module 4

Question 1

EEG

Answer 1

electroencephalogram - measures activity in response to a stimuli at a particular time

Question 2

structural mri

Answer 2

anatomy of the brain - used to detect structural anomalies

Question 3

fmri

Answer 3

gives information about activity in the brain - uses oxygenated blood flow as an indirect measure of neural activity

magnet detects changes in oxygenated blood - ratio of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood flow in regions of the brain is measured during a task and measurements are used to create a spatial image of brain activity

Question 4

right lateral occipitotemporal cortex

Answer 4

area of the brain that becomes active when we view images of body parts

Question 5

parahippocampal place area

Answer 5

area in temporal lobe that is active when we think about spatial layouts

Question 6

supplementary motor area

Answer 6

area of the brain that is active when we perform of imagine movement

Question 7

functional specialization and fmri for communication

Answer 7

knowledge of brain specialization has been used to communicate with people in vegetative states through measuring brain activity in fmri - patients are asked to respond yes/no to questions by thinking about things that either activate the parahippocampal place area or the supplementary motor area

Question 8

strengths and weaknesses of fmri

Answer 8

strengths: good spatial resolution, lots of replication
weaknesses: bad temporal resolution - hard to determine the timing of brain activity, indirect correlational measure, picks up a lot of signals/very noisy

Question 9

brain stimulation

Answer 9

noninvasive method of changing brain activity that can inhibit or increase activity

Question 10

transcranial magnetic stimulation

Answer 10

magnetic stimulation used to induce temporary change in brain activity - studies suggest that tms may improve memory- experiment with face word memory tests

Question 11

pros and cons of tms

Answer 11

pro: good for testing causality
con: not entirely clear how it works - hard to localize effects

Question 12

exteroceptive sensations

Answer 12

any form of sensation that results from stimuli located outside the body detected by sensory organs

Question 13

interoceptive sensations

Answer 13

sensations from inside our body - studies have shown that dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy - were able to estimate heart rate more accurately than non dancers

Question 14

proprioception

Answer 14

sense of where our limbs are in space

Question 15

nociception

Answer 15

sense of pain due to body damage

Question 16

equilibrioception

Answer 16

sense of balance

Question 17

synaesthesia

Answer 17

neurological condition in which one sense automatically triggers the experience of another sense - genetic component - 40% of patients have family members with the condition

due to cross wiring between processing areas in the brain? (hypothesis)

Question 18

grapheme color synesthesia

Answer 18

a person sees colors with certain letters or numbers

Question 19

artists with synesthesia

Answer 19

artists are 8 times more likely to have synesthesia than non artists - cross talk between sensory areas in the brain increases the ability to think creatively and in metaphors

Question 20

is pain a sensation or a perception?

Answer 20

perception

Question 21

mcgurk effect

Answer 21

you hear what you see - baaa to faaa illusion - integration of sensory information/dominance of visual input

Question 22

early vs late visual processing

Answer 22

early visual processing (sensation): eyes and optic nerve

late visual processing (perception): visual cortex (occipital lobe)

Question 23

early visual processing

Answer 23

1. light waves projected onto the retina
2. photoreceptors convert light into electrical activity
3. electrical signal goes to bipolar and then ganglion cells
4. signal exits through optic nerve to the brain

Question 24

information compression

Answer 24

millions of photoreceptors in each retina converge onto 100x fewer ganglion cells, meaning input from the eyes to the brain is compressed

Question 25

distribution of photoreceptors in the retina

Answer 25

cones are more concentrated in the fovea, whereas rods are mostly in the periphery

Question 26

blind spot

Answer 26

no photoreceptors where optic nerve leaves the eye - we usually don’t notice because the brain fills it in and also the left and right visual fields can compensate for each other’s blindspot

Question 27

late visual processing

Answer 27

signals leave the eyes and cross over contralaterally to the thalamus on the opposite side - from there information gets sent to the primary visual cortexes and onto the visual association areas

Question 28

primary visual cortex

Answer 28

specialized regions that process particular visual attributes or features - edges, angles, color, light

Question 29

visual association areas

Answer 29

interpret visual information and assign meaning

Question 30

pathways to visual association areas

Answer 30

what (ventral) pathway - occipital to temporal lobe
- shape, size, visual details

where (dorsal) pathway - occipital to parietal lobe
- location, space, movement information

dorsal and ventral pathways as ‘action’ and ‘perception’?

Question 31

ventral damage with intact dorsal stream

Answer 31

impaired performance on visual object recognition or matching tasks

Question 32

dorsal damage with intact ventral stream

Answer 32

impaired performance on visually guided action

Question 33

what happens to visual input in the cortex

Answer 33

it gets broken down, processed separately and then combined to form a perception of an entity - reality we perceive is a construction of the brain

Question 34

bottom up processing

Answer 34

external environment influence perception - sensory organs

Question 35

top down processing

Answer 35

knowledge (expectations context and goals) influences perception - higher areas of the brain - prefrontal cortex/higher visual processing

Question 36

constructivist theory of perception

Answer 36

we use what we know and current context to predict how to perceive sensory data - top down processes - what we expect to see

ex. subjective experience of pain - partly determined by expectations- shock experiment

Question 37

examples of how context affects visual perception

Answer 37

• ames room - people look taller in a trapezoid shaped room, because we expect rooms to be rectangle shaped, so assume its just the person thats huge

-letters in context - we can read words in sentences even when the letters are mixed up

• color in context - colors look different (lighter, darker, etc) depending on what they are next to

Question 38

correspondence

Answer 38

process by which the brain guesses the location of objects in space

Question 39

bi stable stimuli

Answer 39

illusions that can be perceived multiple ways

Question 40

what is the first structure of the eye that light passes through

Answer 40

cornea then iris /pupil (hoel in iris)

Question 41

perspective projection

Answer 41

objects that are farther away produce a smaller image than those that are close by

Question 42

lateral geniculate nucleus

Answer 42

part of the thalamus that receives 90% of visual information from the retina