What is Psychology?
Define psychology.
The scientific study of the brain and behavior.
What is introspective psychology?
Examining your own experiences, listening to others, and describing/characterizing them as best as possible.
How do we study brain activity in humans?
DTI, fMRI, PET, EEG, etc.
What is the reflex-circuit?
A reflexive circuit to reduce pain.
E.g., touch the stove, pain signal send to neurons in spinal cord, spinal cord sends signal to muscles, pull finger away from stove
What is operant conditioning?
Type of learning where association is made between stimulus and voluntary response
What is structuralism?
Human behaviors are "basic elements".
E.g., if you took apart a computer, what structures would make it up?
How are a hypothesis and a theory different?
Theory -- broad, set of principles
Hypothesis -- specific, testable
Draw and label the parts of a neuron!
Soma, dendrites, axon, myelin sheath, axon terminal, synaptic gap
What is the dual-center theory?
There are 2 centers in the brain related to feeding (lateral and ventromedial hypothalamus)
What is habituation?
Strength of response decreases over time.
What is functionalism?
Looks at the functions of the brain/behavior.
E.g., if you look at a computer, what functions and tasks can it do?
What are some descriptive research methods?
surveys, observations, case reports
What is the function of the hippocampus?
Memory
What are eating behaviors affected by?
Maslov's hierarchy, environmental factors, atypical hypothalamus or serotonin receptors
With Pavlov's dogs, what was the UCR?
Salivation
What type of psychology focuses on how the brain works, perception, and memory?
Cognitive psychology
What is correlational research?
Looking at how well 2 variables correlate -- e.g., how well 1 thing predicts another thing
Define biological and psychological homeostasis.
Biological -- keeping body at 'set point' via unintentional behavior like shivering, sweating, etc.
Psychological -- keeping body at 'set point' via behavior choices like getting water, putting on a coat, etc.
Describe the neural network model of decision making.
each motive may be represented by a pair of neural population
▶ higher spike rate means more/less motivation
▶ i.e., one of the pair excites and the other inhibits
each population projects to "vote counting" decision neurons
▶ some motives excite and others inhibit any given decision (e.g. fear vs hunger when it’s risky to get food)
▶ when the decision neurons hit some threshold activity level, a decision is made, and active behavior begins
Name all components of classical conditioning
NS, UCS, UCR, CS, CR
Who pioneered 'psychoanalysis', and what is it?
Freud; Introspection about feelings and dreams, looking at mistakes (Freudian slips) to infer the structure of the mind
What is experimental research?
One variable manipulated while the other is measured
What is the theory of predictive coding?
there should be brain regions and/or circuits that:
predict how the external world will change, predict how our own bodies will respond to neural commands to move, measure and encode prediction errors and update the brains best guess as to the state of the world
What are the basic universal emotions?
Happy, sad, fear, anger, surprise, disgust
What is Hebb's rule?
Neurons that fire together, wire together.