Deck 30: Appendix

Question 1

What can you infer from studies that show that when subjects are surgically treated for epilepsy, and are shown visual images, cells in the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus fire?

A) The visual cortex sends impulses to the medial temporal lobe.
B) Impulses are sent directly from the eyes to the medial temporal lobe.
C) The visual cortex is the first central structure to receive images.
D) The medial temporal lobe mediates images between the eyes and the visual cortex.
E) The medial temporal lobe and hippocampus send impulses to the visual cortex.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

When the patient was shown a picture of someone they recognized, a single hippocampal neuron fired

A) immediately
B) at a high intensity
C) at a high intensity, but in an on-and-off again fashion
D) only once, and then stopped
E) at a low intensity

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Concept cells are a specialized type of neuron in the

A) entorhinal cortex.
B) visual cortex.
C) retina.
D) parietal cortex.
E) hippocampus.

Answer 3

E

Question 4

If you are recording from a single concept cell to which you show eight images of the actor, Sean Connery (SC) mixed in with other images of relatively neutral stimuli (NS). Among such stimuli, are also four images of another famous actor, Patrick Stewart (PS). Total number of images shown is 100. In terms of the number of action potential spikes fired, how would the concept cell respond?

A) SC > PS > NS
B) SC > PS = NS
C) SC = PS > NS
D) SC = PS = NS
E) SC < PS = NS

Question 5

Suppose you record from a single concept cell to which you show images of a famous person (or maybe a not-so-famous person, such as your sibling). And then, suppose you display a series of images of the same person, but with each successive image, the face has been increasingly altered to the point that the face on the final image no longer bears any resemblance to the original face. In terms of action potential spike firing, how would the concept cell respond?

A) The cell would continue to fire at the same intensity until the face images become too dissimilar and firing would abruptly stop; i.e., a threshold will be reached.
B) The cell would continue to fire at the same intensity until the face images become too dissimilar and firing would abruptly decline, but not stop.
C) The cell would continue to fire at the same intensity in response to all face images shown.
D) The cell would significantly decrease firing intensity in response to the first significant alteration of the face.
E) The cell would gradually decrease firing intensity as the resemblance to the original image decreases.

Question 6

When a neuron is said to "respond vigorously with a burst of action potentials," this means that the action potentials

A) all have large amplitude.
B) all fire at high frequency.
C) all fire at high frequency but interspersed with event-related potentials.
D) all fire at high frequency, but only briefly.
E) burst fire in an on-and-off fashion.

Question 7

When a hippocampal neuron responds not only to one famous face from, say, a movie, but to all other famous faces from that same movie, this provides a common _______ for recognition.

A) concept, such as the field of "acting"
B) category, such as "movie stars"
C) stimulus, such as "faces"
D) context, such as that particular movie
E) theme, such as "science fiction movies" or "crime drama"

Question 8

What group of cells are responsible for remembering and recognizing faces?

A) Medial temporal lobe
B) Visual cortex 1
C) Visual cortex 2
D) Parahippocampal place area
E) Fusiform face area

Question 9

To study the cellular basis of consciousness, what kind of technologies would most likely enable evaluation of the activities of several cells simultaneously?

A) fMRI
B) PET
C) Electroencephalography
D) Laser-scanning microscopy using fluorescent staining
E) Patch-clamp single cell recording

Question 10

Ultimately, the most thorough understanding of how tangible neural firing patterns are translated into intangible, abstract thought or consciousness is to understand the brain at the

A) organismal level.
B) organ level.
C) cellular level.
D) molecular level.
E) atomic and subatomic levels.

Question 11

What is one of the principle ways in which astrocytes hinder the regeneration of injured axons?

A) Preventing the blood-brain-barrier form re-forming completely
B) Forming glial scar tissue
C) Releasing too many cytokines
D) Failing to adequately buffer the extracellular space from too much potassium
E) Failing to adequately re-uptake excess neurotransmitters back into neurons

Question 12

What is one advantage of using neural stem cells for repairing injured neuronal axons?

A) They can yet be any kind of neural cell.
B) They are relatively inexpensive.
C) They are technically easy to acquire and use.
D) They are relatively easy to maintain in the lab.
E) They are among the youngest type of cells, meaning that they still can easily adapt to their new environment.

Question 13

Which class of molecules would be a good candidate to aid in the regeneration of injured axons?

A) Cations, such as sodium, potassium, and calcium
B) Anions, such as chloride and phosphate
C) Lipids, such as fatty acids
D) Growth factors, such as nerve growth factor
E) Nucleotides

Question 14

The proteome is much more complicated than the genome, not only because of RNA splicing, proteolytic processing, post-translational modifications, conformational variants, and other protein variants that the authors mention, but also because of

A) how proteins are degraded.
B) what happens to proteins after they are degraded.
C) how the raw materials (i.e., amino acids) are reused.
D) how proteins are carried around the cell(s) or body.
E) when proteins are expressed, and whether it is constitutively or in response to some signal.

Question 15

In biology, one of the most common ways to determine the function of something is to

A) purify it.
B) isolate it.
C) remove it or prevent it from working.
D) add more of it.
E) change it only a little so that it is still functioning, but only partially so.

Question 16

If an ion channel is composed of five different sub-units, and no RNA splicing or any other kind of processing occurs, how many different genes are required to express this channel?

A) 10
B) 8
C) 5
D) 1
E) Not enough information given

Question 17

If an ion channel is composed of five different sub-units, and assume no RNA splicing or any other kind of processing occurs, how many different genes are required to express and target this channel to its proper location within the cell?

A) 10
B) 8
C) 5
D) 1
E) Not enough information given.

Question 18

One of the main obstacles in treating monogenic diseases using gene therapy is that a single gene

A) may have several functions in the cell.
B) may express different variants of a protein at different times.
C) must first be cloned.
D) may express a protein that must be proteolytically processed to its active form.
E) may have several overlapping functions.

Question 19

Because baby-boomers are currently approaching retirement age, making the elderly population nearly double every 10 years, what is one disease whose cure, management, or slowing of its progress is particularly urgent?

A) Huntington's disease
B) Parkinson's disease
C) Alzheimer's disease
D) Diabetes
E) Spongiform encephalopathy

Question 20

None of the cells in the retina proper are myelinated. One type of these cells, however, does transition from a nonmyelinated state to a myelinated one. Which cells are these?

A) Photoreceptor cells
B) Amacrine cells
C) Bipolar cells
D) Horizontal cells
E) Ganglion cells

Question 21

What is one major obstacle that using the transcriptome (single-cell transcriptomics) would present in classifying neurons?

A) The transcriptome of any cell is dynamic-it changes constantly, depending on the demands of the cell and any point in time, as well as on the type of mRNA being classified (e.g., spliced? processed?)
B) Technology for this practice is still not advanced enough.
C) The RNA-Seq database applies only to neurons of the same overall function, such as all cortical neurons or all hippocampal neurons or all cerebellar neurons.
D) mRNA is too unstable and difficult to work with successfully.
E) This technology is fraught with logistical problems, such as corroborating the same results from different labs.

Question 22

In the peripheral nervous system, the fact that most neurons are unmyelinated suggests, from a teleological perspective, that they do not need to be myelinated. This greatly decreases the burden of having to produce so many more

A) astrocytes.
B) oligodendrocytes.
C) Schwann cells.
D) bipolar cells.
E) motor neurons.

Question 23

The _______ in the brain is most affected rhythmically by the rhythms of other structures.

A) retina
B) hippocampus
C) visual cortex
D) thalamus
E) cerebellum

Question 24

Sleep can be considered an altered state of consciousness; not unconsciousness. Moreover, it is well known that sleep is needed to consolidate learning and memories. Studying the rhythmicity of the _______, therefore, will likely yield the most useful information about why we need to sleep.

A) respiratory centers in the medulla
B) suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus
C) hippocampus and association cortices
D) spinal cord
E) visual cortex

Question 25

The signal derived in fMRI is based on neurons'

A) age.
B) metabolic activity.
C) electrical activity.
D) neurotransmitter activity.
E) amount of gray matter vs. white matter.

Question 26

Intense thought devoted to planning your next vacation should show greater blood flow in the _______, as revealed by fMRI.

A) prefrontal cortex
B) hippocampus
C) cerebral cortex
D) cerebellum
E) visual cortex

Question 27

Arguably, some of the most significant early (and current) discoveries about how the brain works has been because of

A) neuroscientists.
B) neurologists.
C) technological advances.
D) patients.
E) educational advances that have trained more neurologists and other physicians.

Question 28

Some of the most profound scientific breakthroughs in the understanding of disease occurred because of

A) a well-formulated research plan to understand and overcome the disease.
B) virtually unlimited funding of programs designed to conquer the disease.
C) directly building on the results of the research immediately preceding it.
D) the collaboration and corroboration of many different disciplines.
E) unintentional events or outcomes.

Question 29

The beginning and hallmark of wisdom is embodied in the statement,

A) "Correlation does not imply causation" (source is controversial).
B) "Imagination is more important than knowledge" (A. Einstein).
C) "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood" (M. Curie).
D) "I don't know."
E) "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" (I. Newton).

Question 30

Propose one kind of experiment that might be done to corroborate and support the single-neuron monitoring experiment done in a hippocampal neuron when participants were presented with a visual stimulus.

Question 31

In Figure 30.1 (in the text) , beside the red bars that represent the neuron's response to Pamela Anderson's face at five spikes or higher, that same neuron also responded with four spikes to four other stimuli. Hypothesize what these other stimuli might have been.

Question 32

Explain how concept cells function.

Question 33

Given that a neuron can have as many as 50,000 dendrites and spines, all of which are potential synaptic inputs from neighboring neurons, and that neurons can be either activated, resting or inhibited (3 different discrete states), how many possible combinations are there to predict whether a fusiform face neuron is active?

Question 34

In the context of conscious control, when we speak of a neuronal discharge pattern in a discrete ensemble of neurons, what are we referring to?

Question 35

Memory is required for a conscious act to occur. Propose an explanation for how a memory might cause a conscious act to be implemented.

Question 36

The authors propose that shortly after a CNS injury, astrocytes can be allowed to perform their protective function and then converted to neurons, so as to avoid the formers' harmful effects that would hinder the healing process. What is the first thing that must be known before this kind of therapy can happen?

Question 37

Of all the different types of cells in the retina, including the enormous number of each cell type (e.g., amacrine cells), propose an explanation for why only ganglion cells are myelinated, but not until part of their axons enter the optic nerve.

Question 38

If a left-handed man had a large right parietal lobe lesion, would he be able to draw or write with his left hand?