Cognitive Psyc Ch 2

* (p. 33) Gil's perception of Mary is based not on direct contact with Mary, but on the way she is _________ by ______________ in the brain.

Represented; action potentials

**According to Edgar Adrian who studied pressure-sensitive receptors, when neurons are resting, the inside of the neuron's cell body shows ________ mV relative to the outside.

(-)70

* As the nerve impulse passes the recording electrode, the charge inside the axon rises to _____ millivolts compared to the outside.

+40

* Most of the cognitive functions are served by the _________, which is a layer of tissue about 3 mm thick that covers the brain.

Cerebral cortex

* The nerve net was originally believed to be ___________.

Continuous (physically connected)

* This chapter will introduce three methods that have been used to study cognitive neuroscience: ___________. A. Recording from single neurons B. Studying the effects of brain damage in humans C. Creating images of the brain D. All of the above

D. All of the above

**Which of the following shows correct connection between brain areas and their functions? A. Frontal lobe: Coordination of information received from all senses & decision making. B. Occipital lobe: vision C. Temporal lobe: hearing, taste, smell D. Parietal lobe: touch, temperature, pain E. All of the above

E. All of the above!

* Determining the exact nature of neuronal signals had to await the development of ________________ that were powerful enough to make the extremely small electrical signals generated by the neuron visible.

Electronic amplifiers

* ______________ refers to the idea that a topic can be studied in a number of different ways, with each approach contributing its own dimension to our understanding. ... To fully understand any phenomenon, whether it is how a car operates or how people remember past experiences, it needs to be studied at different ______________.

Levels of analysis

* The idea that Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain serve different functions is still valid and was a major impetus to accepting the idea of _____________ of function.

Localization

* One of the basic principles of brain organization is _____________________ - specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain.

Localization of function

neuron doctrine

The idea that individual cells called neurons transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by nerve net theory.

* True/False: Gross also found some neurons in the temporal lobe (rather than visual cortex as studied by Hubel and Wiesel) that responded best to faces, and later researchers found neurons that respond to faces but don't respond to other types of stimuli.

True

* True/False: The knowledge that neurons in the visual system fire to specific types of stimuli led to the idea that a stimulus such as a tree is represented by the combined response of many feature detectors as if building objects by combining building blocks like Legos.

True

* True/False: One reason for describing the microstructure of the brain as a continuously interconnected network was that the staining techniques and microscopes used during that period could not resolve small details, and without these details, the nerve net appeared to be continuous.

True!

* Functional magnetic resonance imaging takes advantage of the fact that _____________ in areas of the brain activated by a cognitive task.

blood flow increases

When you look at an intact brain, the wrinkled cover is the..

cerebral cortex

most of the cognitive functions are served by the...

cerebral cortex

neurons in the temporal lobe respond to..

complex geometrical stimuli & faces (different areas)

* Adrian described the connection between nerve firing and experience in his book The Basis of Sensation (1928) by stating that if nerve impulses "are _______________ the sensation is intense, if they are _______________ the sensation is correspondingly feeble."

crowded closely together; separated by long intervals

neural circuits

groups of interconnected neurons, formed only to specific neurons (not connected indiscriminately)

neural networks

groups of neurons or structures that are connected together

the sensory code refers to

how neurons represent various characteristics of the environment

our main interest is not in how axons transmit signals but..

how these signals contribute to the operation of the mind

functional magnative resonance imaging (fMRI)

indicates the presence of brain activity by examining hemoglobin

**Cajal used _______ animal brains with _____ density of cells.

infant; low

* Cajal concluded that there is a small gap between the end of a neuron's axon and the dendrites or cell body of another neuron. This gap is called ___________.

synapse

**Resting potential is ____ mV while action potential is ____ mV.

-70; +40

**Which of the following is correct regarding Golgi staining method?

It stains 1% of the neurons.

Gross' monkey experiments found that..

neurons in the temporal lobe respond to complex stimuli

* When the axon, or nerve fiber, is at rest, the meter records a difference in potential between the tips of the two electrodes of ___________ millivolts (mV). This value, which stays the same as long as there are no signals in the neuron, is called the _____________.

-70; resting potential

* When the neuron is at rest, the inside of the neuron has a charge that is ______ mV more ________ than the outside, and this difference continues as long as the neuron is at rest.

70; negative

* In the late 1900s, Gross found that there is a neuron in the temporal lobe (rather than visual cortex as studied by Hubel and Wiesel) responded to ____________.

A handlike shape with fingers pointing up

* Carl Wernicke studied a group of patients with damage in an area of the temporal lobe, now called Wernicke's area, whose speech was fluent and grammatically correct ______________.

But tended to be incoherent.

* The idea of specificity coding is unlikely to be correct, because __________. A. Neurons respond to a number of different stimuli. B. There are just too many different stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron dedicated to each object. C. Both of the above D. None of the above

C. Both!

**Double dissociation needs ______. A. Damage to one region causes a deficit on process A but not B B. Damage to another part causes a deficit on process B but notA C. Both a) and b)

C. both A & B

* ________ is the metabolic center of the neuron which contains mechanisms to keep the cell alive; the function of ___________ that branch out from the cell body is to receive signals from other neurons; __________ (also called nerve fibers) are usually long processes that transmit signals to other neurons.

Cell body; dendrites; axons

**Which of the following is the limitation of specificity coding? A. A single neuron typically responds to just a single stimulus B. A single neuron typically responds to multiple stimuli C. The number of neurons is less than the number of stimuli that we can represent D. Both b) and c).

D. both b & c (A single neuron typically responds to multiple stimuli & The number of neurons is less than the number of stimuli that we can represent)

* Figure 2.6 shows a typical setup used for recording from a single neuron. There are two electrodes: a recording electrode, shown with its recording tip inside the neuron, and a reference electrode, located some distance away. The _______________ the recording and reference electrodes is fed into a computer and displayed on the computer's screen.

Difference in charge between

* One way to answer the question of how action potentials determine different qualities of experiences is to propose that the action potentials for each quality might look ________.

Different

* The principle of neural representation states that everything a person experiences is based not on ___________ with stimuli, but on ______________ in the person's nervous system.

Direct contact; representations

* The idea that specific cognitive functions activate many areas of the brain is called __________.

Distributed representation

* Double dissociations have been demonstrated for face recognition and object recognition, by finding patients who can't recognize _________ (function A) but who can recognize __________ (function B), and other patients with damage in a different area, who can't recognize ________ but who can recognize faces (function A).

Faces; objects; objects; faces

* In the 1960s, David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel determined what kind of visual stimuli caused specific neurons to fire. They found that each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina. They called these neurons ____________.

Feature detectors

**Neurons in the visual cortex that respond best to only specific and simple orientation or shape are called ______.

Feature detectors

* Faces activate a specific area in the brain called ___________

Fusiform face area (FFA)

* Neurons in the visual cortex that respond to relatively simple stimuli send their axons to higher levels of the visual system, where signals from many neurons combine and interact; neurons at this higher level, which respond to more complex stimuli such as geometrical objects, then send signals to higher areas, combining and interact further and creating neurons that respond to even more complex stimuli such as faces. This progression from lower to higher areas of the brain is called ________________.

Hierarchical processing

* According to Adrian, electrical signals are representing the __________ of the stimulus, so pressure that generates "crowded" electrical signals feels stronger than pressure that generates signals separated by long intervals.

Intensity

**While the ______ shows the static image of a brain, ______ shows the activation of various brain parts during a cognitive task.

MRI; fMRI

* Edgar Adrian recorded electrical signals from single neurons using _____________ - small shafts of hollow glass filled with a conductive salt solution that can pick up electrical signals at the electrode tip and conduct these signals back to a recording device.

Microelectrodes

* Further research in areas beyond the visual cortex revealed neurons that respond to stimuli that are ___________.

More complex than oriented lines.

* Adrian studied the relation between __________ and ______________ by measuring how the firing of a neuron from a receptor in the skin changed as he applied more pressure to the skin.

Nerve firing; sensory experience

* Figure 2.6b shows what happens when the neuron's receptor is stimulated so that a _______________ is transmitted down the axon. This impulse, which is called the ____________, lasts about 1 millisecond (1/1000 second)

Nerve impulse; action potential

* Cajal concluded that neurons are not connected indiscriminately to other neurons, but from connections only to specific neurons. This forms groups of interconnected neurons, which together form _________.

Neural circuits

* Cajal's discovery that individual units called neurons were the basic building blocks of the brain was the centerpiece of _____________ - the idea that individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by nerve net theory.

Neuron doctrine

**The nerve net theory suggests that ____

Neurons are continuously & physically connected.

**Cajal's neuron doctrine suggests that ____.

Neurons are not continuously connected to other neurons.

* Researchers showed that when the signals reach the synapse at the end of the axon, a chemical called a ______________ is released.

Neurotransmitter

* _______________ makes it possible for the signal to be transmitted across the gap that separates the end of the axon from the dendrite or cell body of another neuron.

Neurotransmitter

* Studies of Japanese soldiers in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 and Allied solders in World War I showed that damage to the _______ lobe of the brain, where the visual cortex is located, results in blindness, and that there was a connection between the area damaged and the place in visual space where the person was blind.

Occipital

* The purpose of this chapter is to introduce some of the basic physiological principles of cognitive neuroscience - the study of the _____________ basis of cognition.

Physiological

* ___________ coding is the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons.

Population

* Broca and Wernicke identified one area for ________ language and one area for _________ language, respectively.

Producing; comprehending

**Broaca's area is for language _______ while Wernicke's area is for language _______.

Production; comprehension

* The _____ of neural firing is related to the ________ of stimulation, which, in turn, is related to the ________ of an experience, such as feeling pressure on the skin or experiencing the brightness of a light.

Rate; intensity; magnitude

* Feature detectors respond to ________ stimulus features such as orientation, movement, and length.

Specific

* The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object is called ____________.

Specificity coding

**"Mind represents a specific stimulus based on the firing of specifically tuned neuron toward it" corresponds to the ______.

Specificity coding

* Paul Broca proposed that an area in the left frontal lobe, now called Broca's area, is specialized for ___________.

Speech (producing language)

**One way of knowing the functions of various parts of brain is by _________.

Studying behavioral/cognitive deficits of brain-damaged patients.

* Adrian ruled out the possibility that action potentials for different qualities of experiences are different by determining that all action potentials have basically _______________.

The same height and shape

**According to the YouTube video, the cat's visual cortex neuron seemed to be tuned to ______.

a (moving) line

an advantage to population coding is..

a large number of stimuli can be represented, because large groups of neurons can create a huge number of different patterns

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

a technique introduced in 1980s, made it possible to create images of structures within the brain detects tumors & brain abnormalities does NOT indicate brain activity

the frontal lobe receives signals from..

all the senses & is responsible for coordination of the senses & higher cognitive functions like thinking and problem solving

axons

also called nerve fibers, usually long processes that transmit signals to other neurons

Broca's area

an area in the left frontal lobe that is specialized for speech

Prosopagnosia

an inability to recognize faces, reported in patients who have damage to the temporal lobe on the lower right side of the brain

* The results of the neuropsychology studies indicate that face recognition is served by one area in the temporal lobe and that this function is separate from mechanisms associated with recognizing other types of objects, which is served by _______ area of the temporal lobe.

another

**By stimulating various parts of the brain while the patient is _____, one can _______.

awake; build a map that shows which part of the brain is associated which part of the body

nerve fibers are the same as

axons

a double dissociation occurs if..

damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, & damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present ex: can recognize objects but not faces & vice versa

The idea that specific cognitive functions activate many areas of the brain is known as

distributed representation

* ___________ dissociation occurs if damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present.

double

when studying visual stimuli in cats, Hubel & Wiesel found..

each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina

Why is demonstrating a doubel dissocation important?

enables us to conclude that function A & B are served by different mechanism which operate independently of one another

principle of neural representation

everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact with stimuli, but on representations in the person's nervous system

true/false: to understand how the mind works, we need to do either behavioral experiments or physiological experiments

false! need to do both

true/false: specificity coding is straightforward & likely to be correct

false! straightforward but not likely to be correct, there are just too many people and objects to have neurons dedicated to each

**Some neurons (_______) are most sensitive to simple features such as a line, other neurons (_______) are most sensitive to more complex patterns such as faces.

feature detectors in the visual cortex; neurons in the fusiform face area or FFA

* In 1870s, the Italian anatomist Camillo Golgi developed a staining technique in which a thin slice of brain tissue was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate. This technique stained ________________ percent of the cells. So, the stained cells stood out from the rest of the tissue.

fewer than 1%

quality within the senses refers to

for vision: shape, color, movement or recognizing different kinds of objects based on their shapes or different people based on their faces

**According to the YouTube video, a strong stimulation is represented by ________.

frequent action potentials

* The _______ lobe receives signals from all of the senses and is responsible for coordination of the senses, as well as higher cognitive functions like thinking and problem solving.

frontal

dendrites

function to branch out from the cell body to receive signals from other neurons

**_____ are for scaffolding while _____ are for generating signals and delivering the signals.

glial cells; neurons

Each action potential travels all the way down the axon without changing...

its height or shape

We know less about the actual form of stored information for memory but it is (likely/unlikely) that the basic principles of population & sparse coding also operate for memory

likely!

* Brain's small unit called __________ create and transmit information about what we experience and know.

neurons

* The plan of this chapter is to begin by describing some basic principles of nervous system functioning by first considering the structure and functioning of ____________, cells that are the building blocks and transmission lines of the nervous system.

neurons

feature detectors

neurons that respond to specific stimulus features such as orientation, movement, & length

receptors

neurons that specialize to pick up information from the environment, such as the neurons in the eye, ear, & skin

early evidence for localization of function came from..

neuropsychology

* Ramon y Cajal, a Spanish physiologist who was interested in investigating the nature of the nerve net cleverly used two techniques to achieve his goal. First, he used the Golgi stain, which stained only some of the cells in a slice of brain tissue. Second, he decided to study tissue from the brains of ___________ animals, because the density of cells in the newborn brain is small compared to the density in the __________ brain.

newborn; adult

* Cajal clearly saw that the nerve net was _________, but was instead made up of individual units connected together.

not continous

sparse coding

occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent

localization of function

one of the basic principles of brain organization, specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain

* The somatosensory cortex, which receives signals from the skin, is in the __________ lobe and is responsible for perceptions of touch, pressure, and pain.

parietal

* An advantage of population coding is that a large number of stimuli can be represented, because large groups of neurons can create a huge number of different __________.

patterns

**While specificity coding suggests a one-on-one mapping between neurons and stimuli, _______ coding suggests an all-on-one mapping and ______ coding suggests some-on-one mapping.

population; sparse

**A sudden rush in of ______ ions waiting outside of a neuron into the neuron is due to the disproportionately numerous _____ ions staying inside of the neuron. And this is the very nature of the action potential.

positive; negative

* Figure 2.4b shows a neuron with a receptor that receives stimuli from the environment - ________. In this example.

pressure

* Adrian found that the shape and height of the action potential remained the same as he increased the pressure, but the ___________ of nerve firing - that is, the number of action potentials that traveled down the axon per second - increased.

rate

* Presenting high-intensity light generates a high _______ of nerve firing and the light appears bright; presenting lower intensity light generates a lower _______ of nerve firing and the light appears dimmer. What is the common word for both blanks?

rate

**The intensity (strength) of a stimulus is represented by ________ of the action potential.

rate

* Cajal concluded that, in addition to neurons in the brain, there are also neurons that are specialized to pick up information from the environment, such as the neurons in the eye, ear, and skin. These neurons, called ___________, are similar to brain neurons in that they have an axon, but they have specialized _______ that pick up information from the environment. What is the common word for both blanks?

receptors

* (p. 33) When Gil sees Mary, what enters Gil's eye is a ______________ of Mary - something that stands for her - and one property of this __________ is that although it may look like Mary, it is also different from her.

representation

* Broca's proposal was based on his study of a patient who had suffered damage to his frontal lobe and was called "Tan" because this was the only word he could ______.

say

Neurons in the visual lobe respond to..

simple stimuli ex: oriented bars

voxels

small cube-shaped units of analysis created by the fMRI scanner, on the brain about 2 or 3 mm on a side

syanpse

small gap between the end of neuron's axon & the dendrites or cell body of another neuron

** While a fresh brain is very _____, the brains that are treated for a long-term storage and observation is _____.

soft; firm

* For some functions, a large number of neurons aren't necessary as suggested by the population coding idea. _________ coding occurs when small groups of neurons are involved.

sparse

* Given the likelihood that the neurons responded to pictures of the actor Steve Carell only are likely to fire to more than one stimulus, Quiroga and coworkers (2008) suggested that their neurons are probably an example of ___________ coding.

sparse

* There is also other evidence that the code for representing objects in the visual system, tones in the auditory system, and odors in the olfactory system may involve the pattern of activity across a relatively small number of neurons, as _________ coding suggests.

sparse

* ________ coding occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent.

sparse

Bill's face is represented by the pattern of firing of a few neurons. Mary's face is signaled by the pattern of firing a few different neurons but possibly with some overlap. This refers to..

sparse coding

parahippocampal place area (PPA)

specialized part of the brain activated by perceiving pictures representing indoor & outdoor scenes emphasized spatial layout

extrastriate body area (EBA)

specialized part of the brain activated by pictures of bodies & parts of bodies (but not by faces)

the idea that a number of neurons are involved in representing an object is an alternative to which idea?

specificity coding

diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)

technique based on how water diffuses along the length of nerve fibers

brain imaging

technique that makes it possible to determine which areas of the brains of humans are activated by different cognitions

* The auditory cortex, which receives signals from the ears, is in the upper __________ lobe and is responsible for hearing.

temporal

visual cortex

the area in the back of the brain that receives signals from the eye

for the senses, quality across the senses refers to

the different experience associated with each of the senses - perceiving light for vision, sound for hearing, etc

specificity coding

the idea than an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object

the cerebral cortex refers to

the layer of tissue about 3 mm thick that covers the brain

cell body

the metabolic center of the neuron

* The stained tissue of a brain shows a network called __________.

the nerve net

the visual cortex is located in..

the occipital lobe

the somatosensory cortex is located in..

the parietal lobe, responsible for perceptions of touch, pressure, & pain aka signals from the skin

the problem of neural representation for senses has been called..

the problem of sensory coding

population coding

the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons

a neurotransmitter is released when..

the signals reach the synapse at the end of the axon, helps transmit the signal across the gap that separates the end of the axon from the dendrite or cell body of another neuron

fusiform face area (FFA)

the specific area in the brain activated by faces, the same part of the brain that is damaged in cases of prosopagnosia

neuropsychology refers to

the study of the behavior of people with brain damage

Wernicke's area is located in

the temporal lobe

building objects by combining building blocks like Legos is similar to which idea?

the tree is represented by the combined response of many feature detectors

the auditory cortex is located in..

the upper temporal lobe

* fMRI shows ________.

which part of the brain is more activated than other parts of the brain

why are action potentials ideal for sending signals over a distance?

won't change height or shape, meaning once an action potential has started at one end of an axon, the signal will still be the same size as when it reaches the other end