When conducting an experiment on how stimuli are represented by the firing of neurons, you notice that neurons respond differently to different faces.For example, Arthur's face causes three neurons to fire, with neuron 1 responding the most and neuron 3 responding the least.Roger's face causes the same three neurons to fire, with neuron 1 responding the least and neuron 3 responding the most.Your results support ____ coding.
A) specificity
B) distributed
C) convergence
D) divergence

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The fact that different stimuli (Arthur's face and Roger's face) activate the same set of neurons, but in different patterns, supports the idea of distributed coding. In distributed coding, each stimulus is represented by a unique pattern of activity across multiple neurons, rather than a single neuron or group of neurons exclusively responding to that stimulus (e.g. specificity coding) or multiple stimuli converging onto the same neurons (e.g. convergence coding) or a single neuron branching out to multiple targets (e.g. divergence coding). Therefore, the variability in the pattern of neural activity for each face implies distributed coding in this experiment.

When Conducting an Experiment on How Stimuli Are Represented by the Firing