Exam 2: The Biological Basis of Behavior

The part of the hindbrain involved in emotional control, attention, memory, and coordinating sensory information is the ________.

The cerebral cortex contains about ________ percent of the neurons in the human central nervous system.

The smallest unit in the nervous system is called the ________.

The part of the hindbrain that controls such functions as breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure is the ________.

Describe the functions of the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, occipital lobe, and parietal lobe. Also, briefly discuss the case of Phineas Gage in terms of which areas of his brain were damaged and the effects of that damage.

Jessica's mother has brown eyes, with a dominant gene for brown eyes and a recessive gene for blue eyes. Her father also has brown eyes, with a dominant gene for brown eyes and a recessive gene for blue eyes. What are the chances that Jessica has brown eyes?

A technique in which more than two dozen electrodes are placed at important locations on the scalp and they then record the brain's electrical activity in a way that is converted by a computer into colored images on a TV screen and used to detect abnormal cortical activity such as that occurring during an epileptic seizure is ________.

________ techniques are used to study the functions of single neurons.

Which hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is usually dominant in language tasks?

The part of the hindbrain sometimes called the "little brain" is the ________.

The hormone released by the pineal gland that reduces body temperature and prepares you for sleep is ________.

Language difficulties that often result from strokes or other brain injuries are called ________.

The part of the neuron that carries outgoing messages either to another neuron or to a muscle or gland is the ________.

Each of the following is a functional imaging technique except ________.

The peripheral nervous system contains about ________ percent of the body's neurons.

Electrically charged particles that are present inside and outside the neuron are called graded potentials.

Approximately ________ percent of humans are right-handed.

The mechanism proposed by Darwin in his theory of evolution stating that organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics to their offspring, is called ________.

Pairs of tiny threadlike bodies that carry genes are ________.

Split-brain patients who are shown objects in such a way that the visual information goes only to the left hemisphere of the brain ________.