Review Questions for Psych 345 Final Exam
Winter 2000

NOTE: This is a collection of the questions the students in this class generated for an exam review.  They do not cover every line of the study guide, but they do touch on the major topics.  They will allow you to gauge how well prepared you are for this exam. They are in no particular order.

What is a system for maintaining and manipulating information to perform complex cognitive activities called? working memory.

Kinsbourne proposed a model to explain performance asymmetries between the two hemispheres, which claims that attention is directed contralateral to the more active hemisphere with a particular task.  What is the name of that model? The activation-orienting model

By removing this location of the brain, as was done in H.M., patient’s experience global amnesia, thus demonstrating it’s importance in memory functions. medial temporal lobe or hippocampus

Explain how the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task can demonstrate frontal lobe syndrome. The WCST demonstrates a difficulty with perseveration, one of the main symptoms of frontal lobe syndrome.  The patient realizes that the rule has changed but has an inability and difficulty changing sets.  The WCST also shows that the patient exhibits rule breaking behavior, another frontal lobe dysfunction.

Explain why Sperry's lab had success demonstrating the asymmetries of disconnection syndrome. Sperry's lab ensured lateralized input to the hemispheres.  Sperry's patients had a complete callosal callosal sectioning.  Their success inspired the study of laterality in the normal brain.

How can information get from one hemisphere to the other in split brain patients? externalization or cross-cueing

One-third of cortical tissue is… Prefrontal cortex

All of the following are symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease except:
neurofibrillary tangles
senile plaques
lewy bodies
amyloid protein deposits

In the Wernicke-Geshwind model, this area is important for forming coordinated plans for language production. Broca's Area (brodmann area 44)

What is the neural pathway for the generation of  spontaneous speech according to the Wernicke-Geschwind model? Cognition-->Wernicke's Area-->arcuate fasciculus-->Broca's Area-->Primary motor cortex

A patient comes in and you would like to know if he is experiencing frontal lobe damage, first you rub a spoon across the patients lips, then you place a popsicle in the middle of his hand, then you use an object that the patient favors and move it in all directions within his reach? What factor are you testing for? Frontal Release signs

Baddeley's tripartite model of Working Memory (discussed in lecture) hypothesizes that the left hemisphere is specialized for what particular component? Verbal-Phonological loop

When a frontal lobe patient is asked to draw a copy of a picture, they may superimpose is on the original copy due to stimulus capture. What does this tell us about a role of the frontal lobes for normal subjects who can copy the picture correctly? Stimulus-bound reflexes are inhibited by the frontal lobes

What's the neurotransmitter blocked by amyloid plaques and neurofibiliary tangles in Alzheimer's Disease? Acetylcholine. 

Which Brodmann area is utilized in the delayed saccade task; if this area is lesioned, one is not able to perform the task. Area 46

Which of the following are you least likely to observe when a subject is performing a dichotic listening task?
        A. Right ear advantage with linguistic information
        B. Left ear advantage with melodies
        C. Left ear information is more strongly projected to the left hemisphere then it is to the right
             hemisphere.
        D. Ipsilateral projections from each ear are supressed.

What is the difference between top-down processing and bottom-down processing in the context of the frontal lobe? Top down processing is when sensory functioning is modulated by a higher order modality (i.e. prefrontal has control of motor cortex).  Bottom up is when sensory modalities modulate the activity of a higher order modality (i.e. convergence of sensory info in the prefrontal cortex).

A patient U.M., who has sustained a stroke in his cerebral cortex, is given a task.  He is shown a large block letter "S" that is entirely composed of small O's.  A few minutes later he is instructed to recreate the visual image to the best of his ability.  U.M. works diligently, but is only able to complete a picture in which only the large block "S" is drawn. None of the small O's that comprised the "S" were included in his dipiction. U.M. most probably sustained a stroke in which hemisphere? Left Hemisphere.

According to the top-down model, what part of the brain selectively processes information received from various modalities? the frontal lobe

Q: Where would the Wernike- Geschwind model predict the lesion site to be in a patient with Conduction Aphasia? Arcuate fasciculus.

What layer of the Hippocampus is most affected by anoxia?  How do we know this?

Name the five main specialized regions of the corpus collosum and discuss what cortices each interconnects.
Rostrum = prefrontal cortex
Genu = prefrontal cortex
Rostral Body = superior frontal & motor cortex
Caudal Body = parietal/somatosensory & temporal/auditory
Splenium = visual areas in temporal/parietal & occipital cortices

According to the Wernicke-Geschwind model, Wernicke's Area does not store meaning.  The area's importance, therefore, stems from its ability to do what important task? Wernicke's area stores memories of sound sequences in the form of a code which is then translated into phonological forms that can access meaning from a network of brain areas.

For which aphasia is Melodic Intonation Therapy a fairly effective approach? Broca's Aphasia

What is the term used to describe the flashing of an object for less than 200 msec in the visual field? tachistoscopic presentation
 
What is the term used to describe simultaneous input that is different for each ear? dichotic listening 

What structure is responsiible of the translation of grapheme to phoneme so it can be accessible for wernicke's area? angular gyrus

What was discovered to be separable from other brain language systems according to studies of left-handed callosotomy patients? The Grapho-Motor Module (or the ability to write)

What is the term for an inability to learn consciously or remember any new information? Anterograde Amnesia

Accoring to the Banich study, as task difficulty increases, which type of hemispheric processing is beneficial? bilateral

There is a double dissociation within _________________ because some patients can access semantic knowledge of man-made but not living things, and some patients can access semantic knowledge of living things but not man-made objects. category-specific deficits

This model proposes that the hemisphere which first receives information also processes it, and that there isn't any need for the information to be transferred to the hemisphere dominant for its processing. It's based on the assumption that both hemispheres can process all types of information to some degree. What is the name of this model? Direct Access Model

A seizure that has no particular cause is called what? idiopathic

If a patient presents symptoms of fluent nonsensical reptitious speech with impaired comprehension, where would be the most likely place of his lesion? Anterior or posterior to Wernicke's Area or the Angular Gyrus.

Suppose a patient is admitted to your hospital with known damage to their frontal lobe.  What signs of this frontal lobe damage would you expect to see? Frontal Release Signs, the re-emergence of "primitive" reflexes, such as grasping groping and sucking reflexes. Also there could be stimulus-capture-utilization (stimulus driven) behavior.

Based on the neuroimaging brain scans during verbal and spatial working memory tasks, Reuter-Lorenz et al. found that older people use both sider of the brain more than young.  What does this suggest? This might show plasticity of the brain late in life to cope with age-related loss.

Because this type of dementia originates in the _______ lobe, the first symptoms are usually social problems.  Which type of dementia is this? frontal, Pick’s disease.

Transcortical Motor aphasia (TMA) is a milder form of Broca's aphasia because ________  is intact in TMA and not in Broca's aphasia. repetition

In the text, there is extensive discussion of Baddeley's Working Memory Model. There are three critical components to this model. Please name them:
1)Central Executive
2)Visuo-spatial scratch pad
3) Phonological loop

Behavior, without goal representation, is determined by what? reflex, habit, and past rewards

What evidence is there that Broca's Aphasia is not merely a motor dysfunction? No dysfluency after paralysis caused by a damaged right hemisphere.

When a subject being observed under PET identifies a tool and the left premotor area is activated, what is the tool’s semantic representation in the brain? Tools are semantically represented in the brain by function.

Name three possible causes of DAT and then give examples for each cause.
A slow virus-Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Immunological abnormalitites
A genetic predisposition to the disease
Abnormally high levels of aluminium in brain tissue