CHAPTER 4 - The Visual Cortex and Beyond

Question 1

Describe the pathway from the retina to the brain. What does it mean when we say that the visual system has a contralateral organization?

Question 2

What function has been suggested for the LGN? How are LGN receptive fields similar to ganglion cell receptive fields?

Question 3

Describe the characteristics of simple, complex, and end-stopped cells in the visual cortex. Why have these cells been called featured detectors?

Question 4

How has the psychological procedure of selective adaptation been used to demonstrate a link between feature detectors and the perception of orientation? Be sure you understand the rationale behind a selective adaptive experiment and also how we can draw conclusions about physiology from the results of this psychophysical procedure

Question 5

How has the procedure of selective rearing been used to demonstrate a link between feature detectors and perception? Be sure you understand the concept of neural plasticity

Question 6

How is the retina mapped onto the striate cortex? What is cortical magnification, and what function does it serve?

Question 7

Describe location columns and orientation columns. What do we mean when we say that location columns and orientation columns are “combined”? What is a hypercolumn?

Question 8

How do V1 neurons and columns underlie perception of a scene? Start by describing how a tree trunk is represented in the cortex and then expand your view to the whole forest scene

Question 9

What is the extrastriate cortex? How do receptive fields of extrastriate neurons differ from receptive fields of striate neurons?

Question 10

How has ablation been used to demonstrate the existence of the ventral and dorsal processing streams? What is the function of these streams?

Question 11

How has double dissociation been used to show that one of the functions of the dorsal stream is to process information about coordinating vision and action? How do the results of a behavioural experiment support the idea of two primary streams in people without brain damage?

Question 12

Describe Gross’ experiments on neurons in the infero-temporal cortex of the monkey. Why do you think his results were initially ignored?

Question 13

Describe the connection between vision and memory, as illustrated by experiments that recorded from neurons in the MTL and hippocampus

Question 14

Describe the two experiments that demonstrated the “flexibility” of receptive fields