PSYCH 275 A1 — Practice Final Exam

Brain and Behaviour

Chapters 7-13 Comprehensive Review | Fall 2025

📋 EXAM INSTRUCTIONS
Time: 90 minutes total | Materials: Closed book, closed notes, simple calculator allowed
Sections: Part I (Short Answer: 40 pts), Part II (Longer Answer: 20 pts)
Instructions: Answer ALL questions. Write clearly. Show your reasoning for partial credit on longer questions. Total Points: 60
📚 Study Guide: Use the Comprehensive Review Scaffold to prepare—all questions on this practice exam are directly drawn from the review material.
Coverage: Chapters 7-13 (Vision → Psychopharmacology)
⚠️ Note: This is a PRACTICE exam. Use it to identify knowledge gaps and practice time management. The actual final will follow this same format with similar question types, emphasizing integration across chapters.
PART I: Short Answer (40 points — answer ALL questions, 2-4 sentences each)

Instructions: Provide concise answers explaining mechanisms and relationships. Focus on how and why, not just what.

1.
Ventral vs. Dorsal Visual Streams (5 pts)
Explain the functional dissociation between ventral and dorsal visual pathways. Use patients D.F. and A.T. to illustrate.
2.
Color Opponent Processing (5 pts)
Describe how opponent process channels work in color vision and explain why we can't perceive "reddish-green" colors.
3.
Inattentional Blindness (5 pts)
What is inattentional blindness, and what does it reveal about the relationship between attention and consciousness? Include an example.
4.
Basal Ganglia Direct and Indirect Pathways (5 pts)
Describe how the direct and indirect pathways of the basal ganglia work to select actions. What happens in Parkinson's disease?
5.
Cerebellar Error-Based Learning (5 pts)
Explain how the cerebellum implements supervised learning using climbing fibers and parallel fibers. What computational problem does this solve?
6.
Hippocampal Place and Grid Cells (5 pts)
Describe place cells and grid cells. What evidence shows that the hippocampus creates cognitive maps of space?
7.
Systems Consolidation (5 pts)
Explain how memories transfer from hippocampus to cortex during systems consolidation. Why does this process take months to years?
8.
Somatic Marker Hypothesis (5 pts)
Describe Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis. How did patient EVR's Iowa Gambling Task performance support this theory?
PART II: Longer Answer (20 points — answer BOTH questions, 1 well-developed paragraph each)

Instructions: Write integrated paragraphs connecting multiple concepts across chapters. Include specific mechanisms, researcher names, patient cases, and clinical examples where relevant.

9.
Sleep, Memory, and Learning Integration (10 pts)
Sleep actively consolidates memories through multiple mechanisms rather than merely avoiding interference. Explain how sleep supports different memory systems: describe hippocampal replay during slow-wave sleep and its role in declarative memory consolidation, the function of sleep spindles in coordinating hippocampal-cortical transfer, how REM sleep benefits procedural memory with motor cortex reactivation, and the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis proposing that SWS downscales synaptic strengths to renormalize networks. Include evidence from sleep deprivation studies showing both encoding and consolidation deficits. How does this integration of attention (what gets encoded), memory systems (what gets stored), and sleep (how it's consolidated) demonstrate cross-chapter principles?
10.
Reward, Addiction, and Neural Hijacking (10 pts)
The mesolimbic dopamine pathway evolved for learning about natural rewards but can be hijacked by drugs, converting adaptive learning into addiction. Explain: how the mesolimbic pathway (VTA → nucleus accumbens → PFC) mediates reward and motivation, why all addictive drugs increase dopamine in nucleus accumbens despite diverse mechanisms (cocaine blocks reuptake, opioids disinhibit, nicotine excites), the three stages of addiction (binge/intoxication with dopamine-driven positive reinforcement, withdrawal/negative affect from opponent processes, preoccupation/anticipation with craving and relapse), and how chronic drug use shifts control from ventral striatum (goal-directed) to dorsal striatum (habitual). Connect this to learning and memory principles (Chapter 10): how is addiction essentially pathological learning involving the same synaptic plasticity mechanisms (LTP/LTD) that normally support adaptive behavior?

📚 How This Practice Exam Maps to the Review Guide

Part I: Short Answers Cover:
  • Chapter 7: Visual pathways, color opponents (Q1-2)
  • Chapter 8: Inattentional blindness (Q3)
  • Chapter 9: Basal ganglia, cerebellum (Q4-5)
  • Chapter 10: Place cells, systems consolidation (Q6-7)
  • Chapter 11: Somatic markers (Q8)
💡 Study Strategy: Use the Comprehensive Review Scaffold to study each chapter's integrative paragraphs (showing how concepts connect) and concept boxes (listing specific details). Every question on this practice exam tests material explicitly covered in the review guide.
🎯 Part II Integration: Questions 9-10 test your ability to synthesize across multiple chapters—exactly what the final exam emphasizes. Question 9 integrates attention (Ch 8), memory (Ch 10), and sleep (Ch 12). Question 10 integrates motor control/basal ganglia (Ch 9), learning mechanisms (Ch 10), and psychopharmacology (Ch 13). These integration questions require connecting systems to show how they work together.
🔗 Cross-Chapter Connections to Practice:
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