chapter 2 (cognitive neuroscience)

Question 1

cognitive neuroscience

Answer 1

field concerned with studying the neural basis of cognition.

Question 2

levels of analysis

Answer 2

a topic can be understood by studying it at a number of different levels of a system.

Question 3

neuron

Answer 3

cell specialized to receive and transmit information in the nervous system.

Question 4

synapse

Answer 4

space between the end of an axon and the cell body or dendrite of the next axon.

Question 5

neural circuits

Answer 5

group of interconnected neurons that are responsible for neural processing.

Question 6

receptors

Answer 6

specialized neural structures that respond to environmental stimuli such as light, mechanical stimulation, or chemical stimuli.

Question 7

microelectrodes

Answer 7

small wires used to record electrical signals from single neurons.

Question 8

nerve impulse/action potential

Answer 8

electrical response propagated down the length of an axon.

Question 9

neurotransmitter

Answer 9

chemical that is released at the synapse in response to incoming action potentials.

Question 10

principle of neural representation

Answer 10

everything a person experiences is based on representations in the person’s nervous system.

Question 11

feature detectors

Answer 11

neurons that respond to specific visual features such as orientation, size, or more complex features that make up environmental stimuli. like bars at certain orientations.

Question 12

experience-dependent plasticity

Answer 12

mechanism that causes an organism’s neurons to develop so they respond best to the type of stimulation to which the organism has been exposed.

Question 13

visual cortex

Answer 13

area in occipital lobe that receives signals from eyes.

Question 14

temporal lobe

Answer 14

lobe on side of the brain that contains mechanisms for language, memory, hearing, and vision.

Question 15

hierarchical processing

Answer 15

processing that occurs in a progression from lower to higher areas of brain.

Question 16

sensory code

Answer 16

how neural firing represents various characteristics of the environment.

Question 17

specificity coding

Answer 17

representation of a specific stimulus by the firing of neurons that respond only to that stimulus. one neuron per stimuli.

Question 18

population coding

Answer 18

neural representation of a stimulus by the pattern of firing on a large number of neurons.

Question 19

sparse coding

Answer 19

neural coding based on the pattern of activity in small groups of neurons. prob correct.

Question 20

localization of function

Answer 20

location of specific functions in specific areas of brain. many cognitive functions in cerebral cortex.

Question 21

cerebral cortex

Answer 21

3-mm-thick outer layer of brain that contains mechanisms responsible for higher mental functions such as perception, language, thinking, and problem solving.

Question 22

cortical equipotentiality

Answer 22

idea popular in 1800’s that brain operates as indivisible whole (not specialized areas.)

Question 23

broca’s area

Answer 23

area in frontal lobe associated with production of language. damage causes broca’s aphasia.

Question 24

broca’s aphasia

Answer 24

condition associated with damage to broca’s area (frontal lobe) characterized by laboured ungrammatical speech and difficulty understanding some types of sentences.

Question 25

wernicke’s area

Answer 25

area in temporal lobe associated with understanding language. damage causes wernicke’s aphasia.

Question 26

wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 26

condition caused by damage to wernicke’s area characterized by difficulty understanding language, and fluent, grammatically correct, but incoherent speech.

Question 27

occipital lobe

Answer 27

lobe at back of brain that is devoted primarily to analyzing incoming visual info.

Question 28

parietal lobe

Answer 28

lobe at top of brain that contains mechanisms responsible for sensations caused by stimulation of the skin and also some aspects of visual information.

Question 29

frontal lobe

Answer 29

lobe in the front of the brain that serves higher functions such as language, thought, memory, and motor functioning.

Question 30

prosopagnosia

Answer 30

condition caused by damage to temporal lobe characterized by inability to recognize faces.

Question 31

double dissociation

Answer 31

situation in which a single dissociation can be demonstrated in one person and the opposite type of single dissociation can be demonstrated in another person.

Question 32

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Answer 32

brain imaging technique that measures how blood flow changes in response to cognitive activity.

Question 33

fusiform face area (FFA)

Answer 33

area in temporal lobe that contains many neurons that respond selectively to faces.

Question 34

parahippocampal place area (PPA)

Answer 34

area in temporal lobe that contains neurons that are selectively activated by pictures of indoor and outdoor scenes.

Question 35

extrastriate body area (EBA)

Answer 35

area in temporal cortex that is activated by pictures of bodies and parts of bodies, but not by faces or other objects.

Question 36

multidimensional

Answer 36

multidimensional nature of cognition refers to the fact that even simple experiences involve combinations of different qualities.

Question 37

distributed representation

Answer 37

occurs when a specific cognition activates many areas of brain.

Question 38

episodic memories

Answer 38

memories for events in person’s life.

Question 39

semantic memories

Answer 39

memories for facts.

Question 40

neural networks

Answer 40

groups of neurons/structures that are connected together.

Question 41

track-weighted imaging (TWI)

Answer 41

technique for determining connectivity in the brain that is based on detection of how water diffuses along the length of nerve fibers.

Question 42

functional connectivity

Answer 42

extent to which the neural activity in separate brain areas is correlated with each other.

Question 43

default mode network

Answer 43

networks of structures that are active when a person is not involved in specific tasks.