The Nervous System
This system includes the brain and spinal cord.
What is the central nervous system?
This brain region helps control balance and coordinated movement.
What is the cerebellum?
hese chemical messengers travel through the bloodstream and affect body processes.
What are hormones?
These units of heredity are passed from biological parents to offspring.
What are genes?
This “feel-good” chemical messenger is often linked with reward and motivation.
What is dopamine?
This division carries sensory information to the central nervous system and sends commands to skeletal muscles.
What is the somatic nervous system?
This structure helps regulate basic functions such as breathing and heartbeat.
What is the brain stem?
This gland is often called the “master gland” because it influences several other endocrine glands.
What is the pituitary gland?
This molecule carries genetic information in most living organisms.
What is DNA?
Your brain can fill in missing details when you look at an image or hear an unclear sound. This shows that perception is not always a perfect copy of what?
What is the outside world?
This branch of the autonomic nervous system prepares the body for action during stress.
What is the sympathetic nervous system?
This brain structure is important for forming new memories.
What is the hippocampus?
This gland produces adrenaline, which helps prepare the body for rapid action.
What are the adrenal glands?
In twin studies, why do researchers compare identical twins with fraternal twins?
To help estimate how much heredity may influence a trait.
This common brain trick makes you more likely to notice information that supports what you already believe.
What is confirmation bias?
These cells transmit information through electrical and chemical signals.
What are neurons?
This brain structure helps process emotions such as fear and aggression.
What is the amygdala?
Unlike the nervous system’s rapid signaling, this system often produces effects that develop more slowly and last longer.
What is the endocrine system?
In adoption studies, researchers compare adoptees with their biological and adoptive relatives. What are they trying to understand?
How heredity and environment may each influence behavior.
This autonomic nervous system branch calms the body and supports “rest and digest” functions.
What is the parasympathetic nervous system?
At the junction between neurons, chemical messengers cross a small gap to pass along a signal. Name the gap and the messengers.
What are the synapse and neurotransmitters?
This brain area helps regulate body temperature, hunger, thirst, and links the nervous and endocrine systems.
What is the hypothalamus?
This structure connects the nervous and endocrine systems by regulating the pituitary gland.
What is the hypothalamus?
This field examines how inherited traits and environmental experiences together influence behavior.
What is behavioral genetics?
This effect describes how people may perform differently when they know they are being observed.
What is the Hawthorne effect?