Diseases and Disorders
What is Alzheimer’s disease?
This disease begins with the appearance of a buildup of proteins in the form of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. This causes brain cells to die over time and the brain to shrink.
What is the occipital lobe?
This lobe of the brain is most associated with vision.
Who is Henry Molaison?
Known by the initials H.M., was unable to form new long term memories after removal of his hippocampi.
We only use 10% of our brain.
False, because brain imaging shows nearly all areas are active over time.
What is the placebo effect?
When someone experiences improvement from a treatment that has no active ingredient, because they believe it will work.
What is Parkinson’s disease?
This disorder is characterized by tremors, slowed movement, rigid muscles, speech changes, and poor posture and balance.
What is the corpus callosum?
This structure connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
Who is Phineas Gage?
A railroad worker survived an iron rod passing through his skull, leading to extreme personality changes.
Left-brained people are logical and right-brained people are creative.
False, since both hemispheres work together for most tasks.
What is Pavlov famous for?
Training dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, demonstrating classical conditioning.
What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that develops after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, causing ongoing distressing memories, heightened alertness, and emotional difficulties.
What is the cerebral cortex?
The outer layer of the brain responsible for higher mental functions like perception, decision-making, language, and voluntary movement.
Who is Little Albert?
An infant who became famous in psychology after John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner conditioned him to fear a white rat, demonstrating classical conditioning of emotions.
Alcohol kills brain cells.
False, it mainly damages connections between them, not the cells themselves.
What is the “fight or flight” response?
The body’s automatic reaction to stress, involving adrenaline, faster heartbeat, and heightened alertness.
What is dissociative identity disorder?
A mental health condition where a person has two or more distinct identities or personality states that control their behavior at different times.
What is the intraparietal sulcus?
A groove in the parietal lobe of the brain that plays a key role in visual attention, spatial awareness, and numerical processing.
Who is Auguste Deter?
Auguste Deter was the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, after her severe memory loss and confusion were studied by Alois Alzheimer.
Playing classical music to babies makes them smarter.
False, the "Mozart effect" is exaggerated and doesn’t boost intelligence.
What is the Stroop effect?
The difficulty of saying the color of a word when the word itself spells a different color (e.g., the word blue written in red ink).