Fall 2008 認知神經科學導論作業題目

Ch5 Sensation & Perception

1. Define the physiological concepts of receptive field and visual area. How is the receptive field of a cell established? How are the boundaries between visual areas identified? Can either receptive fields or visual areas be studied noninvasively in humans? (p. 206)


Ch 6 Object Recognition

1. What are some of the differences between processing in the dorsal and ventral visual pathways? In what ways are these differences useful? In what ways is it misleading to imply a functional dichotomy of two distinct visual pathways? (p.256)

2. As part of a debating team, you are assigned the task of defending the hypothesis that the brain has evolved a specialized system for perceiving faces. What arguments will you use to make your case? Now change sides. Defend the argument that face perception reflects the operation of a highly experienced system that is good at making the discriminations.


Ch7 The control of action

1. (舊版第一題) (請有舊版的人提供題目，謝謝！)

2. What is the difference between the pyramidal and extrapyramidal motor pathways? What type of movement disorder would you expect to see if the pyramidal tract were damaged? How would extrapyramidal damage differ? (p.311)

3. Why do people with Parkinson’s disease have difficulty moving? Provide an explanation based on the physiological properties of the basal ganglia. Why does dopamine replacement therapy improve their condition?


Ch8 Learning and Memory

1. Patient H.M. and others with damage to the medial temporal lop develop amnesia. What form of amnesia do they develop? For example, is it like the amnesia most often shown in Hollywood movies? What information can such amnesia patients retain, what can they learn, and what does this tell us about how memories are encoded in the brain? (p.362)

2. Can you ride a bike? Do you remember learning to ride a two-wheeler? Can you describe to others the principles of riding a bike? Do you think that, if you gave a detailed set of instructions to another person who had never ridden a bike, he or she could carefully study your instructions and then hop on a bike and ride happily off into the sunset? If not, why not?

3. Relate models of long-term potentiation (LTP) to changing weights in connectionist networks. What constrains do cognitive neuroscience findings place on connectionist model of memory?


Ch10

1. How might the mental lexicon be organized in the brain? Would we expect to find it localized in a particular spot in the context? If not, why not?

2. What evidence exists for the role of the right hemisphere in language processing? If the right hemisphere has a role in language, what might that role be?


Ch 12 Attention and Consciousness

1. Do we perceive everything that strikes the retina? If not, does something interfere with vision? What might be the fate of stimuli that we do not perceive but that nonetheless stimulate our sensory receptor?

2. Are the same brain mechanisms involved when we focus our intention voluntarily as when our attention is captured by a sensory event, such as a flash of light?