Question

1. Imagine you meet someone who thinks she is terrible at remembering faces. You

learn this is called: “prosopagnosia” (this is true). You get curious and decide you

want to investigate face recognition ability in the lab.

1. Describe anexperiment to study face recognition for each of the following methods:

a. a behavioral experiment,

b. ERPs,

c. fMRI,

d. neuropsychological patients.

e. TMS

2. How do neurons communicate? Explain:

a. action potentials

b. rate coding, place coding.

3. Is any experimental approach perfect? What is the solution to imperfect measures?

4. What is the goal of these various experimental approaches? How would researchers

know when they are finished?

Answer 1

1. Face recognition. Face recognition can be defined to identify an individual from gazing only at their face, or an image of their face.

A. A behavioral experiment - experimental studies in monkeys-Typical human adult recognize numerous individuals from their faces accurately, rapidly and auto., reaching a level of expertise at individual face recognition that is important for the quality of their social intereactions, a non-human species of primates, the rhesus monkey, has been used for decades as a model of human face processing, in particular for understanding the neural basis of individual face recognition. however, despite responding specifically to faces behaviourally and neurally, this species, as well as old world and new world monkeys,is remarkably poor at individuating faces of conspecifics.

B. ERP Scan - ERPs is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory,cognitive, or motor event. more formally,it is any steretyped electrophysiological response to a stimulus.

C. FMRI- Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. this technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled.

D. Neuropsycological patients- Knowledge of the neuropsycological mechanisms underlying facial recognition has come from both experimental study of normal Ss and clinical investigation of patients who show defects in facial perception or memory.

E. TMS- At present only a small number of studies have used TMS to examine face processing .we than described the existing studies that have used TMS to disrupt different cortical areas implicated in the recognition and discrimination of faces. these included the OFA, the face area in the right somatosensory cortex, and STS.

2. How do neurons communicate ? Explain:

Neurons areconnected to each other through synapses, sites where signals are transmitted in the form of chemical messengers.

a. Action potential - Neurons communicate with each other via electrical events called action potentials and chemical neurotransmitter. at the junction between two neurons, an action potential causes neurons A to release a chemical neurotransmitter.

b. Rate coding, place coding - Rate coding is one way neurons encode information.as the intensity of a stimulus increases, the firing rate of spikes increases as well.

Place coding is a frequency coding as determined by the activation of the organ of corti from the base to the apex of the cochlea ina gradation with higher frequencies transmitted from the base and lower frequencies from apex.