Midterm 1 Psych 302

Study of the structures and functions of the PNS and CNS

Aggregate of mental processes including perception, learning-memory, emotion, consciousness

Innate coordination of multiple muscle movements that, once triggered by biologically significant stimuli, proceed to completion without requiring further sensory input

Fixed-action pattern

Innate patterns of behavior triggered by environmental stimuli

Mind = brain

Mind = brain + x

Split-brain patients performed significantly above chance on tasks that required both of their hemispheres to work together, showing that their brain could still work as a single unified organ even if the two halves couldn't communicate directly with each other.

Principles of parsimony

T

Declarative memory

Hippocampus (MTL), diencephalon

Reflex pathways

Amygdala, cerebellum

Neocortex

Striatum, motor cortex, cerebellum

Over time Ca2+ channels will become inactivated, allowing less neurotransmitter release at the synapse and diminishing the next neuron's EPSP. Neurons may also downregulate the number of axon terminals connecting to the postsynaptic neuron.

Donald Hebb's hypothesis (1949)

Rapid (100 Hz, 1 s tetanization), durable (up to 16 weeks in rabbits), can be strengthened by repetition, supports associative learning (weak inputs can be potentiated if paired with strong ones)

Mia Nolan and her husband run over a kid and hide the body, she then murders him when he mentions wanting to turn himself in, murders an investigator who uses a machine to see her memory, then murders her husband all to hide her crime and protect her reputation.

Loss of recent memory (not long term)

LTM

Not affected

The untrained Aplysia can obtain the trained Aplysia's LTM

We will be able to obtain skills/info by swallowing pills and having the info enter our LTM.

S-S learning: 2 stimuli occur close to each other and become functionally linked

Edwin Twitmyer (in 1902)

S-R or S-R-O learning: response is associated with an outcome (can include positive/negative reinforcement/punishment)

Behaviors followed by pleasant consequences are more likely to be repeated, behaviors followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.

Edward Thorndike

A combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will, on its recurrence, tend to be followed by that movement.

Less trials needed for learning

A close temporal relationship between stimuli, or between stimulus and response, is necessary for an association to form.

Inhibitory conditioning

Excitatory conditioning

Auditory, insular (gustatory) and orbitofrontal cortices

Cerebellum

Amygdala

Insular and orbitofrontal cortices, amygdala

New learning that the CS no longer predicts the US, spontaneous recovery of the association is possible in the future.

Learning spreads to similar stimuli

Learning to discriminate between similar stimuli

Breakdown caused when the difference between similar stimuli is too small to detect

A cue that predicts the CS will also gain meaning, even if the CS isn't followed by the US. The response to the cue predicting the CS will be weaker than the response to the CS.

When two cues predict the US together, the stronger cue will become the stronger CS, and the weaker cue will be overshadowed.

Conditioning requires an information/predictive relationship between the CS and US.

P(US | CS) - P(US | no CS)

Evolution constrains which associations are easy to learn

Takes only 1 trial to form association, works when taste and illness happen hours apart, works even if animals are unconscious when sickness is induced.

Medical examiner David Crane steals a neurobiologist's memory-transferring serum so he can learn about his wife's murder and catch the killer.

Stimulus substitution

Anticipatory response

Compensatory response

Brain state that evolved to guide behaviors that promote survival and reproduction.

Conscious labeling of emotion

We feel emotion because our body reacts.

Emotion and bodily response happen at the same time, independently.

Emotion = bodily arousal + cognitive label from context.

Papez circuit (1937)

Hypothalamus

Animals without a medial temporal lobe (contains amygdala) showed no fear.

Rare genetic disorder that causes bilateral destruction of the amygdala (its tissue is replaced with calcium mineral deposits).

Little Albert was a kid taught to fear white rats through classical conditioning.

Signal travels from the thalamus to the auditory cortex to the amygdala

Signal travels from the thalamus to the amygdala

It doesn't address subconscious fears

Stored memories can be activated, modified, and reconsolidated.

It inhibited their amygdala, allowing them to get pellets that were further from their nest.

It increased amygdala activation and fear, so that rats were less willing to get pellets further from their nest.

It allowed them to get pellets that were further from their nest.

Large robots, robots moving toward rats, especially at high velocity were scary. (Stationary robots weren't scary, neither were robots not moving toward the rat)

Amygdala, dorsal PAG

T

Yes

A gene is delivered into neurons instructing them to make light-sensitive 'opsin' proteins, which embed themselves into the neurons' membranes. Scientists can then shine different colored lights on the neurons through an implanted optical fiber to turn them on or off.

Behavior that threatens/harms member of the same species.

Another male rat is introduced into a male rat's home cage, the two are scared of each other and fight.

Two rats are shocked together, they blame each other and attack each other.