Studies

Question 1

What are some of the findings regarding the heritability of ADHD?

Answer 1

60-90% [Faraone]
Unaffected siblings perform better but worse than control [Slats-Willemse]
Sustained attention 46-72% [Groot]
Estimates change with age [Polderman]

Question 2

What was [Davis et al]’s study about?

Answer 2

Twins in England and Wales. Geocoded by postcode (closer contributed more).

IQ, ADHD, achievement tested.

Question 3

[Davis] What was the hypothesis about why non-shared environmental influences were more important in London?

Answer 3

More diversity of household income, therefore more diversity of kids.

This means more different types of friends for twins to fall into.

Question 4

[Davis] Why are genes more important based on your environment in London?

Answer 4

Hayfever and field example.

Larger class sizes, more competition, lower resources. More variable environment.

Question 5

[Barnes] what is the clinical benefit of MPH?

Answer 5

Blockade of the dopamine transporter (DAT).

Question 6

[Bellgrove] what causes children to perform more poorly on sustained attention tasks?

Answer 6

Being homozygous for the 10 repeat allele.

Question 7

What are the findings for the D4 receptor gene (DRD4)?

Answer 7

Mixed findings but 7-repeat good.

[Bellgrove][Johnson] Children with the 7-repeat allele made fewer errors.

[Langley] The opposite.

[Swanson] Children with the 7-repeat allele display extreme behaviour with no cognitive symptoms. Without it at risk for poorer cognition.

Question 8

[Durston] what are the findings for the genotype influencing brain matter volumes?

Answer 8

Carriers of the 7-repeat allele had larger prefrontal volumes than those homozygous for the 4-repeat allele.

Question 9

[Posner] What was Posner’s original spatial cueing task?

Answer 9

Look at computerised display
Flash arrow in centre (valid, invalid, neutral)
Stimulus up and to the right/left

Always maintain eye position, only allowed to use periphery.

Question 10

[Goldberg] What was Goldberg’s study regarding attentional modulation of parietal neurons?

Answer 10

Monkey tries to detect the target briefly dimming. Fixates on target.

Found that the neurons turn up the volume before it even dims if in RF. Attention benefits.

Question 11

[Beischel] What was Beischel’s study regarding feature based attention?

Answer 11

Look for a particular colour, cue in centre tells him which colour, he then searches for the colour.

Measure where his eyes are looking. He gets reward when he gets the target.

Recording from neurons in v4. Every time he moves his eyes, he moves the RF. When RF is over target but not looking at target, neuron fires maximally.

Question 12

What happened when Ming used an electrical impulse on the growth cone being exposed to the chemorepellent?

Answer 12

It reversed the effect. The growth cone turned toward the chemorepellent.

Question 13

What can we gather from Ming’s electrical impulse study?

Answer 13

Not that electrical impulses reverse the effect of chemoattractant/repellents but that it deeply influences the relationship. It is never clear cut always depends on context.

Question 14

Explain the results of the cross-fostering study in rats.

Answer 14

All pups were low anxiety except those that were born of a low-licking mum and fostered by a low-licking mum.

This means that the genetic effect of having a low-licking mum can be offset by being raised by a high-licking mum.

Also means that high-licking mother’s pups are genetically protected from the negative effects of being raised by a low-licking mother.

Question 15

What were the results of the breastfeeding study?

Answer 15

It promotes all emotional and social development aspects.

Also promotes myelination. Higher myelination in higher breastfeeding kids.

Question 16

What were the results of isolating the newborn pups for 1h daily?

Answer 16

Decreased social structures and memory structures.

Question 17

What did they do to minimise the effects of the 1hr isolation of pups?

Answer 17

They played back the calls of the mother. This actually seemed to mitigate the effects of the isolation (increased dopamine). Effect only in female pups.

Question 18

What were the findings for the prairie voles study on monogamy?

Answer 18

Will always prefer the partner after mating. If there is no mating, there is not a significant preference.

Question 19

What were the findings of injecting dopamine antagonist vs CSF in prairie voles?

Answer 19

Affliative behaviours decreased when antagonist injected.

Virgin males presented with a stranger attacked more often.

Question 20

What were the findings of the oxytocin nasal spray study on social distance?

Answer 20

Whenever males were in a relationship and given oxytocin, the distance they felt comfortable was significantly different than in all other cases.

The M OXY Rel condition caused males to stand significantly further away.

Question 21

Which studies are examples of endogenous cueing (top-down processing)?

Answer 21

The V-N-I cueing tasks. Be it Posner or any other task that has a cue that means to look in a certain direction for the stimulus.

Question 22

What were the results of Owen et al’s study on consciousness?

Answer 22

They asked her to imagine playing tennis and to imagine walking around her house.

Found that the activation areas involved in these processes light up.

Her responses matched controls.

Question 23

What was Goodhew’s study on visual masking?

Answer 23

Object substitution masking.

Fixation cross
Blank
3x3 w/ word or non-word
Dots around each word were coloured (sometimes matching)
Blank or dots remain
Respond colour of mask and word/non-word.

Question 24

What were the results of Goodhew’s study on visual masking?

Answer 24

If dots stay on, impaired detection.

If dots went away, very high accuracy.

Faster to respond when compatible, then N then I.

Regardless of whether you got the word task correct, you still had the same speed increase. So even if you don’t process word consciously, you process it semantically.

Question 25

What was the follow up study conducted by Goodhew et al?

Answer 25

It was a detection study instead of alt forced choice.

Found that when the subject did not detect the word, the opposite effect was shown.

Incompatible fastest, then N and then C.

Proves that it is not a subset of trials effect.

Question 26

What were the findings from Tse et al’s study on visual masking?

Answer 26

Target only
Mask only (two masks)
Mask, target, mask
Same but increased gap

Found that on the mask-target-mask condition, they got a nice masking effect.

Concluded that PVC seems to fire more when it is conscious but fires either way.

Question 27

What were the conditions in Anderson et al’s visual crowding study?

Answer 27

No change = middle just noise

Change-same = middle gabor same direction as others in one eye

Change-different = middle gabor different direction as others in one eye

Question 28

What was the result of Anderson’s study on visual crowding?

Answer 28

The change-same condition was hardest to detect.

When you contrast change-different to change same, there is increased activity in v1.

Question 29

What were the results of Tong’s study on binocular rivalry?

Answer 29

FFA (face) PPA (place).

The areas track awareness. Brain areas oscillate as people’s focus oscillates between the two images.

Ventral visual areas really care about awareness.

Question 30

What were the results of Scholvnick and Rees’ study on motion induced blindness?

Answer 30

People were aware of the yellow dot about 50% of the time.

In PVC, you can see the activation maps on to the behavioural responses.

Question 31

What were the results of Raymond’s study on the attentional blink?

Answer 31

Presented with a rapid succession of stimuli.

Tell me what 2nd letter is
OR tell me both targets.

For 200-500ms after t1 you get an impairment in performance.

If you have to process t2 without t1, no impairment.

Question 32

What were the results of Marois’ study on attentional blink?

Answer 32

Presented with place and face in succession.

Tell me whether t2 is indoors or outdoors OR this and which face did you see.

Same impairment in the two target trials.

Question 33

What were the imaging results for Marois’ study on attentional blink?

Answer 33

Activation in PPA highest on a hit
Second highest on a miss
Lowest but still there on a correct rejection

Shows that PPA seems to care about awareness. Lateral frontal only cares if you see it or not.

Question 34

What do we see in the attentional modulation of v4 study?

Answer 34

Neurons are given a boost when the RF is over the target stimuli regardless of where attention is.

Feature-based attention.