Brain Basics
The lobe at the back of the brain that primarily processes visual information.
What is the occipital lobe?
An action potential moves quickly down a myelinated axon by jumping between these.
What are the nodes of Ranvier?
The most prevalent inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain.
What is GABA?
This snail-shaped structure in the ear contains the auditory receptors.
What is the cochlea?
Small amounts of food eaten before a meal increase hunger, a phenomenon known as this.
What is the appetizer effect?
This structure, part of the hindbrain and resembling a miniature brain, helps maintain balance and coordination.
What is the cerebellum?
These branch-like structures act as the receivers of neuronal messages.
What are dendrites?
Drugs that block the reuptake of a neurotransmitter, like cocaine, act as these.
What are agonists?
High-acuity vision is mediated by this small region of the retina.
What is the fovea?
H.M. lost the ability to form these types of long-term memories after surgery.
What are explicit long-term memories?
The outermost of the three meninges that protect the brain and spinal cord.
What is the dura mater?
This is brief electrical event that occurs in a neuron's axon when it's actively sending a message.
What is an action potential?
The most prevalent excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain.
What is glutamate?
One of the five primary tastes, meaning "savory" in Japanese.
What is umami?
This area of the brain is important for spatial memory and tends to be larger in birds that hide their food compared to birds that do not.
This scan provides both structural and functional information about the human brain.
What is functional MRI (fMRI)?
The blood-brain barrier prevents many chemicals from entering the brain.
What is the blood-brain barrier?
Prozac's effects on mouse learning would most likely be studied in this subdivision of biopsychology.
What is psychopharmacology?
This visual pathway carries information from the retina to the brain and splits at the optic chiasm.
What is the optic nerve?
The true smile, which involves the orbicularis oculi, is known as this.
What is the Duchenne smile?
This part of the brainstem regulates vital functions like heart rate and breathing.
What is the medulla?
These cells form the myelin sheath in the central nervous system, enabling faster neural transmission.
What are oligodendrocytes?
This neurotransmitter is critical for motor control and is significantly reduced in Parkinson’s disease.
What is dopamine?
Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, has been linked to damage in this brain region.
What is the fusiform face area?
This theory suggests that emotions are the result of physiological arousal combined with cognitive interpretation.
What is the Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion?