Exam 4: The Brain and Nervous System

Mentally fill in the missing parts of the nervous system "house." Be sure, once more, that you can describe what each part of the system does.

If researchers do not use the correct statistical procedures, it is possible for an fMRI to detect effects where none exists.

Researchers took photographs of different faces, cut them down the middle vertically, and pasted different halves together to form composite faces. The reconstructed photographs were flashed quickly to split-brain patients. It was found that the split-brain patients would:

Neuroscientists have found that _______________ can inhibit the process of neurogenesis.

The peripheral nervous system is a collection of neurons and supportive tissue running from the base of the brain down the center of the back.

Ronald Myers and Roger Sperry wondered what would happen if the two hemispheres of the brain were cut off from one another. In order to explore their research question, they severed the corpus callosum in cats. Describe the aspects of the cats' behaviors that remained normal and the aspects that showed a profound change.

An adult brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells.

_______________ is a technique that applies a very small electric current to stimulate or suppress activity in parts of the brain's cortex.

Explain the experimental procedure used when split-brain patients were shown composite photographs. Why did the patients claim to notice nothing unusual about the original photographs?

Which word in parentheses better fits each of the following definitions? 1. Basic building blocks of the nervous system (nerves, neurons) 2. Cell parts that receive nerve impulses (axons, dendrites) 3. Site of communication between neurons (synapse, myelin sheath) 4. Opiate-like substance in the brain (dopamine, endorphin) 5. Chemicals that make it possible for neurons to communicate (neurotransmitters, hormones) 6. Hormone closely associated with emotional excitement (epinephrine, estrogen) B. Imagine that you are depressed, and you hear about a treatment for depression that affects the levels of several neurotransmitters thought to be involved in the disorder. Based on what you have learned, what questions would you want to ask before deciding whether to try the treatment?

Hormones have effects similar to natural opiates.

The autonomic nervous system controls skeletal muscles.

Many areas of the cortex, when stimulated, would produce no obvious response or sensation.

The function of the _______________ is to gather and process information, produce responses to stimuli, and coordinate the workings of different cells.

The parietal lobes contain the auditory cortex, which processes sounds.

Shannon blinks as she steps off the school bus and walks into a gust of wind. This automatic reaction is regulated by the:

A surgeon is probing the somatosensory cortex in your brain with a stimulation probe. Which of the following would you most likely experience?

In blind people, the visual areas in the brain might be active during tasks requiring hearing or touch due to plasticity.

Stem cells in brain regions involved in learning and memory seem to divide and mature:

The patterns of brain activity during mathematical processing are different in native Chinese than in native English speakers.