Psych 382: Final Exam Review

THIS IS A COMPREHENSIVE EXAM

1. Stress, Pleasure & Addiction
1. Stress
1. Perception, Coping, Modulation
2. Importance of prediction and control
1. Prediction is only helpful if you can control the situation (medium level stress with time to change = good if you can predict)
2. Control is good is you can control it but not good if you think you have control but you really don't
2. Pleasure
1. Brain (pleasure pathway), Stress
1. Limbic System
2. Ventral Tegmentum goes from limbic system to the prefrontal cortex
3. Think of the main parts of the Triune brain (the pleasure pathway cuts across all of that)
3. Addiction
1. Dopamine, stress
1. Addiction chances are much higher if you are stressed out
2. If you eat junk food when stressed then it maximizes the pleasure of the food (emotional eating)
3. Dopamine is the key neurotransmitter in the pleasure pathway
2. Adrenaline junkies should really be called?
1. Glucocorticoid Junkies or Cortisol Junkies
2. Stress & Placebo
1. Placebo
1. Define
1. Something that is not real but you get a physiological response based on perception
2. Pathways
1. The pleasure pathway is involved with dopamine playing a key role
3. Effects (centrally mediated)
4. Parkinson's as a Powerful Case
1. This is where you have too little dopamine
2. Placebo's given to these patients show an increase in dopamine
2. Placebo Surgery
3. Stress & Placebo
1. Stress key in placebo (as is emotion)
2. Stress management helps us harness power of placebo
1. If they perceive less stress they perceive less pain
3. Stress & Depression
1. Depression is stress
1. Radical statement
1. the same physiology between depression and stress response
2. Unipolar depression increasing rapidly
1. One  of the key factors of unipolar depressions is that stress is a predictor of your first major depressive episode
2. Biology of depression
1. Neurotransmitters
1. Seratonin
2. Dopamine
3. Norepinephrine: behavior and activity
2. Brain Regions
1. Limbic system
2. Hippocampus (shrinks in depression)
3. Prefrontal cortex (shrinks in depression)
3. Role of cortisol (glucocorticoids)
1. Cortisol is very high
2. Metabolic hormone (higher in the morning, lowest at night)
1. For depressive patients their nighttime cortisol is elevated
2. They are looking at ways to reduce cortisol to reduce depression
3. Stress
1. Anti-depressants-placebo
1. If you have mild to moderate depression
2. Interventions (exercise)
1. This helps anti depression about as much as zoloft which is a common anti depressant
3. Stress Theory (psychodynamics, learned helplessness)
1. The common underlying aspect of depression is stress
4. Stress integrates theories
4. Stress, Anxiety, & Hostility
1. Personality
1. We differ in support, control, and coping
2. Stress prone personalities tend to over respond to stress & don't use coping resources
2. Anxiety
1. Define
1. Constant vigilance for threat, anticipate the worst
2. Too much sympathetic activation (norepi, epi)
1. There is a high correlation between depression and anxiety but here the focus is norepi and epi instead of cortisol
3. Impacts hippocampus and amygdala
3. Hostility
1. Type A
1. Hard driving business person
2. Hostility is the key component of type A
3. Synically hostile person who see's others as challenging or threatening
4. It is circular because this type of personality pulls out a hostile reaction
2. Repression
1. Many hostile people try to repress their hostility
5. Stress & Cardiovascular Reactivity
1. Heart & Stress
1. Stress & Death
1. Causes of death past & present
2. Hypertension
1. 90% of hypertension is unknown about the cause
3. Inflammation
2. Reactivity Hypothesis
1. Chronic over response to psychological stress
1. Time of Recovery is more important that reactance
2. Mechanisms
1. Lack of recovery leads to heart disease
3. Key Studies
1. Bowman Gray Medical School studies using cynomolgus monkeys
1. Looked at diet and housing conditions
2. They were able to show that monkeys develop a hierarchy and they would stress them by mixing them each week
3. High fat diet vs social stress
1. Both stress and high fat diet both alone will predict high plaque buildup and together it caused the most plaque buildup and heart disease
6. Stress & Social Factors
1. Social Neuroscience
1. Cool area
2. House 1988
3. Uchino 1996
4. Cole 2007
1. Genetics underlying loneliness
2. higher in loneliness had more inflammatory factor expression
5. Gallo 1999
1. Looked at hostility
2. Social support does not benefit people who are hostile
2. Religiosity and Culture
1. Effects of religion
1. can be good or bad for your health depending on your perception
2. Effects of Culture (Donnison & Blood Pleasure)
1. Donnison went to kenya and found blood pressure does not have to rise with age
1. It is still said here that age is a predictor of blood pressure 
3. Social Status
1. Social gradient
1. income and education predict health better than diet
2. Cultural gradient
1. non western cultures don't value income and education like they do here so you don't see the effects of the social gradient
3. Hispanic Paradox
1. The idea that recently arrived immigrants are one of the poorest groups in the US but also one of the healthiest.  This is a confound to the social gradient.
7. Overall
1. The quote
1. We can change our health through thoughts, emotions, and memory
2. Acute stress response
3. Sympathetic and Parasympathetic
1. Sympathetic: fight or flight energy
2. Parasympathetic: rest
3. you need to have both of these but they need to be balanced
4. HPA axis
1. Hypothalamic Puituitary Adrenal
5. Stress management (don't need to focus too much on this)
6. Stress & Health
7. Go through all the power points