Question

Please answer one of the following questions

1. Ungerleider and Mishkin’s experiments were developed after evidence indicated that specific cognitive problems are associated with damage to specific regions of the brain. Why was that evidence insufficient to show that that region controls that cognitive function? How were Ungerleider and Mishkin’s experiments designed to avoid this limitation?

2. Ungerleider and Mishkin designed different sets of experiments to study the different routes that visual information takes through the brain depending on the kind of information being processed. Describe one of the sets of experiments, including explaining how the experiment shows what path the information takes.

3. What is the justification for studying the algorithms of cognition? What are two aspects of cognition that cannot easily be captured without theorizing about the brain?

4. What are the four main features of artificial neural networks? What does studying them contribute to our understanding of cognitive processing?

5. Discuss in detail one feature of H.M.’s condition and explain how studying that feature has informed our broader understanding of the brain.

https://content.sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/f02aa0f6-61b3-4a49-a7bd-a2a6f002d39f/Readings%20-%20First%20Half/Bermudez_Brain_and_Cognition_Ch3.pdf

Answer 1

5. Henry Gustav Molaison is commonly known as H.M. was a patient who helped scientists to research on the brain and its different parts by donating his brain for further study in brain science. As a child, Henry sustained a head injury that resulted in epilepsy at the age of seven, At first, his seizure was minor and went on increasing by the time he was 16 years of age, the severity increased and when he was 27 years of age he could not work

In 1953 Dr. William Beecher Scoville at Hartford Hospital performed a surgery on Henry and part of Henry’s brain that was causing his seizure was removed.

Dr. Scoville performed bilateral medial temporal lobe resection, and removed Henry’s temporal lobe and hippocampus and amygdala from both the side of the brain, it was an experimental and risky surgery, bur Henry agreed to it looking at the severity of the seizures. After the surgery, Henry could remember his childhood events, his name, and family history, but he could not remember. Some things that had happened up to 11 years before. After the surgery, he developed severe Amnesia that means he lost the power of memory. Every day was a new day for him, Henry's case was a unique case in brain science, and he was a willing subject.

It was a common belief that the memory functions were spread throughout the brain, Henry had severe amnesia due to damage to one part of the brain but his intellectual ability was not affected, that lead the scientist to believe that different part of the brain is assigned different function, During the research Henry was made to draw line, each time he would start as if he is doing it for the first time but there was distinct improvement in his work. This showed Henry is able to learn the new motor skill, called motor learning this showed that memory and motor learning are two different functions.

Henry donated his brain that helped in further study of brain and his help to perform on him willingly opened new ways for modern science that human brain has multiple memory systems and they are located at different part of the brain. Modern science is thankful to him