Final Exam pt. 2
Nonfluent aphasia, in which the victim is unable to speak fluently, is due to brain damage that includes ____.
Broca's area
Chemically, what is the route from genes to their expression?
DNA to RNA to proteins
Why does the fovea provide the clearest, most detailed visual information?
It has tightly packed receptors
What is the effect of MPTP?
It kills the neurons that release dopamine.
Huntington's disease is a genetic disorder caused by _____.
a dominant gene on chromosome 4
On a given trait, high heritability suggests that ____.
adopted children will closely resemble their biological parents
What is the intensity of a sound wave called?
amplitude
Breeding some animals selectively because they possess some desirable characteristic is called ____.
artificial selection
A tonotopic map refers to a(n) ____.
auditory cortex map of sounds
The structure composed of the caudate nucleus, putamen, and globus pallidus is the ____.
basal ganglia
According to the frequency theory, the ____
basilar membrane vibrates in synchrony with a sound, producing action potentials at the same
What does fMRI directly measure?
concentration of deoxyhemoglobin in the blood
Most of the information passing from one hemisphere to the other does so by passing through which structure?
corpus callosum
A split-brain patient is someone who has had their ____.
corpus callosum severed
Brittanie has had damage to the dorsal stream of her visual system. She now has trouble with _____.
describing what is seen
Genetic factors have their greatest impact on Parkinson's disease in cases that involve ____.
early onset of the disease
A condition in which brain neurons have repeated episodes of excessive, synchronized activity is called ____.
epilepsy
What type of experimental design does the following statement describe: "Stimuli from two or more conditions are presented randomly or inter-leaved"?
event-related design
The Decarlos just had a new baby. Their baby is more likely to pay attention to ____ than anything else at this time.
faces
Suppose "A" is a dominant gene for the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) and "a" is a recessive gene for the inability to taste it. Which couples could possibly have both a child who tastes it and a child who does not?
father Aa, mother Aa
Lateralization refers to the ____.
functional asymmetries of the brain
The optic nerve is composed of axons from which kind of cell?
ganglion cells
Cortical blindness restricted to one half of the visual field (associated with damage to the primary visual cortex in one hemisphere) is known as:
hemianopia
A person with two recessive genes is considered to be ____ for that trait.
homozygous
Which structure has the largest receptive fields and greatest sensitivity to highly complex visual patterns, such as faces?
inferior temporal cortex
What is responsible for sharpening contrast at visual borders?
lateral inhibition
Cutting the left optic nerve in front of the optic chiasm would result in blindness in the
left eye
What sound characteristics can be compared between the two ears to locate the source of the sound?
loudness and timing
In the auditory system, hair cells are specialized receptors that respond to ____.
mechanical displacement
Watching another person shoot a basketball is most likely to activate ____ neurons in the brain of the person who is watching.
mirror
The brain's ability to change as a result of experience is referred to as:
plasticity
In which part of the brain does synaptic density not reach adult levels until adolescence?
prefrontal cortex
The motor cortex produces a kind of activity called a(n) ____ before any voluntary movement.
readiness potential
The ____ of any neuron in the visual system is the area of the visual field that excites or inhibits it.
receptive field
A trait not expressed when combined with a dominant trait is called a(n) ____ trait.
recessive
Color constancy is the ability to ____.
recognize the color of an object despite changes in lighting
In addition to having difficulty recognizing faces, people with prosopagnosia may have difficulty____.
recognizing different kinds of plants and animals
Someone with prosopagnosia has difficulty with ____.
recognizing faces
An example of a sex-linked trait is ____.
red-green color vision deficiency
A sensory map coded relative to the position of eye gaze is called:
retinocentric
The left hemisphere is connected to skin receptors mainly on the ____ half of the body, and controls muscles mainly on the ____ side of the body.
right; right
Horizontal cells receive their input from ____, and they send output to ____.
rods and cones; bipolar cells
When cells in the middle temporal cortex respond to visual stimuli, their response depends mostly on the ____.
speed and direction of movement
In Parkinson's disease, which pathway in the brain degenerates?
substantia nigra to caudate nucleus and putamen
What is subitizing?
the ability to rapidly detect the number of items in a small collection without counting
Most auditory information is sent to which hemisphere of the brain?
the contralateral side
The current view of how we perceive sounds less than 100 Hz is based on ____.
the frequency of action potentials
Several months after split-brain surgery, the number of incidents of conflicts between the two hemispheres diminishes because ____.
the hemispheres learn ways of cooperating with each other
What would be the likely outcome of a person who was blind at birth, and had vision restored later in life by the removal of cataracts (clouded lenses)?
trouble describing the shapes of objects
An inability to recognize objects despite otherwise satisfactory vision is called ____.
visual agnosia