The Human Brain

Assignment 3

Assignment: Design two fMRI experiments to test whether the brain contains regions that are selectively involved in perceiving snakes. In each case, state i) the specific hypothesis you are testing, ii) the experimental conditions you will test (including what study participants will see and do in your experiment), iii) what exactly you will measure, and iv) what your hypothesis predicts you will see. You can describe stimuli with words, sketch them, or find them and paste them in (with appropriate explanations). Next, list the alternative accounts that might remain even if the data from this experiment are consistent with the predictions of your hypothesis. Then, describe a second experiment to test one or more of those alternative hypotheses. Finally, list two important questions about snake-specific regions in the brain that can never be tested with fMRI, and give a different method that could be used to test each.