Cognitive Neuroscience Midterm

Question 1

Gall’s method for investigating phrenology was flawed because

Answer 1

he sought only to confirm, not disprove, the correlations he observed

Question 2

Which of the following things would have been the most difficult for the famous individual studied by Paul Broca to do, compared to before his stroke?

Answer 2

Reading a book aloud

Question 3

If you were to insert a microelectrode through the cell membrane of a neuron, you would be able to demonstrate that

Answer 3

the region inside the cell membrane is more negatively charged than the region outside the membrane

Question 4

A patient reports that she is functionally blind after a focal brain injury, even though her eyes and optic nerves are completely intact. Of the structures listed here, the most probable location for the brain injury is the

Answer 4

Lateral geniculate nucleus

Question 5

Which of the following functions is NOT mediated primarily by the hypothalamus?

Answer 5

Relay of sensory information from the body to the cortex

Question 6

The central sulcus is an anatomical landmark that separates the _________ lobe from the ________ lobe:

Answer 6

Frontal; parietal

Question 7

The poison tetraethylammonium (TEA) interferes with normal neural communication. The toxin binds to and blocks voltage-gated potassium channels in the neuron cell membrane. Which of the following best describes the effects of TEA on the action potential?

Answer 7

The repolarization phase of the action potential is blocked

Question 8

A patient has an injury to the parietal lobe and has a selective deficit in processing information about the spatial location of visual stimuli. You hypothesize that this region of the brain is distinct in function from other visual areas in the temporal lobe, in which you suspect shape perception information is processed. To establish a double dissociation between the two functions and brain regions, you would need to find another person who had damage to the

Answer 8

temporal lobe and had only a shape perception deficit

Question 9

Research questions about the time course of cognition are better addressed using methods like ________, whereas questions about the anatomy of cognition are better addressed using methods like ________:

Answer 9

ERP; fMRI

Question 10

All of the following are common across each sensory system, except:

Answer 10

System nerves terminate either monosynaptically or disynaptically in different parts of the thalamus

Question 11

After suffering from a focal brain injury, a patient has difficulty in recognizing visually presented objects, despite normal acuity and color perception. Notably, she has severe difficulty in judging whether two pictures, each showing a different view, represent the same object. What is the most probable diagnosis?

Answer 11

Apperceptive visual agnosia

Question 12

Neural adaptation (aka habituation) in fMRI occurs when the same object is presented to someone repeatedly, which results in decreases of neural activation with each repetition of that object. Interestingly, showing a picture of a real banana several times and then showing a drawing of a banana continues to elicit decreasing activation with each presentation despite these variations. This is an example of:

Answer 12

Form-cue invariance

Question 13

Of the following choices, the strongest evidence for a link between the sense of smell and the triggering of memories is the observation that:

Answer 13

the olfactory cortex has direct connectivity to the limbic cortex

Question 14

The orbitofrontal cortex is an integration area for which two senses?

Answer 14

Olfaction and gustation

Question 15

In the auditory system, the conversion of sound waves into action potentials occurs in the:

Answer 15

Hair cells

Question 16

Before entering the brain, each optic nerve splits into two branches so that information from the ________ half of each retina crosses to the opposite side of the brain:

Answer 16

Nasal (medial)

Question 17

If you were to conduct a single-cell recording from a neuron in the MT region of the extrastriate visual cortex, you would probably find that the cell fires most vigorously to a:

Answer 17

Bar of light that moves across the cell’s receptive field

Question 18

Which area of the body has the greatest amount of representation in the human primary somatosensory cortex?

Answer 18

Hands

Question 19

Describe the process of an electrical signal changing into a chemical signal at the axon terminal.

Answer 19

Action potential (electrical signal) arrives at axon terminal and depolarizes, triggering voltage-gated calcium channels (1) Calcium enters cell and signals to vesicles in axon terminal to dock onto membrane (1) Vesicle fuses into membrane and releases NT (chemical) into synapse (1)

Question 20

Give a description of how coincidence detectors are thought to work to detect the location of a stimulus. How can these discriminate between when a stimulus is directly in front of a person or to the right of a person? (3 marks)

Answer 20

Coincidence detectors are maximally stimulated when they receive input from both left and right cochlear nuclei / ears at the same time (1) If a stimulus is directly in front of a person, the sound will reach both ears at the same time, so a coincidence detector equidistant from both will fire maximally (1)
If a stimulus is to the right of a person, the sound will reach the right ear first, so a coincidence detector closer to the left ear will fire maximally (1)

Question 21

Name one similarity and one difference between EEG and MEG. Why might someone use EEG instead of MEG? (3 marks)

Answer 21

Similarities: (1 mark, one of the following)
Measuring activity of postsynaptic potentials
Can measure ERPs
Can measure time-frequency activity

Differences: (1 mark, one of the following)
EEG is less expensive than MEG
MEG requires a magnetically shielded room
MEG has higher spatial resolution than EEG

If you need a cheaper system, or want a system that is easily moved around / portable (1
mark)

Question 22

Someone comes to you with complaints that although they can still feel pain from their right hand, they have lost all fine touch sensitivity from their right hand and fingertips. Based on this information, where do you think one locus of damage would be, and why? Why does this locus of damage not affect the pain information? (3 marks)

Answer 22

Right (dorsal) medulla, or some part of the right dorsal spinal cord between point of entry and
medulla (1)
The dorsal-column medial-lemniscus system decussates at the medulla, and is responsible for
fine touch (1)
Pain information decussates at the level of the spinal cord, which means that the information
has already crossed to the left side of the body at the point of damage and is conserved (1)

Question 23

You are taking a tour of a local art museum and have taken a seat in front of a brightly coloured painting, focusing your vision to admire it. Describe the path of an electrical signal that would be passed from the retina to the striate cortex in response to a yellow flower in the center of the painting (i.e. in the left/right temporal retinal field). (3 marks)

Answer 23

Cones (stimulated by colour) synapse onto P ganglion cells (1)
Located on temporal retina, so it doesn’t cross at the optic chiasm (0.5)
P cells synapse onto layers 3, 5 of lateral geniculate nucleus (1)
LGN synapses to striate cortex (0.5)