Depression is largely untreatable. True or false? A. True. It cannot be effectively treated and gets progressively worse. B. True. Despite effective drugs and psychotherapy, it’s impossible to adjust the chemical imbalance in the brain to make people fully functional again. C. False. Psychotherapy alone over a short period is often enough to bring a depressed person back to health. D. True. But most of the time it doesn’t get that bad and people get over it. E. False. There are a number of effective antidepressants that work well in combination with psychotherapy. 2. Dr. Linda Buck won a Nobel Prize for her work on brain function. What, specifically did she study? A. The way an action potential or nerve impulse travels down a nerve B. The way the peripheral and central nervous systems interact C. The way the olfactory receptors work to allow us to identify odors D. The way the optic lobes translate light coming into the eye into an image E. The effects of Alzheimer’s Disease on neurons in the brain Endorphins are neurotransmitters that reduce the sensation of pain of make you feel good. Which group of drugs mimics these for the same effects? Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a tool that has been very useful in identifying what parts of the brain do what. Scientists can have a person perform some particular activity and then look for active areas in the brain. How does fMRI work? A. It takes a picture of the inside of the brain according to electricity levels. The more electrical current in the area, the more active it is. B. It takes images of thin layers of the brain and the more electrical activity in a layer, the more magnetic it is and this shows up in fMRI. C It takes a picture of the brain according to oxygen levels. More oxygen in an area indicates more activity in that area. D. Electrodes attached to the skull can trigger activity in particular brain areas which then trigger a person to perform certain behaviors. E. It takes a picture of the inside of the brain according to blood flow. More blood flow indicates more activity in that area. 5. How did scientists realize they’d been stimulating the part of a rats brain in an area that made the rat “feel” good? A. The rat would twitch its whiskers in response to the stimulus, which is how rats communicate to other rats that something is good. B. When rats were given a choice between the stimulus and a piece of their favorite food, they couldn’t decide what to do and so did nothing. C. Electrical stimulation in any part of a rats brain caused it to try to behave in such way as to repeat the stimulation, so it must have “felt” good. D. The rats were trained to push a lever when they “felt” good and they did this in response to particular brain stimulations. E. The rat kept behaving in such a way as to repeat the stimulus over and over, no matter what other activities were offered.