Saturday, April 12, 2008

PSC101 Chapter 7



  • primary sensory cortex: input from thalamus


  • secondary sensory cortex: input from primary sensory cotex or other aras of secondary sensory cortex of same system


  • association cortex: receives input from more than one sensory sytem; from secondary sensory cortex


  • interactions between the three types of senosry cortex are characterized by three principles: hierachical organization, functional segregation, and parallel processing

  • hierachical organization: hierachy; as go up, neurons respond to greater specificity and complexity

  • sensation is detection of stim and perception is integrating, recognizing and interpreting stim

  • functional segregation: the three levels of cerebral cortex, primary, secondary, and association, in each sensory system contains distinct areas that specialize in different kinds of analysis

  • parallel processing: one believed to be in serial: info flow in one pathway; parallel systems: multiple pathways; the simul analysis of a signal in different ways by multiple parallel pathways

  • two parallel processing: one influence behavior without our conscious awareness and one with conscious awareness.

  • corticofugal pathways: cognitive processes such as attention can influence perception

  • scotoma: an area of blindness caused by damage to primary visual cortex

  • blindsight: respond to visual stim in scotomas even though have no conscious awareness of stimuli

  • subjective contours: see contours that don't exist

  • dorsal stream: flow from primary visual cortex to dorsal prestriate cortex to posterior parietal cortex

  • ventral stream: from primary visual cortex to ventral prestriate cortex to inferotemporal cortex

  • prosopagnosia: visual agnosia for faces

  • agnosia: fail to recognize; visual agnosia: cannot recognize objects

  • amplitude = loudness; pitch = frequency; complexity = timbre

  • sound waves travel down auditory canal and cause tympanic membrane to vibrate --> three ossicles: small cones of middle ear; malleus, incus, and stapes --> vibration of membrane called oval window --> fluid of cochlea --> ogan of corti

  • organ of corti: basilar membrane and tectorial lmembrane; hair cells on basilar membrane and tectorial on hair cells; hair cells to auditory nerve

  • cochlear coding: different freq produce different stim of hair cells at different points along basilar; higher freq: more activation to the windows

  • tonotopic; vesticular: balance

  • auditory nerve --> superior olives --> inferior colliculi --> medial geniculate nuclei --> primary auditory cortex

  • medial superior olives respond to differences of arrival time from two ears; lateral superior olives: slight diff in amplitude

  • both project to superior colliculus and iinferior colliculussomatosensory system: exteroceptive system (senses external stim to skin); proprioceptive system (position of body that comes from receptors in muscles, joints, organs of balance); interoceptive system (conditions in body: temp and bp)

  • exteroceptive: mechanical stim (touch); thermal stim (temp); and nociceptive stim (pain)

  • dermatomes: area of body that is innervated by the left and right dorsal roots of a given segment of spinal cord

  • dorsal-column medial lemniscus (DCML): info on touch and proprioception

  • anterolateral: info about pain and temp

  • somatosensory homunculus: somatopic map

  • somatosensory agnosia: astereognosia: cannot recog objects by touch; asomatognosia: cannot recog parts of one's body; anosognosia: failure to recogn symptoms; contralateral neglect: not respond to half of body

  • adaptiveness of pain: important for our survival; responses to excessive stim

  • no cortical representation of pain; anterior cingulate cortex

  • pain suppressed by cognitive and emotional factors; gate-control theory; corticofugal pathways can blcok pain signals

  • olfactory: oflactory muscosa; olfactory bulbs; olfactory tract; amygdala and piriform cortex; medial dorsal neuclei and orbitofrontal cortex

  • tastebuds; papillae; tastes is not combination of primaries; some tate act on ion channels and not receptor molecules

  • selective attention: perceive only small subset of stim; improves focus; endogenous and exogenous attention (internal cognitive processes or external events); top-down and bottom-up

  • change blindness

  • the inferotemporal cortex is an area of secondary visual cortex

  • the dorsal and ventral streams are part of the visual system

  • the primary auditory cortex is tonotopically organized

  • the inferior colliculi and medial geniculate nuclei are components of the auditory system

  • the dcml and anterolateral system are pathways of the somatosensory sytem

  • the ventral posterior nuclei, the intralaminar nuclei, and parafascicular nuclei are all thalmic neuclei of the somatosensory

  • the periaqueductal gray and the raphe nuclei are involved in blcoking the perception of pain

  • one pathway of the olfacotry system projects from the amygdala and piriform cortex to the orbitofrontal cortex

  • parts of the ventral posterior nuclei are thalamic relay nuclei of both soomatosensory and gustatory systems

  • unlike the projections of all other sensory sytems, the projections of the gustatory system are primarily ipsilateral.

Chapter 2



  • Cartesian dualism: descartes; physical matter and the human mind, soul, spirit

  • ethology: study of animal behavior in wild; instinctive behaviors

  • fitness: the ability to survive and pass on genes to next generation

  • hierachy of social dominance: decreases hostility; dominant: copulate more

  • sepcies: reproductively isolated; can only produce offspring by mating with same species (conspecifics)

  • chordates: animals with dorsal nerve cords; spinal bones to protect dorsal nerve cord are vertebrae

  • amphibians: young in water; adult in land

  • reptiles: evolved from amphibians; shell eggs; dry scales; away from water

  • mammals: nurture young in watery environment of their bodies

  • evolution not in single line

  • humans don't have evolutionary supremacy

  • evolution does not proceed slowly and gradually

  • few products of evolution have survived to present day

  • evolution does not progress to perfection

  • not all behaviors or structures are adaptive; spandrels: nonadaptive; may once be adaptive but not anymore

  • not all adaptive characteristics evolved to perform current function

  • similarities among species does not mean common orgins; analogous; convergent evolution

  • no relationship between brain size and intelligence; brain size and body size

  • brain stem: regulate reflexes such as herat rate, respiration, blood glucose level

  • cerebrum: learning, perception, motivation

  • human brain has increased in size during evolution; most increase in cerebrum; increase in convolutions: fold on the cerebral surface --> increased volume of cerebral cortex

  • promiscuity: mate indiscriminately

  • dichotomous traits: in one form or other, not in combo

  • true breeding lines: offspring with same traitoperator genes: controls a gene or a group of genes; regulated by dna-binding proteins

  • mitochondria: energy producing structures; inherited from mother; mutations develop in mito dna at consistent rate --> evolutionary clockphysiological-or-psychological thinking was given official recognitio in thee 17th century when the roman church sanctioned cartesian dualism

  • in darwinian sense, fitness refers to the abaility of an organism to survive and produce large numbers of fertile offspring.

  • a species is a group of reproductively isolated organisms.

  • mammals are thought to have evolved from reptiles 180 million years ago

  • there are five different families of primates: prosmians, new-world monkeys, old-world monkeys, apes, hominids

  • chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans; they have about 99% of the same genetic material.

  • the first hominids were australo

  • the degree of linkage between genes is a measure of how close they are together on a chromosome

  • each structrual gene contains the info for the production of a single protein

  • strutural genes can be turned off or on by operator genes

  • the massive international effort to physically map human chromosomes is known as the human genome project.

  • ontogeny: development through life span; phylogeny: evolutionary deve of species through ages

  • phenylketonuria (PKU): phenylpyruvic acid; lack phenylalanine hydroxylase --> abnormal brain development

  • bird songs: sensory phase (memories of adult songs); sensorimotor phase (refined; feedback; crystallized)

  • age-limited learners: crystallized ramain unchanged; open-ended learners: can add new songs

  • decending motor pathway: from high vocal center on each side of brain to syrinx on the same side; mediates song production

  • anterior forebrain pathway: mediates song learning

  • left decending motor pathway more important than right; high vocal center is four times larger in male; song-control structures of males double in size during mating season; seasonal increase in size results from growth of new neeurons

  • heritability estimate: proportion of variability occuring in a trait in a study that resulted from genetic variation in that study.

Chapter 5

  • Schizophrenia symptoms: delusions, hallu, disorganized speech, loss of affect, diminished motivation
  • paranoid, catatonic, disorganized
  • adolescence or early adult life; same rate in men and women
  • genetic disorder; monozygotic twin, 50%; dizygotic and sibling, 5-15%
  • chromosomal aberrations:
  • drugs that focused on dopamin and serotonin transmission; linkage studies: tendency of genes at specific loci to be inherited together with known markers because of proximity
  • may be due to dysfunction of frontal lobe and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC)
  • Bipolar disorder: manic depressive illness; mood disorders; epi of depression and mania
  • bipolar I diorder: depression and one or more manic epi
  • Bipolar II disorder: depression and one or more bouts of hypomania
  • Autism: pervasive developmental disorder (Rett, childhood disintegrative disorders, Asperger's syndrome); restlessness and distraction, lack of social interaction, difficuty with language, motor behaviors; boys more than girls 3:1; chromosomal abnormalities

Friday, March 21, 2008

Exam 1

  1. autocalibration: visual system flexibly adaps; deal with huge info
  2. simple cells detec bars of light/dark
  3. won nobel prize for orientation selective receptive field organ
  4. pinhole camera: doesn't happen when we open blinds; light interferes with itself destroying details
  5. eyeball filled with saline
  6. lens in water has reduced refractive index
  7. swimming; sharpen image: yes, opaque contact lens to eye that has aperture where light pass
  8. tc eye; scanning input; pinhole sized: not nautilus, bee, patella, paramoecium
  9. types of lens in human eye: convex and converging
  10. tubes: fly
  11. human iris unique id system
  12. rods are more sensitive than cones in scotopic conditions
  13. fixate at dim star; not perceive star because we don't perceive blood vessels
  14. presented a solid dark field to on-center lgn cell (absence of light that covers the entire rf), cell would fire at its spontaneous level
  15. inherent problem with pinhole: not enough light enters
  16. photoreceptor has rf that corresponds to single region in real world
  17. cell firing: neuron summates epsp and ipsp to determind if there is ap
  18. hermann grid illusion: ganglion cells
  19. simple cells: sensitive to both orientation and position
  20. mri anatomy; fmri function
  21. visual rf is specifin region on retina
  22. somatosensation: touch
  23. there are no rods in focea, some cocnes in periphery, and no photoreceptors in blindspot
  24. don't perceive blood vessels in front of photoreceptors: adaptation
  25. method measure ap: micro-electrode
  26. neuron resting potential; cell's pattern of act.: spontaneous activity
  27. size of rf: large to small: complex cells, simple cells, ganglion cells, photoreceptors
  28. v1: layout maintains adjacency of retinal points; located in occipital; first stage of visual proc to show orientation selectivity; not true: each eye sends all signals to v1 in oppoisite hemisphere
  29. oriented rf: v1
  30. white matter in brain: axons; grey matter: soma(body) of neurons
  31. lgn in thalamus
  32. left visual field crosses over; processed in right hemisphere
  33. tonotopy in audtion analogous to retinotopy in visual proc
  34. NOT TRUE: lgn cells and simple cells perfer stim in one direction; complex cells and simple cells perffer stim in one direction; endstopped cells and lgn cells perffer stim in one direction; endstopped but not commplex cells prefer stim moving in one direction
  35. monkey brain: cortical magnification
  36. the image in right eye projects to visual cortex in both hemis
  37. red spot, blank white surface: see green spot due to color adaptation

Exam 2

  1. prosopagnosia: deficit recogn faces
  2. concave face demo: face convexity assump overrules lighting from above assump
  3. damge to ffa prosopagnosia
  4. damage to ppa impair ability to recogn sitting in a classroom
  5. damage to lateral occipital unable to id pad-lock
  6. damage to inferotemporal impair recogn parts of objects (basic shapes)
  7. horopter: set of all 3d points with zero disparity
  8. stereograms: stereopsis occurs at local image points before shape analysis
  9. monkey neuron red pepper: lips; located in inferotemporal cortex
  10. visual system measures the light, infers the intensity, to estimate the reflectance
  11. kid appear big because depth cues like persepctive ocerrule object knowledge
  12. accomodation is depth cue based on lens thickness
  13. cells in v2 that have rf to modal completion
  14. paper white under med illum; still looks white under bright illum: because visual system discounts illuminant
  15. dark gray square brighter when falls under shadow because of: NOT BECAUSE OF: lightness multiplication, lightness freq, reflectance constancy, intensity multiplication
  16. xjunctions: shadows
  17. heuristics visual makes when interp retinal images: lighting direction: not surface contours, surface texture, object shape
  18. true: reflections can be wrong shape
  19. false: refelctions must be right color
  20. true: refelctions can be of wrong scene
  21. false: ref can be wrong lightness
  22. true: ref must appear to follow surface on which they fall
  23. false: shadows can appear to have volume
  24. false: people notice shadows in paintings are wrong direction
  25. false: people notice impossible shadows
  26. false: shadows must be consistent with lighting in scene
  27. true: shadows help determine depth
  28. true: shadows must be darker than surround
  29. false: shadows can have different texture than surround
  30. false: combining top half of face with bottom half of another face familiar and easy to id
  31. true: evidence that faces are processed holistically
  32. false: perception of scene depth requ focuses attention
  33. amodal completion happens more often in real scenes than modal completion
  34. damage to ventral stream: not id object but could mimic actions req to use object
  35. surfaces: mid level vision
  36. emmert's law does not demo: distance constancy; lightness cons; object cons; position cons
  37. convergence: depth cue; angle that eyes are pointing
  38. t junction: occlusion
  39. grandmother coding: single cell code individ people
  40. obejct that owns shared border is in front
  41. one paper lies on top of another; cue tells you which is above: occlusion
  42. peephole in ames room: interpret depth: linear perspective
  43. size: linear perspective
  44. object hover when missing: shadow
  45. determine surfaces: gestalt laws of grouping
  46. objects get fuzzier in more distant: atmospheric persepctive
  47. ball hovers along ground can float in air by changing: shadows
  48. strongest cue in Trompe paintings (stim depth in walls or celings) is NOT: height in field, known size, Atmospheric pers, shadows
  49. CK and paulette: double dissociation between face and object processing
  50. car a and b have same retinal image; a further; a is much larger than b
  51. neuron that perfers disparity has rf that are differentially separated from foveas in two eyes

Exam 3

  1. method to test how fast we can detect objects is visual search
  2. fmri motion aftereffect in MT
  3. color and motion afftereffects share this principle: opponent coding
  4. phantom hand; touch face feel hand because remapping
  5. attend to more things; perceive less detail
  6. inaatentional blindness suggests that while driving a cell phone is more dang when in heated debate
  7. ganglion cells found that code: R+G-; R-G+;B+Y- but not R+G+
  8. motion perceived before shape analysis: kinematograms
  9. perferred spped of Reichardt detector depends on delay and distance between rf
  10. warp speed (flying through space) stim: expansionary optic flow
  11. appears most blue under illum: none
  12. black outline is source of illum that causes perception simulating damage to V4/V8
  13. simulate motion blindness; none of living in a world illum by fluorescent light; adapting to motion for a long time; illum world with sodium light; living in movie theatre
  14. illum x reflectance hits our eye
  15. false: trichromacy in ganglion cells
  16. true: tv work by color addition
  17. false: visual system makes use of color subtraction
  18. false: not possible to grow up normally if you lose half brain at 2
  19. true: most humans have 3 cone photoreceptors
  20. false: opponent process theory req extra yellow photoreceptor
  21. false: green and blue are paired in opponent fashion accor to opponent process theory
  22. false: color aftereffects are evidence for trichromatic color vision
  23. false: perceived color is best desc by trichrmatic alone
  24. true: adapting to green, see red
  25. false: adapting to blue see red
  26. true: adding various mounts of red, green, blue lights can match any perceived color
  27. false: color is an invertible code
  28. false: poinillist painters used color subtraction
  29. true: two different spectra can appear the same
  30. false: there are no such things as metamers when you are color blind
  31. true: children lose sight are better to localize sounds than sighted individ
  32. true: adults how lose sight are better able to localize sounds than sighted individ
  33. ganglion cells code opponent colors
  34. sometimes whatyou hear depends on what you see: McGurk effect
  35. ventriloquest effect is most prominent when watching tv
  36. driving; motion on retina corres to world moving around; make a turn, motion changes; change in heading signaled by MST
  37. true: neglect happens in visual imagery too
  38. true: don't attend to object, disappear from visibility
  39. false: cahnge blindness and multiple object tracking both show that we are aware of only one thing at a time
  40. true: phantom limbs provide evidence for plasiticity
  41. modern correlate of helmholtz trichromacy is cone photoreceptors
  42. attention is limited in space and time and number
  43. mirror box helps patients with phantom pain
  44. true: complex properties (sideways 2 and baldness) are not available preattentively
  45. true: attention can move independently of eyes
  46. false: attention usually moves independently of eyes
  47. multiple object tracking task reveals pro of attentional capacity
  48. line bisection and drawing clock face are two tests to measure neglect
  49. perceiving only one object at a time is ex of balint's syndrome
  50. v1 responds to component but not pattern motion; MT/MST responds to pattern motion
  51. motion aftereffect that you see after adapting to contracting pattern (look away and see expansion indicates that low level motion system exists
  52. areas of brain might blind braille readers use to read with precision: V1
  53. color blind painter could not imagine color, perceive color
  54. "what are you sinking about" is exm of understanding lang requires knowledge of context.