chapter 4 part 2

Question 1

organization of the striate cortex

Answer 1

cortex is organized into location columns and orientation columns that are perpendicular to the surface of the cortex, so that all of the neurons within a column have their receptive fields at the same location on the retina and prefer stimuli with the same orientation

Question 2

organization of orientation columns

Answer 2

neurons preferred orientations change in an orderly fashion across the cortex - 90 to 85 to 70 etc

Question 3

organization of location columns

Answer 3

one location column is large enough to contain orientation columns that cover all possible orientations meaning it can represent any oriented edge or line in a specific area of the retina

Question 4

hypercolumn

Answer 4

a location column with all of its orientation columns - receives information about all possible orientations that fall within a small area fo the retina

Question 5

tiling

Answer 5

when adjacent and overlapping location columns work together to cover the entire visual field to represent a scene

Question 6

extrastriate cortex

Answer 6

visual areas outside the striate cortex - in the occipital lobe and beyond - v2, v3, v4, v5

as we move to higher extrastriate areas, the receptive field sizes of neurons increase

Question 7

object discrimination problem

Answer 7

monkeys trained to recognize objects in two choice tasks - rewarded for recognition

monkeys who had had their temporal lobe (what pathway) removed found the task very difficult

Question 8

landmark discrimination task

Answer 8

monkeys were trained to recognize a landmark (something like a cylinder shape) as the location of a food reward

monkeys who had had their parietal lobes(where) removed had difficulty completing the task

Question 9

ventral and dorsal pathways

Answer 9

ventral - what - temporal, lower part of brain

dorsal - where - parietal - upper part of brain

pathways have connections between them

Question 10

double dissociation

Answer 10

when damage to one area causes function a to disappear but function b to remain and damage to a different area causes the opposite effect, we can conclude that function b and a operate independently

Question 11

patient df

Answer 11

patient who suffered damage to ventral pathway - could not match orientation of a card held in her hand to orientations or a slot - recognition (how pathway)

but ability to place the card in the slot (action) was still intact (action pathway)

ability to judge visual orientation and coordinating vision and action different processes

Question 12

inferotemporal cortex

Answer 12

area of the temporal lobe that contains neurons with receptive fields large enough to encompass entire objects in the visual field

• whole shapes - like hands and faces

Question 13

medial temporal lobe

Answer 13

collection of structures important for memory - parahippocampal cortex, entorhinal cortex and hippocampus - receives signals from the inferotemporal cortex

neurons in this area respond to perceiving objects as well as remembering the same objects/events