155a practice midterm

1. Humans have the highest degree of encephalization (e.g. cortical excess) in the animal kingdom. This was most likely drive by the need to do what? In other words, what is the best predictor of encephalization?

A. Innovate new tools

B. Imitate each other

C. Manage larger social groups

D. All of the above

c

2. Of the different neuroimaging techniques, fMRI has pretty good __________, but less good ________.

A. temporal resolution; spatial resolution

B. spatial resolution; temporal resolution

C. cost effectiveness, spatial resolution

D. cost effectiveness, temporal resolution

b

3. Which type of cut could expose the entire midline of the brain without damaging any of the lobes of the brain (i.e. split the brain into a left and right side)?

A. Axial

B. Coronal

C. Transverse

D. Sagittal

d

4. Pulling apart the Sylvian Fissure (a large sulcus which separates the temporal lobe from the parietal and frontal lobes), reveals this "hidden" part of cortex, which is relevant to social pain.

A. Temporal Pole

B. Insula

C. Dorsal Anterior Cingulate (dACC)

D. Primary Motor Area

b

5. Univariate analysis of the Fusiform Face Area shows more activation to faces than other stimuli, but that it doesn't respond differently to happy or sad faces. If you wanted to know if it represents these faces differently in subtle ways, the appropriate technique would be _______

A. Functional connectivity analysis

B. Neural synchrony analysis

C. Multivoxel pattern analysis

D. None of these

c

6. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC):

A. is sensitive to social rejection

B. is one of the central regions involved in mentalizing

C. helps us compare values of objects (for example, the value of apples versus oranges)

D. helps us infer other's intentions by simulating their actions

c

7. Which of the following statements is true about the overlap between mentalizing and the default mode network?

A. The overlap suggests that mentalizing is occurring during even very brief ( < 2 seconds) moments of rest between tasks in fMRI studies

B. Regions commonly active at rest are also recruited when thinking about other minds

C. The overlap means that social cognition and non-social cognition are processed by the same lateral prefrontal system

D. False-belief reasoning depends mainly on the amygdala and superior parietal lobule

b

8. Angelina fears that her partner will dump her later that day. Based on the studies discussed in class, what is one thing Angelina could to that would decrease activity in the part of her brain that causes distress.

A. Meditate

B. Take Tylenol

C. Go shopping with her friends

D. Treat herself to an ice cream sandwich

b

9. How do ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum (VS) respond to the anticipation and outcome of reward according to the Diekhof meta-analysis looking across many studies reviewed in class.

A. VMPFC responds during the anticipation phase

B. VMPFC responds more to anticipation than outcome

C. VS responds more to anticipation than outcome

D. Both A and B are true

c

10. Studies that ask subjects to think about what another person might think, feel, or believe all study this process:

A. reward learning

B. mentalizing

C. implicit learning

D. social pain

b

11. The same mirror neurons fire when a monkey sees a hand picking up a block as when the monkey sees a hand going to pick up an occluded (hidden) block. What does this tell us about mirror neurons?

A. They code for goals

B. They code for the beginning of the action (i.e. the initiation)

C. They are part of a larger network that fires whenever a monkey sees someone picking things up

D. The context of the action matters more than the action itself

a

12. Catmur & Heyes (2008) had participants sometimes "counter mirror" observed actions (that is, perform a different action associated with an observed action) and sometimes imitate

observed actions (produce the same action). The researchers found that the mirror neuron system:

A. engages more strongly to imitation trials compared to counter mirroring trials

B. engages more strongly to counter mirroring trials compared to imitation trials

C. engages mirror system during counter mirroring trials, but only if mentalizing system is also engaged

D. none of the above

b

13. The Mentalizing network has a high degree of overlap with the _______.

A. Default Mode Network

B. Limbic system

C. Social pain network

D. Visual Cortex

a

14. Successfully understanding an instance of sarcasm (i.e. thinking about what the other person truly feels despite the words they use) requires:

A. Theory of Mind

B. That you feel their same emotion

C. Mentalizing

D. Both A. and C.

d

15. According to social neuroscience research, why does the brain recruit the default mode network during rest?

A. To consolidate episodic memories

B. To prepare for upcoming attentional effort

C. To prepare to see others more psychologically

D. To reduce metabolic energy consumption

c

16. According to Daniel Dennett, the example of Punch & Judy's puppet show demonstrates that a good way to see if someone has a 'theory of mind' is:

A. whether one knows that if a person points to something, they probably want it

B. whether, after an experimenter secretly puts a sticker on one's forehead, they immediately touch the sticker upon seeing their face in a mirror

C. whether one understands that other people can have mental states that are different from one's own

D. whether, when alone in a room with candy they were instructed not to eat, one is able to resist eating the candy.

c

17. If a person is performing a working memory task, one would expect the default mode network to be ____ when they get a trial right and to be ____ when they get a trial wrong

A. Less active; more active

B. More active; less active

C. more functionally connected to working memory regions; less functionally connected to working memory regions

D. less functionally connected to working memory regions; more functionally connected to working memory regions

a

18. Sulci refer to ____ while gyri refers to ____

A. grey matter; white matter

B. white matter; grey matter

C. the part of the cortex you can see; the cortex hidden in the crevices

D. the cortex hidden in the crevices; the part of the cortex you can see

d

19. The ____ part of the visual pathway has neurons that ____

A. View-dependent; only respond to faces from a particular perspective

B. View-dependent; only respond if you are at eye level with the person you are looking at

C. View-invariant; only respond to faces from a particular perspective

D. View-invariant; only respond if you are at eye level with the person you are looking at

a

20. The amygdala responds in the following way to emotional faces

A. It responds the same way to each of the basic emotions

B. It only responds to fear faces

C. It responds to many emotional expressions, but responds more to fear faces

D. It responds fearful and happy faces more than the other emotions

c

21. Nancy Kanwisher and colleagues provided the initial fMRI evidence for the fusiform face area (FFA) by showing that:

A. Activity in the fusiform gyrus correlated with self-reported attractiveness of faces

B. A region on the ventral surface of the temporal lobe responded more to faces than to other object categories, and this was reliable across individual participants

C. Face-selective cells in the fusiform gyrus preferentially fire to inverted rather than upright faces

D. Lesions to the fusiform gyrus produced selective deficits in recognizing emotional expressions

b

22. A TMS study targeting the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) found that disrupting this region made participants worse at processing ________ biological motion but did not significantly impair their processing of ________ biological motion, suggesting that pSTS is specifically responsible for ________ processing.

A. inverted; upright; feature-by-feature

B. upright; inverted; configural

C. upright; inverted; feature-by-feature

D. inverted; upright; configural

b

23. In one of the first fMRI studies of social reward, Izuma and colleagues (2008) had participants in the scanner receive positive feedback from other people about themselves. They found that:

A. Positive social feedback activated the amygdala more than monetary reward

B. Positive social feedback activated the ventral striatum in a way that resembled the response to monetary reward

C. Positive social feedback activated only medial prefrontal cortex, not reward regions

D. Social feedback produced reward responses only when participants knew the evaluator personally

b

24. In an fMRI study of the ultimatum game published by Lieberman and colleagues in 2008, the researchers wanted to show that the brain is responding to fairness itself, not just to the amount of money received. To separate fairness from monetary value, they:

A. Asked participants to explicitly rate how fair each offer felt before making a decision

B. Manipulated whether the proposer was a human or a computer

C. Compared offers that delivered the same amount of money to the participant but differed in their fairness (e.g., $5 out of a $10 stake vs. $5 out of a $23 stake)

D. Measured neural activity only on trials where the participant rejected the offer

c

25. The original claim that mirror neurons are the neural basis of "action understanding" has been challenged. Which of the following findings would be evidence AGAINST the strong version of this claim (i.e., that mirror neurons are necessary and specific for understanding observed actions)?

A. Patients with significant damage to mirror system regions can still correctly identify the goals of observed actions in many cases

B. The mapping between observed actions and mirror neuron responses can be reversed through training (e.g., counter-mirroring), suggesting the relationship is learned rather than innate to action understanding

C. Brain regions outside the mirror system, including mentalizing regions, also activate when people observe others' actions, particularly when inferring intentions

D. Both A & B are true

d

26. The figure above shows the two major visual processing streams originating in occipital cortex. Pathway 1 (traveling toward the parietal lobe) and Pathway 2 (traveling toward the inferior temporal lobe) correspond to which of the following?

A. 1 = the "what" pathway; 2 = the "where" pathway

B. 1 = the "where" pathway; 2 = the "what" pathway

C. 1 = the low road; 2 = the high road

D. Both B and C are correct 37. What

b

27. What imaging technology is being shown in the picture above

A. Functional MRI

B. Structural MRI

C. Functional NIRS

D. EEG

c

28. According to Eisenberger and Lieberman's "neural alarm system" account of social pain, the _______ supports social pain by helping to _______ and generate distress.

A. Amygdala; detect discrepances

B. dACC; detect discrepances

C. Amygdala; encode intensity

D. dACC; encode intensity

b

29. It is generally accepted that that social attachment "piggybacked" onto the pain system. The most likely evolutionary rationale that helps explain this is that:

A. Physical pain evolved after social cognition

B. Feeling hurt by separation would help keep immature and vulnerable mammals close to caregivers

C. Social pain requires less energy in the brain than physical pain

D. Pain made social interactions more memorable, which supports social cognition

b

30. Paola is thinking about all the fun she will have at a happy hour with her friends. While she thinks about the upcoming event, the feeling of reward is most attributable to activity in which brain region?

A. Anterior insula

B. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

C. Ventral striatum

D. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

c

31. Research on social reward is interesting, in part, because it suggests that

A. social and non-social rewards are processed very differently by the brain

B. people are intrinsically interested in both their own and others well-being

C. people appear to care for others but this is driven by social norms

D. all of the above

b

32. As visual information goes from the retina to the primary visual cortex it can most accurately be described as moving:

A. Lateral to medial

B. Ventral to dorsal

C. Inferior to superior

D. Anterior to posterior

d

33. When you look at an object, information is first passed from your retina to primary visual cortex (V1). As information about the object moves from V1 towards the ________, it picks up clarity and becomes "higher resolution", encoding ________ the object is.

A. Temporal Pole; What

B. Posterior cingulate cortex; What

C. Temporal Pole; Where

D. Posterior cingulate cortex; Where

a

34. The perception of _______ works differently than other emotions in that the information reaches its target brain region _______ than the perception of other emotions.

A. Fear; faster

B. Sadness; slower

C. Surprise; faster

D. Joy; slower.

a