Chapter 13 - Quiz 5 Flashcards
13.1 The left and right hemispheres
Discuss which hemisphere deals with skin receptors, peripheral muscles, trunk muscles, and facial muscles as well as visual, auditory info, taste and smell.
-say which is contralateral and which isn’t and which is both
Contralateral:
-skin receptors
-peripheral muscles
-visual info
Both:
-trunk muscles
-facial muscles
-auditory (but slightly stronger for contralateral ear)
-taste
Uncrossed:
-smell
13.1 The left and right hemispheres
What is lateralization?
-division of labour between the two hemispheres
13.1 The left and right hemispheres
How do the left and right hemispheres exchange information? (3)
-corpus callosum (axons connecting sides)
-anterior commissure
-hippocampal commissure
13.1: Anatomical differences between the hemispheres
What brain part is larger in the left hemisphere for 65% of people? Showing difference even in infants?
-planum temporale
-many primates also show a preference for using either their right or left hand as most humans do
13.1 Visual and Auditory Connections to the hemispheres
Light from the right half of the visual field (what is visible at any moment) strikes which side of each retina and connects to which hemisphere? (2)
-strikes the left half of each retina
-which connnects to the left hemisphere
-vice versa for right
-small vertical strip down the center of each retina, covering about 5 degrees of visual arc connect to both hemispheres
13.1 Visual and Auditory Connections to the hemispheres
Each ear sends the information to which side of the brain? Do the hemispheres pay attention more to one ear? (2)
-they send information to both sides of the brain
-however, each hemisphere pays more attention to the ear on the opposite side
13.1 The Corpus Callosum and the Split-Brain operation
What are split-brained people? What do they struggle to do?
-people who do not have a corpus callosum
-they can do most things normally but struggle to use the hands together on tasks that they have not previously practiced
13.1 The Corpus Callosum and the Split-Brain operation
Can a split-brain person name an object after feeling it with the right hand? With the left hand? Explain.
-A split-brain person can describe something after feeling it with the right hand but not with the left. The right hand sends its information to the left hemisphere, which is dominant for language in most people. The left hand sends its information to the right hemisphere, which cannot speak.
13.1
What are the main functions of the left hemisphere? How about the right? (2)
Left:
-language/speech, logical thinking, math
Right:
-spatial relationships, creativity and art, intuition, non-verbal communication (emotional stimuli)
-chatgpt
13.1: Split Hemispheres: Competition and Cooperation
Describe how split-brain people experience competition and cooperation.
-right after the person has a split-brain, they struggle with competition between the two sides and a lack of coordination doing things
13.1: Split Hemispheres: Competition and Cooperation
What is the concept of the interpreter?
-the tendency of the left hemisphere to invent and defend explanations for actions, even when the true causes are unconscious
-shown both in split-brain people and not
13.1: Evolution of Language
How does human language stand out from other forms of communication? Define the term (2)
-it stands out because of its productivity
-its ability to improvise new combinations of signals to represent new ideas
13.1: Bonobos
What are three likely explanations for why bonobos made more language progress than common chimpanzees? (3)
-Bonobos may be more predisposed to language than common chimpanzees.
-The bonobos started training at an earlier age.
-They learned by imitation instead of formal training techniques.
13.1: How did humans evolve language?
What two things may language have evolved from that are seen in primates and other animals?
-gesturing
-mouth gestures
13.1: Is language a by-product of intelligence?
What is Williams syndrome and how does it show that overall intellectual impairment does not mean someone has poor language skills? (2)
-it is a condition traceable to the loss of a gene that influences connections in the brain
-they struggle in many basic regards and often have to be supervised but speak grammatically well and fluently
13.1: Language as a specialization
What did Chomsky and Pinker propose that humans have and what is it? (2)
-language acquisiiton device
-built in mechanism for acquiring language
13.1: A sensitive period for language learning
What is the strongest evidence in favor of a sensitive period for language learning?
Deaf children who did not learn either spoken language or sign language while young do not become proficient at either type of language later.
13.1: Broca’s Aphasia (Nonfluent aphasia)
What is aphasia? What is Broca’s aphasia or nonfluent aphasia? (2)
-aphasia is language impairment
-Broca’s aphasia or nonfluent aphasia is when brain damage impaires language production, regardless of the exact location of damage
13.1: Broca’s Aphasia (Nonfluent aphasia)
What is Broca’s area? What have modern methods confirmed and changed about it? (2)
-damage in the left frontal cortex that impairs language
-they have confirmed the importance of Broca’s area for language production, but damage limited ot that area produces only minor or brief language impairment
-Broca’s aphasia relates to damage in parts of the cortex, thalamus and basal ganglia
13.1: Impaired language production
Describe what Broca’s aphasia looks like with symptoms?
-they are slow and awkward with all forms of language communication including speaking, writing, gesturing and using sign language
-Broca’s area helps to organize speech but it doesn’t produce it
13.1: Problems in comprehending grammatical words and devices
What kind of words are Broca’s patients least likely to use?
-They have the greatest trouble with “closed-class” words that are meaningful only in the context of a sentence, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and helping verbs.
-under, above
-because, but
-is
*-They have the most trouble understanding the same kind of words they have trouble producing—the closed-class words.
13.1 Wernicke’s Aphasia (Fluent aphasia)
Where is Wernicke’s area? What does damage there cause? (2)
-an area located near the auditory cortex
-it produces Wernicke’s aphasia (fluent) which is characterized by poor language comprehension and impaired ability to remember the names of objects.
13.1 Wernicke’s Aphasia (Fluent aphasia)
What are the 3 signs of Wernicke’s Aphasia? (3)
-articulate speech, speaking fluently
-difficulty finding the right word
-poor language comprehension
13.1
What is anomia?
-difficulty recalling the names of objects
13.1: Dyslexia
What is dyslexia?
-a specific impairment of reading in someone with adequate vision, motivation, cognitive skills and educational opportunity
13.2: The Mind-Brain Relationship
What is the mind-body or mind-brain relationship?
-it looks at the relationship between our mental processes, consciousness and subjective experiences (mind) with the physical matter, brain processes and external world (body)
13.2 The Mind-Brain Relationship
Define dualism
-the belief that the mind and body exist seperately
13.2 The Mind-Brain Relationship
What is monism and what are the three categories? (4)
-the universe consists of only one kind of substance
-materialism
-mentalism
-identity position
13.2 The Mind-Brain Relationship
What is materialism? Give an example. (2)
-the view that everything that exists is material or physical
-For instance, consciousness might be seen as an emergent property of neuronal activity and neural networks in the brain.
-eliminative materialism believes mental events don’t exist at all
13.2 The Mind-Brain Relationship
What is mentalism? give an examnple (2)
-the view that only minds really exist and that the physical world could not exist unless some mind were aware of it
-In a mentalist perspective, the feelings of awe or the intellectual reflections you have about a painting are not reducible to purely physical explanations. While neuroscience might explain how your brain processes visual information or triggers emotional responses, mentalism would argue that the experience of beauty and meaning goes beyond mere neural firing—it involves subjective awareness and personal interpretation.
13.2 Mind-Brain Problem
What is the identity position?
-the idea that mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing. just described in different terms
13.2 Mind-Brain problem
What is the easy problem? The hard problem? (2)
-looks at questions like what is the difference between wakefulness and sleep and what brain activity occurs during consciousness?
-hard problem concerns why consciousness exists at all
-Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on ‘in the dark,’ free of any inner feel?” Why does brain activity feel like anything at all?
13.2 Consciousness of a stimulus
Explain how we know is someone was conscious of a stimulus?
-if someone reports awareness of one stimulus and not another, then they are conscious
-with individuals who cannot speak, like infants and animals this doesn’t apply so research is limited to healthy adults
13.2 Consciousness of a stimulus
What is flash suppression?
-lets say you see a yellow dot then although it remains on the screen other dots around it flash on and off and while they are flashing you do not see the stationary dot
13.2 Experiments using masking
What is masking? Use an example. (2)
-a brief visual stimulus is preceded and followed by longer interfering stimuli
-for example, showing a screen with small black lines all over it and then flashing a word very quickly and then showing the screen with the black lines again. people almost never identify the word.
-in backward masking, they only present the brief stimuli and then the longer one
13.2 Consciousness of a stimulus
In a masking experiment, how did the brain’s responses differ to the conscious and unconscious stimuli?
-A stimulus that reached consciousness activated the same brain areas as an unconscious stimulus but more strongly, and then the activity spread to additional areas. Also, brain responses became synchronized for a conscious pattern.
13.2 Experiments using binocular rivalry
Explain binocular rivalry. Use an exampl. What do they conclude from these experiments? (3)
-a phenomenon that occurs when each eye is presented with a different image, leading to a competition between the two images in visual perception. The brain cannot merge the two conflicting images into a single coherent picture, so it alternates between them instead (chatgpt)
-example: red and green dots with different stripes in textbook
-conclusion is that a conscious stimulus strongly activates much of the brain virtually taking over brain activity. When the same stimulus is unconscious it produces weaker and less widespread activity
-emotionally charged images hold attention longer than a neutral image
13.2 The fate of an unattended stimulus
If someone is aware of the stimulus on the right in a case of binocular rivalry, what evidence indicates that the brain is also processing the stimulus on the left?
-If a stimulus gradually appears on the left side, attention shifts to the left faster if that stimulus is a meaningful word than if it is a word from an unfamiliar language.
-If you become aware of something highly meaningful faster than you do for something similar but less meaningful, evidently your brain decided the stimulus was meaningful before you became conscious of it! The conclusion is that much of brain activity is unconscious, and even unconscious activity can influence behavior.
13.2 Consciousness as a threshold problem
Describe how consciousness appears to be a yes-no phenomenon, rather than someone being able to have degrees of consciousness. (2)
-people either say they are fully conscious of something or they are not in experiments
-this pattern is seen also in brain activity: When a stimulus activates enough neurons to a sufficient extent, the activity reverberates, magnifies, and extends over much of the brain. If a stimulus fails to reach that level, the pattern fades away.
-however, we have some level of consciouness of stimuli as there are studies showing we have some small awareness of things subconsciously (like a word flashed on a screen)
13.2 The Timing of consciousness
What is the phi phenomenon? Use some examples from the textbook to illustrate. (2)
-an optical illusion of perceiving continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. (chatgpt)
-example: see a dot in one position on the left and another to the right. It appears to be moving from the left to the right however you only perceived this after you saw the second position. In other words, the second position changed your perception of what occurred before it.
13.2 Conscious and Unconscious People
What was loss of consciousness marked by? WHat did a recovery from consciousness show in the brain? (2)
-decreased overall activity, especially decreased connectivity between the cerebral cortex and subcortical areas such as the thalamus, hypothalamus and basal ganglia
-recovery depended on increased connectivity between subcortical and cortical areas
13.2 Attention
What is inattentional blindness or change blindness? Use an example (2)
-an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight because their attention is focused on another task, event, or object. (chatgpt)
-example: gorilla video where you are asked to count something
13.2 brain areas controlling attention
What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up attention? (2)
-bottom-up processes depend on the stimuli
-whereas top-down processes are intentional
13.2 brain areas controlling attention
What parts of the brain does deliberate, top-down direction of attention depend on? How do they direct attention? (2)
-prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex
-they direct attention by facilitating responsiveness in parts of the thalamus which then increases the activation of appropriate areas of the sensory cortex
13.2 brain areas controlling attention
What is the Stroop effect?
-when you’re given words of colours in particular ink not matching the word
13.2 brain areas controlling attention
What brain response was related to people’s ability to resist distraction from an irrelevant red square among the green squares and circle?
-Resistance to distraction related to the amount of activity in part of the prefrontal cortex before the presentation of stimuli.
13.2 Spatial neglect
What is spacial neglect? What are the symptoms caused by? (2)
-when people with damage to the right hemisphere show a tendency to ignore the left side of the body, the left side of objects, much of what they hear in the left and ear and their feelings in the left hand.
-neglect is not due to loss of sensation but a difficulty in directing attention to the left side
13.3 Percpetual decisions
What has evidence showed us about making a decision between two options?
-one set of cells accumulate evidence in favor of one choice, another set accumulate evidence for the other choice, and a third set compare the two.
13.3 Perceptual decisions
Describe the cells within the posterior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex’s frontal orienting fields during a rat making a choice between two options. (2)
-within the posterior parietal cortex, one set of cells responded in proportion to the number of clicks on the left and another set responded in proportiong to the number of clicks on the right (responses are graded)
-within the frontal orienting fields, one set of cells responded when the left side was ahead and vice versa (all-or-none)
-However, although these results seem to suggest that the cells in the posterior parietal cortex are counting the clicks, procedures that inactivate the posterior parietal cortex have little effect on the rat’s behavior on this task. Evidently the posterior parietal cortex is just echoing a process taking place somewhere else, and we do not yet know where that is.
13.3 Decisions based on values
What is the role of the basal ganglia, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex in decision making? (3)
-basal ganglia gradually learns which choices are better
-ventromedial prefrontal cortex modifies basal ganglia responses allowing rapid learning to overrule slower learning when necessary
-orbitofrontal cortex updates expected value of actions based on current circumstances (monkey’s current preference for juice out of 2 options)
13.3 The biology of love
What areas of the brain are activated when you look at someone you love?
-brain areas associated with reward, including the hippocampus and other areas important for memory and cognition
13.3 The biologi of love
Explain the effects of oxytocin. Start with the effects of it on love and attraction, then social behavior and lastly the anti-social effects. (3)
-Oxytocin increases attraction specifically to a loved partner, not to others in general.
Social behavior:
-Improves face recognition and interpretation of emotional expressions in those who struggle with these tasks.
-Increases conformity and trust towards in-group members, but has variable effects towards out-group members depending on pre-existing perceptions.
Anti-social:
-Can increase attention to threats and dangers, leading to heightened anger, distress, and negative reactions towards strangers.
-further research is needed
13.3 Empathy and altruism
Who do people tend to show more empathy for?
-people who are similar or closely related to them
-seen in rats too
13.3 Empathy and altruism
What effects does frontotemporal dementia have on empathy and altruism? (2)
-do not recognize or respond to others reactions and show little empathy
-also show little interest in how others percieve them
