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Description
Flashcards by Melani Martinez , updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Melani Martinez
about 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| Biological psychologists | A branch of psychology that studies the links between biological (including neuroscience and behavior genetics) and psychological processes. |
| Neurons | a nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system. |
| Sensory (afferent) neurons | neurons that carry incoming information from the sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord. |
| Motor neurons (efferent) | neurons that carry outgoing information from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles and glands. |
| Interneurons | neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs |
| Mirror Neurons | frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy. |
| Axon | the extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fibers, through which messages pass to other neurons or to muscles or glands. |
| Dendrites | the bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body. |
| Myelin Sheath | a layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fivers of many neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed of neural impulses as the impulse hops from one node to the next. |
| Action Potential | a neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon. |
| Threshold | the level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse |
| Synapse (synaptic gap) | the junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron. The tiny gap at this junction is called the synaptic gap or synaptic cleft. |
| Neurotransmitters | chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between enron's. When released by the sending neuron, neurotransmitters travel across the synapse and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron, thereby influencing whether that neuron will generate a neural impulse. |
| Reuptake | a neurotransmitter's reabsorption by the sending neuron. |
| Soma (cell body) | Also called soma, these structures can be star shaped, round or pyramidal, with large nuclei and prominent nucleoli. |
| Excitatory Neurotransmitters | Cause depolarizations (e.g. glutamate) |
| Inhibitory Neurotransmitters | Cause hyperpolarizations (e.g. GABA and glycine) |
| acetylcholine | a compound that occurs throughout the nervous system, in which it functions as a neurotransmitter. |
| dopamine | a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers |
| serotonin | an important chemical neurotransmitter in the human body. |
| gamma aminobutyric acid | an amino acid that acts to inhibit the transmission of nerve impulses in the central nervous system. |
| endorphins | any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions. They are peptides that activate the body's opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect. |
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