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EPPP Flashcard Study System: EPPP Test Practice Questions and Exam Review (2020)

Achieve certification success with EPPP Flashcard Study System: EPPP Test Practice Questions and Exam Review (2020) , a structured guide designed to simplify complex topics and enhance your understanding.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Describe the basic process whereby information is transmitted within the brain.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior The brain is made up of neurons, or nerve cells. Each neuron has extensions, or branches, called axons and dendrites. Dendrites are extensions that receive messages from another neuron. Axons are extensions that send messages to another neuron. The gap between one neuron’s axon and another’s dendrite is called a synapse. The synapse is the location where a chemical exchange takes place. This change in chemical secretions is how the brain conveys information. When a synapse occurs between neurons, the specific message being sent advances from one nerve cell to the next. Messages are transmitted from neuron to neuron along neural pathways until they reach their destinations.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Differentiate between sensation and perception. Summarize the general neuroanatomy involved in transforming sensations to perceptions.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior Sensations are the result of our senses collecting and registering input from our environment. Our eyes see images, our ears hear sounds, our skin is involved in our sense of touch, our noses smell, and our tongues taste. However, sensations by themselves do not mean anything to us without perception. Perception is how our brains interpret the signals received by our senses. Generally, after sensory signals enter the respective sensory organs, they are transmitted by nerves from these organs to the brain. Different nerves do this job, depending on the sense organ involved. Each organ is innervated with specific nerves. Each nerve carries different sensory information to a particular area of the brain that is responsible for processing that specific sense. Our brains interpret sensory signals to make sense of them. For example, an image seen by the eyes is interpreted as something recognizable, such as a person or a tree; sounds heard by the ears are interpreted as birdsong, human speech, music, or noise; etc.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Define the term prosopagnosia. Describe the demands the visual stimuli of faces make on our perceptual mechanisms. Explain how current neuroimaging technology can inform prosopagnosia research and treatment.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition. A colloquial description for it is “face blindness.” Individuals with prosopagnosia cannot recognize faces, even ones that are extremely familiar—spouses, family members, best friends, pictures of their country’s president, etc. They know who the people are once they are told, but cannot identify them by their faces. According to neuropsychologists, faces make maximal demands on our visual perception systems. In fact, faces are some of the most “compelling” visual stimuli we see. With advances in technology, researchers have been able to look beyond one region of the brain. In doing so, they have discovered that multiple parts of the brain are involved in face recognition. The right fusiform region, for example, plays a key part. Additionally, information is distributed evenly among anterior temporal regions. These regions, which are part of a network, respond differently to identities in clear patterns. Scientists hope to develop treatments for prosopagnosia using this knowledge.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Identify some recent discoveries by neuropsychologists that have changed beliefs about face recognition. Explain how these beliefs have changed and the implications for research and treatment.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior Until recently, scientists believed that face recognition—the ability to identify someone’s face as belonging to someone we know each time we see it—was governed by only a couple of areas of the brain. However, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University discovered that, actually, an entire network of different areas within the cerebral cortex interact and collaborate during the task of face recognition. This will change the types of research questions researchers ask in the future, because they will no longer focus their study on just one area of the brain. Instead, scientists will need to study the “system as a whole” to develop an understanding of how we individuate faces. In addition to these implications for research, this discovery may help in the development of treatments for prosopagnosia, or “face blindness.” Individuals with this disorder cannot recognize even the most familiar faces on sight.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Explain how spatial maps function as neural correlates of attention, and include examples related to visual perception.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior Spatial maps increase or decrease neural activity in various brain areas that process different sensory information. They can stimulate orienting behaviors such as eye movements in the case of visual stimuli. They function at different levels in a hierarchy. In the dorsolateral frontal cortex, the frontal eye fields (the top of the hierarchy) have a spatial map revolving around the retina that enhances cortical responses to visual stimuli. The parietal cortex (the next level of the hierarchy) has various spatial maps. The lateral inter-parietal area has a map for saliency, and is interconnected with sensory brain areas and the frontal eye fields. At the sub-cortical level, the superior colliculi manage automatic responses related to attention, such as orienting to more prominent stimuli. At the level of neural networks, lateral inhibition and similar processes are believed to influence competitive selection, which is the way in which our working memory selects and pays attention to some information above other information.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Identify a neural correlate of attention. Summarize a recent general neural model of attention with four basic processes.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior A neural correlate of attention is the enhancement of neuronal firing. If a neuron fires in response to a stimulus even when the individual is not attending to it, it will fire more strongly when the individual is attending to it. The four basic processes of a recent general neural model of attention are: (1) working memory, which retains information momentarily to be analyzed; (2) competitive selection, wherein some information competes to access our working memory over other information; (3) “top-down sensitivity control,” whereby higher-order cognitive processes can control signal intensities; and (4) occasional stimuli or ones that are important from an instinctive or biological perspective (also known as “bottom-up saliency filters”), which automatically increase our neural responses. In information channels that compete for use of our working memory, working memory influences our voluntary control of attention by affecting which new information we select.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior © Mometrix Media - flashcardsecrets.com/eppp EPPP Exam Describe some recent discoveries regarding neural correlates of memory and the implications of these discoveries.

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    Biological Bases of Behavior Scientists traditionally assumed that we recall memories due to external stimuli that act as cues. Recently, however, researchers have found that brain activity levels before retrieval from storage are correlated with memory. By measuring theta brainwaves, scientists found that high rates of theta waves in human subjects before they were prompted to recall memorized words and their contexts were associated with better memory performance. Theta brainwaves (when produced along with other frequencies) are associated with the brain actively monitoring or exploring something. Rats, for example, display more theta waves when exploring mazes. Researchers concluded that this is an indication that the brain is mostly occupied with internal activities unrelated to external stimuli. The brain does not wait for external stimuli. Instead, external stimuli interact with the brain’s spontaneous internal activity patterns. Scientists wonder if we can voluntarily adjust our brains for better recall. If so, it could improve treatments for memory loss.

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