Exceptionally clear memories of emotionally significant events are called flashbulb memories. They're called so because they are typically very vivid and detailed, much like a photograph, and often pertain to surprising, consequential, and emotionally arousing events, such as hearing about a national tragedy or experiencing a personal milestone.| Simply Psychology
The forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain are the three main brain divisions. The forebrain handles higher cognitive functions, the midbrain controls motor movement and sensory processing, and the hindbrain manages coordination, balance, and autonomic functions like breathing and heart rate.| Simply Psychology
The human brain is a complex organ, made up of several distinct parts, each responsible for different functions. The cerebrum, the largest part, is responsible for sensory interpretation, thought processing, and voluntary muscle activity. Beneath it is the cerebellum, which controls balance and coordination. The brainstem connects the brain to the spinal cord and oversees automatic processes like breathing and heart rate. The limbic system, containing structures like the hippocampus and amygd...| Simply Psychology
The temporal lobe, located near the temples, is the second largest lobe of the human cerebrum, accounting for almost one-fourth of the brain's volume. It processes auditory information, forms memories, comprehends language, and regulates emotions through key structures like the hippocampus and primary auditory cortex.| Simply Psychology
Henry Gustav Molaison, known as Patient H.M., is a landmark case study in psychology. After a surgery to alleviate severe epilepsy, which removed large portions of his hippocampus, he was left with anterograde amnesia, unable to form new explicit memories, thus offering crucial insights into the role of the hippocampus in memory formation.| Simply Psychology
Mood disorders can significantly impact an individual, causing disruptive and prolonged shifts in their emotional state, leading to feelings of intense sadness, hopelessness, irritability, or uncontrollable euphoria, thereby affecting their overall well-being, relationships, and daily functioning.| Simply Psychology
The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of the brain, composed of folded gray matter. It plays a crucial role in various complex cognitive processes including thought, perception, language, memory, attention, consciousness, and advanced motor functions.| Simply Psychology
The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) is a small but powerful structure in the brain’s basal forebrain. It acts as a hub for processing reward, motivation, and pleasure. Think of it as the brain’s motivational switchboard—it helps us decide what feels good, what’s worth pursuing, and what behaviors to repeat.| Simply Psychology
In psychology, the hippocampus is a crucial structure within the brain's medial temporal lobe. It plays a vital role in forming and retrieving memories, spatial navigation, and emotional responses. Damage to the hippocampus can lead to memory impairments and difficulty forming new memories, highlighting its importance in learning and cognition.| Simply Psychology
The Big Five Personality Traits are a widely recognized model for understanding personality. They include openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These traits describe an individual’s behavior, emotions, and thinking patterns, and are often used to predict life outcomes like job performance and well-being. Each trait exists on a spectrum, with people varying in how strongly they express each one.| Simply Psychology
Neurogenesis is the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain through pre-natal development and as adults. This phenomenon primarily occurs in the hippocampus playing a crucial role in learning, memory, and cognitive flexibility. Factors like exercise, enriched environments, and certain drugs can promote neurogenesis, while stress and aging may inhibit it.| Simply Psychology
The limbic system is a complex set of brain structures involved in emotion, motivation, memory, and behavior regulation. Key components include the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and cingulate gyrus. It's central to emotional processing, memory formation, and various autonomic functions, bridging higher cognitive processes and primal emotions.| Simply Psychology
Do you get anxious in certain social situations? Learn about the signs and symptoms and how avoidance makes anxiety worse.| Simply Psychology
Anxiety disorders are characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety and are often paired with unhelpful behaviors that individuals may use to try to reduce anxiety, such as avoidance or other safety behaviors.| Simply Psychology
The fight or flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It prepares your body to either confront or flee from the threat by triggering changes like increased heart rate, quickened breathing, and heightened alertness.| Simply Psychology