Neuroscience
Through the Ages
Through the Ages
In 1861, this French physician linked damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus with impaired speech production.
Paul Broca
A 68-year-old develops sudden right-sided weakness and expressive aphasia. Imaging shows an infarct involving the dominant frontal lobe. Which major cerebral artery is most likely affected?
Left middle cerebral artery.
Which basal ganglia dopamine receptor, when stimulated, promotes movement via the direct pathway?
D1 receptor
During this stage of sleep, the brain becomes highly active, vivid dreaming is common, and skeletal muscles are largely paralysed. What stage of sleep is being described?
REM sleep
I'm a distorted little man draped across the postcentral gyrus. My lips and hands are enormous, my trunk and legs are tiny. What am I?
Homunculus
Name the large-scale research initiative that aims to map all neural connections in the human brain.
The Human Connectome Project
The immune system attacks the sheaths around axons in the central nervous system, so action potentials slow down or fail to propagate. Flare-ups are calmed with drugs that suppress inflammation.
Multiple Sclerosis
Right before a difficult exam, a student's heart races, palms sweat, and pupils dilate.
Which neurotransmitter, central to the fight-or-flight response, is responsible?
Norepinephrine
A neuron has a resting membrane potential of −70 mV. If it becomes −90 mV, has it become more or less excitable?
Less excitable
I'm the ridge just in front of the central sulcus. Damage to my strip and a specific body part on the opposite side stops moving. What am I?
Precentral gyrus (primary motor cortex)
What is the name of the old, now-discredited practice of "reading" personality and mental traits from the bumps and shape of a person's skull?
Phrenology
Loss of neurons that make orexin, a hypothalamic chemical that keeps us awake, causes this disorder of uncontrollable sleep attacks.
Narcolepsy
A neurotransmitter is released into the synaptic cleft and binds to receptors on the postsynaptic neuron. How is the neurotransmitter removed from the synapse?
Reuptake into the presynaptic neuron or by enzymatic breakdown
Name the structural feature of the endothelial cells lining brain capillaries that restricts free passage of most substances into brain tissue.
Tight Junctions
I give nutrition to the feet of the distorted man in the cortex. If I stop supplying the opposite leg goes weak. What am I?
Anterior Cerebral Artery (ACA)
This physician worked closely with a patient known as Anna O., whose treatment for hysteria led him to develop the "talking cure," and he went on to found an entirely new field studying the unconscious mind.
Sigmund Freud
A patient on long-term anti-seizure medication develops nystagmus and an unsteady, wide-based gait as his dose is increased.
Which drug is most likely responsible for this cerebellar toxicity?
Phenytoin
In depression, one of the neurotransmitters most classically implicated is thought to be present in reduced amounts. Which nuclear group in the brainstem is the primary source of this neurotransmitter throughout the brain?
The Raphe Nuclei
Which physiological process, involving a persistent increase in synaptic strength following high-frequency stimulation, underlies memory formation in the hippocampus?
Long term Potentiation
I'm a pair of raised ridges on the brain stem's front surface, carrying motor signals from the cortex. Most of me cross to the other side right where I end. What am I?
Medullary pyramids
This physiologist coined the term "synapse" and won a Nobel Prize for his work on the reflex actions of the nervous system, including reciprocal innervation.
Charles Sherrington
A mass pushes the midbrain across so that the cerebral peduncle on the opposite side is squeezed against the edge of the tentorium. The resulting weakness appears on the same side as the mass, which points to the wrong side of the brain.
Kernohans Notch phenomenon
In Alzheimer's disease, a specific neurotransmitter is deficient due to loss of the neurons that normally supply it to the cortex. Which brain structure do those neurons originate from?
The nucleus basalis of Meynert
Which EEG wave pattern, characterized by high-amplitude, slow oscillations, dominates during the deepest stage of non-REM sleep?
Delta Wave
I'm an arching white matter tract connecting the hippocampus to the mammillary bodies, forming part of a memory circuit. What am I?
Fornix