Mind, Brain, Behavior Exam 4 Study Guide
These questions pertain to Unit 4 only. Revisit your study guides from Units 1-3 to review that
content.
Disorders Over the Lifespan
What are some common symptoms of schizophrenia? What is the difference between positive
and negative symptoms?
● Common symptoms of schizophrenia:
○ Disturbed perceptions (usually auditory -- hearing voices)
■ Hallucinations -- perceptions without sensations
■ Illusions -- real stimuli takes another form
○ Inappropriate emotions and actions
■ Flat affect: neutral feeling, numbness to things that would normally elicit
emotions
■ A disorder is something that disrupts your daily life
○ Disorganized thinking
■ Delusions
■ Word salad (may be due to breakdown in selective attention)
● Positive means presence of inappropriate symptoms
● Negative means absence of appropriate symptoms
When do symptoms of schizophrenia typically begin to appear? How common is this disorder
among men and women?
● Symptoms typically appear in late twenties, early thirties for women
● Late teens or early twenties for men
● There is a strong genetic component
● 60% of people with schizophrenia are male
What are the biological factors that may contribute to the development of schizophrenia? What
are the environmental factors?
● Biological factors = rare genetic mutations
● Environmental = complications during pregnancy/birth, season of birth (lack of social
interaction, seasonal depression, etc), urban vs rural
Which structures in the brain appear to be affected in people with schizophrenia? Name these
structures/areas and briefly describe the differences compared to an unaffected brain.
● Brain appears smaller with enlarged ventricles
● Cerebral cortex appears smaller
● Corpus callosum appears smaller
● Thalamus (relays sensory info--makes sense that schizo people have problem here)
● Basal ganglia is associated with regulation of information coming into/leaving the
brain
○ Hallucinations may be due to basal ganglia not inhibiting certain sensory info
○ People with schizophrenia have excess of dopamine receptors, this could be
intensifying brain signals
, People with schizophrenia often have an excess of which receptors?
● Dopamine receptors
Explain the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. How do the obsessions and
compulsions interact?
● Compulsion = behavior that is meant to relieve anxiety
● You have obsessive thoughts and thus compulsive behaviors to relieve the anxiety, but the
relief is only temporary
Briefly describe the brain differences for individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
● Hyperactive orbitofrontal cortex (sends out false alarms when nothing is actually wrong,
thus leading to repetitive behaviors)
● Caudate nucleus: primary site of initiation of movement
○ Should block false alarms but fails to do so for people with OCD (can view OCD
as faulty alarm system in brain)
What are some of the therapies we discussed for obsessive-compulsive disorder?
● Serotonin directed medications
● Intense behavioral therapy used for those who are not responsive
What does normal cognitive aging look like? That is, what are the typical characteristics of aging
on cognition?
● Reduction in cortical thickness, white-matter integrity, dopaminergic activity, functional
engagement in hippocampus
● But not everything declines/declines rapidly, crystallized intelligence increases with age,
fluid intelligence decreases
What is Alzheimer’s disease? How does it impact the brain? Give some specific areas of the
brain that are affected, and describe how they are different in individuals with Alzheimer’s
disease.
● Alzheimer’s disease = most common cause of progressive loss in adulthood,
neurodegenerative disease caused by formation of beta amyloid plaque
● Impact on brain
○ Neurons in several brain areas shrink and die, including cells that produce
critical neurotransmitters like acetylcholine
○ As neurons die, brain atrophies and shrink
○ Areas that are affected:
■ Cortex
■ Hippocampus
■ Ventricles (larger)
■ Basal ganglia
What is Korsakoff’s syndrome? What are some of its key components? How does it differ from
Alzheimer’s disease?
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