Chapter 3 - Studies

Question 1

What was the significance of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga’s study on behaviour in split brain patients?

Answer 1

They had patients fixate on the center of the screen, a picture was on the right VF while a word was presented in the left VF. (VF go to opposite sides of the brain in regular patients). Then participants were asked to either draw or describe what they saw.

Results: Patients repsponded verbally to the object in the right visual field, but drew the object in the left

RIGHT = LANGUAGE
LEFT = CREATIVE
The two hemispheres of the brain could no longer communicate and couldn’t agree on what the person saw. Now, things from the LVF project into the RH where spatial processing is dominant, and things from the RVF project into the LH where language is dominant.

Question 2

What were the results of the experient conducted by RQ Quiroga and collegues (2005) where they recorded patients brain activity with electrodes when they viewed different stimuli?

Answer 2

They found that neurons showed very high selectivity. In particular, one neuron in the Right Hippocampus responded to different representations of actress Halle Berry, but not other actresses. It included photographs of her, a caricature and even her written name. A similar neuron was found for Jennifer Aniston.

Evidence for Specificity Encoding - object is encoded by the response of a singular neuron also known as the Grandmother Cell Theory

Question 3

What was found in Lettvin’s (1959) study on frogs?

Answer 3

There is a neuron in their brain that responds only to small dots moving in certain patterns

Question 4

What was found in Hubel and Weisel’s (1959) experiment on cats?

Answer 4

There are neurons in cats visual cortx that respond to bard of light with specific widths as well as orientations and directions of motion.

Question 5

What did Kanwisher (1997) find in their analysis of FMRI data when participants looked at houses versus at faces?

Answer 5

There is a region in ther inferior temporal cortex that was specifically activiated by faces which they named the “Fusiform Face Area” or FFA

Question 6

What was the significance of Haxby’s (2001) experiment where they measured brain activity while participants viewed images of images of faces, buildings, cats and man-made objects?

Answer 6

They gathered the data and presented it to computers in two different sets - the training set and the test set. They found that the type of image being viewed could be correctly identified by a computer from patterns of brain activity with over 90% accuracy.

Question 7

What were the results of Perrett’s (1992) experiment on brain activity in monkeys?

Answer 7

They recorded information from singular cells (implanted elecctrodes in the monkeys brains) and found that they have neurons in the inferior temporal cortex that respond selectively to faces and hands.