Deck 3: Neural Processing and Perception

Question 1

In the simultaneous contrast effect, gray squares of equal intensities are surrounding by either a dark background or a lighter background. The square on the dark background looks _______ than the square on the lighter background.

A) darker
B) lighter
C) the same as
D) more colorful

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Lateral inhibition has been used to explain

A) the Hermann Grid.
B) Mach bands.
C) simultaneous contrast.
D) the Hermann Grid, Mach bands, and simultaneous contrast.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

The flow of information in the LGN is best described as

A) unidirectional, with signals going from the retina to the LGN.
B) unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the retina.
C) unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the cortex.
D) bi-directional, with signals coming from the retina and the cortex to the LGN.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The inability of lateral inhibition to explain White's illusion suggests that some contrast effects are based in

A) the retina.
B) the cortex.
C) the lateral plexus.
D) the macula.

Question 5

You can create a version of the ________ by illuminating a light-colored surface with a desk lamp and casting a shadow with a piece of paper.

A) Hermann Grid
B) Mach bands
C) Benary Cross
D) illusory square

Question 6

The area on the retina that influences the firing rate of the neuron is called the

A) receptive field.
B) amacrine region.
C) divergence area.
D) inverted fovea.

Question 7

Most of the signals travel from the retina to the ______ via the optic nerve.

A) temporal cortex
B) lateral geniculate nucleus
C) the superior colliculus
D) the visual homunculus

Question 8

The gray intersections in the Hermann Grid

A) are physically present.
B) are explained by dark adaptation.
C) support the claim that "perception is not the same as the physical stimulus."
D) are best explained by feature detectors.

Question 9

A neuron with an excitatory center- inhibitory surround receptive field will respond most when we stimulate

A) only the center.
B) only the surround.
C) both the center and surround together.
D) part of the surround.

Question 10

Hartline et al. (1956) selected the Limulus to demonstrate lateral inhibition because

A) it was possible to illuminate a single receptor without illuminating its adjacent receptor.
B) it was a non-verbal species.
C) the Limulus eye contained more cones than rods.
D) the Limulus has excellent color vision.

Question 11

In Hermann's grid, gray areas appear at the intersections because

A) the amount of inhibition right at the intersections is twice as great as the inhibition between each square.
B) the amount of inhibition right at the intersections is much less than the inhibition between each square.
C) the superior colliculus responds maximally as you move your eye from intersection to intersection.
D) moving the eye creates a blur at all the intersections.

Question 12

The Nobel Prize winners who conducted the pioneering research on the physiology of striate cortex neurons were

A) White and Benary.
B) Hubel and Wiesel.
C) Mathers and Marshall.
D) Libby and Rizzutto.

Question 13

_________: Limulus :: ________: human retina.

A) Horizontal cells; amacrine cells
B) Amacrine cells; horizontal cells
C) Lateral plexus; horizontal and amacrine cells
D) Lateral plexus; rods

Question 14

Human lateral inhibition is most likely accomplished by

A) end-stopped cells.
B) extrastriate cells.
C) bipolar cells.
D) dissociative cells.

Question 15

A receptor array in the Limulus is connected by the lateral plexus. Receptor "A" is located 5 receptors to the left of Receptor "B." What stimulation will result in the greatest firing rate recorded from "A"?

A) stimulate A with 10 units of illumination
B) stimulate A with 10 units of illumination and stimulate B with 10 units
C) stimulate A with 10 units of illumination and stimulate B with 20 units
D) stimulate A with 5 units of illumination and stimulate B with 20 units.

Question 16

In Mach bands, the darker area sends _____ lateral inhibition to the lighter area than the lighter area sends to the darker area.

A) less
B) more
C) the same amount of
D) no

Question 17

Neurons in the LGN have __________ receptive fields.

A) center-surround
B) side-by-side columnar
C) ill-defined
D) ambiguous

Question 18

White's illusion is an example of a perceptual effect that can be explained by the principle of

A) belongingness.
B) lateral inhibition.
C) spatial summation.
D) convergence.

Question 19

The flow of information from the ___ to the ____ is the greatest amount of information flow.

A) LGN; cortex
B) retina; LGN
C) LGN; retina
D) cortex; LGN

Question 20

Chad is reading when he sees an insect land on the corner of his book. He then makes an eye movement to look at the insect. The structure of the visual system that is most likely responsible for making this eye movement is

A) the superior colliculus.
B) the extrastriate cortex.
C) the optic chiasm.
D) the parietal cortex.

Question 21

_________ refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by an animal's or person's perceptual experience.

A) Selective adaptation
B) Neural plasticity
C) Sensory integration
D) Perceptual analysis

Question 22

A stimulus that contains alternating black and white bars is called a

A) grating.
B) grid.
C) Boolean array.
D) Moire pattern.

Question 23

______ cells fire to moving lines of a specific length or to moving corners or angles.

A) Complex
B) Simplex
C) End-stopped
D) Edge

Question 24

An advantage of ___________coding of visual object representation is that a large number of stimuli can be signaled by a few neurons.

A) specificity
B) distributed
C) extrastriate
D) retinal

Question 25

Finding the neural correlate of consciousness is related to the

A) easy problem of consciousness.
B) hard problem of consciousness.
C) easy problem of reductionism.
D) hard problem of reductionism.

Question 26

"How do physiological responses transform into perceptual experiences?" summarizes the

A) easy problem of consciousness.
B) hard problem of consciousness.
C) NC state problem.
D) NCC-1701 lettering problem.

Question 27

The different types of cortical cells are also called

A) inhibitory cells.
B) feature detectors.
C) direct circuits.
D) signal detectors.

Question 28

When you stare at a grating of wide bars for 55 seconds, then look at a grating with narrow bars, the narrow bars will

A) seem to be thinner than they actually are.
B) seem to be wider that they actually are.
C) seem to change orientation.
D) be unaffected by the adaptation period.

Question 29

To measure _________, the experimenter decreases the intensity difference between the light bars and the dark bars until an observer can just barely detect the difference between the dark bars and the light bars.

A) Mach bands
B) contrast threshold
C) phase continuity
D) brightness constancy

Question 30

As we travel farther from the retina, neurons fire to

A) more complex stimuli.
B) less complex stimuli.
C) more intense stimuli.
D) less intense stimuli.

Question 31

Quioroga et al. (2005) studied sensory coding by

A) ablation of the IT in humans.
B) ablation of the FFA in humans.
C) using implanted electrodes in the limbic system of college student volunteers.
D) using implanted electrodes in the temporal lobe of epileptic patients.

Question 32

Selective rearing refers to

A) raising an organism in an environment that only contains certain types of stimuli.
B) genetically manipulating the organism pre-natally.
C) genetically manipulating the organism in the first month after birth.
D) presenting an array of stimuli to the organism in the first month after birth.

Question 33

The results of experiments of selective adaptation to gratings with specific orientations can be related to the __________ of ________ cells.

A) lateral inhibition; simple cortical
B) lateral inhibition; end-stopped
C) tuning curves; amacrine
D) tuning curves; simple cortical

Question 34

The difference in intensity between the light bars and the dark bars is called

A) orientation.
B) wave form.
C) phase.
D) contrast.

Question 35

Graphing the response of a simple cortical cell results in the

A) response compression curve.
B) orientation tuning curve.
C) response expansion curve.
D) motion-directive sensitivity function.

Question 36

Neurons in the ________ respond to complex stimuli, but not simple stimuli such as straight lines.

A) LGN
B) Striate cortex
C) IT cortex
D) Retina

Question 37

"Grandmother cells" are mostly closely associated with _______ coding.

A) specificity
B) distributed
C) olfactory
D) invasive

Question 38

Which of the following proposed representational systems is the least likely to actually be in place in the human visual system?

A) Sparse coding
B) Specificity coding
C) Representation by a small number of neurons
D) Distributed coding

Question 39

When a kitten is exposed to an environment of just horizontal lines, the kitten

A) would pay attention only to vertical lines.
B) would pay attention only to horizontal lines.
C) would have cortical cells that only respond to vertical lines.
D) would have cortical cells that respond to horizontal lines, but none to vertical lines.

Question 40

Unlike simple cells, complex cells respond best to

A) stationary spots of light.
B) small spots of light.
C) moving stimuli.
D) stationary lines of any orientation.

Question 41

(a) What is lateral inhibition?
(b) Select either the Hermann Grid or Mach bands, and discuss how lateral inhibition accounts for the phenomenon.

Question 42

Describe how information would be represented under each of the following representational schemes: specificity coding, distributed coding, and sparse coding.

Question 43

Describe the procedure involved in mapping receptive fields.

Question 44

Discuss research that shows that selective rearing results in neural plasticity.

Question 45

(a) Describe the difference between simple cortical cells, complex cortical cells, and end-stopped cells.
(b) Explain why these cells are called "feature detectors."

Question 46

(a) What is "White's Illusion"?
(b) Discuss why this can't be explained by lateral inhibition, and what mechanism has been proposed to explain this illusion.