Chapter 2

Sarah has experienced brain damage making it difficult for her to understand spatial layout. Which area of her brain has most likely sustained damage?

Parahippocampal place area (PPA)

Which part of the brain is important for touch, pressure, and pain?

Parietal lobe

Hemoglobin molecules in areas of high brain activity _____.

lose some of the oxygen they are transporting

Groups of neurons or structures that are connected within the nervous system are called _____.

neural networks

The concept of distributed neural coding proposes that a specific object, like a face, is represented across a number of _____.

neurons

A 10-month-old baby is interested in discovering different textures, comparing the touch sensations between a soft blanket and a hard wooden block. Tactile sensations such as these are received by the _____ lobe.

parietal

If kittens are raised in an environment that contains only verticals, you would predict that most of the neurons in their visual cortex would respond best to the visual representation of a _____.

picket fence

If the intensity of a stimulus that is presented to a touch receptor is increased, this tends to increase the ______ in the receptor's axon.

rate of nerve firing

The layer of neurons that lines the back of the eye is called the _____.

retina

When conducting an experiment on how stimuli are represented by the firing of neurons, you notice that neurons respond differently to different faces. For example, Arthur's face causes three neurons to fire, with neuron 1 responding the most and neuron 3 responding the least. Roger's face causes three different neurons to fire, with neuron 7 responding the least and neuron 9 responding the most. Your results support _____coding.

sparse

The idea of a grandmother cell is consistent with _____.

specificity coding

In a procedure called diffusor tensor imaging (DTI), the way in which _____ diffuse(s) along the length of a nerve fiber is measured to determine how different nerves communicate with each other.

water

The temporal lobe is _____.

where signals are received from the auditory system

Josiah is trying to speak to his wife, but his speech is very slow and labored, often with jumbled sentence structure. Josiah may have damage to his _____.

Broca's area

Which of the following procedures can be used to help determine the exact way in which nerve fibers communicate with each other?

DTI

Ramon is looking at pictures of scantily clad women in a magazine. He is focusing on their body parts, particularly their chest and legs. Which part of Ramon's brain is activated by this viewing?

Extrastriate body area (EBA)

Which of the following statements is the most accurate with regard to specificity coding?

It is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron for each.

Which of the following brain imaging techniques, discovered in 1908, is not a standard technique for detecting brain tumors and other brain abnormalities?

MRI

Damage to Wernicke's area is in which love of the brain?

Temporal

Which of the following neural components is NOT found at the receiving end of neurons? a. Dendrite b. Axon c. Cell body d. Receptor

b. Axon

Your author points out that studying the mind requires both _____ and _____ experiments.

behavioral; physiological

Which of the following is consistent with the idea of localization of function? a. Brain areas are specialized for specific functions b. Specific areas of the brain serve different functions c. Neurons in different areas of the brain respond best to different stimuli d. All of the above

d. All of the above

Brain imaging has made it possible to _____.

determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes.

Neurons that respond to specific qualities (e.g., such as orientation, movement, and length) that make up objects are called ______.

feature detectors.

The _____ lobe of the cortex receives information from all of the senses and is responsible for the coordination of the senses, as well as higher cognitive functions such as thinking and problem solving.

frontal

You are walking down the street and see a really nice car drive by. You notice many features of it: its color, movement, shape, location, and so forth. All of these features are processed _____.

in different parts of the brain

The neuron doctrine is _____.

in disagreement with nerve net theory

Barbara has recently been diagnosed with a rather aggressive form of abdominal cancer. Her oncologist is interested in determining the best way to treat her so that the tumors can be eliminated. Her gastroenterologist is focused on relieving her symptoms and giving her normal digestive functioning. Barbara is also seeing a psychologist, whose goal is to help her stay calm, relaxed, and keep her anxiety as minimal as possible while keeping her spirits up. The fact that these doctors are considering Barbara's situation with different goals and from different perspectives is similar to the idea of _____ presented in your textbook.

level of analysis

Paul Broca's and Carl Wenicke's research provided early evidence for _____.

localization of function

Recording from single neurons in the brain has shown that neurons responding to specific types of stimuli are often clustered in specific areas. These results support the idea of _____.

localization of function