Cognitive Neuroscience Final Review (MC Questions)
One of the two pathways of the amygdala is known as the "low road." This pathway can be characterized as ________ and involves a ________.
"quick and dirty" ; direct signal from thalamus to amygdala
One of the two pathways of the amygdala is known as the "high road." This pathway can be characterized as _________ and involves a ________.
"slow and analytical", project to the cortex
Which of the following hypothetical experimental results would support the idea that the two hemispheres have different conscious experiences?
A split-brain patient's right hemisphere cannot infer that "match" and "paper" can lead to fire.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is sometimes thought of as being associated with cognitive control deficits. Which piece of evidence best supports this?
ADHD stimulant medications have a particularly high affinity for frontal lobe structures involved in cognitive control
Which of the following statements best describes the distinction between affect, mood, and emotion?
Affect is the most general term of the three, and it includes emotions, which tend to be short-term and reactionary; moods tend to last longer than emotions.
In what way might the self-referent effect and the depth-of-processing effect be related?
Information processed in relation to the self may benefit from the wealth of information about the self in memory.
Julian spots a snake in the forest. He immediately runs away from it and then notes that he is scared as he is running. Which of the following theories would suggest that his feeling of fear is due entirely to the fact that Julian notices his physiological response?
James-Lange Theory
Which of the following statements best characterizes our ability to modulate our empathic responses?
Our empathic responses are not particularly static, and can be modulated even by relatively trivial connections to others.
One theory of emotion and the brain from the mid 20th century implicated the hypothalamus, anterior thalamus, cingulate gyrus, and hippocampus. These structures were later named the ________ circuit.
Papez
Simple reflexive motor responses to external stimuli rely primarily on the function of the _______, whereas motor behaviors that are only minimally dependent on such external cues rely primarily on the function of the _______.
Spinal cord; motor cortex
Which statement best characterizes the insula's role in emotional processing?
The insula processes interoception and bodily states, and plays a role in connecting the physiology of emotion with emotional state.
Which of the following best describes our current understanding of the brain areas that process emotions?
The limbic system seems to be heavily involved in processing emotion, with contribution from other brain areas, particularly in frontal-medial cortical areas.
In general, increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex has been observed when participants perform tasks that have any of the following properties EXCEPT:
The task involves well-learned or automatic responses.
Which of the following statements best describes the anatomical connectivity of the prefrontal lobes to the rest of the brain?
There are extensive projections to and from the prefrontal cortex to all other lobes of the brain
Which of the following is typically true of people with bilateral damage to the amygdala?
They are like controls in their implicit and explicit reactions to race.
You meet a Capgras syndrome patient who insists their spouse is an imposter. Why do they think this?
They recognize their spouse but feel no emotion toward them.
Which of the following situations would be most likely to engage the anterior cingulate cortex?
You enter your classroom and find someone sitting in your usual seat
When a voluntary movement such as contracting one's right biceps is generated, what other signals, if any, must accompany this command?
a signal to antagonist muscles, such as the right triceps, to relax
The ________ is a small, almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe, immediately adjacent to the anterior portion of the ________.
amygdala; hippocampus
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex involves ________ valuation, whereas dorsolateral prefrontal cortex involves more ________ valuation.
automatic; controlled
If neuroimaging studies showed that entirely different brain regions were activated when a person experienced pain from those that are activated when a person viewed or imagined someone else experiencing pain, this would
be inconsistent with mirror neuron involvement in empathic processes.
In an experiment by William Kelley and colleagues (2002), participants judged personality adjectives in relation to either themselves or the U.S. president. The results suggested that memory for words processed in relation to the self was ________ than that for words processed in relation to the U.S. president, and that the former condition resulted in greater neural activity in the ________ cortex.
better; medial prefrontal
Which of the following would NOT result from damage to the pons?
blindsight
Core consciousness is turned off by lesioning which intralaminar nuclei (ILN) of the thalamus?
both left and right
Which structure is responsible for extended consciousness?
cerebral cortex
The scaffolding to storage framework was proposed to account for the movement from ________ to ________.
conscious; unconscious
Which of the following of Damasio's categories is most associated with the brainstem?
core consciousness
One major difference between the pyramidal and the extrapyramidal motor tracts is their points of origin. The pyramidal tracts carry messages from _______ to the spinal cord, whereas the extrapyramidal tracts carry messages from _______ to the spinal cord.
cortical structures; subcortical structures
Cognitive control is often associated with
decision making, cognitive flexibility, and goal oriented behavior (all the answers are correct)
Studies using fMRI have found that neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex ________ when people make self-referential judgments compared to other judgments, suggesting that when we are "at rest" we are engaging in a number of self-referential processes.
decreases less
Single-cell recording studies of the motor control of reaching movements have demonstrated that neurons in the motor cortex are selectively active based on the
direction in which a reaching movement is generated
A neural event occurs at 1:00 p.m. Libet's backward referral hypothesis suggests that awareness is assigned to what time?
exactly 1pm
Focal injuries of the prefrontal cortex generally produce all of the following cognitive changes or symptoms EXCEPT
fluent aphasia
The most salient symptom in people who have suffered damage to the orbitofrontal cortex is
inappropriate social behavior
The self-referent effect refers to the phenomenon that
information processed in relation to the self is enhanced in memory.
Which of the following is NOT an accurate description of a process related to basal ganglia influence/striatal disinhibition?
inhibition of the global pallidus dampens cortical activity to decrease motor output
The fact that the population vector recorded in the motor cortex precedes the corresponding reaching movement indicates that motor cortex activity
is primarily involved in the planning of movement
Which of the following is NOT characteristic of the interpreter system?
it processes emotion
Imagine you develop a technique to introduce language processing into a split-brain patient's right hemisphere. How would this likely change the right hemisphere's ability to make inferences?
its inferences abilities would not change
Which of the following processes would LEAST involve cognitive control?
jumping rope with your niece and nephew, after not having jumped rope for at least 10 years
The amygdala consists of several subnuclei. During fear conditioning, information converges on the ________ of the amygdala and from there projects to the ________.
lateral nucleus; central nucleus
Three main subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex are the
lateral prefrontal cortex, frontal pole, medial frontal cortex
When you first learn how to execute the complex motor sequence that comprises a slam dunk in basketball, a circuit including the _______ is active. After much practice, once you have learned the sequence well, a second circuit involving the _______ is active.
lateral premotor area; supplementary motor area
Which of the following is NOT a gradient along which the prefrontal cortex is organized?
left-right
One concern with interpreting fMRI studies employing a "resting state" for comparison with cognitive activities of interest is that
many processes are engaged "at rest," including self-referential processes.
The _______ seem(s) particularly important in the control and planning of complex motor sequences as opposed to simple movements
motor cortex regions in the prefrontal lobes
One conceptualization of the prefrontal cortex, offered by Shimamura (2000), which could explain the seemingly disparate set of impairments associated with damage to this area, is that
one underlying function of the prefrontal lobes is to select the information that is most task-relevant.
The term theory of mind refers to
our ability to make inferences about the mental states of other people.
For people with blindsight, "blind" can be considered ________, with "sight" reflecting ________.
perception; sensation
Phineas Gage, who suffered injury to the orbitofrontal cortex, experienced changes in all of the following areas as a result of his injury EXCEPT
performance on cognitive tests
Neuroimaging experiments have demonstrated that working memory engages the
prefrontal cortex and more posterior brain areas involved in perception and mental representation.
The most caudal part of the frontal lobe contains the ________ region.
primary motor
A friend comes into your house and eats all the chocolates in your pantry. You come in and at first are very angry. Then you think to yourself, "That's actually better for me. Now I don't have to eat all those calories." What have you done?
reduction of anger, reappraisal and antecedent-focused regulation (all of the above)
The amygdala responds to fearful facial expressions
regardless of whether the face is consciously perceived.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERP) studies suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex may be involved in tasks requiring
self-referential processing
Which of the following is NOT a form of unconscious processing?
short-term memory
Studies of the perception of the self and others have suggested that
similar regions of the medial prefrontal cortex are activated when we answer questions about the self and about others, if they are close.
Which of the following is NOT considered a characteristic of emotions?
similarity to moods
The primary interaction of muscles and the nervous system involves the alpha motor neurons, which originate in the _______, exit through the _______, and terminate in the muscles.
spinal cord; ventral root
Single-cell recording studies have indicated that the _______ may be especially important in the control of internally guided motor sequences, whereas the _______ may be especially important in the control of externally guided motor sequences.
supplementary cortex, premotor cortex
An experiment that requires participants to respond based on one goal, such as naming digits, on some trials and another goal, such as naming letters, on other trials is an example of a(n) ________ paradigm.
task-switching
Klüver-Bucy syndrome is associated with damage to which brain structure or region?
the amygdala
Which brain area seems to be the most important for selectively attending to positive self-relevant information, as opposed to negative self-relevant information?
the anterior cingulate cortex
Which of the following is NOT an effector?
the brain
Which of the following is NOT a part of the basal ganglia?
the claustrum
To engage in joint attention, a child will pay attention to
the direction of your eye gaze
A laboratory dog has had surgery to separate the spinal components of its motor system from the cortical and subcortical components. Which of the following best describes the motor abilities of this animal?
the dog demonstrates reflexive withdrawal of its foot in response to sudden stimulation
Which brain region is the most susceptible to coup-contrecoup injury?
the orbitofrontal cortex
Which aspect of conscious experience is NOT well understood from a cognitive neuroscience perspective?
the subjective conscious experiences itself
Emotional regulation refers to the processes that influence emotions in which of the following ways?
the types of emotions we have, when emotions occur, and how emotions are experienced and expressed (all the options are correct)
With regard to motor cortex, a population vector is the
total number of neurons that are tuned to the same preferred direction
Which of the following types of motor behavior probably relies most on the function of a central pattern generator?
walking
Without the brain's "interpreter" system,
we would not have our own personal set of beliefs about the world
Lesions of the lateral prefrontal cortex disrupt ________ memory but not ________ memory.
working; long term
Employing subliminal perception by quickly flashing an angry face before an image of someone could __________ the participant's attitude about the person.
worsen
