Top Hat module 3

Question 1

Nervous system

Answer 1

A portion of the body consisting of neurons, nerves, and glial cells whose function is to allow different portions of the body to communicate with one another.

Question 2

Neurons

Answer 2

Specialized cells that can receive + transmit information

Question 3

Nerves

Answer 3

Bundles of connective tissue between neurons that can carry information over long distances

Question 4

Glial cells

Answer 4

Cells within the NS that provide support for neurons and overall NS function.

Question 5

CNS

Answer 5

Portion of the NS that consists of the brain and spinal cord. Cognition takes place primarily within the CNS, and in the brain in particular. The brain is the seat of conscious, voluntary action and is also the basis for all learning in the NS. The CNS sends a behavioral decision as output to the PNS in order to control muscles to generate a behavior.

Question 6

PNS

Answer 6

Portion of the NS that consists of all the neurons, glial cells, and nerves that are not part of the CNS. The PNS provides the input by bringing in information from the external senses and passing it to the CNS for processing.

Question 7

Autonomic NS

Answer 7

A portion of the PNS that connects to most organs in the body and regulates certain unconscious bodily functions.

Question 8

Sympathetic NS

Answer 8

A subdivision of the autonomic NS that unconsiously regulates certain functions of the body to prepare for immediate action. It worky by reducing certain lower-priority bodily functions, such as digestion, and increasing others, like heart rate and respiration.

Question 9

Fight-or-flight response

Answer 9

A response by the sympathetic NS that prepares the body with increased strengths and stamina in response to perceived threat.

Question 10

Parasympathetic NS

Answer 10

A subdivision of the Autonomic NS that regulates certain bodily functions under conditions when immediate action is not needed. It increases functions that are useful for longer-term survival (like eating/digestion) or reproduction (sexual arousal).

Question 11

Brainstem

Answer 11

A stalk-like structure at the base of the brain that connects it to the spinal cord and regulates involuntary functions like heart rate and breathing.

Question 12

Hypothalamus

Answer 12

A small but highly complex cluster of neurons that lies in the center of the brain. It is involved in regulating involuntary functions like body temperature, hunger and thirst, fatigue, and certain sexual behaviors.

Question 13

Reflex action

Answer 13

The simplest form of autonomic behavioral response in which the spianl cord generates the behavioral signal without the brain itnervening.

Question 14

Cerebrum

Answer 14

The largest portion of the human brain, sitting at the top of the brain and consisting of the cerebral cortex and related structures. It is mostly devoted to controlling and regulating voluntary behavior.

Question 15

Cerebral cortex

Answer 15

A folded, layered structure that is the largest single structure and the most superficial portion of the human brain. It is the evolutionarily newest part of the human brain and the one that is comparatively bigger in humans than in any other species.

Question 16

Gray matter

Answer 16

The topmost layer of the cortex, made up of neuronal cell bodies.

Question 17

White matter

Answer 17

The layer of the cortex beneath the gray matter, containing the nerve tracts that connect neurons to each other

Question 18

Hippocampus

Answer 18

A complex structure involved in (mostly long-term) memory formation. It is structurally an extension of the temporal lobe of the cortex.

Question 19

Contralateral hemisphere

Answer 19

A spatial relationship between brain and body observed in vertebrates in which one side of the brain controls or receives input from the opposite side of the body.

Question 20

Gyri

Answer 20

The hill-like projections of the folds of the cerebral cortex.

Question 21

Sulci

Answer 21

The valley-like indentations of the folds of the cerebral cortex.

Question 22

Cerebral lobes

Answer 22

The 4 anatomical divisions of the cortex that exist on each hemisphere. These are the the occipital, temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes. They are large folds of the cortical sheet and are all connected. They are separated by deep sulci (fissures).

Question 23

Cerebral hemisphere

Answer 23

Each of the 2 halves of the cerebrum, divided into a left and a right, and connected by the corpus callosum (a cluster of fibers). They have different functions: he left hemisphere is the dominant location of language while the right hemisphere is the dominant location of spatial processing.

Question 24

Functional localization

Answer 24

The concept that certain cognitive functions reside in specific regions of the cerebral cortex.

Question 25

Neuropsychology

Answer 25

The study or observation of brain function and impairment due to brain pathology. If damage to a specific part of the brain leads to specific impairments, this may be taken as evidence for functional localization.

Question 26

Phineas Gage

Answer 26

A railroad worker who suffered a serious accident when a metal bar penetrated his skull and traveled through much of his frontal cortex. He recovered much of his basic mental faculties, including the ability to speak, walk, and work. But before the accident, Gage was soft-spoken, mild-mannered, and reliable; now he was cantankerous and abusive and had difficulty holding down a job.

Question 27

Split-brain patients

Answer 27

In cases of very severe seizures, some people have had their corpus callosum severed entirely, in order to prevent the seizure from jumping from one side to the other. Patients who have endured this procedure typically recover and show mostly normal cognitive function, but they couldn’t name an object seen in their left visual field.

Question 28

Frontal lobe

Answer 28

• Executive control
• Planning
  Separated from the temporal lobe by the lateral fissure.

Question 29

Temporal lobe

Answer 29

• Meaning of sensory information
• Meaning of language
• Visual memory

Question 30

Occipital lobe

Answer 30

• Vision
  Separated from the parietal lobe by the parieto-occipital sulcus

Question 31

Parietal lobe

Answer 31

• Attention
• Somatosensory processing
• Sensory integration
  Separated from the frontal lobe by the central sulcus

Question 32

Cognitive neuroscience

Answer 32

A subfield of neuroscience that uses multiple tools to measure and analyze active brain processing in awake and (typically) healthy individuals.

Question 33

EEG

Answer 33

A method in cog. neuroscience that measures the electrical activity of the active brain that travels through the scalp. The temporal resolution is good (it can take individual measurements of very small time windows), but the spatial resolution (how small of a spatial area you can take an individual measurement from) is quite poor.

Question 34

Event-related potential (ERP)

Answer 34

Specific changes in electrical charge in response to a presented stimulus, which can be measured by an EEG.

Question 35

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Answer 35

A technique in cog. neuroscience for measuring ratios of oxygenated bloodflow in the brain in order to determine task-realted neural activity. It is an indirect measure of brain activity. It relies on the fact that neurons that engage in firing activity must replenish their resources and nutrients through the hemodynamic response. It has better spatial resolution than EEG, but worse temporal resolution.

Question 36

The hemodynamic response

Answer 36

A process in which the blood delivers oxygen more quickly to active neurons than to inactive neurons. fMRI 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.

Question 37

Problems with fMRI

Answer 37

Almost the entire brain shows some activity almost all of the time. fMRI researchers typically do the “subtraction method”: 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 that are more active when the participant is doing the task of interest are assumed to be more heavily involved in that task.

Question 38

Multi-variate pattern analysis (MVPA)

Answer 38

A data-analysis tool that uses machine learning to decode what task/stimulus a participant is engaging in, based on the distribution of activity across the brain.

Question 39

Steps of MVPA

Answer 39

• the researcher decides which neurons from different parts of the brain will be included. The results are usually clearer if the analysis is narrowed down to a few areas
• the pattern of brain activity when participants are engaged in different tasks is measured using neuroimaging (typically fMRI).
• after a number of different neural patterns are gathered, they are split into two groups. One group becomes the training set and the other group becomes the test set. The training set is given to a computer with the correct labels so that it can learn which pattern of brain activity belongs with which stimulus.
• testing whether the computer can correctly identify brain activation patterns from a set that it has not encountered before. This technique is also called “decoding”: taking some brain activity and working backwards to figure out what stimulus or other cognitive process caused it.

Question 40

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Answer 40

A (harmless) research technique that uses magnetic pulses to disrupt localized brain processing in order to observe effects on cognitive function. TMS has high spatial and temporal resolution. It is the closest human analog to some of the techniques behavioral neuroscientists use in animals.

Question 41

Limitations of TMS

Answer 41

• it is only possible to disrupt regions that are close to the surface of the brain
• TMS cannot precisely pinpoint what effect it is having on the brain; it may generate excitatory or inhibitory behavior in neurons, depending on the state of the brain when it is applied

Question 42

Why are different lobes not different organs?

Answer 42

• the basic mechanisms of the cortex (consisting of webs of interconnected neurons) are highly similar across cortical areas
• typical functional localization is not so fixed: for example, while the occipital lobe is primarily involved in visual processing in people who can see, people who are blind do not have a dormant or missing occipital lobe

Question 43

Neuroplasticity

Answer 43

The ability for the brain to reorganize the spatial arrangement of its function. It helps demonstrate that the function of different parts of the cortex is not due to their inherent physical structure but based on the inputs to those regions

Question 44

Limitations of cog. neuroscience techniques

Answer 44

• they can only tell us something about where and when certain functions are carried out in the brain, but not how they are carried out
• they largely depends on the assumption that the brain really is made up of distinct modules that carry out different functions. Some theorists argue that this assumption is wrong. The brain is an interconnected network and most cognitive functions depend on the distributed activity of many different regions all working together. Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience are moving away from the idea of cognitive modules and instead are concerned with cognitive networks.