AQA Psychology A-level: Biopsychology (A* notes)

AQA Psychology A-level: Biopsychology
From specification 7181, 7182 - Psychology in context - paper 2 (I achieved an A* in Psychology A-level in 2018, across all three papers. I prioritised revision on evaluation, necessary for accessing higher grade!)

Includes:

• Nervous system - Division of nervous system - CNS and peripheral nervous system; somatic vs autonomic

• Endocrine system - glands, pituitary gland; anterior vs posterior, flight/fight response; appraisal, HPA/SAM

• Types of neurons, synaptic transmission, EPSP and IPSP

• Localisation of function- motor/somatosensory areas, visual centres, auditory centres, language centres

• Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area and evaluation

• Lateralisation and split-brain study - Sperry and Gazzaniga (1967) and evaluation

• Brain plasticity - Boyke et al, Kuhn et al, Davidson et al and evaluation

• Functional recovery - stem cells, neural unmasking, animal vs human studies and evaluation

• Ways of studying the brain - FMRI and evaluation, EEG and evaluation, ERPs and evaluation, post-mortem and evaluation

• Biological rhythms - circadian rhythms, sleep-wake cycle, Siffre’s cave study, Folkard et al and evaluation

• Ultradian rhythms and evaluation - BRAC and sleep stages

• Infradian rhythms and evaluation - weekly, monthly and annual rhythms

• Endogenous pacemakers; SCN, pineal gland and melatonin and evaluation

• Exogenous zeitgebers; light, social cues, jet lag studies and evaluation