Unit 3

Your friend is taking her first psychology class. She comes to you saying, "I don't understand why we are studying the brain; I thought this was a psychology class." Because of your background in psychology, your best response should be

"Everything psychological is simultaneously biological."

Which of the following fictional research findings is the best evidence against the idea that "our lives are determined by our experiences"?

Babies are born with personalities that are relatively stable throughout their lives

An undersupply of the major inhibitory neurotransmitter known as ___ is linked to seizures

GABA

The concentration of glucose in active regions of the brain underlies the usefulness of a(n)

PET scan

Which of the following best describes how the brain processes and controls language?

Subfunctions of speech (such as producing speech, reading aloud, and understanding speech) are processed by different parts of the brain.

Alzheimer's disease is most closely linked to the deterioration of neurons that produce

acetylcholine

Transferring messages from motor neurons to a leg muscle requires the neurotransmitter known as

acetylcholine

The movement of positively charged ions across the membrane of a neuron can produce a(n)

action potential

The brains of patients with Parkinson's disease have little dopamine. Drugs used to treat such patients bind to dopamine receptors, thereby stimulating those receptors. These drugs would be considered

agonists

Molecules that are similar enough to a neurotransmitter to bind to its receptor sites on a dendrite and block that neurotransmitter's effects are called what?

antagonists

The process of anticipating that you will be punished for misbehaving takes place within the

association areas

Neurotransmitters are released from vesicles located on the knoblike terminals at the end of the

axon

The part of a neuron that transmits neural messages to other neurons or to muscles or glands is called the

axon

Professor Seif conducts research on the relationship between the limbic system and sexual motivation. Her research interests best represent the psychological specialty known as

biological psychology

Which kind of psychological researcher would be most interested in the research question, "Do people who lose most of their cerebral cortex in an accident still show signs of consciousness?

cognitive psychologist

The ability to simultaneously copy different figures with the right and left hand is most characteristic of those whose ____ has been cut.

corpus callosum

Animal research has revealed a general reward system that triggers the release of the neurotransmitter

dopamine

Schizophrenia is most closely linked with excess receptor activity for the neurotransmitter

dopamine

Which cognitive neuroscience term reflects the idea that "much of our everyday thinking, feeling, and acting operates outside our conscious awareness"?

dual processing

Hormones are the chemical messengers of the

endocrine system

Brittla frequents only the most expensive clubs in an effort to attract a desirable mate. According to evolutionary psychologists, Brittla's behavior is a product of

genetic predispositions

The peripheral nervous system is to sensory neurons as the central nervous system is to

interneurons

A synapse is a(n)

junction between a sending neuron and a receiving neuron

Severing a cat's reticular formation from higher brain regions causes the cat to

lapse into a coma

The ability to recognize faces with the right hemisphere but not with the left hemisphere best illustrates

lateralization

Evolutionary psychology studies the evolution of behavior and the mind using principles of

natural selection

Recent brain research contradicts previously held beliefs, indicating that new neurons are actually formed in the brain. What is this process called?

neurogenesis

The chemical messengers released into the spatial junctions between neurons are called

neurotransmitters

Migraine headaches are most closely linked with an

oversupply of glutamate

After Terry lost a finger in an industrial accident, the area of his sensory cortex devoted to receiving input from that finger gradually became very responsive to sensory input from his adjacent fingers. This best illustrates

plasticity

After Kato's serious motorcycle accident, doctors detected damage to his cerebellum. Kato is most likely to have difficulty

playing his guitar

Reuptake refers to the

reabsorption of excess neurotransmitter molecules by a sending neuron

The axon of a resisting neuron has gates that do not allow positive sodium ions to pass through the cell membrane. What is this characteristic called?

selective permeability

Messages are transmitted from your spinal cord to your digestive system's stomach muscles by the

sympathetic nervous system

While you are hiking in the mountains, a rattlesnake slithers across your trail. Which of the following triggers the "fight-or-flight" response, increasing your heart rate and blood pressure, as you run away?

sympathetic nervous system

Sir Charles Sherrington observed that impulses took more time to travel a neural pathway than he might have anticipated. His observation provided evidence for the existence of

synaptic gaps

Your ability to experience the physical pleasure of a hot shower is most likely to be disrupted by damage to your

thalamus

Researchers use dichotic listening tasks to investigate right-left differences in an intact brain. In this task a different verbal stimulus is presented simultaneously to each ear. Findings suggest that participants more quickly recall information heard by the right ear. This suggests that

the left hemisphere is dominant in language processing

The minimum level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse is called the

threshold

A picture of a dog is briefly flashed in the left visual field of a split-brain patient. At the same time a picture of a boy is flashed in the right visual field. In identifying what she saw, the patient would be most likely to

verbally report that she saw a boy