NEURO 212 Exam 2 Review

Attention is what we call the mechanisms that ___________________ resources in order to preferentially process information which is deemed most relevant to our well-being.

prioritize

A key characteristic of attention is _____________________. Attended information is processed __________________ and more accurately than unattended information.

selectivity, faster

Attention is _____________________ in that we can only attend effectively to a limited amount information.

capacity-limited

When participants were asked to detect a target stimulus in a rapid stream of stimuli, the detection of subsequent targets is poor if they follow the first target closely in time. This phenomenon is known as what?

attentional blink

When participants are asked to stare at a point of fixation on a screen and their eyes waver to certain other portions of the screen, this is known as what phenomenon?

covert attention

Attention can be allocated to external as well as to internal information and can be focused on different _________________ modalities.

sensory

Attention and arousal are the same thing.

False

In relation to attention, arousal is ____________________.

global

Attention varies with arousal in a _________________ fashion.

inverted U-shape

Attention can be guided __________________ aka top-down by our internal goals.

endogenously

Attention can be guided exogenously aka ____________________ by salient stimuli in the environment.

bottom-up

The Posner task demonstrates that target detection times are __________________ following valid cues (arrows in the direction of target) and slowest during invalid cues.

fastest

An attentional capture study aims to assess _________________ attention by presenting salient but task-irrelevant stimuli.

exogenous

The attentional capture effect is ___________________ and reverses if the salient distracter precedes the target by more than 300 ms. This is known as _________________________.

short-lived, inhibition of return

Top-down and bottom-up attentional systems interact through the concept of ______________ _______________. This was shown in Folk et al where participants were asked to detect a red equal sign target. Their attention was captured "bottom up" on the condition that the salient stimulus was also red. Sudden on-set cues of other colors did not capture attention.

contingent capture

The ability of a stimulus to attract attention (salience) is dependent on both top-down (relevance to state of mind) and bottom-up processing (physical aspects).

True

During visual searches, attention can be guided to __________________ locations and to stimulus __________________.

spatial, features

During searches, top-down feature-based AND spatial attention work hand-in-hand.

True

Advocates of this phenomenon contend that unattended stimuli are fully processed before attention operates.

late-selection

Advocates of this phenomenon contend that unattended stimuli are NOT fully processed before attention operates.

early-selection

Selection for attention is strongly ____________________ and varies with the nature of task-relevant and irrelevant stimuli.

context-dependent

Perceptual Load Theory proposes that if the task-relevant stimuli have a high load, no spare attention is available for processing _____________________ stimuli (early selection).

irrelevant

Perceptual Load Theory proposes that if the task-relevant stimuli have a ________ load, spare attention will be allocated to irrelevant stimuli (late selection).

low

Inhibition of return is observed with endogenous attention.

False

Longer time intervals after the cue during an exogenous attention experiment promote ___________________ of new, previously unattended environmental elements.

exploration

In EEG recordings of visual stimuli in the left visual field visual spatial attention enhances the ________________ of sensory P1/N1 ERP components.

amplitude

Stimulation and attentional effects are strongly ___________________ over early visual regions in response to visual stimuli.

lateralized

If a visual stimulus is delivered in the left visual field, attentional effects will be seen in the visual cortex in what cerebral hemisphere?

right

Studies using fMRI have shown that spatial attention modulates early visual processing (V2-V4) in a ______________________ fashion.

retinotopically-organized

fMRI studies finding visual spatial attention activity in V1 and thalamus can be attributed to ________________ activity.

reentrant

Attention does not affect the ___________________ of visual neurons.

selectivity (attention does not sharpen the tuning curve)

Attention imposes a __________________ gain on neuronal responses.

multiplicative

Pairing a suboptimal stimulus with an optimal stimulus will lead to less intense activation of visual neurons toward the optimal stimulus. However, attention can ________ this response, keeping visual neuron activation high.

bias

In ____ neurons, neuronal responses depend on the locus of attention within the receptive field.

V4

If attention is directed out of the visual receptive field of a V4 neuron, will the response to the effective stimulus be modulated?

No

At higher level visual cortex, where receptive fields are larger, even if ignored stimuli are far away from the attended one, attention modulated neuronal responses to the attended stimulus.

True

Attending to a specific stimulus feature (motion/color) enhances activity in the ________________ visual regions to support processing of that feature.

extrastriate

Feature-based and spatial attention have _______________ effects on neuronal firing rates of visual neurons.

additive

Feature-based attention enhances responses in feature-preferring neurons _____________ ______ ______________ visual field.

across the entire

In fMRI studies, visual BOLD responses to an ignored stimulus are _______________ when the ignored feature matches the attended feature in a different part of the visual field.

enhanced

In Bichot et al, V4 neurons fire vigorously when their _______________ feature fell into the receptive field and that the feature was the target of their current search.

preferred

Feature-based attention _____________ spatial attention to task-relevant stimuli in the visual field.

guides

What is the disorder in which patients are unable to attend to elements in their left personal space, extrapersonal space, or internal memory representations?

hemi-spatial neglect

Patients with hemi-spatial neglect syndrome have a dysfunction in their visual cortex or eyesight.

False

Patients with neglect syndrome can attend to objects in their left side in _________________ but will fail to notice the item in the presence of another object in their right visual field. This shows the right object wins the _____________________ for attentional resources.

isolation, competition

Neglect syndrome is seen in patients with lesions in what part of the brain?

right inferior parietal cortex

Neglect syndrome is a dissociation syndrome that disrupts what side of the spatial attention network?

Right

Which attentional period (cue or target) reflects pure top-down attention?

cue

Which attentional period (cue or target) reflects a mixture of processes, including detection and response selection?

target

What 2 brain regions have studies shown are important for top-down attentional orienting? ("b-" first)

bilateral frontal eye-field (FEF) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC)

Cue period activity during an attentional experiment is defined as being more activated during neutral or directed cues?

directed

Attending to space and attending to stimulus features recruits ____________________ frontal and parietal regions which suggests ______________ sources of spatial and feature-based attention.

overlapping, shared

Combined EEG and fMRI studies indicate that more ____________ frontal and parietal regions are involved in general cue processing.

lateral

Combined EEG and fMRI studies indicate that more _______________ brain regions are involved in spatial-orienting processing.

medial

Which is activated first in attentional processing, FEF or PPC?

FEF

Attentional orienting and biasing of sensory processing originates in which region of the top-down attentional network?

frontal

What is the phenomenon through which biasing of sensory cortices can be observed prior to presentation of target stimuli?

baseline activity shift (enhances responsiveness of regions to target stimuli)

Studying the neural correlates of exogenous orienting is hard to study because it is tricky to _____________________ the visual responses to a salient stimuli from the attentional orienting response.

dissociate

Some studies that try to work around the challenges of studying exogenous attentional systems claim that the same ___________ frontal and parietal regions are involved in exogenous and endogenous orienting.

dorsal

In exogenous attention studies, researchers claim that _____________ activity may precede ______________ activity when attention is captured bottom-up.

parietal, frontal

Based on fMRI studies of exogenous attention, researchers have found that invalidly cued trials lead to right-lateralized ventral attention network consisting of what phenomenon?

right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ and inferior cortex)

Corbetta and Schulman developed the dual attention systems theory which consists of a right ______________ bottom-up system and a bilateral _______________ top-down system.

ventral, dorsal

The status of the ventral system of the dual attention systems theory is slightly uncertain as recent data suggests that the ventral system only responds to task-irrelevant stimuli that _____________ stimulus features with currently task-relevant stimuli. This phenomenon is known as ___________________ ________________.

share, contingent capture

What is one way researchers have gotten around the sluggish BOLD response in fMRI studies with both cue and target periods?

longer cue-target intervals

Psychologist Donald Hebb proposed that memories are stored in distributed _______ __________________.

cell assemblies

The phenomenon of when pre-synaptic and post-synaptic neurons fire together, their connection strengthens is known as?

Hebbian learning (cells that fire together, wire together, less input needed to stimulate post-synaptic neuron in the future)

Biological and empirical support for Hebbian learning is rooted in this phenomenon where strong action potentials from a pre-synaptic neuron results in higher responsiveness of the post-synaptic neuron to future inputs.

long-term potentiation (LTP)

One crucial aspect of LTP through which inactive synapses are NOT potentiated.

specificity

One crucial aspect of LTP through which other active synapses ARE potentiated.

associativity (simultaneous strong stimulation of a pathway may activate other neighboring pathways)

The medial temporal lobe is an important brain region for the _______________ of certain memories.

encoding

The MTL consists of the hippocampus and underlying parahippocampal gyrus which can be broken down into the posterior parahippocampal cortex and anterior rhinal cortex which CONSIST of the ________ and ________.

LPC (lateral perirhinal cortex), MEC (medial enthorhinal cortex)

The perirhinal and parahippocampal corticies project to the hippocampus via what MTL region?

enthorhinal cortex

The perirhinal and parahippocampal corticies receive inputs from what brain regions?

association areas (frontal, parietal, temporal, and cingulate cortex)

The hippocampus passes information to the thalamus through what brain regions?

fornix and mammillary bodies

What surgical procedure did HM undergo?

bilateral temporal lobectomy

What type of condition did HM have after surgery?

anterograde amnesia (unable to produce new declarative memories)

HM could not acquire new skills (non-declarative memories).

False

This task done with patient HM showed that HM could still acquire implicit information through conditioning.

mirror-drawing task

HM's case study is evidence that the MTL is crucial for the encoding of ______________________ memories.

declarative

The MTL is crucial for working-memory.

False

The MTL stores declarative memories.

False (the MTL helps encode declarative memories which are then stored in the neocortex)

Priming is a type of non-declarative memory.

True

Memories case studies demonstrate that there is more than 1 memory system.

True

Semantic memory is a form of non-declarative memory.

False (it is declarative)

A strong ______________ __________ is observed in free word recall tasks reflecting working memory is at play.

recency effect

In free word recall tasks, distractions between list-learning and recall abolishes the recency effect (working memory) but not recall of earlier words which is a sign of what type of memory?

long-term memory

Slower presentation of words during word free recall tasks improves the recency effect.

False

Slower presentation of words during the word free recall task improves long-term memory.

True

Will MTL lesion amnesiacs be able to express the recency effect?

Yes (MTL lesions do not affect working memory, they will just not be able to have long-term memory)

Patient KC had damage to what brain region?

Left temporo-parietal cortex

Patient KC's damage affected what type of memory?

working memory

Patient KC is evidence of double-dissociation between independent working memory and long-term memory systems.

True

This theory of memory consolidation assumes that the hippocampus rapidly encodes new events or concepts and then slowly transfers them to neocortical neurons.

Standard Model

This memory consolidation renders the hippocampus important for making connections to the neocortex at first, but overtime it becomes redundant.

Standard Model

According to the Standard Model, is the hippocampus required to retrieve a consolidated memory?

No

Non-consolidated memories require hippocampal activation according to which model?

Standard Model

Retrograde amnesia in MTL patients losing autobiographical memories is evidence for which consolidation model?

multiple-trace model

The multiple trace theory states all _________________ memories are dependent by the hippocampus.

episodic

Repeated retrieval of memories lays down additional memory traces in the MTL according to what consolidation model?

multiple-trace model

One similarity between the standard and multiple-trace models is that the hippocampus learns ___________ while the neocortex learns ___________.

fast, slow