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PSYC 351D > Thinking part 1 > Flashcards

Thinking part 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is a psychological process?

A

Idea that some mental ability exists as an entity (hard to localize)

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2
Q

Is human thought a psychological construct?

A

Yes

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3
Q

What is cognition?

A

Thought processes

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4
Q

Describe why language is a thought process.

A

provides the brain with a way to categorize information
provides a means of organizing time –> think about past and future
Language has syntax

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5
Q

What is a main characteristic of human thought?

A

Sequencing events in time

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6
Q

Describe why sequencing events in time is a characteristic of human thought?

A

Human brain seems prewired to string events together
It is highly adaptive
Language may just be a byproduct of a brain organized to string
together events

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7
Q

What brain area is involved in new memories and thought sequences (sequencing events in time)?

A

Frontal lobes

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8
Q

What happen with frontal lobe damage?

A

difficulty planning and generating novel
solutions to problems

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9
Q

What was suggested as a neural unit of thought and by who?

A

Donald Hebb suggested cell assembly

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10
Q

What is the saying that supports cell assemblies?

A

Neurons that fire together wire together

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11
Q

What are cell assemblies?

A

Hypothetical group of neurons that become
functionally connected via common sensory inputs

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12
Q

How are cell assemblies organized and what do they represent? How does thinking arise?

A

Connections among neurons are organized into
systems and subsystems.
* Represent complex concepts: Thinking arises from the
activity of these complex neural circuits.

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13
Q

Describe the study by Newsome that suggests another neural unit of thought.

A

Monkeys were trained to identify apparent motion in a set of moving dots on a TV screen. The dots could have semi-random movement (no motion perceived) or semicoordinated movement (threshold level) or coordinated movement (apparent motion strongly perceived.
After the monkeys were trained in this task, investigators recorded from single neurons in area V5, which contains cells that are sensitive to motion in a preferred direction

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14
Q

What did Newsome et al find?

A

perception of apparent
motion was influenced by
individual neurons, not by the
summed activity of many
neurons

Activity of individual cortical
neurons influences
perception of motion. Maybe it is individual neurons that give rise to thought

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15
Q

How did newsome reconcile the individual neurons and cell assemblies theories?

A

Cell assemblies converge inputs from individual neurons to arrive at consensus.
The cell assembly represents the final consensus of many individual neurons that have independently detected a sensory stimuli

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16
Q

What provides the basis for cognition?

A

Cell assemblies

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17
Q

How do cell do cell assemblies provide the basis for cognition?

A

Different assemblies come together, much like words in language, to
produce coherent thoughts.
* Neurons combine evidence from each other, forming networks that represent
particular concepts/ constructs/ ideas

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18
Q

Where would cell assemblies be located?

A

in the association cortex

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19
Q

Where are the association cortices located?

A

Any area outside of primary somatosensory cortex and motor cortex

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20
Q

What does the association cortex do? (simple)

A

Produces cognition by binding information together

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21
Q

How does the association cortex work?

A

Receives information that is highly processed by
the primary sensory/ motor cortices.
Are functionally multimodal – neurons integrate information from more than one modality to give rise to perception

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22
Q

Are there multiple types of association cortices?

A

Yes

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23
Q

What is an example of what association cortices do? For a dog

A

Hear dog and see dog and bind that together

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24
Q

What are the functions of association cortex?

A

Object recognition
Spatial navigation
Attention
Executive function (planning, selecting behaviour)
Imitation and understanding

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25
What area of the association cortex are involved in object recognition? What visual stream?
Knowledge about what objects are is represented in the temporal association cortex. Part of the ventral visual stream
26
What happens if the ventral visual stream/temporal AC is destroyed?
person will develop visual agnosia (apperceptive vs visual agnosia)
27
What is apperceptive agnosia?
Unable to perceive object in its entirety
28
What is associative visual agnosia?
Can see objects but can't identify it
29
What area of the association cortex are involved in spatial recognition? What visual stream?
Dorsal visual stream and parietal association cortex
30
Where is the information stored after the parietal association cortex?
Parahippocampal cortex
31
What does spatial navigation involve? What are the two types of navigation?
Includes the creation of a mental map (a cognitive map) of the environment; includes mental rotation Relationship between two objects (allocentric navigation) Can involve memorizing sequences of landmarks along a path – known as egocentric navigation
32
What brain areas as involved in allocentric navigation?
MTL (parahippocampal cortex)
33
What brain areas are involved in ecocentric navigation?
basal ganglia & parietal cortex
34
What does damage to the parietal association cortex cause?
Deficit in mental rotation tasks or spatial orientation task (spatial cognition) Topographic disorientation
35
What is topographic disorientation?
Inability to find one’s way in relationship to salient environmental cues
36
What is a type of topographic orientation?
Egocentric disorientation - Difficulty perceiving relative locations of objects with respect to the self
37
Give an example of egocentric disorientation.
Can identify landmarks but can't plot way of going around them. Ex: Know house and where it is but doesn't know hoe to get there
38
What does damage to posterior parietal cortex cause?
Balint Syndrome
39
What does damage to the hippocampus and surrounding areas of the MTL cause?
deficits in cognitive mapping
40
What is attention?
elective narrowing/focusing of awareness to part of sensory environment or class of stimuli
41
Describe study of monkey and attention.
Record from V4 neuron and a cue shows up and disappears. If the stimulus is the same as the cue then the monkey releases the bar
42
What were the results of the monkey attention study?
Before training neurons responded to stimuli in all locations After training, neurons responded only when the visual stimuli were in the rewarded location
43
What did the study on monkeys and attention show?
Neurons can be trained to selectively fire only when stimulus is in one particular location in the visual field and is of a particular color. If same colour stimulus appears in other locations, neurons can be trained not to fire. Learning to attend to specific parts of the sensory world is a property of single neurons
44
Damage to what two areas can cause deficits in attention?
frontal association cortex damage, or parietal association cortex damage
45
What happens to attention when people have frontal association cortex damage?
People are overly focused on environmental stimuli; Attend excessively to one stimulus or to have difficulty shifting attention. * Planning impairment --> cannot shift
46
What happens to attention when people have parietal association cortex damage?
Can produce contralateral neglect
47
What is contralateral neglect?
failure to attend to one side of space (affects mental representations too!) --> mental, visual, body space
48
What happens during recovery for patients with parietal association cortex damage?
extinction
49
If a patient has left contralateral neglect and they are shown objects in their right and left visual field, what do they see?
Only the object in the right visual field
50
If a patient with contralateral neglect goes through therapy and is shown different objects in each eye what happens?
Patient sees both objects in each visual field
51
If a patient with contralateral neglect goes through therapy and is shown the same objects in each eye what happens? What is this called
the patient only sees the object in his right visual field --> extinction
52
Do the eyes process in contralateral neglect?
Yes, they just don't attend to it
53
What did the video on hemispatial neglect show
ignore one side of space only eat food on one side of plate If the fingers do the same motion he ignores them
54
What do frontal lobes do for executive function?
Frontal lobes recruit several brain regions during planning. Frontal lobes act like an orchestra conductor
55
How do frontal lobes act as an orchestra conductor?
Organize behaviour temporally Develop motor plans to solve problems or perform tasks * Select appropriate behaviours amongst an array of possible behaviour
56
What is a neuropsychological measure of planning?
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
57
What is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
1. Subjects provided with a row of cards and asked to sort the remaining deck. 2. Subjects are never explicitly told what the correct sorting category is—color, number, or form 3. After subjects have begun sorting by one category, the tester unexpectedly changes to another category
58
What happens in the Wisconsin card sorting test for people with frontal lobe damage? What do they demonstrate?
Shifting the response strategy is particularly difficult for people with frontal lobe lesions Demonstrate preservation
59
What is preservation?
Tendency to repeat the same response even if you know that the rules have changed
60
What is involved in imitation and understanding?
Mirror neurons
61
What are mirror neurons? Where are they located?
Activate when you do a task or when other people do a task Many “movement” neurons located in the inferior frontal and posterior parietal cortex discharge when a monkey sees other monkeys or experimenter make the same movements
62
What is the function of mirror neurons?
Mirror neurons help us imitate other’s action and understand their meaning; Provide the link between the sender and the receiver of a communication
63
Where are mirror neuron systems found?
various cortical area
64
What are mirror neurons being used for>
Is being applied to rehabilitation interventions --> people with parkinson's watch videos of someone walking

PSYC 351D (9 decks)

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