Week 2 Flashcards
What part of the cerebral cortex is involved in creating a mental representation of
the space around you?
Parietal lobe
What contributions did contributions Santiago Ramon y Cahal and Edgar Adrian make in understanding the structure and function of the brain ?
- Ramon y Cajal introduced individual neurons, synapses, and neural circuits
- Adrian introduced action potential and resting potential
How do neurons code for the intensity of a stimulus ?
By the frequency of action potentials
Are action potentials stronger and fired more frequently for more intense stimuli ?
Yes , action potential are stronger or fired more frequently for more intense stimuli
What was the significance for the work done by Hubel and Weisel ?
Hubel and Weisel discovered feature detectors
* neuron in VC that any time they see 90 degree line relative to the floor, the neuron will fire
* neurons that respond to specific stimulus features such as orientation, movement, and length
What was the significance of the work done by Gross ?
- discovered that neurons in the temporal lobe respond to complex stimuli
- information is being pushed forward in the t.l which then gets sent to the o.l, breaks down, info gets put together
What is the difference b/w specificity & population coding ?
- Specificity: for each person we have met, there is a neuron devoted to recognizing them
- Population: instead of one neuron per face, each nueron has a feature they recognize and a combination of different neurons are used to recognize people based on their features (entire population of neurons is involved is the idea)
How does sparse coding build on the idea of population coding ?
the entire population of neurons is involved (population coding) but not everyone has to be active for every face and they are all not doing the same thing
What part of the brain is involved in processing faces
Inferior temporal lobe
* fusiform cortex
What is prosopagnosia ?
Inability to recognize faces
What is double dissociation in the context of neuropsychological studies of brain function ?
Double dissociation, becasue you have two pieces of evidence showing that those parts of the brain have associations with certain processes
* damaged FC -> can’t recognize faces
* damage to ATL -> can’t recognize objects
How would one demonstrate causation in a study aiming to demonstrate the effect of drug use on brain structure ?
- 2 groups (smokers and non-smokers) and take image of their brain to determine if there are differences b/w 2 structures (amygdala and nucleus accumbens)
How do researchers commit reverse inference when interpreting the results of brain imaging experiments ?
Carry out a study and in order to understand, look back at literature and see what others say and nit pick what goes along w/ the narrative you want to push
Can brain images enhance the credibility of research ?
Yes when presented near conclusion
