occurs from sensory memory to STM to LTM, info is transferred from STM to LTM by rehearsal, organisation or elaboration
Encoding is the process of storing sensory info into the brain, the quality of the memory depends on the attention to detail given to the encoding to it
E.G rehearsal is considered a shallow form of encoding to the LTM but elaboration is considered a deeper form of encoding which leads to improved information retention
