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Chapter 04 The Visual Cortex and Beyond

1. What term is used to describe the electronic map of the retina on the cortex?
a. Visual map
b. Spatial map
c. Retinotopic map
d. Cortextual map
ANSWER: c

2. The cortical magnification factor occurs in humans because

a. a small area in the peripheral retina accounts for a large area on the cortex.
b. the small area of the fovea accounts for a large area on the cortex.
c. the lens accommodates so that the image is magnified on the retina.
d. the area at the optic disk accounts for a large area on the cortex.
ANSWER: b

3. Dougherty et al. (2003) used brain imaging to investigate cortical magnification. Their primary finding was that
a. information presented in the peripheral vision activated the most brain area.
b. information presented to the fovea activated the most brain area.
c. moving stimuli activated different brain areas than stationary stimuli.
d. cortical magnification is not detectable using fMRI.
ANSWER: b

4. Using the techniques of both recording from neurons and ablation, researchers found that properties of the ventral and
dorsal streams are established by two different types of what kind of cells in the retina?
a. Bipolar
b. Hippocampus
c. Ganglion
d. LGN
ANSWER: c

5. In what type of ocular columns do neurons respond better to input from one eye than from the other?
a. Preference
b. Dominance
c. Orientation
d. Laterality
ANSWER: b

6. An electrode is placed in an orientation column that responds best to orientations of 45 degrees. The adjacent column of
cells will probably best respond to orientations of
a. 5 degrees.
b. 40 degrees.
c. 90 degrees.
d. 175 degrees.
ANSWER: b

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7. Which statement is true regarding the organization of columns in the cortex?
a. A location column can contain many orientation columns.
b. An orientation column can contain many location columns.
c. Location and orientation columns are in different parts of the cortex.
d. Action columns are present in both location and orientation columns.
ANSWER: a

8. What is the term for a location column that receives information about all possible orientations within a given area of
the retina?
a. Supercolumn
b. Orientation
c. Hypercolumn
d. Action
ANSWER: c

9. Neurons respond preferentially to the right eye or the left eye. This phenomenon is referred to as
a. hemispheric specialization.
b. bilateral dominance.
c. retinotopic disparity.
d. ocular dominance.
ANSWER: d

10. The arrangement of ocular dominance columns in the cortex is best described as
a. columns for both the left eye and right eye in each hypercolumn.
b. columns for the left eye in the left hemisphere and for the right eye in the right hemisphere.
c. groupings of left eye columns adjacent to groupings of right eye columns.
d. concentric areas with the center columns for the left eye and the surrounding columns for the right.
ANSWER: a

11. A large object, such as a tree trunk, will cause

a. every neuron in one location column to fire, but no firing in any other column.
b. a limited number of neurons to fire in only one ocular dominance column.
c. firing of neurons in a number of different columns.
d. every neuron in an orientation column to fire, but not in the location columns.
ANSWER: c

12. When looking at a scene, the different sections of the scene are processed by many different location columns.
Through the use of all of the location columns, the entire scene can be perceived. This effect is referred to as
a. fielding.
b. orientation.
c. convergence.
d. tiling.
ANSWER: d

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13. Ablation is a procedure in which
a. a radioactive isotope is injected into the bloodstream and traced through the brain.
b. electrodes on the scalp are used to measure changes in brain activity.
c. a particular area of the brain is removed or destroyed.
d. an electromagnetic pulse is used to temporarily disrupt brain activity.
ANSWER: c

14. In Ungerleider and Mishkin’s (1982) research, monkeys who had had their temporal lobes removed had difficulty
a. coordinating their movements.
b. discriminating between objects.
c. discriminating between locations.
d. remembering sequences of actions.
ANSWER: b

15. To which lobe does the dorsal pathway go?

a. Temporal
b. Frontal
c. Parietal
d. Occipital
ANSWER: c

16. With what other name has the ventral pathway been labeled?
a. Where
b. How
c. What
d. Why
ANSWER: c

17. Which statement regarding the dorsal and ventral pathways is most accurate?
a. Information flow is unidirectional in both pathways.
b. The pathways rely on information from the same type of ganglion cells.
c. The pathways are independent of each other and do not communicate.
d. Both pathways have feedback activation.
ANSWER: d

18. According to Milner and Goodale, the dorsal stream is what kind of pathway?
a. What
b. When
c. How
d. Why
ANSWER: c

19. A researcher finds that damage to Area A of the brain results in the loss of Function A, but not Function B. In another
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individual, damage to Area B results in the loss of Function B, but not Function A. These results are best described as a(n)
a. associative link.
b. double dissociation.
c. single dissociation.
d. differential assessment.
ANSWER: b

20. The results of the patient D.F., who had visual form agnosia, show that
a. perception and action are independent of each other in the brain.
b. the same brain areas are involved in visual orientation and oriented action.
c. the inability to draw items is due to a lack of general knowledge.
d. double dissociations do not occur in these patients.
ANSWER: a

21. Ganel et al. (2008) designed a modified visual illusion, in which line 1 appears to be longer than line 2, when, in
reality, line 2 is longer. Participants are asked to judge the line lengths and to reach and grab the ends of the lines. The
results of this investigation reveal
a. the interaction of the ventral and dorsal stream.
b. that the visual illusion affects both the ventral and dorsal streams.
c. the effects of damage to the ventral pathway.
d. that the illusion only affects ventral stream processing.
ANSWER: d

22. An IT neuron in the monkey will fire briskly when presented with a picture of a
a. monkey’s face.
b. tree.
c. banana.
d. human torso.
ANSWER: a

23. What percent of neurons in the monkey IT cortex did Tsao et al. (2006) find were face selective?
a. 12%
b. 97%
c. 70%
d. 43%
ANSWER: b

24. What is the name of the area in the temporal lobe that specializes in recognizing faces?
a. FFA
b. RBC
c. Parietal area
d. Area 4H
ANSWER: a

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25. Activity in the PPA
a. reveals a preference for indoor, not outdoor, scenes.
b. is higher for pictures of empty rooms than furnished rooms.
c. reveals a preference for body parts over faces.
d. is the same for pictures of furnished and empty rooms.
ANSWER: d

26. The EBA is activated by

a. pictures of houses and other manmade structures.
b. pictures of bodies and parts of bodies.
c. direct eye gaze from another individual.
d. tasks that require spatial information.
ANSWER: b

27. Patient H.M. had his what removed in order to control his epileptic seizures?
a. Hippocampi
b. IT cortex
c. Striate cortex
d. Corpus callosum
ANSWER: a

28. The primary deficit encountered by patient H.M. is best described as the inability to
a. discriminate between faces.
b. perceive different line orientations.
c. form new long-term memories.
d. use information from the “where” pathway.
ANSWER: c

29. Neurons in the LGN have what type of receptive fields?

a. Center-surround
b. Side-by-side columnar
c. Ill-defined
d. Ambiguous
ANSWER: a

30. The flow of information in the LGN is best described as

a. unidirectional, with signals going from the retina to the LGN.
b. unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the retina.
c. unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the cortex.
d. signals coming from the retina and the cortex to the LGN.
ANSWER: d

31. Gelbard-Sagiv et al. (2008) monitored individual MTL neurons while displaying video clips of a variety of stimuli.
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Chapter 04 The Visual Cortex and Beyond

They were able to identify neurons that respond preferentially to a visual stimulus. Later, they found preferential
activation of the same neuron to the video clip concept when they asked participants to do what?
a. View pictures from various viewpoints.
b. View the same video clips, but with an altered color pallette.
c. Try to remember the video clips they had seen.
d. Draw a picture representing the video clip.
ANSWER: c

32. What term refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by what an animal or person
perceives?
a. Selective adaptation
b. Experience-dependent plasticity
c. Sensory integration
d. Perceptual analysis
ANSWER: b

33. What effect occurs because humans have more cortical neurons that respond to horizontal and vertical orientations
than slanted orientations?
a. Oblique
b. Transverse
c. Parallel
d. Box
ANSWER: a

34. Neurons in what area respond to complex stimuli, but not simple stimuli such as straight lines?
a. LGN
b. Striate cortex
c. IT cortex
d. Retina
ANSWER: c

35. When a kitten is exposed to an environment of just horizontal lines, the kitten
a. would pay attention only to vertical lines.
b. would pay attention only to horizontal lines.
c. would have cortical cells that only respond to vertical lines.
d. would have cortical cells that respond to horizontal lines, but none to vertical lines.
ANSWER: d

36. Selective rearing refers to

a. raising an organism in an environment that only contains certain types of stimuli.
b. genetically manipulating the organism prenatally.
c. genetically manipulating the organism in the first month after birth.
d. presenting an array of stimuli to the organism in the first month after birth.

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ANSWER: a

37. The different types of cortical cells that respond to specific stimuli are also known as
a. inhibitory cells.
b. feature detectors.
c. direct circuits.
d. signal detectors.
ANSWER: b

38. A stimulus that contains alternating black and white bars is called a
a. grating.
b. grid.
c. Boolean array.
d. Moire pattern.
ANSWER: a

39. The difference in intensity between light bars and dark bars is called
a. orientation.
b. wave form.
c. phase.
d. contrast.
ANSWER: d

40. When an experimenter decreases the intensity difference between the light bars and the dark bars until an observer can
just barely detect the difference between the dark bars and the light bars, the experimenter is testing
a. Mach bands.
b. contrast threshold.
c. phase continuity.
d. brightness constancy.
ANSWER: b

41. When we view a stimulus with a specific property, neurons tuned to that property fire and will eventually become
fatigued. What is the term used to describe this effect?
a. Selective
b. Refractory
c. Depletion
d. Massed
ANSWER: a

42. What term refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by an animal’s or person’s
perceptual experience.
a. Selective adaptation
b. Neural plasticity
c. Sensory integration
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d. Perceptual analysis
ANSWER: b

43. Most signals travel via the optic nerve from the retina to the
a. temporal cortex.
b. lateral geniculate nucleus.
c. the superior colliculus.
d. the visual homunculus.
ANSWER: b

44. Graphing the response of a simple cortical cell results in the

a. response compression curve.
b. orientation tuning curve.
c. response expansion curve.
d. motion-directive sensitivity function.
ANSWER: b

45. Unlike simple cells, complex cells respond best to

a. stationary spots of light.
b. small spots of light.
c. moving stimuli.
d. stationary lines of any orientation.
ANSWER: c

46. What type of cell fires to moving lines of a specific length or to moving corners or angles?
a. Complex
b. Simplex
c. End-stopped
d. Edge
ANSWER: c

47. As we travel farther from the retina, neurons fire to

a. more complex stimuli.
b. less complex stimuli.
c. more intense stimuli.
d. less intense stimuli.
ANSWER: a

48. (a) Describe the research that shows that cortical magnification occurs in humans.
(b) What is the connection between cortical magnification and acuity?
ANSWER: Even though the fovea accounts for only 0.01 percent of the retina’s area, signals from the fovea account
for 8 to 10 percent of the retinotopic map on the cortex (Van Essen & Anderson, 1995). This apportioning
of a large area on the cortex to the small fovea is called cortical magnification. The extra cortical space
allotted to the letters and words at which the person is looking provides the extra neural processing needed
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Chapter 04 The Visual Cortex and Beyond

to accomplish tasks such as reading that require high visual acuity (Azzopardi & Cowey, 1993).

49. Describe how an object such as a tree is represented in the striate cortex.
ANSWER: The continuous tree trunk is represented by the firing of neurons sensitive to a specific orientation in a
number of separate columns in the cortex. Although it may be a bit surprising that the tree is represented by
separate columns in the cortex, it simply confirms a property of our perceptual system. The cortical
representation of a stimulus does not have to resemble the stimulus; it must contain information that
represents the stimulus. Working together, these columns cover the entire visual field, an effect called
tiling. Just as a wall can be covered by adjacent tiles, the visual field is served by adjacent (and often
overlapping) location columns.

50. Describe research on people with brain injuries that support the idea that the dorsal stream is the “how” pathway.
ANSWER: Milner and Goodale (1995) used the method of determining double dissociations to study D.F., a 34-year-
old woman who suffered damage to her ventral pathway from carbon monoxide poisoning. One result of
the brain injury was that D.F. was not able to match the orientation of a card held in her hand to different
orientations of a slot. Because D.F. had trouble orienting a card to match the orientation of the slot, it would
seem reasonable that she would also have trouble placing the card through the slot, because to do this she
would have to turn the card so that it was lined up with the slot. But when D.F. was asked to “mail” the
card through the slot, she could do it! Even though D.F. could not turn the card to match the slot’s
orientation, once she started moving the card toward the slot, she was able to rotate it to match the
orientation of the slot. Thus, D.F. performed poorly in the static orientation-matching task but did well as
soon as action was involved (Murphy et al., 1996). Milner and Goodale interpreted D.F.’s behavior as
showing that there is one mechanism for judging orientation and another for coordinating vision and action.

51. Summarize the Ganel et al. (2008) research on length estimation and grasping tasks, and what the implication of this
research is for different processing streams.
ANSWER: Tzvi Ganel and coworkers (2008) conducted an experiment designed to demonstrate a separation of
perception and action in subjects without brain injuries. The stimulus they used consisted of two lines and
created a visual illusion in which line 2 appears longer than line 1, when line 1 is actually longer. Ganel and
coworkers presented subjects with two tasks: (1) a length estimation task in which they were asked to
indicate how they perceived the lines’ length by spreading their thumb and index finger; and (2) a grasping
task in which they were asked to reach toward the lines and grasp each line by its ends. Sensors on the
subjects’ fingers measured the separation between the fingers as the subjects grasped the lines. These two
tasks were chosen because they depend on different processing streams. The length estimation task involves
the ventral or “what” stream. The grasping task involves the dorsal or “where/how” stream.

The results of this experiment indicate that in the length estimation task, subjects judged line 1 (the longer
line) as looking shorter than line 2, but in the grasping task, they separated their fingers farther apart for line
1 to match its longer length. Thus, the illusion works for perception (the length estimation task), but not for
action (the grasping task). These results support the idea that perception and action are served by different
mechanisms. An idea about functional organization that originated with observations of patients with brain
damage is therefore supported by the performance of subjects without brain damage.

52. Identify the five areas of the brain associated with processing of faces and explain what is processed in each area.
ANSWER: Occipital cortex (OC): Initial processing
Fusiform face area (FFA): Basic face processing
Amygdala (A): Emotional reactions (face expressions and observer’s emotional reactions); Familiarity
(familiar faces cause more activation in amygdala and other areas associated with emotions)
Frontal lobe (FL): Evaluation of attractiveness
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Superior temporal sulcus (STS): Gaze direction; mouth movements; general face movements

53. Discuss the relationship between neural plasticity and selective rearing as it relates to sensory functioning.
ANSWER: The idea behind selective rearing is that if an animal is reared in an environment that contains only certain
types of stimuli, then neurons that respond to these stimuli will become more prevalent. This follows from a
phenomenon called neural plasticity or experience-dependent plasticity (i.e., the idea that the response
properties of neurons can be shaped by perceptual experience). When animals are reared in an environment
that contains only vertical lines, for example, neurons that respond to vertical lines will come to dominate.

54. (a) Describe the difference between simple cortical cells, complex cortical cells, and end-stopped cells.
(b) Explain why these cells are called “feature detectors.”
ANSWER: Cells with side-by-side excitatory and inhibitory receptive fields are called simple cortical cells. Complex
cells, like simple cells, respond best to bars of a particular orientation. However, unlike simple cells, which
respond to small spots of light or to stationary stimuli, most complex cells respond only when a correctly
oriented bar of light moves across the entire receptive field. End-stopped cells fire to moving lines of a
specific length or to moving corners or angles. Because simple, complex, and end-stopped cells fire in
response to specific features of the stimulus, such as orientation or direction of movement, they have been
called feature detectors.

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