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Psych Unit 3 Vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Plasticity | Neural change, building new pathways |
| Neuron | The building blocks for our neural information systems |
| Glial cell | Supports, nourishes, and protects neurons |
| Threshold | The moment that triggers action potential |
| Refractory period | The time it takes neurons to fire again |
| All-or-none response | A neuron either fires or it doesn't, there's no difference in intensity |
| Resting potential | The electric potential between the inside and outside of a neuron |
| Depolarization | When a cell's charge becomes positive/less negative |
| Multiple Sclerosis | When the immune system attacks glial cells, myelin is damaged and stripped from the axon leading to loss of motor function and such |
| Reuptake | Excess neurotransmitters drifting away, being captured by enzymes, or being reabsorbed by the sending neuron |
| Excitatory neurotransmitters | One that excites the neurotransmitter, causing it to fire off another message |
| Inhibitory neurotransmitters | One that blocks the chemical message from being passed along any further |
| Reuptake inhibitors | A drug that inhibits reuptake |
| Acetylcholine | Enables muscle action, learning, and memory |
| Dopamine | Influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion |
| Serotonin | Affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal |
| Norepinephrine | Helps control alertness and arousal |
| GABA (gamma-aminobutryic acid) | A major inhibitory neurotransmitter |
| Glutamate | A major excitatory neurotransmitter involved in memory |
| Endorphins | Neurotransmitters that influence the perception of pain or pleasure |
| Agonists | Molecules that increase a neurotransmitter's action |
| Antagonists | Molecules that decrease a neurotransmitter's action |
| Substance P | Regulates mood, anxiety, stress, pain, etc. |
| Myasthenia Gravis | Another disease that causes weakness in a person's muscles because of an error in how nerve signals are sent to muscles |
| Nervous system | The communicating network in our body |
| Central Nervous System (CNS) | The brain and the spinal cord |
| Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) | Responsible for gathering info and transmitting all of the CNS decisions to other body parts |
| Sensory neurons | Carry messages from tissues and sensory receptors |
| Motor neurons | Carry instructions to muscles and glands |
| Interneurons | Communicate between sensory and motor neurons |
| Somatic Nervous System | Enables voluntary control of skeletal muscles |
| Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) | Controls glands and internal organ muscles automatically |
| Sympathetic Nervous System | Arouses and expends energy, for example, raising your heartbeat in a stressful situation |
| Parasympathetic Nervous System | Conserves energy, for example, calming you down after watching a horror movie |
| Reflex | A simple, automatic response to a sensory stimulus |
| Hormones | Chemical messengers |
| Adrenaline | This and noradrenaline get someone amped up and energized |
| Pituitary gland | Super important, it regulates growth and controls our endocrine glands |
| Hypothalamus | Controls the pituitary gland, also helps manage sleep, hunger, and body temperature among other things |
| Leptin | Regulates the balance between food intake and energy expenditure |
| Ghrelin | Hunger hormone, tells you when it's time to eat |
| Melatonin | Times circadian rhythms and sleep and shit |
| Oxytocin | Causes contraction of uterus during labor and stimulates ejection of milk into the ducts of breasts (also known as the horny hormone) |
| Electroencephalogram (EEG) | Like an amplified recording of electrical activity across the brain's surface |
| fMRI (functioning MRI) | An MRI that reveals bloodflow and therefore activity |
| Lesions | Tissue destruction |
| Brain stem | Oldest and innermost region of the brain (most survival functions) |
| Medulla | Base of the brainstem (heartbeat and breathing) |
| Thalamus | On top of the brainstem (controls the senses) |
| Reticular formation | A nerve network through the brainstem that plays a role in controlling arousal |
| Cerebellum | Extends from the brainstem's rear, enables nonverbal learning and skill memory |
| Limbic system | Between oldest and newest regions, connected with emotions and drives |
| Amygdala | Lima-bean sized neural clusters (aggression and food) |
| Hippocampus | Seahorse-shaped (processes memories) |
| Cerebral cortex | Ultimate control and info processing |
| Frontal lobes | Just behind the forehead, does speaking, muscle movement, plans, judgements, it's pretty important and develops slowly |
| Parietal lobes | Top of head and rear, receives sensory input for touch and body position |
| Occipital lobes | Back of head, receives information from the visual fields |
| Temporal lobes | Roughly above ears, includes auditory areas, gets information from the ear on the opposite side |
| Motor cortex | At the rear of the frontal lobes, controls voluntary movements |
| Sensory cortex | Receives and processes sensory information across the body, it's right behind the motor cortex |
| Cortex specialization | Different parts of the brain control different body parts |
| Prefrontal cortex | In the frontal lobe, thought of as the personality center, what makes us uniquely human |
| Broca's area | Brain center associate with the motor control of speech |
| Wernicke's area | All about comprehension of language |
| Aphasia | Can occur after a head injury, affects ability to express and understand spoken or written language |
| Neurogenesis | Brain growth, like plasticity |
| Corpus callosum | A band of nerves that connects the brain's two hemispheres |
| Hemispheric specialization/Lateralization | Tendency of some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or another |
| Consciousness | The individual awareness of one's unique thoughts and memories and shit |
| Attention | The concentration of awareness on something |
| Selective attention | Focusing on a particular input while suppressing irrelevant information |
| Inattention blindness | The failure to notice something fully-visible but unexpected because attention was engaged on another task |
| Change blindness | When there is a change in a visual stimulus but the observer does not notice it |
| Cocktail Party Effect | Focusing on one thing while filtering out other things |
| Blindsight | A neurological condition where someone can perceive the location of an object despite being cortically blind |
| Circadian rhythms | The physical, mental, and behavioral changes an organism experiences over a 24-hour cycle |
| Jet lag | Tiredness after a long flight, getting used to time change |
| REM sleep | A part of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement accompanied by low muscle tone throughout the body and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vividly |
| Hypnagogic sensations | The transitional state from wakefulness to sleep |
| EEG patterns (of each NREM stage) | Low-voltage fast EEG pattern of wakefulness gradually decreases to slower frequencies (N1 to N2 to N3 gets slower and slower) |
| Insomnia | A disorder where it's hard to fall asleep |
| Narcolepsy | A chronic neurological disorder that affects the brain's ability to control sleep-wake cycles |
| Sleep apnea | A sleep disorder marked by pauses in breathing 10 seconds or more during sleep and causes unrestful sleep |
| Sleepwalking | Walking around or sometimes performing other actions while sleeping |
| REM Sleep Behavior Disorder | Movement in your sleep (but like extreme sometimes) |
| Neural activation | The process by which neurons become active and generate electrical impulses or signals within the nervous system |
| REM Rebound | The tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation |
| Consolidation theory | The idea that sleep plays a crucial role in the process of converting short-term memories into long-term memories by strengthening neural connections |
| Psychoactive drugs | Chemicals that change perceptions and moods |
| Tolerance | Needing larger quantities of a drug for the same effect |
| Addiction | Craving a drug, not being able to stop using it |
| Withdrawl | Adverse side effects when one tries to stop taking a drug |
| Depressants | Drugs that calm neural activity and slow body functions |
| Alcohol use disorder | Basically an addiction to alcohol |
| Opiates | Opium and its derivatives, temporarily lessen pain and anxiety, depressants |
| Stimulants | Drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions |
| Cocaine | A stimulant that's really powerful |
| Caffeine | A stimulant that's not super powerful but is used a lot |
| Hallucinogens | Drugs tha distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input |
| Marijuana/THC | Also known as weed, it's a mild hallucinogen |
| Endocrine System | Our "slow" chemical communication system that uses hormones |
Created by:
mejones
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