PSYA370 Final Exam

According to research by Sternberg and colleagues, an especially important period of development for anticipating the future occurs between _____________ years of age.

13 and 16

According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming, why do people frequently dream that they cannot move?

Because people are paralyzed during REM sleep.

How can someone tell a scientist that he or she is currently having a lucid dreaming.

By using eye movements.

Denervation supersensitivity:

Comes from the growth of new postsynaptic receptors.

What is the corpus callosum responsible for?

Communication between the hemispheres.

Which of the following does Dr. LaBerge suggest doing to increase the chances of having a lucid dream?

Developing a habit of questioning reality while awake.

A dog who is happy to see you will wag his tail mostly to his left.

False

According to the Mirror Neuron Hypothesis of Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorder results from overactive mirror neurons.

False

The amplitude of a sound wave is perceived as pitch.

False

The base of the basilar membrane is most important for the perception of low pitches.

False

The best documented type of long-term potentiation occurs at GABA synapses.

False

What does the G in PGO waves stand for?

Geniculate

How does the development of external genitalia differ from the development of the internal reproductive structures?​

Genitals for males and females develop from a single unisex structure; reproductive structures develop from separate Wolffian and Müllerian structures

Which of the following would definitely NOT increase one's chances of having a lucid dream?

Getting up early.

What happens when a word is flashed in Joe's left visual field.

He cannot read it, but he can draw it using his left hand.

What important change did Elias Howe make to his sewing machine based on a dream?

He moved the eye of the needle.

Your digit ratio is the ratio of the length of your _

Index finger (2D) to your ring finger (4D)

Why couldn't Alan, with his connected hemispheres, draw a picture with each hand at the same time?

Motor messages in one hemisphere were confusing motor messages from the other hemisphere.

In humans, which of the following is NOT associated with impulsive behavior?

Musical training

Which neuroscientist won a Nobel prize for an idea that came to him in a dream?

Otto Loewi

Regrowth of axons after damage is more likely in the___________ than in the __________.

PNS; CNS

During what period is a female spotted hyena's testosterone levels particularly high?

Pregnancy

Lucid dreams take place during _______________________.

REM sleep

Which of the following is the main cause of brain damage from a closed head injury?

Rotational forces that cause the brain to hit the skull from the inside.

A study administering testosterone to women found which of these effects?​

Testosterone increased the amount of time they required to recognize angry faces.

Singing a song generally activates which brain area--both during a dream and while awake?

The right hemisphere.

Why do individuals with prefrontal cortex damage often make bad decisions

They don't anticipate the unpleasantness of likely outcomes.

Why do female hyenas get mistaken for males?

They have a masculinized clitoris that resembles a penis.

Why was Joe's corpus callosum severed?

To prevent epileptic seizures.

Drugs used to treat Alzheimer's disease affect activity of the cortex by enhancing the effects of acetylcholine.

True

Female mice that were between two male mice in utero had higher levels of aggression compared to other female mice that were between females in utero.

True

Homosexual men tend to have lower than average 2D:4D ratios.

True

Male sheep who direct their sexual behaviors toward other males tend to have a smaller than average hypothalamic nucleus in their anterior hypothalamus.

True

Narcolepsy can be caused by an autoimmune response.

True

Simple cells are found exclusively in the primary visual cortex.​

True

Someone monitoring your cortex can as you decide which of two buttons to press and when to press it can predict which choice you are going to make 7-10 seconds before you make that response.

True

The key feature of mirror neurons--that they fire in response to visual input about someone else's movements--was discovered by accident.

True

Whether or not mirror neurons are crucial for understanding/treating Autism Spectrum Disorder is controversial.

True

Which best describes the antisaccade task?

Trying to look away from, instead of toward, a stimulus

Which of the following best describes what happens if you hear a sound close to the same that you make a movement.

You assume your own movement caused the sound.

Producing long-term potentiation of cells in the mammalian nervous system requires ____.

a burst of many stimuli within a few seconds

A "Hebbian" synapse is one in which ____.

activity of the synapse, paired with an action potential in the postsynaptic cell, strengthens that synapse

According to the James-Lange theory, we experience emotion ____.​

after we experience autonomic arousal

What does cataplexy involve?​

an attack of muscle weakness while awake

Many kinds of information impinge onto two kinds of cells in one nucleus of the hypothalamus, which is regarded as the "master area" for control of appetite. That area is the ____.

arcuate nucleus

Leptin directly activates receptors in the part of the hypothalamus known as the ____.

arcuate nucleus​

One important difference between organizing effects and activating effects of hormones is that activating effects

are shorter-term

Studies on conscious decisions regarding voluntary movements suggest that ____.

brain activity for the movement begins before we are conscious of our decision​

Which eating disorder most closely resembles drug addiction?

bulimia

When Simon LeVay examined interstitial nucleus 3 in 41 people who had died, he found that in the homosexual males in his sample, this nucleus was ____.​

comparable in size to the heterosexual females

A distinctive symptom of Korsakoff's syndrome is ____.

confabulation

Individuals with pure autonomic failure ____.​

do not experience much intensity of emotion

The visual path in the parietal cortex is referred to as the ____.​

dorsal stream

In general, when do hormones produce "organizing effects"?​

during early stages in development

Studies with placebos and studies using hypnotism suggest that much of the reduction in pain is the result of decreased activation in the ____.​

emotion processing areas of the brain

Research suggests that mirror neurons are important for

empathy imitation reading

Where did Libet and colleagues record a "readiness potential"?

from the motor cortex

In terms of reproductive success, it benefits a pepper plant to taste hot to mammals but not birds because birds spread the seeds better. What kind of explanation is this for why pepper plants are hot (to us and other mammals)?

functional

The optic nerve is composed of axons from which kind of cell?​

ganglion cells

The excessive release of ______________ is the cause of dangerous overexcitation of neurons during a stroke.

glutamate

The one additional feature that hypercomplex cells have that complex cells do not is that hypercomplex cells ____.​

have a strong inhibitory area at one end of the receptive field

What are the dreamlike experiences at the onset of sleep that are difficult to distinguish from reality?​

hypnagogic hallucinations

According to research by Casey and Caudle, impulsive behavior in adolescents is mostly like to occur __________________.

in social situations

Output from the paraventricular nucleus acts on the ____.

lateral hypothalamus​

In a study of serotonin turnover in male monkeys, it was found that those with ____.​

low levels were usually dead by age six

Morphine and other opiate drugs decrease sensitivity to pain by ____.​

mimicking the effects of endorphins at the synapses

Damage to the ventromedial hypothalamus leads to eating ____.

normal-sized meals, but eating them more frequently​

Where are the auditory receptor cells located?

on the basilar membrane

After you stare at a bright green object for a minute and look away, you see red. Which theory attempts to explain this finding?​

opponent-process theory

Narcolepsy appears to be caused by a loss of _____________ activity in the brain.

orexin

When faced with moral dilemmas involving killing one person to save five others, ____.​

people with the strongest autonomic arousal are the least likely to make the "logical" decision to kill one and save five others

Girls who are exposed to higher than normal androgen levels during prenatal development tend to ____.​

prefer typically masucline toys

Mirror neurons were first discovered in the ______________ of a monkey.

premotor cortex

One ironic but interesting finding is that people with amnesia will improve on ____ tasks, but have no ____ memory with respect to the task.

procedural; explicit

​When neuropeptide Y inhibits the paraventricular nucleus, it ____.

produces extreme overeating​

In what order does visual information pass through the retina?​

receptor cells, bipolar cells, ganglion cells

A common reason people learn to lucid dream is ____________________.

recurring nightmares during childhood

In addition to the neurotransmitter glutamate, in order to activate the NMDA receptors, the neuron requires ____.

removal of magnesium ions from sodium and calcium channels

Color and brightness constancy are best explained by the ____ theory of color vision.​

retinex

Words presented in Joe's ______________ visual field are processed in the left hemisphere.

right

Low activity of what neurotransmitter seems to cause aggression, especially in response to frustrating failures (like a failed attempt at dominance)?

serotonin

​H.M. was able to learn and remember ____.

skills like mazes and puzzles​

Compared to its size in heterosexual men, the INAH-3 is ____________________ in gay men and ________________ in male-to-female transwomen.

smaller; smaller

The sensory aspect of pain activates the ____ cortex, whereas the emotional aspect activates the ____ cortex.​

somatosensory; cingulate

People (and animals) with narcolepsy usually lose muscle tone after:

something exciting happens

What neurotransmitter is released by axons that carry pain information to the brain?​

substance P

Rats appeared "addicted", even showing withdrawal symptoms, when they didn't receive their usual __________________.

sugar water

In theory, artificial sweeteners may extinguish _____________ as a predictor of elevated blood glucose.

sweet tastes

Damage to the ventral stream may interfere with ____.​

the ability to describe the shape or size of an object

Activity-based anorexia in rats is especially likely to occur if

the rat is kept in a cool room

What causes the primitive gonads to develop into masculine structures?​

the sex region Y (SRY) gene

What type of deficiency causes Korsakoff's syndrome?

thiamine

When participants from the original Stanford Marshmallow Experiment were tested 40 years later, __________________________________.

those who had behaved impulsively as children still behaved impulsively in response to a social cue

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) occurs because the adrenal gland releases ____.​

too little cortisol

The interstitial nucleus 3 of the anterior hypothalamus is known to be more than ____.​

twice as large in heterosexual men as in women

How do sound waves ultimately result in the production of receptor potentials?

​Hair cells in the cochlea vibrate, causing ion channels to open in their membrane.

What is the major problem for the frequency theory of sound perception?

​It requires that neurons respond more quickly than they are able to do.

What is the shape of the receptive field to which a simple cell in the primary visual cortex responds?​

​bar in a particular orientation

According to the trichromatic theory of color vision ____.​

​our perception of color depends on the relative activity of three types of cones