Cognitive Neuroscience Final Exam Flashcards
Harper is experiencing odd behavioral issues since a traumatic brain injury. For example, when she goes to pour herself coffee, she cannot seem to stop and the cup overflows. Tests show she has longer than normal reaction times suggesting difficulty initiating behavior. Which area did Harper most likely damage?
supplementary motor area SMA
Dr. Bridge uses tDCS to stimulate part of the cortex. The stimulation impacts participants’ ability to
create attentional sets in a cued-Stroop Task and their ability to sequence on the Tower of London. Which
part of the cortex did Dr. Bridge most likely stimulate?
DLPFC
Noah finds activation of a large network of brain regions, including the anterior cingulate, premotor
cortex, supplementary motor area, and superior parietal sulcus during the time when participants had to shift their attentional set based on changes in feedback. Which task did Noah most likely use in their study?
Wisconsin Card Sorting
Elise finds activation of a large network of brain regions, including the right prefrontal cortex, the pre-
putamen during the time when participants had to inhibit a prepotent
supplementary motor area, and the putamen during the time when participants had to inhibit a prepotent response. Which tasks did Elise most likely use in their study?
Stop signal, Flanker, Go-No Go
“all of the above”
Skylar wants to examine developmental changes in EF. She has participants from 8 to 80 years old
complete a task where they connect a series of dots, alternating between numbers and letters. Which EF is she most likely measuring and which brain area supports it?
Sequencing; DLPFC
If we happened to be recording brain activity while you take this quiz, which ERP component would
we likely see is larger in amplitude for your errors compared to correct responses?
ERN
According to Banich’s EF model, the role of the posterior DLPFC in the Stroop task is…
A. to bias activation of color representations in posterior brain regions.
B. to bias information selection towards the appropriate response.
C. to compare the response to the original goal state.
D. to compare the task relevant and irrelevant information.
A. to bias activation of color representations in posterior brain regions.
According to Banich’s EF model, the role of the anterior dorsal ACC in the Stroop task is…
A. to bias activation of color representations in posterior brain regions.
B. to bias information selection towards the appropriate response.
C. to compare the response to the original goal state.
D. to compare the task relevant and irrelevant information.
ann
C. to compare the response to the original goal state.
Camila tells Jonas he has a heart of gold. Jonas informs her that no one’s heart is made of gold. Jonas took Camila’s words literally, which may mean he has damage to his…
A. Right hemisphere.
B. left hemisphere.
C. thalamus.
D. brain stem.
A. Right hemisphere.
Older adults tend to perseverate on the first rule the learn in the Wisconsin Card Sorting task compared to younger adults. Reduced activation of which brain area is associated with that behavior?
DLPFC
Penelope designs a task where participants press a key when they see a square. On 10% of the trials, a circle appears instead of a square. Penelope is interested in how the brain responds to the rare circles.
Which ERP component will she likely see increase in amplitude for the circles?
P300
Patients with frontal lobe damage show a reduced sympathetic nervous system response, as measured by _______ , to anticipation of negative outcomes.
SCR
You design an ERP study of self-monitoring. Which assessment (task) would you use and why? Which ERP component will you be looking for and which brain region is it thought to originate from?
Could use any task to measure self-monitoring, BUT the stroop task could be used to measure ERN ERP that arises from the ACC brain area.
Several research techniques have been used to determine the brain’s role in EFs, including fMRI, patient populations, and tDCS. Based on the collective findings we’ve discussed, which brain region(s) would you say
is/are most important to EFs? Describe at least one piece of evidence from class that supports your answer.
Most brain areas are intertwined in all EFs, but some big areas are the ACC (involved in error monitoring) and LDPFC (involved in sequencing behaviors)
Denise has filed her own taxes ever since she got her first job at 16. When she completes this year’s forms, the schema that drives her actions will be selected by the
contention scheduler.
Donald has somehow avoided using any form of social media his whole life. He was recently hired by
a marketing firm and must help clients manage their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Donald’s success in
this novel situation will be managed by the
supervisory attentional system. SAS
As adults, Denise and Donald have a large store of schemas to help guide their thoughts and behaviors. The Norman and Shallice model of EFs would refer to this store as a
data base
Mia is homeschooled. Their mother devised a schedule of classes and uses a timer to let Mia know when to swap subjects. The timer goes off and Mia stops working on math and starts reading their social studies book. Which executive function allows them to do that?
Shifting
Mia plays Rocket League online with friends. When mom leaves the room, they think about opening Rocket League instead of doing their school work, but stop themselves from opening the game. Which executive function allows them to do that?
inhibition
Mia is helping mom cook dinner. They’ve memorized the Istat ingredients, but need to keep track of which ones have already been added and which ones still need to be added. Which executive function allows
them to do that?
updating
Tests of Miyake and Friedman’s model frequently fail to find an inhibition-specific latent variable. What interpretation of this finding has become the most accepted?
Inhibition is common to all other EFs
A group of adolescents are asked to complete a Stroop Task and the Marshmallow Test. Which
executive function is the researcher most likely trying to assess?
inhibition
Dr. Campbell would like to study the effects of an all-soup diet on executive function. She decides to measure sequencing ability. Which two tasks should Dr. Campbell use?
Letter-Number and Tower of Hanoi
Which executive function would NOT be assessed by the Stroop task?
A. inhibition
B. sustained attention
C. Error monitoring
D. sequencing
D. Sequencing
Liam wants to get an overall assessment of executive functioning using existing tasks. Liam’s professor explains that this will require having people complete multiple EF tasks. Is Liam’s professor correct
and why?
Yes, because most existing tasks do not capture every known EF.
An operational definition of EFs describes how…
we measure or assess the EFs.
Briefly define executive functions and give an example of how you are using them to
complete this quiz.
EFs: an ability to control one’s thoughts/behaviors regarding attaining of a goal.
- goal is to do well on the quiz so I have been inhibiting distractors in the room to focus.
Dr. Bailey wants to examine the effect of caffeine on EFs in college students. She can only have participants complete two tasks. Pick any TWO of the tasks we discussed in class and briefly describe what
the participant must do in that task AND b) identify one EF that the task measures (e.g., shifting, inhibition, sequencing, goal maintenance, etc.).
1: Tower of Hanoi (participant must move all disks from first peg to the 3rd following rules, like the disk must never be smaller than the one above it– sequencing)
2: Stroop (participant must inhibit reading of the words and say the font colors during the test— inhibition)
Which of the following descriptions best reflects the findings of Furley & Schweizer (2014)?
A. Non-athletes were more accurate at estimating game score based on the athletes’ body language.
B. All participants were reasonably accurate at estimating the game score based on body language.
C. Children were more accurate than adults at estimating the game score based on body language.
D. Experienced athletes were more accurate at estimating the game score based on body language.
B. All participants were reasonably accurate at estimating the game score based on body language.
One difference between a fake and genuine smile is that a fake smile only involves contraction of the….
zygomaticus.
Roxana suffered a stroke in her right hemisphere. She is finding it difficult to perceive and interpret emotion in her daughter’s face. Which area of her right hemisphere was most likely impacted by the stroke?
fusiform face area
After a surgical procedure to severe the corpus callosum, Ari participated in a study with similar patients that found they could more accurately identify the emotion in a face when the face was displayed to
their left visual field. Based on these findings, which hemisphere of Ari’s brain is identifying emotion?
right
Wyatt had a particularly devastating case of meningitis that has drastically altered his behavior. He eats indiscriminately, explores non-edible objects with his mouth, shows abnormal emotional responses, and displays hypersexual behavior. Which area of the brain was most likely damaged by the meningitis?
amygdala
Emery underwent a surgical procedure that severed the connections between their prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. With which of these tasks are they most likely to struggle?
A.Drinking a cup of coffee.
B. Watching a thunderstorm.
C. Planning a birthday party.
D. Hiking a familiar trail.
The procedure Emery experienced is called a
performed in the US despite little evidence supporting their validity as a treatment.
C. Planning a birthday party.
frontal lobotomy
The _____ influences our autonomic arousal to emotional stimuli, while the ________ helps
us select appropriate behaviors.
amygdala; prefrontal cortex
Thanos severely injures several people to reach his goal of collecting all the Infinity Stones. Thanos’ behavior in this case is an example of ________ aggression
instrumental
If using aggression to achieve goals is a common pattern of behavior for Thanos (i.e., he has psychopathic tendencies), then which brain areas might be dysfunctional (assuming his brain is like a human’s)?
amygdala and vmPFC
Groot has played several hours of violent video games a day for many years. If we were to show Groot violent and nonviolent images while recording his brain activity with ERPs, we may find
if we also asked Groot to determine whether there was an emotional face in a crowd of neutral faces while recording his brain activity with ERPS, we may find that the amplitude of the ERPS would be
a reduced P300 to violent images.
reduced for happy faces
The Hulk is getting angry (and you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry). You suggest he eat a Snickers/Why might your suggestion be good advice for calming his anger?
low glucose levels are associated with aggressive behavior; eating can raise glucose
Which of the following findings is NOT evidence of a right hemisphere advantage for processing social information?
A. Better recognition of emotional expressions in left visual field
B. Better recognition of emotional tone in left ear
C. Better recognition of emotional expressions in the left eye
D. Greater activation of the fusiform face area in the right hemisphere
C. Better recognition of emotional expressions in the left eye
You meet a social cognitive neuroscientist at a bar. You have some time on your hands, so you ask about their research. Which of the following is least likely to be the title of their most recent paper?
A. Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music
B Electrophysiological studies of face perception in humans.
and voodoo doll task.
C. Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love
D. The role of task-irrelevant information in congruency sequence effects
D. The role of task-irrelevant information in congruency sequence effects
Shows larger amplitude for racially biased errors on the WIT.
ERN
Shows smaller amplitude for violent images among video game players.
P300
Selects appropriate actions based on reinforcement expectancy.
vmPFC
Lower levels associated with greater aggression on the CRT
glucose
Involved in stimulus reinforcement learning.
amygdala
Anita’s 74-year-old mother struggles to remember names of familiar objects. Some days she does not recognize Anita at all and other times she calls her “Kathy (Anita’s sister). She cannot perform basic tasks because she forgets important steps. Anita’s mother is showing signs of
dementia
HM had a radical surgery to remove the hippocampus to stop his epileptic seizures. Consequently, he could not form explicit memories of new events post-surgery. HM’s symptoms are an example of
anterograde amnesia.
A professional quarterback completes a pass to the receiver. Which type of memory did they use?
procedural
At your 20-year college reunion, you vividly recount where you were when you learned that OWU was going remote in March 2020. What a zany time! Which type of memory did you rely on?
episodic
A researcher shows participants words, like “sports” and “flowers” very quickly followed by a male or female name. The participant must decide if the name was male or female. If they respond more quickly to the name Sarah after seeing the word “flowers”, then they have demonstrated a type of memory called
priming.
Your significant other was telling you a story, while you were watching TV. Later, you realize you have no idea what they told you. Which stage of memory most likely failed in this scenario?
encoding
You read a question on this quiz. The answers look familiar, and you know you studied the topic, but you can’t quite recognize the correct answer now. Which stage of memory most likely failed in this scenario?
retrieval
You are creating a new animal model of Alzheimer’s Disease. What molecular changes would you want to ensure that your model had?
Amyloid plaques, tau tangles
The neural pathways for implicit and explicit memory are different in several ways. Which difference might help explain why implicit memory is typically unconscious?
Its pathways are unidirectional.
You are chased by a bear in the woods. The strength of your memory for this event later is partly due to greater activation of the ________ during fear.
amygdala
You correctly identify an object you’ve seen before. This type of explicit memory is supported by the…
perirhinal cortex
You have a “cognitive map” of campus that allows you to navigate that environment. This type of explicit memory is supported by the
parahippocampal cortex
In a parking lot of cars, you recognize your car as your own, despite similar looking objects. That sense of familiarity comes from the
entorhinal cortex
Dr. Bailey checks the Crumbl menu weekly even though she is trying to reduce sugar in her diet. She must inhibit the urge to eat a cookie to achieve her goal. Which area of her brain monitors that conflict?
anterior cingulate
A professional quarterback completes a pass to the receiver. Which area of the brain was most involved in the memory of how to do that?
basal ganglia
Which of the following brain areas is NOT likely to play an important role in encoding?
A. brainstem
B. medial temporal lobes
C. hippocampus
D. sensory cortices
A. brainstem
The nature of long-term memory storage has been challenging to study because it is difficult to separate it from
A. encoding.
B. retrieval.
C. both A & B
D. neither A or B
C. both A & B
Dr. Hall designed a study of long-term memory that measured how much time it took participants to get their performance back to a previously acquired level. This approach to measuring memory is called
relearning.
Dr. Bailey felt bad about having to miss class last week, so she decided to only use multiple-choice questions on the quiz. This approach to measuring memory is called_________ and often feels easier because it provides ________ cues.
recognition; more
Research repeatedly finds that performance suffers when we divide our attention illustrating that it is
limited
While you study in the library, rain pounds the windows, someone clicks their pen incessantly, and a couple has a whisper argument a few feet away. You can tune these stimuli out because attention is
selective
Babies have orienting reflexes, like startle to a loud noise, demonstrating that human attention is
basic
A patient arrives at a hospital unconscious after an injury to the brainstem. Doctors stabilize the patient, but they remain in a coma. Which area was most likely damaged?
Reticular activating system
Researchers find that direct stimulation of the midbrain nuclei increases overall activity levels in the cortex. This suggests that which neurotransmitter is causally involved in maintaining arousal?
acetylcholine
Playing action video games associated with a decrease in which category of attention?
sustained
Researchers are examining the role of norepinephrine in attention. Which categories of attention could they be studying?
arousal and sustained
You have not noticed anything happening outside your room because you are selectively focused on your notes. Suddenly, loud screeching in the hallway shakes you from your thoughts. This illustrates
bottom-up selection (environment stimuli- surprise)
You go to the grocery store near Easter and there are colorful displays of candy, eggs, and other fun treats everywhere, but you’ve been trying to reduce your sugar intake. You stroll past the holiday candy unphased thanks to
top-down selection (goal)
The debate over when attentional selection occurs was resolved when the ______ ERP component representing early selection and the ______ ERP component representing late selection were identified.
N1; P3
A patient has damaged their superior parietal lobe (SPL). what aspect of selective attention is most likely to be affected?
shifting attention
Selective attention relies on an extensive network of brain areas. Which of the following areas is the least likely to be involved in selective attention?
A. anterior cingulate
B. prefrontal cortex
C. basal forebrain
D. inferior parietal lobe
C. basal forebrain
A patient has damaged their lateral prefrontal cortex. What aspect of selective attention is most likely to be affected?
setting goals and intentions
Using TMS, researchers demonstrated that inhibition of the right _____ causes change blindness.
posterior parietal cortex
inattentional blindness is associated with less activity in the
visual cortex
which of the following neurological differences is NOT associated with an ADHD diagnosis?
A. decreased cortical activity
B. less cortical volume
C. lower dopamine levels
D. slower cortical maturation
A. decreased cortical activity
What is feature integration theory?
when there are more features to process and connect, it takes more time. this is normal, not a deficit
It is 8am and I form the intention (goal) to drink a cup of coffee using my…
prefrontal cortex
my motor cortex will execute the selected action to grasp and move the cup, producing the specific movement in my limbs via the _____ corticospinal tract
lateral
the motor neurons from the ________ division of y spinal cord will innervate the muscles in my arms and hands.
cervical
the sensory receptors in my fingers and hands will send a message to the ______ cortex saying the cup has been grasped.
somatosensory
the ________ would be responsible for helping me judge the grasp force necessary to pick up the cup without breaking or dropping it.
basal ganglia
If i needed to increase the movement or grass force on a cup, then the _______ pathway of the BG would need to be more active.
direct
in the pathway (the one that increases movement), the caudate/putamen inhibit the ______, which disinhibits the _________, allowing it to excite the cortex.
GPi; thalamus
The _______ pathway of the BG would be more active if I needed to decrease my movement or grasp force on the cup.
indirect
In the _________ pathway (the one that decreases movement), the caudate/putamen inhibit the ______, which disinhibits the _______, allowing it to excite the GPi, ultimately inhibiting the thalamus and cortex.
indirect; GPe; subthalamic nucleus
When I try to grasp the cup, my movements are jerky, random and difficult to control. I see a doctor about this, and they find degeneration of neurons in my caudate and putamen. what disorder is this characteristic of?
Huntington’s
If instead of uncontrolled movements, I displayed show rigid movements and the doctor found degeneration of neurons in my substantia nigra, what disorder would I have?
Parkinson’s
During the process of drinking coffee, what steps require conscious awareness?
forming the intention
How does the cerebellum contribute to your increased accuracy when throwing darts?
the cerebellum does motor correction and judges how well the movement worked towards a goal based on its copy of instructions from the cortex. It gives the cortex feedback to improve the dart throwing.
