How Does the Brain Think

Question 1

ideas that result from a set of impressions

- mental processes such as thought, language. memory emotion, and motivation

Answer 1

Psychological constructs

Question 2

it is ______ to localize constructs in the brain

Answer 2

difficult

Question 3

Act or process of knowings or coming to know

Answer 3

cognition

Question 4

for behavioural neuroscientists, cognition usually entails?

Answer 4

the ability to pay attention to stimuli, to identify stimuli, and to plan meaningful responses to them

Question 5

______ gives humans an edge in thinking and provides a means of organizing time and a way to categorize info

Answer 5

language

Question 6

language has syntax, which is?

Answer 6

• sets of rules for putting words together form meaningful utterances

Question 7

is proposed to be a unique characteristic of human language

Answer 7

syntax (gives us more flexibility to talk about things in abstract ways)

Question 8

syntax allows humans to?

Answer 8

have language that moves beyond the concrete world and now

Question 9

what may have encouraged language development

Answer 9

human predisposition to sequence movements

Question 10

a critical characteristic of human motor sequencing is ?

Answer 10

our ability to form novel sequences with ease

Question 11

people with ______ damage have difficulty generating novel solutions to problems
–> why what is this structure critical for?

Answer 11

frontal lobe

- to organizing not only behaviour but also thinking

Question 12

parrots do not possess a neocortex, instead they evolved specific brain nuclei that function much as the layers of the human cortex do
–> so how do they think?

Answer 12

• complex thinking that includes vocabulary with meaning abstract ideas, and integration of concepts, and comprehension
• -> thinking is the activity of complex neural circuits, not a specific brain region

Question 13

hypothetical group (network) of neurons that becomes functionally connected via common sensory inputs

Answer 13

cell assembly (neural network)

Question 14

cell assembly was proposed by hebb as the basis of?

Answer 14

perception, memory, and thought

Question 15

connections among neurons are not random but rather are?

Answer 15

organized into systems and subsystems

–> thinking must result from the activity of these complex neural circuits

Question 16

______ provide the basis for cognition

Answer 16

cell assemblies (different ones come together to produce coherent thoughts)

Question 17

what are the only elements in the brain that combine evidence and make decisions

Answer 17

neurons

Question 18

foundation of cognitive processes and thought

Answer 18

neurons

Question 19

what produces complex mental representations?

Answer 19

combination of individual neurons into novel neural networks

Question 20

neocortex outside of the primary sensory and motor cortex; produces cognition
(2/3 or cortex)

Answer 20

association cortex

Question 21

what is one of the key differences between the association cortex and the primary sensory cortex

Answer 21

the pattern of connections

- the association cortex receives info that is more highly processed than info received by the primary cortices

Question 22

contains knowledge either about our external or internal world about movements

Answer 22

association cortex

Question 23

cortical areas not referred to as primary are collectively referred to as?

Answer 23

association cortex, which functions in thinking

Question 24

produce cognition related to visual and auditory processing

Answer 24

temporal association regions

Question 25

closely related to somatosensation and movement control

Answer 25

parietal cortex

Question 26

coordinates into coming from the parietal and temporal association regions with info coming from subcortical regions

Answer 26

frontal cortex

Question 27

knowledge about what object are, is represented where?

Answer 27

- in the temporal association cortex, part of the ventral visual stream

Question 28

a person will develop agnosia if what region is destroyed

Answer 28

temporal association cortex

Question 29

what is the binding problem

Answer 29

a philosophical question focused on how the brain ties a single and varied sensory and motor events together into a unified perception or behaviour

Question 30

what is the solution to the binding problem

Answer 30

regions of the association cortex are multimodal, these neurons respond to info from more than one sensory modality

Question 31

refers to a range of mental functions, from the ability to navigate from point A to point B to the representation of complex visual arrays

Answer 31

spatial cognition

Question 32

the ability to mentally manipulate things likely evolved in parallel with our ability to navigate in space

Answer 32

spatial cognition

Question 33

what brain region is important in spatial cognition

Answer 33

dorsal visual stream

Question 34

the ability to manipulate an object in the minds eyes probably flows from ?

Answer 34

the ability to manipulate tangible objects with the hands

Question 35

what is central for controlling vision for action

Answer 35

dorsal stream in parietal lobe

Question 36

mentally rotating object is the job of the ?

Answer 36

dorsal stream in the parietal lobe

Question 37

ppl with damage in the ________ _________ regions, especially the _____ hemisphere, have deficits in processing complex spatial info, both in the real world and in their imagination

Answer 37

parietal association | - right

Question 38

selective narrowing or focusing of awareness to part of the sensory environment or to a class of stimuli

Answer 38

attention

Question 39

attention can be directed ______ or ______

Answer 39

inward or outward

Question 40

__________ is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of of what seem several simultaneous objects or trains of thought

Answer 40

attention

Question 41

each animal trained to attend to a stimuli presented in one particular area of the visual field and to ignore stimuli in any other area --> this is an example of?

Answer 41

selective attention

Question 42

neurons in what brain area can be trained to respond selectively to info in their receptive fields? (selective attention)

Answer 42

areas V4

Question 43

attending to specific parts of the sensory world is a property of ? --> this is more evidence that?

Answer 43

- property of single neurons | - that the neuron is the computational unit of cognition

Question 44

ppl with _____________ injuries tend to be overly focused on environmental stimuli --> they seem to _______ _______ attention to an excessive degree or have difficulty ____ ______

Answer 44

- frontal lobe injury - selectively direct - shifting attention

Question 45

damage to this area can cause contralateral neglect

Answer 45

parietal association cortex

Question 46

what is contralateral neglect

Answer 46

ignoring a part of the of the body or world on the side opposite that of the brain injury

Question 47

neglect is particularly severe i the ______ hemisphere damage

Answer 47

right

Question 48

in neurology, neglect of info on one side of the body when it is presented simultaneously with similar info on the other side of the body

Answer 48

extinction

Question 49

patients with contralateral neglect exhibit this symptom as they begin to recover

Answer 49

extinction

Question 50

ppl with contralateral neglect not only fail to pay attention to one side of the physical world around them but also to ?

Answer 50

one side of the world represented in their mind

Question 51

how do you test for extinction.

Answer 51

1. hold up to objects of the same (one in each visual field) 2. hold up 2 different objects (a different object in each field) 3. hold up to same objects but different than the first same objects - -> patient should only see one side when the object are the same but both sides when the objects are different

Question 52

to plan you need to recognize object (brain region? ) and to make appropriate movements with respect to them (brain region? ) ----> the ______ act as an orchestra conductor

Answer 52

- occipital and temporal lobe - parietal lobe - frontal lobes

Question 53

what brain region make and read a motor plan to organize behaviour in space and time

Answer 53

frontal lobes

Question 54

ppl with damage to this are unable to organize their behaviour

Answer 54

frontal lobe

Question 55

the wisconsin card sorting task exemplifies the deficits in _____ injury causes --> it involves what cognitive processes?

Answer 55

frontal lobe | - planning and reasoning

Question 56

ppl with frontal lobe injury doing the Wisconsin card sorting task have trouble shifting their response strategy --> this pattern of behaviour is known as

Answer 56

Preservation | the tendency to repeated the same verbal or motor response to varied stimuli

Question 57

cells in the _______ _______ cortex that fire when an individual observed a specific action taken by another individual --> these are called

Answer 57

primate premotor | - mirror neurons

Question 58

the human capacity to communicate with words may have resulted from evolution of the mirror neuron system

Answer 58

- rozzolatti

Question 59

where are mirror neurons in the monkeys brain? and when do they fire?

Answer 59

- inferior frontal and posterior parietal cortex | - when a monkey sees another monkey make the same movement and when monkeys sees experiment make the movements

Question 60

what could provide the link between the sender and the receiver of a communication

Answer 60

mirror neurons | - used both for imitating others actions and for understanding their meanings

Question 61

more understood as an action monitor which improves speed and accuracy of movements

Answer 61

mirror neurons