alright give ARB psychology students if you're studying the biological approach and you want to know a great study to use for neurotransmission topic in this video i'm gonna tell you my favorite study to use for neurotransmitters and if you stick around to the end i'm going to show you how you can use this for eight different topics in the course right so some people like Martinez in Kesner with acetylcholine Fischer's study on dopamine and love or the one with the monks in the forest and serotonin I don't like any of those for the IBEW psychology course I'll tell you my favorite study is pest money at our study which we can use to explain how serotonin can influence aggression in fact the full title of the study is you fix an acute event depletion on prefrontal amygdala connectivity while viewing facial signals of aggression now I must warn you I'd only be using this study if you're aiming for a 6 or a 7 it's quite complex but if you're aiming for a 7 this gives you the depth of explanation needed that's gonna separate your answers from the rest so what we're explaining here is how serotonin is linked with aggression and a lot of studies have shown that lower levels of serotonin or serotonin abnormalities are linked with aggression there are correlational studies that show that as well as animal studies and I would suggest if this studies a little bit complicated for you then you can use the revision book and use one of those correlational studies it's a little bit more simple but passamani study what do they do or to manipulate serotonin they gave their participants a drink and the strength depletes levels of tryptophan tryptophan is an amino acid that build serotonin in the brain so they use 30 healthy individuals and they randomized the procedure it was repeated measures and they randomized the procedure one day they would come in and they would drink this drink that depleted tryptophan levels on another day they would just drink an ordinary dream ok and then after they drank that they went into the fMRI machine and in the fMRI machine they were shown three different types of faces angry said in neutral and while they were viewing these faces their activity in their brain was activated and the activity they got them to do was just to recognize them to label the type of emotion in those faces well they found was when participants had lower levels of serotonin so they drank the tryptophan depletion drink which reduces serotonin levels in the brain well they found when they saw angry faces there was a reduced connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala now that reduced connection didn't happen in the normal serotonin group and the control group and also didn't happen when they're looking at sad or neutral faces now we can use us to explain aggression how well there are two important things to remember one the amygdala the amygdala is a center of emotion right and it's where if we feel angry our anger is generated in the but the prefrontal cortex can down regulate that anger our prefrontal cortexes front part of the brain there's a part of the brain that inhibits and pulse of decision-making so if we feel angry right so if someone's an angry face we're threatened we have a social threat situation and we're feeling angry our prefrontal cortex can say well we'll hang on just pump the brakes don't respond but this studies suggesting if we have reduced levels of serotonin and we're viewed were confronted with an angry face amygdala might activate but after it that the connection is not there with the prefrontal cortex to reduce an activity and amid the letters to inhibit than impulsive reaction so specifically this studies explaining impulsive reactive aggression when we are impossible we do it without thinking and we're reacting to someone's at someone's threat right and that's what that angry face and the fMRI is showing now why do I like this study so much well there's a few reasons one it gives us a really detailed explanation of why serotonin influences aggression their level of explanation that just gave you I think it's pretty easy to provide as long as you know about the amid there on the prefrontal cortex which are two parts of the brain I really feel like all students of psychology should know about and if you can explain I mean it's a pretty easy link with aggression right the amygdala is where the anger comes from the negative emotion the prefrontal cortex the connections disrupted so our prefrontal cortex can't inhibit that impulsive reaction so we might act without thinking we might react aggressively without thinking about our consequences that's pretty straightforward I think most students can grasp there another reason I really like this study is that the methodology is very common right we out of physiology in some way then we show those different types of faces and we measure the the activity in the brain all right so let's look at some of the strengths of the study okay so it was a randomized so they they counterbalance the order so some people came in with the tryptophan one day some people came in with the control group so they repeated measures and they randomized the order that they got the samples they were healthy healthy control so there was no existing brain abnormalities or issues here that might have confounding the results all participants signed an informed consent form and it was a double-blind so neither the researcher or the participant knew which condition they were going to be in when they were and the research has been they were analyzing the data didn't know what's group there right so if we if you need to evaluate this for an essay there's two points there the some of the limitations and I'm not going to tell you exactly what the limitations but you can think about this for yourself a couple of things to consider if you're using this to explain aggression and again only do this in an essay not a short answer response if you're using this to explain an aggression consider um this is only really explaining one type of aggression right is that that valuable now this is also explaining aggression and healthy participants could that be an issue as well also this is based on fMRI findings and it's an angry face that they're responding to now it's quite a big leap to say this is what your brain did when you saw a static angry face while you're laying stationary in fMRI machine to then going out and saying why someone might at a workplace you know might pick up a hammer and throw it at their colleague and kill them right that's actually based on the true incident that happened recently in New Zealand ok so we might be making quite a leap there and think about what might be some issues with with their generalizability now how do we apply this to eight different topics well we've already shown how can it show the reduced levels of serotonin might explain the aggressive behavior it also can be used to show the benefit of using fMRI we can get a deeper explanation of connections between neurotransmitters and behavior by looking at how they influence the brain we can also use this with our techniques and the brain and behavior right so if you're asked a general question about the brain and behavior you can you can use it there research methods this is a true experiment and highlights the benefit of a true experiment we can control those variables like I just talked about the strengths and we can measure the effect on the dependent variable in this case the brain activity it could also be about ethical considerations inform consume here is really important right you're going to manipulate people with serotonin are you going to tell them about that how much information should you give them you don't want to distort the results so epical considerations are relevant here as well it can also be used to explain agonist and serotonin could be classified as an endogenous or a naturally occurring agonist so it's binding to the postsynaptic neuron and there might be having an effect so here we can talk about serotonin is an example of endogenous agonist there as well now certain is also an inhibitor in neurotransmitter so you can use this study to talk about inhibitory neurotransmitters and in fact the researchers even conclude that maybe they got these results because the serotonin the low levels of serotonin was disrupting or inhibiting activity in inhibitory neurons in the amygdala and that could be causing the disruption you can also talk about this within your networks now if you're asked to explain how neural networks are formed possibly not but if you just ask the question about neural networks will the studies showing that low levels of serotonin can disrupt neural networks between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex you can explain the significance of that right in regards to aggression and so I think I think there we have it right there are eight different topics you could use this study for on the surface it does seem quite complex but if you take the time to explain it you get a really good explanation of the study and like I said one of the biggest things missing from short answer responses is an explanation actually answering the question most students when they're asked explain how one neurotransmitter influences human behavior they're gonna say something like one neurotransmitter that influences human behavior is is um no dopamine and it can influence love fishes study butter and they get into fish in study they don't really explain how or why that neurotransmitter is connected with a specific behavior now my goal on teaching psychology is I don't want you to remember all the studies that's only part of it the studies come second to the explanation the understanding and from the study I love the study because it shows the connection between serotonin the brain and aggression and you can explain those three things serotonin is linked with aggression because it influences the activity in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala which could explain impulsive reactive aggression right there we have it that's my favorite study for the neurotransmitter topic if you like this if you found it was helpful leave a like or a comment below and tell me what topics would you like me to tell you my favorite study for all right good luck studying for your exams hope you go well