Brain Structures
This brainstem structure controls alertness and arousal; significant damage to it can cause a person to fall into an irreversible coma.
What is the reticular formation (reticular activating system / RAS)?
This lobe, at the back of the brain, processes visual information.
What is the occipital lobe?
This band of fibers connects the brain's two hemispheres and can be surgically severed in extreme epilepsy cases.
What is the corpus callosum?
This sleep disorder involves repeated pauses in breathing during sleep, often with gasping or loud snoring.
What is sleep apnea?
This research method involves studying the same individuals repeatedly over an extended period of time.
What is a longitudinal study?
This limbic structure regulates hunger, thirst, and body temperature.
What is the hypothalamus?
This lobe governs planning, judgment, and impulse control, and is the last lobe to fully develop.
What is the frontal lobe?
This term describes the brain's capacity to reorganize itself and shift functions to undamaged areas, especially in younger brains.
What is brain plasticity?
This sleep disorder causes sudden, uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep during the day.
What is narcolepsy?
This ethical requirement means participants must understand what a study involves, including their right to withdraw, before agreeing to take part.
What is informed consent?
Often called the brain's “sensory relay station,” this structure routes incoming sensory information to the cortex.
What is the thalamus?
This lobe processes touch and pain; because of contralateral organization, damage to its right side would affect sensation on the left side of the body.
What is the parietal lobe?
This term describes how each hemisphere of the brain primarily controls and receives sensory input from the opposite side of the body.
What is contralateral organization?
This term describes the body's roughly 24-hour internal clock, which can be disrupted by long-distance travel across time zones.
What is circadian rhythm?
A precise, measurable description of exactly how a variable will be defined and measured in a study is called this.
What is an operational definition?
This limbic structure, when stimulated, is most closely linked to producing aggression or fear responses.
What is the amygdala?
Damage to this frontal-lobe language area produces slow, labored, grammatically poor speech, while comprehension stays intact.
What is Broca's area?
This term describes the brain's ability to simultaneously process information along both a conscious and an unconscious track.
What is dual processing?
This theory of dreaming proposes that dreams are the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural activity generated in the brainstem during REM sleep.
What is the activation-synthesis theory?
This memory phenomenon occurs when someone correctly remembers a piece of information but cannot correctly recall where or how they learned it.
What is source amnesia?
This structure coordinates balance, posture, and fine motor movement, such as maintaining coordination during a complex physical performance.
What is the cerebellum?
This small, cone-packed area of the retina is responsible for our sharpest, most detailed vision.
What is the fovea?
Psychologists often point to incomplete development of this brain region to help explain risky, impulsive decision-making in teenagers.
What is the frontal lobe (prefrontal cortex)?
Sleep plays an important role in this process, during which the brain stabilizes and strengthens newly formed memories.
What is memory consolidation?
This memory error happens when information never gets stored in long-term memory in the first place, often because it wasn't attended to or processed deeply enough.
What is encoding failure?