Question

A monkey has been trained to perform a visual spatial selective attention task. A microelectrode is placed in its visual cortex to record the activity of single neurons. When the monkey selectively attends a stimulus flashed within the recorded neuron’s receptive field, the investigator will observe that the recorded neuron’s firing rate _______

Answer 1

Answer:

The monkey's neuron's firing rate will increase because the animal is highly aroused in hopes of a reward.

Explanation:

As the exercise describes, we have a monkey who has been trained to perform visual spatial selective attention task. We can assume that, during this training, the monkey was given a reward when things went well and the monkey behaved correctly. So, when the monkey  selectively attends a stimulus flashed within the recorded neuron’s receptive field, the investigator will observe that the recorded neuron’s firing rate has fired up because the animal is aroused in hopes of a reward. Neuron's activities increase when the individual is, for example, under excitement as the monkey was.