A well-written essay example for ERQ in Paper 1 for the Biological Approach, written from a student who has only received 7s throughout the course and ended up with a 7 as a final IB grade and a 44 overall.
Essay Question: Discuss the effect of one or more hormones on behavior.
The present essay will discuss the hormone cortisol through the studies of
Newcomer et al, which showed the negative effect of high level of cortisol on recall of
declarative memory and the one of Lupien et al., which demonstrated the memory
impairment that can be caused by high levels of cortisol and will make reference to the
study by Antonova et al. on the effect of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the
encoding of spatial memories.
A hormone is defined as the regulatory substance that is produced by the
endocrine system, which is a network of glands, and that is later secreted into the
bloodstream. Hormones are entered into the bloodstream as a response of the
endocrine glands to the level of chemicals in it or as a response to another hormone
or nerve impulse. Once secreted, hormones are directed to target cells, which have
specific receptors, and bind to them, changing their chemical regulation, either by
increasing or decreasing their function.
Hormones are relatively similar to neurotransmitters, in that they are both
chemical messengers, but hormones are vital in a number of life stages and are
involved in a wide array of bodily functions and behaviors, such as body growth,
development of sexual characteristics, metabolism and mood changes. In addition,
hormones are directly secreted into the bloodstream and thus, it takes longer for them
to provoke a change in the behavior.
The hormone which will be examined by this study is cortisol, a steroid hormone
produced in the adrenal gland. Cortisol is often referred to as “stress hormone”, since
it accounts for several stress-related bodily changes and is produced in high amounts
during the body’s “fight or flight” response to stress. The adrenal glands secrete cortisol
in response to physiological and/or psychological stress, but it should be noted that
cortisol might be secreted into the bloodstream for reasons other than stress. Chronic
over-secretion of cortisol due to long-term stress might have an impact on immune
functioning and memory processes and especially, the formation of new memories and
the accessing of existing ones.
The first study which was chosen to be presented in the essay was the study
by Newcomer et al. in 1999, a lab experiment which aimed at studying the effect of
stress on verbal declarative memory. The sample used was comprised of employees
and students of the Washington University Medical Center. Prior to the experiment, all
participants were given a clinical interview with a physician and the ones who were
pregnant, had sleeping problems or had history of mental illnesses, head trauma or
illness which was treated with corticosteroids were excluded, in order for extraneous
variables to be controlled. The design used was the matched-pair design for age and
gender and there were two experimental groups and a control one, used to investigate
a possible link between the “stress hormone” cortisol and memory. Moreover, a
double-blind control was used, in that neither the researcher was aware of the
condition in which each participant was placed nor the participants were aware of the
experimental group in which they were allocated.
There were three conditions; in the first one, high level of cortisol was examined
and participants were given a tablet with 160mg of cortisol daily for 4 days, an amount
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