fMRI Imaging

Instructions:

This take-home exam is not a group assignment. Please do not chat on Facebook about it or work together with others. No extensions of the April 5th (2:30 PST) due date will be granted. Whatever you have been able to complete must be submitted by this date. So leave yourself lots of time to work on it. Start soon.

Note:  You are supposed to ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS … not just one.

We will not have covered some of these topics in class or in readings before this exam is due. You may need to read on-line resources from the web and from journal articles to help you answer the questions.

Not including your Reference Section, your answers should be approximately 1500 words (1300 word minimum / 1700 maximum).

Please organize your answer clearly and do not use point form. If you are unsure an acceptable format, please review the About the Take-Home Exams guidelines. And if you’re still unsure, you can email your TA (see below) and she/he will help you.

Please do not submit attachments.  Copy and paste your text into the Submission box. Again, do not upload links to attachments.

WARNING – DO NOT PATCH WRITE: Note that there is a lot of information on line about attention, so it should not be difficult for you to find information … BUT please be careful not to patch write. This is plagiarism. If you do so, you will lose marks … and

Reference Section

Please use a Reference Section to list the sources of the ideas in your paper that are not your own. You must acknowledge them with a citation in the body of your paper (author(s), year of publication), and also with full publication details in your Reference Section. Use APA format for this section. And, of course, unless quoting, please use your own wording.

There is no word limit for Reference Sections … and the section does not add to your 1500 word limit for answers.

APA Reference Format

A standard source reference begins with the author’s surname, followed by a comma, then the initial(s) of his or her first name. If there are multiple authors, place a comma between each of the author names and an ampersand (“&”) before the last author’s name. There should always be a period after the author name(s).

Number of authors	Example (journal article format)
1 author	Jones, G. (1996). The cognitive psychology of writing thought papers. Journal of Amazing Stuff, 312(7039), 1128-1131. Retrieved from http://www.joas.org/stable/29321719
2 authors	Wong, Y., & Singh, P. (2018). Why the perception of features is cool. Journal of Cognitive Processing and Other Amazing Stuff, 293(6547), 577-580. Retrieved from http://www.jcpoas.org/stable/29567395

How do I cite the readings by Dr. Wright that are unpublished chapter drafts?

These readings are drafts of chapters for a textbook in preparation. If you choose to cite any of them as a source, please use:

Wright, R.D. (2022). Introduction to Attention. Manuscript in preparation.

For more information, see this page.

Exam Questions:

Question 1)  What are some things we have learned about the role of the brain’s right and left hemisphere when we pay attention?

Question 2)  fMRI data has indicated quite a bit about brain areas that are part of attention networks. To what extent are we able to understand the function of these attention networks on the basis of fMRI imaging?

Question 3)  Neuropsychologists use several techniques to diagnose attention deficits and disorders. What are some of them, what are their strengths, and what sorts of attention deficits are difficult to diagnose?

Question 4)  To what extent is spatial neglect caused by a perceptual as opposed to an attentional impairment, and what evidence supports this? Why does neglect occur? And how does it differ from extinction and from blindsight?

Question 5)  What can attention deficits tell us about the brain’s attentional networks?