Deck 10: Attention

Question 1

Biased competition is a mechanism that allows for filtering out distracting information.One important implication of this phenomenon is which of the following?

A)Distracting information is only filtered out if attention is allocated outside a cell's receptive field
B)Distracting information increases activation of a cell within its receptive field irrespective of attention
C)Attention to both distracting and task-relevant information increases a cell's firing within the receptive field
D)Attention can reduce the suppressive effects of distracting information within a cell's receptive field

Answer 1

D

Question 2

A brain region at which processing is modulated to enhance attention to a specific attribute, location, item, or other salient dimension is known as…
A.Source of attentional control
B.Source of processing control
C.Site of processing control
D.Site of attentional control

Answer 2

Site of attentional control

Question 3

You're walking down the street when someone on the sidewalk across the street suddenly screams.This sudden noise automatically grabs your attention and you reflexively look toward the location of the scream.This event would most strongly activate which area:

A)Frontal eye fields
B)Inferior Colliculus
C)Dorsal attention network
D)Superior Colliculus

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Personal neglect is used to describe patients who…

A)fail to notice items on the left side of the world
B)fail to use the left side of the body.
C)fail to draw the left side of objects
D)All of the above

Question 5

An air-traffic controller who must sustain their attention over long periods of time would rely most heavily on which neurotransmitter system to do their job well?

A)Norepinephrine
B)Dopamine
C)Glutamate
D)Serotonin

Question 6

Imagine that you are eating lunch on campus and all of a sudden a person in whom you are romantically interested walks in and sits down nearby.You are trying to focus on what your friend is saying but you are also focused on this other person.What kind of attention would you be most likely employing?

A)Pre-attention
B)Divided attention
C)Early selection
D)Late selection

Question 7

What role does the noradrenergic system play in attention?

A)Acts as an interface between arousal and other aspects of attention.
B)Alerting the brain that it should get ready to receive information or make a response.
C)Selection of the appropriate motor response.
D)Control of where attention will be directed.

Question 8

Which of the below describes the typical manifestation of hemineglect?

A)Individuals ignore, or do not pay attention to, the side of space ipsilateral to their lesion.
B)Individuals ignore, or do not pay attention to, the side of space contralateral to their lesion.
C)Individuals ignore, or do not pay attention to, the sides of space both ipsilateral and contralateral to their lesion.

Question 9

Overactivation of the locus coeruleus would result in which of the following?

A)Fatigue
B)Decreased sensory integration
C)Attentional fixation
D)Insomnia

Question 10

Which of the statements below is true of bottom-up attentional selection?

A)Some intrinsic aspect of the stimulus itself, such as its perceptual saliency relative to other information, causes it to be attended.
B)Control of attention occurs because of an item's specific perceptual characteristics, such as brightness, color, or motion
C)It is driven by processing information at primary sensory cortices
D)All of the above.

Question 11

Saliency maps allow for the swift detection of visual items among distractors.Which brain area plays a major role is constructing these maps?

A)Frontal eye fields
B)Intraparietal sulcus
C)Superior temporal lobe
D)Medial prefrontal cortex

Question 12

What condition would someone most likely have if they damaged their reticular activating system?

A)Insomnia
B)Coma
C)Spatial neglect
D)Hemianopsia

Question 13

Based on research of divided attention, damage to which brain area would most likely disrupt your performance while multitasking?

A)Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
B)Locus Coeruleus
C)Anterior cingulate cortex
D)Supplementary motor area

Question 14

Which of the following is not a behaviour patients with neglect can exhibit:

A)Altered letter cancellation
B)Landmark-specific neglect
C)Neglect of part of one's body
D)Object-based neglect

Question 15

Which part of the brain plays an important important role in automatically orienting attention to particular locations in space?

A)Lateral prefrontal cortex
B)The superior colliculus
C)Medial prefrontal cortex
D)The parietal lobe

Question 16

You are at a picnic with your family and talking to some of your cousins.Whenever politics is discussed you tune out and ignore this information.What kind of attention would you be employing here?

A)Late-stage selective attention
B)Early-stage selective attention
C)Divided attention
D)Pre-attention

Question 17

You have been studying hard for an upcoming exam when your mind begins to wander and you suddenly start day-dreaming.What attention network would most likely be activated during this experience?

A)Executive attention network
B)Ventral attention network
C)Dorsal attention network
D)Default network

Question 18

Hemineglect syndrome is much more prominent and severe after damage to which brain hemisphere?

A)Right
B)Left
C)There is no difference observed.

Question 19

The following patient was told to draw a vertical line halfway through a long horizontal line, known as the line bisection task.Based on their response below, what type of clinical impairment would you say they have and why?

A)Hemineglect of the right side of space
B)Hemineglect of the left side of space
C)Blindsight
D)Damage to the left basal ganglia

Question 20

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A)Top-down attentional selection is implemented by the superior parietal lobe, while bottom-up selection is implemented by the inferior parietal lobe.
B)Bottom-up selection is implemented by the inferior parietal lobe, while the intraparietal region is important for creating a salience map of spatial locations to which attention should be directed.
C)A salience map is created by the superior parietal lobe which is fed to the intraparietal region.
D)Salience maps integrate top-down and bottom-up influences on attentional control.

Question 21

Hemineglect syndrome is more severe when the right hemisphere is damaged.What is one possible explanation for this?

A)Ocular dominance is often in the left eye
B)The right hemisphere plays a larger role in attention and arousal
C)The left hemisphere has difficult compensating because language centers are also located in the left hemisphere
D)Most people are hemispherically rightward dominant

Question 22

Patients with hemineglect were asked to recall from memory landmarks they knew well.What did this research on their spatial memory reveal?

A)Their memories of the left side of space was intact but distorted
B)They always neglected the left side, but told to imagine themselves facing in one direction and then the opposite, it could be shown that their memory for all the landmarks was intact.
C)The neglected side of space was remembered as a mirror image of the attended side of space
D)They were unable to adequately recall spatial information from memory