Module 3 - The Brain Flashcards
The __________ system consists of all the nerves and cells throughout the body whose job it is to receive and transmit information from one part of the body to the other.
Nervous
It is very likely that the brain has gyru and sulci because they_________.
A. Have specific functions to perform
B. Increase the surface area that can fit in the skull
C. Help blood flow
D. Help migration of neurons to their proper location during development
B. Increase the surface area that can fir in the skull
The cortex is divided up into four distinct lobes separated by deep ____________ and fissures.
Sulci
The idea that specific parts of the cortex do different jobs is known as ___________.
A. Functional localization
B. Specific localization
C. Functional processing
D. Distributed processing
Functional localization
The right hemisphere of the brain is dominant for what kind of processing?
Spatial
People with damage to their left hemisphere are likely to have trouble with ________.
A. Memory
B. Spatial processing
C. Control of their left hand
D. Language
D. Language
To say two functions are doubly dissociated indicates that those two functions __________.
A. Involve the same mechanisms
B. Involve different mechanisms
C. Interact with each other
D. Cannot function alone
B. Involve different mechanisms
If a split-brain patient is presented with a triangle in their left visual field and a circle in their right visual field, which object will they verbally name?
A. Neither the circle nor the triangle
B. Both the circle and the triangle
C. The triangle
D. The circle
D. The circle
An EEG measures ___________.
A. The flow of blood in the brain
B. The electrical activity of an active brain
C. The electrical activity of a single neuron
D. The BOLD response
B. The electrical activity of an active brain
Which of these is not one of the basic goals of the nervous system?
A. Gather information from sensory systems
B. send information to the brain
C. Secrete hormones into the bloodstream
D. direct the movement of muscles
C. Secrete hormones into the bloodstream
What are the two subsystems of the nervous system in humans?
- Central nervous system
- Peripheral nervous system
What does the central nervous system consist of?
The brain, spinal cord
Technically it also includes the retina of the eye
What does the peripheral nervous system consist of?
All the neurons, glial cells and nerves that are not part of the central nervous system.
What is the role of the peripheral nervous system?
It provides the input by bringing in information from the external senses and passing it to the central nervous system for processing
What is the role of the central nervous system?
It sends behavioural decisions as output back to the peripheral nervous system in order to control muscles to generate a behaviour
What are some involuntary behaviours that can have an effect on cognition?
Emotions for examples. Emotions are involuntary but can affect cognitive processes like decision making
What is the autonomic nervous system?
A portion of the peripheral nervous system that connects to most organs in the body and regulates certain unconscious bodily functions
What are some of the bodily functions taken care of by the autonomic nervous system?
Heart rate
Digestion
Respiration
Sexual arousal
Etc
Which two subsystems does the autonomic nervous system engage?
The sympathetic nervous system
- stress reaction
- Prepares body for action
- Fight or flight response
- lowering priority bodily functions like digestion and sexual arousal
- higher heart rate, respiration etc
parasympathethic nervous system
- relaxed state
- eating and digestion, arousal etc
Which structure heavily regulates the autonomic nervous system?
The brainstem
What is the brainstem?
Structure at the base of the brain that connects it to the spinal cord
Regulates involuntary functions like heart rate and breathing
A small but highly complex cluster of neurons that lies in the center of the brain that regulates multiple involuntary behavioural functions.
Hypothalamus
Which involuntary functions does the hypothalamus take care of?
Body temperature
Hunger
Thirst
Fatigue
Certain sexual behaviours
What is a reflex action?
The simplest form of autonomic behavioural responses in which the spinal cord generates the behavioural signal without the brain
What takes up the largest portion of the human brain?
Cerebrum
What is the role of the cerebrum?
It is mostly devoted to controlling and regulating voluntary behaviour
Is the cerebrum one structure?
No
It’s a group of connected structures that sit on the top of the brain
Which part of the cerebrum is considered the most important?
Cerebral cortex
What is the cerebrsl cortex?
A folded, layered structure that is the largest single structure snd the most superficial portion of the human brain (closest to the skull)
What is the outer layer of the cerebral cortex made of?
gray matter
- neuron cell bodies
What is white matter made of?
Made of nerve tracts that connect neurons to each other.
What is the hippocampus?
Subcortical of the cerebrum
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Complex structure involved in memory formation and is structurally an extension of the temporal love of the cortex
Where is the dorsal, caudal, frontal and ventral?
Dorsal
Caudal/posterior 🧠 frontal/anterior
Ventral
Tactile information in your right leg is processed on the left side of your brain. This is because most sensory information from one side of the body tends to cross over to which hemisphere?
A. Ipsilateral
B. Dorsal
C. Frontal
D. Contralateral
D. Contralateral
Into which two structures are the layers of the cortex folded?
Gyri and sulci
What are the gyri?
The hills of the 🧠 brain
What are the sulci?
The valleys of the brain, the crevices between the little hills 🧠
Why does the brain have gyri snd sulci?
A. It makes it easier for the neurons to know where to migrate
B. The gyri snd sulci each have a specific function
C. It increased the surface area that can fit into the skull
D. It increases blood flow to the spinal cord
C. It increases the surface area that can fit into the skull
What are the fissures in the brain?
Deeper sulci, just deeper than normal sulci
What is called the primary cluster of fibers connecting the two hemispheres?
The corpus callosum
Which of these is the best description of the different functional specializations of the two hemispheres?
A. Left: spatial reasoning - Right/ language
B. Left: language - Right: spatial reasoning
C. Left: language - Right: mathematical reasoning
D. Left: emotion - Right: spatial reasoning
B. Left is language and right is spatial reasoning
The concept that certain cognitive functions reside in specific regions of the cerebral cortex.
Functional localization
What is the study or observation of brain function and impairment due to brain pathology?
Neuropsychology
Which of the following did the case of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker who had an accident in which a metal bar penetrated his skull, giver researchers evidence to support?
A. People can recover from traumatic brain damage
B. Different parts if the brain serve different functions
C. The brain works as a whole unit
D. The frontal lobe is not critical to function normally
B. Different parts of the brain serve different functions
People with lesions to the right hemisphere show difficulty in…….
Coordination and navigation
What do people with lesions to the left hemisphere have difficulty withv
Language. They will have slurred speech or confused speech.
Where must you present an object to a split-brain patient if you want to name that object?
A. Left eye
B. Right eye
C. Left visual field
D. Right visual field
D. Right visual field
What are the established functions of the frontal lobe?
- executive control
- planning
What are the established functions of the parietal lobe?
- attention
- somatosensory processing
- sensory integration
What are the established functions if the occipital lobe?
- vision
What are the established functions of the temporal lobe?
- meaning of the sensory information
- meaning of language
- visual memory
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Subfield of neuroscience that used multiple tools to measure and analyze active brain processing awake and typically healthy individuals
What does electroencephalography (EEG) measure?
It measures the electrical activity of the active brain that travels through the scalp, often with some form of electrically conductive gel underneath.
- measures very fast changes in brain activity.
What is an event-related potential (ERP)?
Rapid changes in electrical potential, as measure by EEG, due to inset of a stimulus
Which part of the brain is partly or totally severed in split-brain patients?
The corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres
What do ERPs allow researchers to do?
To determine with fairly high precision when a change in the brain takes place in responses to a particular stimulus.
What is EEG good at?
Temporal resolution
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It can take individual measurements of very small time windows
Why does EEG not have a good spatial resolution?
Because the electrical signal must travel through the scalp to be measured. It gets “spread out” and diffuses through the tissue and bone.
Sam is participating in a sleep study. Researchers place electrodes to Sam’s scalp, which are connected to an EEG. What kind of information will be provided by the EEG?
A. Changes in blood flow
B. Areas of the brain that are necessary to sleep functions
C. Electrical activity of the brain during sleep
D. The kind of neurotransmitters released during sleep
C. Electrical activity of the brain during sleep
Name the technique in cognitive neuroscience that is used for measuring ratios of oxygenated bloodflow in the brain in order to determine task-related neural activity.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
What does fMRI rely on to measure brain activity with blood flow?
It relies on the fact that neurons that engage in firing activity must replenish their resources and nutrients.
They accomplish this through a process called the hemodynamic responses.
What is the hemodynamis response?
It’s a process accomplished to replenish neurons’ resources and nutrients.
It consists of blood delivering oxygen more quickly to active neurons than to inactive neurons.
How does the fMRI infer that brain activity has taken place?
It uses the changes in the ratio of oxygenated to de-oxygenated blood in order to infer that brain activity has taken place and oxygen is being used up by neurons
What is fMRI primarily used for by researchers?
Used in order to determine which portions of the cortex are involved in specific cognitive tasks.
How do researchers infer that such place in the brain is used for such task with the help of the fMRI?
They measure brain activity when participants perform the task they wish to study and compare to when the participant is engaging in a different task or no task at all.
The portions of the brain most active when the participants are doing the task of interest are assumed to be more heavily involved in that task.
What is the multi-variate pattern analysis (MVPA)?
It’s another new technique for analyzing fMRI data.
How does the analysis tool called multi-variate pattern analysis (MVPA) work?
A computer can learn to determine what a participant is seeing or thinking simply by examining their pattern of brain activity.
The idea behind MVPA is that a computer algorithm can be trained to recognize different patterns for different cognitive functions
What are the main steps of MVPA?
1) researcher must decide which neurons from different parts of the brain will be included
2) the pattern of brain activity when participants are engaged in different tasks is measured using neuoimaging (typically fMRI).
3) testing whether the computer can correctly identify brain activation patterns from a set that it has not encountered before.
What is a block design, that is used in fMRI?
A block design is something where participants conduct multiple trials of each condition and then the average BOLD response is measures.
Which TWO of these statements are true about EEG relative to fMRI?
A. EEG takes less temporally frequent measurement
B. EEG takes more spatially precise measurements.
C. EEG takes more temporally frequent measurements
D. EEG takes less spatially precise measurements
C and D
What is a more affordable and portable research method than fMRIs that is able to measure hemodynamic response (albeit with less accuracy)?
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)
What does functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) use as a technique?
It uses near-infrared light in order to measure oxygenated versus non-oxygenated hemoglobin, a component of blood.
Both fMRI and EEG are _______________ techniques.
Correlational
Name the research technique that uses magnetic pulses to disrupt localized brain processing in order to observe effects on cognitive function.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TNS)
What does transcranial magnetic stimulation use to determine causal effect of specific brain regions on behaviour?
It uses brief but strong magnetic pulses that are able to penetrate through the skull and temporarily
What are the pros and cons of TMS?
Pros
- high spatial and temporal resolution
- Is an important tool in the cognitive neuroscience arsenal
Cons
- It is only possible to disrupt regions that are close to the surface of the brain
- It cannot pinpoint what effect it is having on the brain, it may generate excitatory or inhibitory behaviour in neurons
Which method can tell researchers whether some portion of the brain is causally involved in performing a specific function?
A. Electroencephalography (EEG)
B. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
C. Transcranial magnetic stimulation
D. Functional-near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)
C. Transcranial magnetic stimulation
What is neurplasticity?
The ability for the brain to reorganize the spatial arrangements of its function - demonstrates that the function of different part of the cortex is not due to their inherent physical structure but based on the inputs to those regions.
