module 3

Question 1

how do eyes tranduce light into signals that can be sent to the eye

Answer 1

photoreceptors, which form the retinae of human eyes. this begins a process that changes the membrane conductance of the photoreceptor causing a wave of depolarisation

Question 2

primary visual cortex

Answer 2

Signal leaves your eye via the optic nerve travelling to the optic chiasm. Here signals cross, so information from either side of visual space travels to one side of your brain. S

Question 3

hit rate

Answer 3

is proportion of times a participant reports seeing an input when it is actually presented.

Question 4

false alarm rate

Answer 4

are the proportion of times a participant reports seeing an input when it wasn’t presented.

Question 5

signal detection theory

Answer 5

allows experimenters to measure sensitivity and bias - which refers to the tendency to report if a signal has or has not been presented, regardless of whether it has been presented.

Question 6

receptive field

Answer 6

Position on retina that images must fall upon to make that visual neuron respond

Question 7

response selectivity

Answer 7

The type of input to which a cell will respond

Question 8

akinetopsia

Answer 8

or the patient with motion blindness the world appears as is viewed through a strobe light.

Question 9

sensation

Answer 9

an ability to detect sensory input.

Question 10

perception

Answer 10

your subjective experiences of sensory input

Question 11

transduction

Answer 11

the conversion of electromagnetic radiation into neural events. Involves light sensitive chemicals

Question 12

visual pigments

Answer 12

Pigment absorbs photons of light, beginning a process that changes photoreceptor membrane conductance, causing depolarisation and action potentials

Question 13

the physiological blind spot

Answer 13

• The point at which the optic nerve leaves your eye is called the optic disc

Question 14

opponent process theory

Answer 14

fter protracted viewing of certain colours, you can see oppositely coloured afterimages

Question 15

colour constancy

Answer 15

in different conditions the colours of the same wavelength of light can look very different

Question 16

specialisation

Answer 16

cells respond selectively to specific stimulus characteristics

Question 17

modularity

Answer 17

cells that respond to similar stimulus characteristics are clustered into specific brain regions

Question 18

a hierarchy of processing structures

Answer 18

cells respond to progressively complex stimulus characteristics as we follow the anatomical connections from the retina through to higher level visual brain regions

Question 19

receptive field

Answer 19

the region of retina to which a visual cell is responsive

Question 20

simple V1 cells

Answer 20

Simple V1 cells are responsive to oriented stripes of contrast located in a specific subfield of its RF.

Question 21

end-stopped V1 cells

Answer 21

End-stopped V1 cells are responsive to oriented striped of contrast of a specific (limited) length

Question 22

complex V1 cells

Answer 22

Complex V1 cells are responsive to oriented striped of contrast located anywhere within its RF

Question 23

complex direction-selective V1 cells

Answer 23

Complex direction-selective V1 cells are responsive to oriented stripes of contrast located anywhere within its RF that move in a particular direction

Question 24

V1 response selectivity

Answer 24

The orientation tuning of V1 cells is possible by taking excitatory inputs from bands of LGN cells, which in turn are activated by bands of retinal ganglion cells.

Question 25

Retinotopic mapping

Answer 25

adjacent neurons in visual brain regions encode information from adjacent regions on the retinal surfaces

Question 26

blindsight

Answer 26

The primary visual pathway travels to primary visual cortex (V1) via the lateral geniculate nucleus (LG)…
BUT, visual information also projects from the superior colliculus (SC) to the pulvinar to the medial temporal lobe (MT or V5)…

Question 27

V5 causes

Answer 27

akinetopsia

Question 28

V4 causes

Answer 28

colour blindness