PSYC 211 Lecture 7: Week 7

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 211
• Professor: Yogita Chudasama

Document Summary

Arousal is important for emotion, sleep, crucial for motivating certain behaviors, finding food, fight or flight, sexual activity, etc. Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake. Arousal is non-uniform; we can be alert and attentive, or fail to notice what is going on around us. Sleepiness has an effect on wakefulness: struggling to stay awake can affect our level of concentration. Five different neurotransmitters play a role in our level of arousal: Acetylcholinergic neurons are located in the dorsal pons, the basal forebrain and in the medial septum. Ach antagonists decrease cortical arousal, whereas agonists increase cortical arousal, respectively (as measured by eeg activity). A minimally-invasive sampling technique that is used for continuous measurement of free, unbound analyte concentrations in the extracellular fluid of virtually any tissue. Ach release in striatum, hippocampus and frontal cortex is associated with animals level of arousal (as measured by microdialysis).