Unit 2: Neuroscience

• Acetylcholine: Neurotransmitter in the autonomic nervous system, contracts smooth muscles, dilates blood vessels, and slows heart rate
• Action Potential/Depolarization: When a neuron transmits an electrical charge down its axon - chain reaction down an axon
• Activation Synthesis: A neurobiological approach to explain why humans have dreams
• Addiction: Compulsive craving for drug/alcohol use (or any other thing that is unhealthy lol) that reduces neural activity and slows body functions
• Adrenal Glands: Help regulate blood pressure, metabolism, and immune system

  
• Agnosia: Inability to interpret sensations. Brain damage along pathways that connect primary processing areas, located at the parietal cortex, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe
• Agonist: Substance that mimics the actions of a neurotransmitter to produce a response when it binds to a specific recpetor in the brain
• All-or-None Response: A response may either be full of intensity or absent, no partial response
• Amphetamines: Drugs that speed up messages between the brain and body
• Amygdala: Part of the limbic system, this helps with survival and detecting danger

  
• Antagonist: A substance that blocks the activity of a receptor and prevents the recpetor from connecting to its ligands
• Aphasia: A language disorder caused by damage to a specific area of the brain that controls language and comprehension, occurs in the frontal lobe, Broca's area
• Association Areas: An area in the cerebal cortext that functions in linking and coordinating the sensory and motor areas
• Autonomic Nervous System: Part of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary physiologic processes like heart rate and sexual arousal
• Axon: Where electrical impulses from the neuron travel away to be recieved by other neurons
• Axon Terminal: The end of an axon, makes synaptic connections with another nerve cell
• Barbiturates: A group of sedative-hypnotic medications used for treating seizures and insomnia
• Blood Brain Barrier: Between the brain and itself, layer of cells that defend your brain from harmful substances
• Blood Laterlization/Hemispheric Specialization:

  • Left Brain: Organizational skills, logic, nonverbal communcation, arithmetic, and writing
  • Right Brain: Creativity, spatial ability, artistic, and musical skills
• Brainstem: Sends signals from your brain to the rest of your body

  
• Broca's Area: Complex speech network, interacting with the flow of sensory information from the temporal cortex and passing that to the motor cortex
• Central Nervous System: Brain and spinal cord, receiving, processing, and responding to sensory information
• Cerebellum: Primary role in posture, motor learning, coordination
• Cerebral Cortex: Responsible for the higher level processes of human brain, language, memory, reasoning, intelligence and personality

  
• Circadian Rhythm: Regulates cycles of alertness and sleepiness by responding to light changes in our environment
• Contralateral: Using both sides of the brain
• Corpus Callosum: Connects the two hemispheres of the brain

  
• CT Scan: Detailed, three-dimensional images of the brain
• Dendrite: Recieving information from other neurons - the cells of the nervous system
• Dependence: An inability to function without a substance or behavior
• Depressants: Reduce arousal and stimulation - slowing down the messages between the central nervous system
• Dopamine: A neurotransmitter that is released when we experience pleasure and satisfaction
• Electroencephalogram: Recording of brain activity using electrodes attached to the scalp
• Endocrine System: Comprised of glands that produce hormones and regulates all activities in the body - hormones traveling through the body
• Endorphins: Hormones your body releases when it feels pain or stress, they also are released when doing pleasurable acitivites like exercising and eating
• Excitatory Neurotransmitters: Excite the neuron and the message continues to be passed alog to the next cell. Ex. Glutamate, dopamine, serotonin, and epinephrine
• fMRI Scan: Measures the small changes in blood flow that occur within brain activity - evaluating the effects of stroke or other disease
• Forebrain: Plays a central role in the processing of information related to complex cognitive activities

  
• Frontal Lobe: Responsible for Broca's area and controls the way you think
• GABA: An amino acid that functions as the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter for the central nervous system - helps control anxiety and fear