Question 1

Paulo has been diagnosed with prosopagnosia. Which of the following will he show difficulty doing?

Accepted Answer

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that causes difficulty in recognizing faces.

Question 2

One patient lost the ability to tell cars apart. She was able to locate her own car in a lot only after reading all the license plates until she found her own. This disorder is called __________.

Accepted Answer

The disorder described is prosopagnosia, which is the inability to recognize familiar faces or objects, including cars. Apraxia is a difficulty with motor movements, aphasia is a language disorder, and neglect syndrome is a lack of awareness of one side of the body or space.

Question 3

After a stroke involving Broca's area, a person would have the most trouble __________.

Accepted Answer

Broca's area is responsible for speech production, so after a stroke involving this area, a person would have difficulty pronouncing words. This would not affect hand gestures (A), reading silently (B), or listening to music (E) as those functions are not primarily controlled by Broca's area. Listening to a radio talk show (D) may be affected if the person has difficulty understanding spoken language after the stroke, which could be related to other areas of the brain involved in language comprehension.

Question 4

A patient has a cortical lesion. When shown a drawing of a camel, he painstakingly identifies several parts and then ventures a guess: "Eyes . . . mouth . . . of course, it's an animal." He probably suffers from __________.

Accepted Answer

The answer of A patient has a cortical lesion. When...

Question 5

Prosopagnosia is defined by a(n) __________.

Accepted Answer

Prosopagnosia is the inability to visually distinguish faces (or other similar categories). A is a description of apraxia, B describes agnosia, and D describes a sensory deficit.

Question 6

After a stroke involving Wernicke's area, a person would have the most trouble __________.

Accepted Answer

Wernicke's area is involved in the comprehension of language. A stroke affecting this area would most significantly impair the ability to understand spoken language, such as listening to a radio talk show.

Question 7

A patient lights a match and then puts it in his mouth, rather than using it to light a cigarette, as he was asked to do. This sort of disorder of action is called an __________.

Accepted Answer

Apraxia is a disorder of action, where the patient is unable to perform specific motor tasks, even though the muscles and sensory inputs are intact. In this case, the patient was unable to execute the specific task of using the match to light a cigarette, indicating apraxia. Aphasia refers to the loss of language function, agnosia is a perceptual impairment, and abulia is a lack of ability to initiate action. None of these fully fit the given scenario.

Question 8

What's wrong with the accompanying diagram of a right-handed person's brain?

Accepted Answer

Broca's area is typically located in the left hemisphere of the brain. Therefore, showing it in the right hemisphere in the diagram is incorrect.

Question 9

A patient suffers from a visual agnosia. Her lesion is probably in __________.

Accepted Answer

The answer of A patient suffers from a visual agnosia....

Question 10

An agnosia is a __________.

Accepted Answer

Agnosia refers to a disturbance in the organization of sensory input, which can result in an inability to recognize or interpret sensory information, even though the individual's basic senses such as vision, hearing, and touch are intact. Therefore, options A, C, and D are not accurate descriptions of agnosia.

Question 11

A woman slaps accurately at a mosquito biting her leg, yet she is completely unable to get a key out of her pocket and use the key to open a door. This woman most likely suffers from damage to her __________.

Accepted Answer

The frontal lobe, specifically the area just in front of the motor cortex, is responsible for executive functioning, including planning and decision making. This woman's difficulty with getting a key out of her pocket and using it to open a door suggests dysfunction in this area. Her ability to slap a mosquito on her leg suggests that her somatosensory cortex and motor cortex are functioning appropriately. Damage to the temporal lobe or corpus callosum would not necessarily affect key retrieval and door opening in this way.

Question 12

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a best-selling book about neurological disorders, describes a man with damage to the association cortex who literally mistook his wife for a hat. Just by looking, he could not tell his wife and his hat apart, but he could as soon as his wife spoke. The disturbance of this patient is __________.

Accepted Answer

The disturbance of this patient is agnosia, specifically visual agnosia, which is a condition in which a person cannot recognize or make sense of visual information, despite having normal vision. This patient was unable to recognize his wife visually, indicating a specific form of agnosia known as prosopagnosia, which is the inability to recognize familiar faces. The other options given are not relevant to this specific case or type of disorder.

Question 13

You observe a man brushing his teeth. You notice that as he puts the toothpaste on the brush, he keeps squeezing the tube until the toothpaste drips all over the sink. Then you observe that he sticks the tube of toothpaste in his mouth instead of the brush. This problem of selecting the right components and fitting them together to carry out an activity is known as __________.

Accepted Answer

The problem of selecting the right components and fitting them together to carry out an activity is known as apraxia. In this case, the man is having difficulty with the motor planning and executing the task of brushing his teeth correctly. The other options, such as agnosia, aphasia, and split brain, are not relevant to this scenario. Agnosia refers to difficulty recognizing objects or sensory information, aphasia refers to language difficulties, and split brain refers to a medical condition where the two hemispheres of the brain are not fully connected.

Question 14

Nelia is asked to copy a simple drawing. She is able to correctly reproduce many of the details, but the details are not drawn in any particular order. Nelia is showing symptoms typical of someone with damage to the __________.

Accepted Answer

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for organizing and planning tasks, including those involving spatial reasoning and the order in which details are processed. Damage to this area can result in difficulty organizing and executing tasks, such as copying a drawing in the correct sequence.

Question 15

Tom is not paralyzed, but he has great trouble organizing the steps that must be taken to cook an egg. A CAT scan is most likely to reveal damage to his __________.

Accepted Answer

The frontal association area is responsible for higher order thinking skills such as planning, problem solving, and decision making. Damage to this area would make it difficult for Tom to organize the steps necessary to cook an egg.

Question 16

Let's say a patient can identify the separate details of a visual scene and yet has difficulty making sense of the scene as a whole. This kind of disorder is called __________.

Accepted Answer

This describes agnosia, a disorder where a person can recognize individual components of an object or scene, but has difficulty perceiving the object or scene as a whole. Apraxia refers to difficulty with motor movements, dyslexia refers to difficulty with reading and written language, and spontaneous remission refers to a spontaneous, unexplained improvement in a condition.

Question 17

Gabe is asked to first sort cards by color and then to resort the cards by symbol. Gabe, who recently had a stroke, is unable to complete this task. It is likely that Gage has suffered damage to the __________.

Accepted Answer

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for cognitive and executive functions, such as planning and decision-making. Damage to this area can result in difficulty completing tasks that involve multiple steps or require organization and planning, as in the case of sorting cards by both color and symbol.

Question 18

Neglect syndrome is most apt to follow damage to the __________.

Accepted Answer

Neglect syndrome involves being unaware or inattentive to stimuli presented on one side of the body or environment. Damage to the right parietal lobe is most commonly associated with neglect syndrome, as this area of the brain is responsible for spatial attention and awareness of the left side of the body and environment.

Question 19

Serge has difficulty controlling his social impulses, uses vulgar language at inappropriate times, and generally shows poor social cognition. These symptoms, on top of his poor planning abilities, are suggestive of damage to the __________.

Accepted Answer

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functioning, which includes planning, decision-making, as well as controlling social impulses and appropriate language use. Damage to this area can lead to poor social cognition, poor planning, and poor decision-making.

Question 20

What is the main difficulty in neglect syndrome?

Accepted Answer

The main difficulty in neglect syndrome is attending to what is going on in certain aspects of the patient's world. Patients with neglect syndrome can fail to attend to one side of space, leading to difficulty in daily activities such as dressing, eating, and reading. They may also ignore or forget objects or people on one side of their body or visual field.

Quiz 3: The Brain and the Nervous System