Flashcards
Biopyschology - Studies
Cards in this deck (20)
- 1BiopsychologyAll the studies needed for the AQA Psychology - Biopsychology topic
- 2Paul Broca Studied patients that had injuries to the brain and discovered that specific areas of the brain are associated with physical and psychological functions including Broca's area which is responsible for speech productionKarl Wernicke
Wernicke identified an area of the temporal lobe (encircling the auditory cortex) in the left hemisphere responsible for language comprehension - 3Petersen et al (1988) Used brain scans to demonstrate how Wernicke's area during a reading task and the Broca's area was active during a reading task, suggesting that these areas of the brain have different functionsTulving et al (1994)
Revealed that semantic and episodic memories reside in different parts of the prefrontal cortex. This shows that the functions of the brain are localised - 4Walter Freeman (1950s) Developed the lobotomy, a brutal and imprecise method and typically involved severing connections in the frontal lobe, in an attempt to control aggressive behaviourDougherty et al (2002)
Reported that on 44 OCD patients who had undergone a cingulotomy - a neurosurgical procedure that involves lesioning of the cingulate gyrus. At post-surgical follow-up after 32 weeks, a third had met the criteria for successful response to the surgery and 14% for partial response. The success of procedures like this strongly suggests that symptoms and behaviours associated with serious mental disorders are localised - 5Case study of Phineas Cage (1848) Gage was preparing to do some railway line work with explosives when there was an accident and a meter-length pole was shot through his left cheek and exiting the top of his head, destroying most of his frontal lobe. He somehow survived this but the damage had caused changes in his personality, he went from a calm, reserved personality before but after he was quick-tempered and rudeLashley (1950)
Suggests that higher cognitive functions, such as the processes involved in learning, aren't localised but distributed in a more holistic way in the brain
He removed an area of the cortex in rats that were learning a maze. He found that no area of the brain was important than any other. Learning appeared to need all parts of the cortex rather confined to one area of the brain. This suggests that learning isn't localised and requires the involvement of the whole brain - 6Gopnick et al (1999) Found that a person number of synaptic connections peaks at approximately 15,000 connections at age 2-3. As we age the number of connections lower due to synaptic pruning.Eleanor Maguire et al (2000)
Studied the brains of London taxi drivers and found that they had significantly more volume of grey matter in the posterior hippocampus than in a matched control group. This part of the brain is responsible for spatial and navigational skills. Taxi drivers in London have to complete a test on their recall of city streets and routes called 'the knowledge'. It appears that the result of this learning experience is to alter the structure of the taxi drivers brain. It was also found the longer they had been doing the job, the more pronounced was the structural difference - 7Draganski et al (2006) Imaged the brains of medical students 3 months before and after there final exams. He found that learning-induced changes were seen in the brain particularly in the posterior hippocampus and the parietal cortex, presumably as a result of revising before the examMechelli et al (2004)
Found a larger parietal cortex in the brains of people who were bilingual compared to a matched monolingual control group - 8Doidge (2007) Found that the brain is able to rewire itself by forming new synaptic connections close to the area of damage. Secondary neural pathways that wouldn't typically be used to carry out certain functions are activated or 'unmasked' to enable functioning to continueMedina et al (2007)
Found that after prolonged drug use the brain is poorer in cognitive functioning and people have an increased chance of developing dementia later in life - 9Ramachandran and Hirstein (1998) Found that 60-80% of amputees have been known to develop phantom-limb syndrome, the feeling of pain in the missing limb as if it was there. These are incredibly painful and unpleasant and thought to be due to organisation in the somatosensory cortex that occurs as a result of limb lossBezzola et al (2012)
Demonstrated how 40 hours of golf training produced changes in the neural representation of movement in participants aged 40-60. Using fMRI, the researchers compared to a control group, suggesting more efficient neural representations after training. This shows that neural plasticity does continue throughout the lifespan - 10Hubel and Wiesel (1963) Involved sewing one eye of a kitten shut and analysing the brains cortical responses. It was found that the area of the visual cortex associated with the shut-eye wasn't idle but continued to process information but from the other open eyeSchneider et al (2014)
Discovered that the more time brain injury patients had spent in education the greater chance they of disability-free recovery (DFR). 2/5 patients studied had more than 16 years education had achieved DFR compared to about 10% of patients who had less than 12 years' education - 11Sperry (1968) Study people who had undergone the same surgical procedure called a commissurotomy in which the corpus callosum and other tissue connecting the two hemispheres are split. This meant that for these hemispheres are unable to communicate. This allowed Sperry to conduct split-brain research to find out if the hemispheres were specialised for certain functions, and whether the hemispheres performed tasks independently of one anotherSperry (1968) - Procedure
Sperry devised a general procedure in which an image or word could be projected to a patient's right visual field and the same, or different, an image could be projected to the left visual field. In the 'normal' brain, the corpus callosum would immediately share the information between both hemispheres. However, presenting the image to one hemisphere of a split-brain patient meant that the information couldn't be conveyed from that hemisphere - 12Sperry (1968) - Findings - Describing what you see When an object was shown to a patient's right visual field, the patient could easily describe what was seen. However, if the object was shown to the left visual field the participant couldn't say what they just saw and typically said nothing was there. Language is processed in the left hemisphere, and not in the right hemisphere so it is hard to describe the object that information went to that sideSperry (1968) - Findings - Recognition by touch
Although patients couldn't attach verbal labels to objects projected in the left visual field, they were able to select matching objects from a grab-bag of different objects using their left hand. The objects were placed behind a screen so as not to be seen. The left hand was also able to select an object that was most closely associated with an object presented to the left visual field. In each case, the patient was unable to identify what they had seen but could understand what the object was using the right hemisphere - 13Sperry (1968) - Findings - Composite words If two words were presented simultaneously, one on either side of the visual field, the patient would write with their left hand the word linked to the left visual field (right hemisphere) and say the word from the right visual field (left hemisphere) showing each hemisphere has different functionsSperry (1968) - Findings - Matching faces
The right hemisphere also appeared dominant in terms of recognising faces. When asked to match a face with a series of other faces, the picture processed by the right hemisphere was consistently selected whilst the picture presented to the left hemisphere was ignored. When a composite picture made up of two halves of a face was presented to each hemisphere, the left hemisphere dominated in terms of verbal description whereas the right hemisphere dominated in terms of selected a matching photo. - 14Siffre' cave study (1962) Siffre is a self-styled caveman who has spent several extended periods underground to study the effects on his own biological rhythms. Deprived of natural light but with access to food and drink, Siffre re-surfaced after two months believing he had only been down there for one month. A decade later he performed the same experiment in a Texan cave for 6 months. Each time his free- running biological rhythms changed to 25 hours though he did wake up and fall asleep on a regular scheduleAcchoff and Wever (1976)
Convinced a group of particiapants to spend 4 weeks in a WWII bunker deprived of natural light. All but one of the participants displayed a circadian rhythm of 25 hours (the one who didn't had one of 29 hours). This suggests that the natural sleep wake cycle is just slightly longer than 24 hours but it made to fit 24 hours by exogenous zeitgebers. - 15Simon Folkard et al (1985) Studied a group of 12 people who agreed to live in a dark cave for 3 weeks, retiring to bed at 11:45 and waking up at 7:45. During the study the research starting speeding up the clocks so at the end the dya was only 22 hours not 24. It was revealed that only one participants able to comfortable adjust to the new regimeBolivin et al (1996)
Night workers engaged in shift work experience a period of reduced concentration around 6am meaning accidents and mistakes are more likely - 16Knutson (2003) Suggest a relationship between poorer health and night shift work. He said that shift workers are 3 times more likely to develop heart disease which may be due to the stress/wake patterns and the lack of poorer quality of sleep during the dayBaraldo (2008)
Revealed that there are certain peak times during the day or night when drugs are likely to be at their mot effective. This has led to the development of guidelines to do with timing of drug dosing for a whole range of medications including anticancer, cardiovascular and lots more. - 17Siffre (1999) Found that his body clock ticked slower when he was older than it was when he was younger. This shows that even the same person can have factor influencing their biological rhythmsCharles Czeisler et al (1999)
Were able to adjust participants' circadian rhythms from 22 to 28 hours using dim light. As such, the use of a light may be analogous to participants taking a drug that resets their biological clock - 18Jeanne Duffy et al (2001) Revealed that some people display a natural preference for going to bed early and rising early ('larks') whereas some people prefer to do the opposite ('owls'). They also found that there are age differences in sleep/wake patternsDeCoursey et al (2000)
Destroyed the SCN connections in the brains of 30 chipmunks who were then returned to their natural habitat and observed for 80 days. The sleep/wake cycle of the chipmunks disappeared and by the end of the study a significant proportion of them has been killed by predators (presumably because they were awake and vulnerable to attack when they should have been asleep) - 19Martin Ralph et al (1990) Bred mutant hamsters with a 20-hour sleep/wake cycle. When SCN cells from the foetal tissue of mutant hamsters were transplanted into the brains of normal hamsters, the cycles of the second group defaulted to 20 hours.Scott and Campbell and Patrica Murphy (1998)
Demonstrated that light may be detected by skin receptor sites on the body even when the same information is not received by the eyes. 15 participants were woken at various times and a light pad was shone on the back of their knees. The researchers managed to produce a deviation in the participants' usual sleep/wake cycle by up to 3 hours. This suggests that light is a powerful exogenous zeitgeber even if it isn't received by the eyes - 20Francesca Damiola et al (2000) Demonstrated how changing feeding patterns of mice could alter the circadian rhythms of cells in the liver by up to 12 hours, whilst leaving the rhythm of the SCN unaffected. This suggests that there may be many other complex influences on the sleep/wake cycle, aside from the master clock (the SCN)Laughton Miles et al (1977)
Recounted the story of a young man, blind from birth, with a circadian rhythm of 24.9 hours. Despite exposure to social cues, his sleep/wake cycle couldn't be adjusted, and consequently, he had to take sedatives at night and stimulants in the morning to keep up with the 24 hour day.
Information
- Description
- All the studies needed for AQA Psychology, biopsychology.
- Created by
- Benjamin Smith
- Views
- 11
- Rating