L99 Review

Lecture 1: Origins of Behavioral Neuroscience

Question 1: What does biopsychology study?

The biopsychology study how does the brain, chemicals (neurotransmitters) and other factors influence our brain, it also study the mechanism behind these phenomenon.

Question 2: Can you list several titles similar to this course?

Neurobiology, Animal Psychology, Ethology.

Lecture 2: How the Brain Controls Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior

Question 1: What does old brain do?

The old brain regulates things which are essential for survival.

Question 2: List several brain regions belonging to old brain and their major functions.

1. The brain stem
   1. medulla: Controls heart rate and breathe
   2. pons: Regulate the balance and walking, it also control the movements
   3. reticular formation: Filter the signals from the spinal cord and relay the signals to other areas of the brain.
2. The thalamus
   • More filtering the signals from the spinal cord and the reticular formation
   • It also acts as the signal relay station
3. The cerebellum
   • Control voluntary movement
   • Contributes the emotion responses
4. The limbic system: Responsible for memory and emotions
   1. Amygdala: Emotions such as fear, regulates the facial responses, the smell and regulates the release of neurotransmitters related to aggression and stress.
   2. Hypothalamus:
      • Linking the nervous system and the endocrine system to the pituitary gland.
      • It also regulates: Temperature, fighting, fleeing, sexual behavior, feeding, drinking, responses to satisfaction.
   3. Hippocampus: Storing information for long-term memory.
   4. Pituitary Gland: Part of the endocrine system, release some hormones.

Question 3: What is the cerebral cortex for?

It provide advanced functions, such as higher memory, more sophisticated social interaction and ability to experience emotions.

Question 4: What is the structure of the cerebral cortex?

1. The frontal lobe
2. The parietal lobe
3. The occipital lobe
4. The temporal lobe
5. The insula lobe

Question 5: List the names and locations of the cerebral lobes and their major functions.

1. The frontal lobe: Memory, planning, thinking and judgement
2. The parietal lobe: Processes information about touch
3. The occipital lobe: Processes visual information
4. The temporal lobe: Regulate the audition (hearing) and language
5. The insula lobe: Source of emotions

Question 6: What is the neural plasticity? List several forms of neural plasticity.

The neural plasticity is the ability to change its function and structure responses to damage and experience.

Several forms of neural plasticity:

1. Learning and memory
2. The brain will compensate for the sensory if some of the part of the body is lost or damaged.

Lecture 3: Methods and Strategies

Question 1: Please list several ways of loss of function studies?

Lesion:

• Permanent lesion:
  1. Aspiration
  2. Radio frequency lesion
  3. Excitotoxic lesion
  4. Specific chemical lesion
• Temporary lesion:
  1. cooling
  2. inhibition
  3. Optogenetics
  4. Pharmacogenetics

Question 2: How to monitor the neural activities?

Neural activity tracing (Tracing neural connections):

1. Anterograde labeling method: PHA-L
2. Retrograde labeling method: Fluorogold

Recording neural activity:

1. Patch clamp: Whole-cell patch clamp, voltage clamp, current clamp
2. Extracellular recording using the electrode

Question 3: How to manipulate the neural activates?

Electrical stimulation:

1. Deep brain stimulation (DBS)
2. Optogenetics
3. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Chemical stimulation:

1. Pharmacogenetics

Question 4: List several methods to study living human brains.

Recording the Brain’s Metabolic and Synapic Activity

• Metabolic:
  1. Autoradiography
• Functional imaging:
  1. fMRI
  2. PET

Genetic methods:

1. Twin study
2. Adoption study
3. Genome study
4. Targeted mutations
5. Antisense oligonucleotides

Lecture 4: Psychology of Vision

Question 1: List the differences of rods and cones?

1. Cones encode the color vision while the rods are sensitive to the intensity of brightness
2. The fovea exists only the cones but not rods
3. The cones provide high acuity while the rods provide low acuity

	Cones	Rods
Location	Most prevalent in the central retina (fovea); found in the fovea	Most prevalent in the peripheral retina; NOT found in fovea
Light Sensitivity	Sensitive to moderate-to high levels of light	Sensitive to low levels of light
Function	Provide information about the hue (color)	Provide only monochromatic information
Acuity	Provide excellent acuity	Provide poor acuity

Question 2: What is the fovea and what is the blind spot?

Fovea locates at the center of retina, it provide the most acute vision

Blind spot is the location that the signals exit from the retina, contains fibers of ganglion cells and no photoreceptor cells.

Question 3: What is the receptive field of a sensory neuron?

The receptive field is the a specific portion of vision that can stimulate particular neurons.

Question 4: What is the receptive field like for ganglion cell, LGN cells and V1 cells?

The receptive field consists a approximately circular center and surrounded by a ring.

Question 5: What is the major difference of simple cells and complex cells in V1?

The complex cell is only sensitive to the line segment with particular orientation. The simple cell’s receptive field organizes in an opponent manner.

Question 6: What is low spatial frequency and what is high spatial frequency?

The spatial frequency is the width of bands in a sine-wave grating. The low frequency indicates the wider band and the high frequency indicates the thinner band.

Question 7: List several cues for depth perception.

Monocular depth cues:

1. Relative size
2. Hight in a plane
3. Texture gradient
4. Linear perspective
5. Light and shadow
6. Occlusion/Interposition

Binocular depth cues:

1. Binocular disparity
2. Binocular convergence

Lecture 5: Hearing and Language

Question 1: List the three perceptual dimensions of color and sound, respectively.

Color	Sound
Hue: Dominant wavelength	Pitch: Fundamental Frequency
Brightness: Intensity	Loudness: Intensity
Saturation: Purity	Timbre: Complexity

Question 2: Describe several important brain regions in the auditory pathway.

1. Auditory nerve
2. Ventral cochlear nucleus
3. Superior olivary complex
4. Inferior colliculus
5. Medical Geniculate Nucleus
6. Auditory cortex
   1. Core region
   2. Belt region
   3. Parabelt region

Question 3: How do animals percept pitch?

1. Place code: Coded by different locations, responsible for high frequencies
2. Rate code: Coded by rate of firing, responsible for low frequencies

Question 4: How do animals percept sound location?

1. Two ears receive different sound intensity and timing.
   • For the distance between two ears, the transition of the sound wave will be influenced. Therefore, the interaural intensity difference (IID)/interaural level difference (ILD) will be created. Besides, there also exists the interaural timing difference (ITD).
2. The Phase difference between two ears.
   • Interaural phase difference (IPD)

Question 5: What is McGurk Effect?

An illusion results from conflicting information from hearing and vision.

For example, human hearing can be affected by vision and sometimes we can hear the wrong sound due to our vision.

Question 6: What is major difference between Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia:?

Patients of Broka’s aphasia has good comprehension ability, they can understand the meaning of the conversation but they has poor talking ability.

Patients of Wernicke’s aphasia can fluently speech but they have poor comprehension ability.

Question 7: Where is Broca’s area and where is the Wernicke’s area?

Broca’s area: A region of frontal cortex, located just rostral to the base of the left primary motor cortex

Wernicke’s area: A region of auditory association cortex on the left temporal lobe of humans

Question 8: Where is the posterior language area?

The brain region behind the Wernicke’s area and serve as a place for interchanging information between the meaning of the words and the auditory representation

Question 9: What is the brain lateralization?

Left and right hemispheres of the brains are specialized to perform different functions.

Question 10: What do the left and right hemispheres contribute to the language, respectively?

Left hemisphere mainly contributes to the auditory representation while the right hemisphere mainly contributes to the comprehension of the meaning.

Question 11: What is pure alexia?

Loss of the ability to read without the loss of the ability to write.

Lecture 6: Sleep and Consciousness

Question 1: Describe the difference of brain waves in REM sleep and non-REM sleep.

In REM sleep, it displays beta and theta wave, the EEG is desynchronized.

In non-REM sleep, it may display alpha, beta, delta, theta waves and the K complex and sleep spindle (In stage 2). The EEG is synchronized.

Question 2: What is the function of REM Sleep?

The REM sleep helps the brain to develop, clean the brain and enhance the nondeclarative memories.

Question 3: What is the functions of non-REM Sleep?

The non-REM sleep can help the brain to rest, clean itself and enhances the declarative memory.

Question 4: List several neural transmitters and the brain regions important for animals’ wakefulness?

Transmitters:

1. Acetylcholine (Ach)
2. Norepinephrine
3. Histamine
4. Serotonin
5. Orexin

Brain regions:

1. Locus coeruleus
2. Raphe nuclei
3. Tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN)

Question 5: Where is the sleep neurons?

The sleep neurons exists in the preoptic area, they suppresses the arousal neurons.