"We have 'til dawn, then we must ride" - Theodon

I was just reminded of my family's inherit apologetic behaviour, which by this i mean we seem to apologise for things before it has time to take effect. e.g. we'll all apologise for the meal we've cooked for others, even tho it's pretty damn nice and you better like it or else!

Aaaanyway, decided to use the next few blog posts for killing two birds with one stone. Teach people some basic psychology, and revision. I know there's some people who think the topics in my psych/crim course sounds pretty damn interesting (Baker for example), and to be fair they are. It's just when you go in depth it strains your brain and makes it hard to concentrate. Especially for those (like me) who find it hard to keep motivated after have 6hours of lectures and a 9am in the same day!

So this bits gonna be about (bio psych module) psychopharmacology and addiction topics (drugs/resistance/physical and reported cognitive effects/bio-chemicals/depression&schizophrenia/maybe a bit on bio-weapons etc), next will be either emotion, or a developmental psych module I have yet to work out. I'll add some links or descriptive keys to explain any confusing bits and make it as useful to myself as possible.
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Psychopharmacology

To understand you'll need a crash course on 'synaptic transmission' (the electric signal that is passed from one neuron to another) [estimated between 86-100 Billion neurons in the brain]

 

* there are different types of neuron









This standard* neuron recieves a neurotransmitter (NT, a signal) from a neighbouring neruron's synapse, and passes it through the neuron's Cell Body, along the Axon, to the Synapse at the end, where another neuron's synapse is there to recieve it.
To look something like this:

Connecting Axons

The synapse is more like a collective term for the gap between the end of the axon and the recieving part of the cell (the recieving part can alter depending on the terminal), quite similar to a two docks trading goods (lol).
 The processes of the NT passing from the pre-synaptic terminal across the synaptic cleft (gap) to the post-synaptic terminal takes about 9 stages.

Exocytosis

1.  NT synthesized by action potential and enzymes moving them into the axon bulb
2.  NT are stored in vesicles.
3.  Unused NT are destroyed by enzymes.
4.  Action potential fuses vesicles to pre-synaptic membrane
5.  NT are released into the synaptic cleft through pre-synaptic receptors
6.  NT released bind with post-synaptic receptors in the post-synaptic membrane
7.  NT are also taken back through auto-receptors on the pre-synaptic membrane, which regulates the amount of NT released
8.  Released NT are deactivated either by; re-uptake through pre-synaptic receptors or enzyme degradation,
9. The post-synaptic current of actiona potential causes a excitorary or inhibitory post-synaptic potential that changes the excitability of the post-synaptic membrane, altering future synaptic transmission from that neuron's terminal.

The Action Potential (AP) is theoretically an electrical message that travels across a neuron’s axon.

Outside Neurons is Extracellular fluid, and inside is Intracellular fluid. The fluid is made from a cocktail of Ions consisting of; Sodium (Na+), Potassium (K+), and Chloride (Cl-) Ions (take note of the +ive and -ive charges)

Neurons are either at AP when the intracellular fluid is positively charged at +40mv, OR Resting Potential (RP) when the intracellular fluid is negatively charged at -70mv.

A badly drawn axon during AP and RP

The ions move between the inside and outside of the neuron from either diffusion (ions move from area of concentration to lower areas of concentration) or Electrostatic force [opposites charges attract, same charges repel).

However at rest potential neurons are not very permeable of sodium (Na+). Also any sodium (Na+) that does leak through is removed by a Sodium Potassium Pump (SPP).

The sodium potassium pump is a membrane protein which removes sodium (Na+) to keep a higher concentration of sodium (Na+) outside the cell. (to keep -70mv inside, it doesn’t want the ‘+’ ions in). When nauron receives a signal sodium (Na+) channels open causing loads of Na+ to enter the cell. Yay!

The triger for the AP to begin (the change of intracellular and extracellular charge) is when the inside charge changes from -70mv to -60mv, at which point more Na+ channels open allowing the cell to flood with + charge.

So this is how the action potential works:

Important facts about synatpic transmittions:

• all or nothing action,
• passive conductance,
• always the same size,
• membrane event, 
• refractory period, 
• AP travels faster in myelinated cells (the parts of the axon covered in myelin sheaths in pic at top. the gaps between these are called nodes of ravier),
• they travel in one direction only

SO you should now be able to roughly follow this:

Well done, you've made it through the hardest bit!
Now the actual psychopharmasutical side will be in the next pos.
 
For those who made it through or scrolled down far enough, here are a couple of presents.