Question 1

Your friend is trying to teach you how to play guitar. You've taken a few lessons with them already and they are now trying to show you how to play a new chord. You watch them play the chord a few times before picking up your own guitar and trying it yourself. You strum the strings with your right hand, meaning you use the fingers on your left hand to manipulate the strings on the guitar neck. The first time you watch your friend play the new chord, your _____ will respond.
A)glial cells
B)mirror neurons
C)association neurons
D)glutamatergic neurons
E)emulation cells

Accepted Answer

Mirror neurons are responsible for mimicking or understanding actions by observing others, which is what happens when you watch your friend play a chord and then try to replicate it yourself.

Question 2

Patient X was in a car accident in which the top of his head was damaged. When he recovers from the most obvious injuries, he finds that he has paralysis in one hand. His physician explains that this is due to damage to X's frontal lobe, specifically the part that controls voluntary movement of his hand. This part of the brain is called
A)Wernicke's area.
B)Broca's area.
C)the motor cortex.
D)the somatic sensory cortex.
E)the limbic system.

Accepted Answer

The motor cortex is the part of the frontal lobe responsible for controlling voluntary movements, including movements of the hand. Damage to this area can result in paralysis or loss of movement in the corresponding part of the body.

Question 3

Dr. Kelsey is working with a split-brain patient to better understand what the different parts of the brain do. She finds that when words are flashed to the left side of the visual field, so they are sent to the right hemisphere, patients can't describe what they have seen using words. This tells Dr. Kelsey that language abilities are at least somewhat localized in one hemisphere of the brain. This localization is called
A)agnosia.
B)plasticity.
C)apraxia.
D)lateralization.
E)centralization.

Accepted Answer

Lateralization refers to the localization of functions in one hemisphere of the brain or the other. In this case, language abilities being localized primarily in one hemisphere (usually the left for most people) is an example of lateralization.

Question 4

Your friend is trying to teach you how to play guitar. You've taken a few lessons with them already and they are now trying to show you how to play a new chord. You watch them play the chord a few times before picking up your own guitar and trying it yourself. You strum the strings with your right hand, meaning you use the fingers on your left hand to manipulate the strings on the guitar neck. What phenomenon can account for the physical changes in the brain that could result from extensive practice of guitar playing?
A)reuptake
B)generalization
C)somatic transfer
D)neural plasticity
E)modelling

Accepted Answer

Neural plasticity is the phenomenon that accounts for the physical changes in the brain resulting from extensive practice of activities such as guitar playing. It refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience and learning.

Question 5

Your friend is trying to teach you how to play guitar. You've taken a few lessons with them already and they are now trying to show you how to play a new chord. You watch them play the chord a few times before picking up your own guitar and trying it yourself. You strum the strings with your right hand, meaning you use the fingers on your left hand to manipulate the strings on the guitar neck (which requires more control than what your strumming hand is doing). Assuming that you continue practicing your guitar playing, what change in your brain could be predicted?
A)a smaller left-hemisphere somatosensory cortex
B)a larger left-hemisphere somatosensory cortex
C)a larger right-hemisphere somatosensory cortex
D)a smaller right-hemisphere somatosensory cortex
E)none of these possible responses would be predicted.

Accepted Answer

Practicing guitar involves fine motor skills and sensory feedback, which can lead to an increase in the size of the right-hemisphere somatosensory cortex, as it controls the left hand.

Question 6

You have just joined a psychology lab and are working with a group of researchers who are interested in how the brain responds to different kinds of facial expressions (e.g. happy, scared, angry, etc,.). They ask you if you have any ideas for experiments. You tell them that you wonder if the response of the fusiform face area (FFA), an area known to be involved in facial processing, might differ with the emotion being conveyed by a face. If you hypothesize that FFA activity will vary across the presentation of different kinds of facial expressions, what method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis?
A)A functional MRI (fMRI)
B)ERP (event-related potentials)
C)None of these method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis.
D)transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
E)a computerized axial tomography (CT) scan

Accepted Answer

A functional MRI (fMRI) is the appropriate method to test the hypothesis because it allows researchers to observe brain activity, including in the fusiform face area (FFA), in response to different stimuli, such as facial expressions, by measuring changes in blood flow associated with neural activity.

Question 7

You have just woken up from a dream and can hardly believe your brain was capable of creating such a realistic feeling version of reality that seems to exist nowhere but your own mind. Which of these neural structures is most closely associated with the experience you just had?
A)thalamus
B)nucleus accumbens
C)cerebellum
D)medulla
E)pons

Accepted Answer

The pons is involved in regulating sleep and dreaming, making it closely associated with the experience of dreaming.

Question 8

You have just joined a psychology lab and are working with a group of researchers who are interested in how the brain responds to different kinds of facial expressions (e.g. happy, scared, angry, etc,.). They ask you if you have any ideas for experiments. You suggest testing what happens when you temporarily disrupt a specific part of the brain involved with facial processing (the fusiform face area) when students are making judgments about face stimuli. What method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis?
A)a computerized axial tomography (CT) scan
B)transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
C)A functional MRI (fMRI)
D)None of these method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis.
E)ERP (event-related potentials)

Accepted Answer

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a method that can temporarily disrupt the functioning of specific parts of the brain, making it suitable for testing the hypothesis about the role of the fusiform face area in processing facial expressions.

Question 9

You have just joined a psychology lab and are working with a group of researchers who are interested in how the brain responds to different kinds of facial expressions (e.g. happy, scared, angry, etc.). They ask you if you have any ideas for experiments. You suggest that knowing whether the overall electrical activity of the brain changes immediately after processing happy or scared faces might tell you something about how the brain perceives emotion. If you hypothesize that the electrical response of the brain may vary across different kinds of facial expressions, what method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis?
A)ERP (event-related potentials)
B)a computerized axial tomography (CT) scan
C)transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
D)None of these method would be appropriate to test that hypothesis.
E)A functional MRI (fMRI)

Accepted Answer

ERP (event-related potentials) is a method that measures the brain's electrical response to specific sensory, cognitive, or motor events, making it suitable for testing how the brain's electrical activity changes in response to different facial expressions.

Quiz 3: Biological Foundations of Behaviour

You have just woken up from a dream and can hardly believe your brain was capable of creating such a realistic feeling version of reality that seems to exist nowhere but your own mind. Which of these neural structures is most closely associated with the experience you just had?