Practice question · Multiple choice
The reticular formation is small and diffuse, with projections spreading through the whole cortex. Why does that anatomy suit the job of maintaining consciousness?
Hints
- Ask what has to change when someone wakes up. One region, or all of them?
- Compare this with a sensory pathway, which needs to reach one specific place precisely.
Show the answer
C. Because consciousness is a state of the entire cortex.
Why
Most neural systems are built for precision, a sensory pathway must reach one region and no other. Arousal is the opposite problem, since waking is a change in the whole cortex's operating mode, so a small nucleus fanning out through the thalamus is the right shape. It is necessary and not sufficient: aroused cortex with nothing left to arouse produces no experience either.
Practise The Brainstem and Cerebellum
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
More questions on The Brainstem and Cerebellum
- A patient with cerebellar damage can reach for a cup, and the hand oscillates around it before closing. Why…
- A stroke destroying the medulla is far more immediately life-threatening than a stroke of the same size in…
- Sort each structure by whether it is part of the brainstem.
- Match each concrete role or effect to the structure responsible.
- A patient with a small pontine stroke is fully conscious, thinking normally, and can move only their eyes.…
- Select every statement that is TRUE about the brainstem and cerebellum.
- A stroke destroying a few cubic centimetres of medulla is usually fatal, while a stroke destroying far more…