Annie Park
Intro to Psychology V89.001
Fall 2011
Professor Edgar E. Coons
The “Basic Requirements for Survival” question.
a) In living organisms what are the two MOST basic strategies for promoting
survival (2pts)?
In living organisms, the two most basic strategies for promoting survival are selfprotection and self-replication.
b) How does each strategy seek to achieve its aim (2pts)?
An organism will want to achieve protection from accidents and other corrosive
influences at least long enough for its replication to occur. In order to achieve selfprotection, an organism can build a barrier (a cell membrane or a cell wall) to keep out
anything harmful, learn to run away, or utilize aggression - the sympathetic system within
the Autonomic Nervous System has an activating function to ready the organism for the
possibility of fighting or fleeing.
An organism achieves self-replication through asexual or sexual reproduction. For
example, cells multiply to create backups of themselves so that their form, at least at the
species level will survive.
c) Which one has the higher priority in the “long term” and why and which one has
the higher priority in the “short term” and why (2pts)?
Self-replication has the higher priority in the "long term," and self-protection the "short
term." An organism will want to achieve protection to survive at an individual level, but
an organism will want to achieve replication to insure that the form will be preserved at
least at the species level (long term), since destruction of the form at the individual level
(short term) is inevitable. First of all, replication minimizes the effects of lethal
mutations. The phrase" safety in numbers" goes along with this statement - there is little
likelihood that accidents will happen at the same time to everyone of a myriad of
examples of the same form. Secondly, replication maximizes the effects of benificial
mutations.
In order for organisms to replenish the constant metabolic draws on their energy
stores and yet not overdo it:
d) what three types of detectors are necessary (1 pt each = 3 pts),
what general kind of purposive behavior is involved (1 pt),
what functions does each serve singly and together(4 pts),
and
1. Need detectors (motivate) serve as sensing mechanisms for detecting stimuli that
signal there are, or soon will be, needs that must be resolved.
2. Cue detectors offer guidance as to how to respond (in what direction and with what
particular set of responses) to solve a need.
3. Success detectors (find) let the organism know when the need has been met (solution
has been found).
Together, the three types of detectors exist to fulfill a need.
e) what two positive feedback actions (1 pt + 1 pt) and one negative (2 pts) one (=
4pts total)
are involved? (It may help for you to draw the flow chart involved and label its
parts).
The two positive feedback actions that are involved are 1) the continued execution until
the process of removing the need is complete, and 2) the storage of those same
combinations into memory for the ease of reuse, should in the future the same need arise
again. The one negative feedback action involved is letting the organism know that the
removal of the need has been completed.
f) What role does the “VTA – Nucleus-Accumbens” medial forebrain bundle circuit
play (2pts)?
The medial forebrain bundle is the location of the most frequently investigated brain
stimulation reward sites. It is the main pathway for the ascending dopamine fibers and it
functions to repay information from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens. There is a large
rewarding effect (pleasure).