Lesson 4: Cortical organization

Question 1

Why is organization important in the visual system? (2)

Answer 1

1. process information about characteristics of objects, such as size, shape, orientation, color, movement, and location in space.
2. Process information about different types of objects, such as trees, animals, furniture, etc.

Question 2

Spatial organization

Answer 2

how different locations in the environment and on the retina are represented by activity at specific locations in the visual cortex.

Question 3

area V1

Answer 3

striate cortex

Question 4

retinotopic map

Answer 4

electronic map of the retina on the cortex.
two points that are close together on the object and on the retina will activate neurons that are close together on the brain

Question 5

What this means is that electrical signals associated with
the part of the tree near where the person is looking (fovea) are allotted 1. more/less space on the cortex than signals associated with parts of the tree that are located off to the side in the periphery.

Answer 5

more.
In other words, the representation on the cortex is distorted, with more space being allotted to locations near the fovea than to locations in the peripheral retina.

Question 6

Cortical magnification

Answer 6

assignment of a large area on the cortex to the small fovea
fovea = 0.01% of retina’s area
fovea = 8 to 10 % of the retinotopic map on the cortex

Question 7

cortical magnification factor

Answer 7

size of the cortical magnification

Question 8

location columns

Answer 8

Are perpendicular to the surface of the cortex, so that all of the neurons within a location column have their receptive fields at the same location on the retina.

Question 9

orientation columns

Answer 9

Each column containing cells that respond best to a particular orientation.

Question 10

hypercolumn

Answer 10

A location column with all of its orientation columns

Question 11

tiling

Answer 11

Each circle or ellipse in the scene represents an area that sends information to one location column. Working together, these columns cover the entire visual field.

Question 12

Ablation (lesion)

Answer 12

Destruction or removal of tissue in the nervous system

Question 13

Object discrimination project

Answer 13

pick the correct shape after ablation
temporal lobe = object identity
Called the WHAT pathway

Question 14

landmark discrimination project

Answer 14

remove the cover of the food well that was closest to the tall cylinder
Parietal lobe = object’s location
called the WHERE pathway and HOW, actions

Question 15

what other name do we give to the what pathway? (object identification, temporal lobe)

Answer 15

ventral pathway

Question 16

what other name do we give to the where pathway? (object location, parietal lobe)

Answer 16

dorsal pathway

Question 17

neuropsychology

Answer 17

the study of the behavioral effects of brain damage in humans.

Question 18

double dissociation

Answer 18

-which involves two people: In one person, damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present; in the other person, damage to another area of the brain causes function B to be absent while function A is present
-confirm the areas are independent

Question 19

modularity

Answer 19

the idea that specific areas of the cortex are specialized to respond to specific types of stimuli

Question 20

inferotemporal cortex- monkey

Answer 20

selective face neurons

Question 21

fusiform face area in humans - FFA - Temporal lobe

Answer 21

specialized to respond to faces

Question 22

prosopagnosia

Answer 22

difficulty recognizing the faces of familiar people

Question 23

Parahippocampal place area - (PPA)

Answer 23

activated by pictures depicting indoor and outdoor scenes

Question 24

extrastriate body area - (EBA)

Answer 24

activated by pictures of bodies and parts of bodies
(but not by faces)

Question 25

Distributed representation

Answer 25

occurs when a stimulus causes neural activity in a number of different areas of the brain, so the activity is distributed across the brain.

Question 26

Distributed representation of multidimensional stimuli

Answer 26

1. we respond to other aspects of faces (ex: emotional, attractive, where they are looking, how it moves, if it’s familiar)
   2.Pain

Question 27

H.M.

Answer 27

Man who removed both sides of his hippocampus to reduce epileptic seizures

Question 28

Findings H.M.

Answer 28

eliminated seizures but also eliminates the ability to store experiences in his memory. This is because the hippocampus is important to store long-term memories.

Question 29

what structures are important for memory?

Answer 29

Medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures, such as the parahippocampal cortex, the entorhinal cortex, and the hippocampus.

Question 30

mind–body problem

Answer 30

How do physical processes like nerve impulses (the body part of the problem) become transformed into the richness of perceptual experience (the mind part of the problem)?

Question 31

expertise hypothesis

Answer 31

proficiency in perceiving certain things can be explained by changes in the brain caused by a long exposure, practice, or training