R9 Questions

Question 1

Describe TN’s visual abilities and disabilities?

Answer 1

Abilities: blindsight (navigating through a hallway)

Disabilities: blindness in visual field (oblivious to what he can see)

Question 2

According to this article, damage to which brain region is responsible for the impairment of conscious vision?

Answer 2

primary visual cortex

Question 3

Research in which De Gelder and colleagues tested GY, who had lost primary visual cortex in the left hemisphere, revealed what surprising ability with faces?

Answer 3

He was able to guess the facial expressions shown in his blind spot.

Question 4

When faces were presented GY’s left primary visual cortex, what was he unable to perceive?

Answer 4

non-emotional facial characteristics like identity and gender

Question 5

Define emotional contagion and the procedure used to test it.

Answer 5

Emotional contagion: the likelihood to match one’s own facial expressions to other peoples’ that we see.

The procedure used to measure this = facial electromyography (different electrodes on a subject’s face record nerve signals that moved to muscles used in smiling or frowning)

Question 6

What is transcranial magnetic stimulation? What does it accomplish?

Answer 6

Transcranial magnetic stimulation temporary disables the visual cortex of a patient by implementing magnetic fields to the back of the head. This helps healthy subjects gain the ability to guess the overall nature of the stimulus.

Question 7

Brain regions in the (subcortex/cortex) are implicated in emotional blindsight.

Answer 7

subcortex

Question 8

In people who are cortically blind, what brain region is thought to underlie the subconscious perception of visual stimuli?

Answer 8

the superior colliculus (SC)

Question 9

This brain region acts as an interface between _________ and _________.

Answer 9

sensory procession (sight) and motor process (action)

Question 10

What does this article tell us about the nature of cortical and subcortical processes in general? Can dissociations of this sort help us to understand how we normally see the world?

Answer 10

Cortical areas: consist of many higher-level functions; acknowledge that cortical blindness is often rare among humans.

Subcortical areas: more primitive functions (processing emotions that could be detected by blindsight in blind patients)

Having dissociations as represented in this article helps us understand how we are actively learning about how these areas are integrated yet distinct.