Question

Which of the following statements is the most accurate with regard to specificity coding?

a. It is probably accurate, which explains why the human nervous system contains over one hundred billion neurons.
b. Research has found that specificity encoding does occur for lower animals, such as dogs and cats, but has not found this phenomenon to exist in human beings.
c. It is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron for each.
d. Specificity coding is one of the areas that is only theoretical and not applied, and thus there is no way to know if it truly exists in human beings.

Answer 1

The most accurate statement with regard to specificity coding is that it's improbable because the human nervous system would require too many neurons to decode each unique stimulus. Neurons can multitask, allowing the brain to process a wide array of information efficiently.

Step-by-step explanation:

The most accurate statement regarding specificity coding is option c: It is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron for each. The human nervous system does encode sensory information, including the type of stimulus, the location of the stimulus in the receptive field, the duration of the stimulus, and its relative intensity. However, given the vast number of possible stimuli, it is not feasible to have a distinct neuron dedicated to each individual stimulus. The nervous system instead uses patterns of neural activity to represent various sensations, an approach that is far more efficient than specificity coding.

Research has shown that certain neurons can multitask, as evidenced in the model organism C. elegans. The human brain, with its approximately 86 billion neurons, demonstrates a high level of complexity and can handle multiple functions with fewer neurons, thereby making specificity coding as a universal principle for sensory processing highly unlikely.

Answer 2

The best answer to the question: Which of the following statements is the most accurate with regard to specificity coding, would be, C: Is is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have separate neurons for each.

Step-by-step explanation:

The first thing that must be clarified about this question is that neuroscience is still a pretty young science, and the study of the brain, how it works, how neuronal connections work precisely, is still pretty much in its infant stages. Scientist recognize that although many advances have been made, there is still no possibility of drawing definitive conclusions about how the human brain works exactly. However, what is known for sure is that when a stimulus is picked up by our nervous systems, these produce a series of responses and messages that are transmitted to the brain, where integration happens, and where a response is produced. Especially when coding information, neuroscience knows that the brain receives messages from several neuronal groups, with different types of stimuli, and the brain will process these multiple stimuli to integrate and form a concept on them, as well as produce a proper response. Specificity coding would require that one neuron be reserved specifically for each type of possible stimulation: sensory, or motor, and this is, as far as has been found scientifically, not accurate. This is why the answer would be C.