1. Question What is behaviour? B6 – Brain and Mind Q1 Answer: Behaviour is a response to a change in an organisms environment. Question What is a stimulus? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 Answer: A stimulus is a change in the environment. Question What is the role of the CNS? B6 – Brain and Mind Q4 Answer: The CNS is a processing centre. It receives information from receptors and coordinates a response. Question What makes up the central nervous system (CNS). B6 – Brain and Mind Q3 Answer: The brain and the spinal cord. SThaw 2014

2. Question What are receptors? Give an example. B6 – Brain and Mind Q5 Answer: Receptors are the cells that detect stimuli. Taste receptors Sound receptors Light receptors Question What are effectors? Give two examples of effectors. B6 – Brain and Mind Q6 Answer: Effectors cause a change (response). Muscle and cells that produce hormones are both effectors. Question What is the function of motor neurones? B6 – Brain and Mind Q8 Answer: These neurones carry impulses from the CNS to effectors. Question What is the function of sensory neurones? B6 – Brain and Mind Q7 Answer: These neurones carry impulses from receptors to the CNS. SThaw 2014

3. Question How do neurones transmit information? B6 – Brain and Mind Q9 Answer: As electrical impulses. Question What is an axon? B6 – Brain and Mind Q10 Answer: The cell cytoplasm forms a long fibre that is surrounded by a cell membrane. It carries the electrical impulse. Question What is a synapse? B6 – Brain and Mind Q12 Answer: The gap between two neurones. Question What is the function of the fatty sheath surrounding some axons. B6 – Brain and Mind Q11 Answer: It acts as an electrical insulator, it speeds up the electrical impulse. SThaw 2014

4. Question Describe how an impulse is transmitted across the synapse. B6 – Brain and Mind Q13 Answer: When an electrical impulse reaches the end of a neurone, transmitter chemicals are released into the synapse. The transmitter chemicals diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptor molecules on the next neurone. This triggers a new electrical impulse. Question Describe the effects of ecstasy. B6 – Brain and Mind Q14 Answer: Ecstasy blocks sites where serotonin is removed. As it can’t be removed, the concentration increases, this affects a persons mood. Question What are the advantages and disadvantages of simple reflexes? B6 – Brain and Mind Q16 Answer: Advantage: improve the chance of survival e.g. finding food/shelter from predators. Disadvantage: Difficulty responding to new situations. Question What is a reflex? B6 – Brain and Mind Q15 Answer: A rapid, automatic response to certain stimuli. SThaw 2014

5. Question Give three examples of simple reflexes in humans. B6 – Brain and Mind Q17 Answer: Pupil reflex – in bright light the muscles in the eye contract making the pupil smaller. Knee jerk reflex. If you pick up something hot, there is a reflex that makes you drop it. Question What is a reflex arc? B6 – Brain and Mind Q18 Answer: The route taken by the information in a reflex (from receptor to effector). Question Give an example of when it would be advantageous to modify a reflex. B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 0 Answer: If you pick up a hot object such as a dinner plate, if you override the reflex then you don’t lose your dinner Question How are reflexes modified? B6 – Brain and Mind Q19 Answer: The brain can modify a reflex by sending an impulse along the motor neurone of a reflex arc. SThaw 2014

6. Question Briefly describe the experiment that Pavlov carried out. B6 – Brain and Mind Q21 Answer: Pavlov noticed that dogs would salivate when they were presented with food. He rang a bell just before dogs were given food. After a while he found that dogs salivated when the bell was rung. Question What is conditioning? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 2 Answer: A stimulus causes a particular reflex response. Animals can learn to produce the same response to a new (secondary) stimulus. Question Why is harder for older people to learn new things? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 4 Answer: After the age of 10, the pathways that are not used die off. Question What happens to neural pathways when activities are repeated? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 3 Answer: The pathways become strengthened, these pathways are more likely to transmit impulses than others. SThaw 2014

7. Question Why are complex animals better at adapting to new situations than simple animals? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 5 Answer: Complex animals are able to adapt to new situations. There are many potential pathways in the brain. Question What have we learnt about the development of skills from feral children? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 6 Answer: There are stages in brain development and some nerve pathways have to be strengthened by a certain age. For example, communicating via language - if children haven’t learnt to talk by age 10 (because they haven’t heard others speak), then it is very unlikely that they ever will. Question Give three methods that can be used by scientists to study the brain. B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 8 Answer: Studying patients with brain damage. Electrically stimulating the brain. MRI scans. Question What are the functions of the cerebral cortex? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 7 Answer: Intelligence Memory Language Consciousness SThaw 2014

8. Question What is memory? B6 – Brain and Mind Q2 9 Answer: The storage and retrieval of information. Question What is the difference between short-term and long-term memory? B6 – Brain and Mind Q3 0 Answer: Short-term memory is from a few seconds to a few hours. Used for information that you are thinking about now. Long-term memory is information stored days, months or years ago. Question Describe the multi-store model. B6 – Brain and Mind Q3 2 Answer: Information is temporarily stored in your short-term memory. If it is repeated enough then it is transferred to long-term memory. Anything that isn’t transferred is forgotten. Question Give three examples of ways in which we are more likely to remember things. B6 – Brain and Mind Q31 Answer: If there is a pattern in the information. Association with strong stimuli. Repeating information. SThaw 2014