Exam 3: Biological Foundations of Behaviour

Wendy is watching a film while you record the electrical activity in her brain. You note that Wendy reports feeling some emotion and that there is greater activity in the right hemisphere as compared to the left. Most likely, Wendy is experiencing

Who would you expect to be better able to recover from brain damage, a 2-year-old child or a middle-aged adult? Frame your answer in terms of neural plasticity.

Tilly goes to see her newborn nephew at the hospital. She is in awe of him and wonders how many neurons his brain has. What should her estimate of the number of neurons in the newborn's brain be?

Monica is going to the dentist to get her first filling. She tries to be responsible about all medications, so before he numbs her mouth, she asks the dentist to explain how Novocain works. The dentist tells Monica that Novocain creates numbness and prevents pain by _______________ in the target area.

Which of the following statements is TRUE?

The areas responsible for language are found on the left hemisphere. This relatively greater localization of a function in one hemisphere or the other is referred to as _____________.

A person with a severed corpus callosum is briefly shown a picture of a bird and after this presentation she is able to tell the experimenter that she just saw a bird. Given this information, we can conclude that ____________.

The underproduction of serotonin is thought to be an important factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative brain disorder involving profound memory impairment.

The division of the peripheral nervous system that senses the body's internal functions and controls the glands and the smooth muscles is called the _______________________ nervous system.

The use of highly concentrated X-rays to take pictures of narrow slices of the brain is called a ___________ scan.

Research on gender differences in the hemispheric localization of language has revealed that

Which of the following statements is not true about brain plasticity?

In 1868, Dr. Harlow wrote of Phineas Gage, "He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity. manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires." This change to the personality of Phineas Gage was the result of _______________.

The medulla and pons are similar in that they both are ____________.

You are walking down a dark hallway and your friend jumps out to startle you. Afterward, you calm down and return to homeostasis. Which division of the autonomic nervous system calms your body down?

The technique that measures the amount of harmless radioactive glucose used by the brain is called a(n)

Anton's grandfather had a stroke. When the family arrives at the hospital, Grandfather is unable to speak. The family gives him some paper and a pencil, but Grandfather is unable to write, either. A speech therapist explains that Grandfather probably knows what he wants to say, but the part of his brain that allows him to produce speech, _____________________, has been damaged by the stroke. She plans to work with Grandfather to help him learn to speak again.

Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues found that criminal offenders diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy were most likely patients with damage to the _________

The job of interneurons is to

Neuroscientists have found that cell death is programmed into every neuron by its genes, and that the neuron's "suicide apparatus" can be activated by _____________.