Ans.

In distributed neutral coding, a specific face is coded for by a specific pattern of activation among a
group of cells. In this, seeing a face will cause particular cells to fire at different rates. Different faces will
induce different patterns of activation in those particular cells. This type of coding can efficiently
represent a large number of faces or facial attributes and in a way that uses many fewer neurons.
However, in specificity coding, a single cell fires only in response to the presence of a particular face. For
example, one particular cell will fire in response to one particular face, but not to any other face. Specific
coding is possible but still remains unlikely as cells that respond to one face normally respond to others as
well. Also, a large number of cells are required for the coding of all the faces known by one person.
Chair and Sofa will be more naturally included in a distributed neutral coding as both of these objects
have similar characteristics and may induce the same responses of neurons in recognizing these objects
while the responses may be entirely different for chair and lamp. Neutral distributed coding seems more
natural as this induces responses which are more realistic and likely to happen, while also utilizing many
fewer neurons.
Ans. There are three types of agnosia mentioned in the book; Apperceptive Agnosia, Associative Agnosia
& Prosopagnosia Agnosia. All of these come under the broad category of Visual Agnosias.
A visual agnosia is an inability to recognize a visual object. There are two broad categories of visual
agnosia; people with apperceptive agnosia cannot assemble the parts or features of an object into a
meaningful whole. Persons with associative agnosia perceive this whole, but have difficulty in assigning a
name or label to it. Prosopagnosia is an inability to recognize faces.
In Apperceptive agnosia, most of the patient’s basic visual functioning is intact. This includes the
capacity to see details, discriminate between lights of different brightness, and perceive color. They have
great difficulty, however, in naming, matching, copying, or telling the difference between simple visual
forms.
In Associative agnosias, there are three diagnostic criteria. First, affected persons have difficulties in
recognizing objects visually. Second, these patients can recognize objects using sensory modalities other
than vision, for example, touch or sound. Third, they do have the ability to perceive objects holistically, at
least in the operational sense of their being able to copy or match drawings of objects. It is with respect to
this third criterion that associative agnosics differ from apperceptive agnosics, who cannot perform these
tasks.
Prosopagnosia is an inability to recognize faces, despite the capacity to recognize other types of visual
stimuli and the presence of generally intact intellectual functioning.
I think that Prosopagnosia Agnosia is the most interesting. It exemplifies how human cognition depends
upon different parts of the brain to process information and how when damage to different parts can
disrupt the human ability to process one part of an object completely. It is interesting to know how while
the brain can still view different objects and recognize them, it cannot particularly recognize faces.
Ans. The “cortex”, specifically “prefrontal cortex” is critical to recognizing an object and “Amygdala” is
important for encoding where it is located. Also, dorsal and ventral streams also pose an important part in
accessing information about the object. Brain is organized in a way that different parts perform different
brain processes. This may be so that all different kinds of information can be stored and processed quickly
and easily and can also be recognized afterwards. Since different parts of the brain perform different
tasks, this means that the information that represents an object is distributed across disparate areas of the
brain. It is now an imperative question about how all this information comes together to produce a unified
perceptual object. This question of how to recombine the various features of an object is called the
binding problem. The binding problem refers to how brains sense different complex patterns and allocates
them to discrete objects to be able to recognize and encode the object.
Ans. The first main issue is that data in neuroscience exists at an astonishing range of scales of both space
and time. Neuroscientific data are obtained from a wide range of techniques, from patch clamping to
optogenetics to Fmri, but rarely if ever in a broad behavioral context. Different techniques differ also in
concepts and vocabularies, in background assumptions and experimental norms. These differences mean
that standardization in neuroscience must be made relative to a technique and that cross-level and cross
technique data integration cannot easily be automated. Standardizing data collected with. a single
technology is not trivial, making meaningful causal relationships among data sets obtained with very
different technologies even more difficult to achieve.
Second, different animal models are used to study different problems: flies, worms, fish, mice, rats,
monkeys and humans all have their place. It is often unclear how to extrapolate from worm data to a
mammalian nervous system. Each model has its distinct virtues, and new efforts to integrate information
across species and technologies may pay off handsomely which requires deepened appreciation of
comparative and evolutionary neurobiology. Traditionally, neuroscientists have restricted the range and
richness of behavioral measurements to keep the collection and interpretation of correlated data from
neurons manageable. This strategy constrains our understanding of how the brain supports the full range
of behaviors. Big data makes the process easier. Behavioral research will greatly benefit from the
application of machine learning techniques that allow fully automated analysis of behavior in freely
moving animals. The challenge is to discover the causal relationships between big neural data and big
behavioral data.
Third, as things stand in neuroscience, integration of functional data is mainly tackled by individual labs
and by those with whom they collaborate. With increases in numbers of laboratories and publications, it is
hard for individuals to keep up with the latest technology and harder still to keep data from slipping into
oblivion, including data whose significance can be appreciated only later when the science catches up
with the technology. This will require a cultural shift in the way that data are shared across labs.
Horizontal integration of data across a range of problems—for example, learning, decision-making,
perception, emotion and motor control—is even harder to achieve in one laboratory. There is just too
much data for one laboratory to get its collective head around. A goal of the BRAIN Initiative is to record
and manipulate a large number of neurons. during extended, behavioral experiments, to identify the
neurons recorded from, to reconstruct the circuit that gave rise to the activity, and to relate the combined
data to behavior—all in the same individual.
Fourth, as data sets grow and become more complex, it will become more and more difficult to analyze
and extract conclusions. The methodological significance of tested projects is that they show how new
tools can be put to work to find patterns in data obtained from networks of neurons, patterns that emerge
only from using new analytic tools on very large data sets. The statistical design of these experiments will
be critical to insure that data sets are carefully calibrated, are of sufficient power to admit analysis, and
can be used by other researchers who want to ask different questions. This is not an easy process and
requires a level of planning and quality control that goes beyond most exploratory experiments that are
undertaken in most laboratories.
Fifth issue refers to the Baconian rise of ever larger and more complex data sets, a deeper understanding
should emerge from the accumulated knowledge, as it has in other areas of science. The obstacle in this is
that sometimes theorists do not clearly convey what they propose, perhaps because they seek safety in
needlessly complex mathematics or because they are too remote from the experimental base to undergird
their theoretical ideas. Any of these issues can detract from productive ideas.
I think that the most important issue is the fourth one. This is because it is the most basic step in any
scientific method to be able to analyze the data and extract conclusions. In the worst case scenario, the
data may not be reducible to simpler descriptions which can directly affect scientific methods and process
which could lead experiments and projects to go completely in vain or be too complex to be understood
by anyone. Here, a modest cultural change can make a large impact. Significant development towards this
can result in data to be interpreted by more scientists in different aspects of life which can then be used
for important scientific researches and methods.