Unit quiz: Release, plasticity, and memory across synapses and systems

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5 questions · 80% to pass · no timer. This quiz checks the lessons in this unit. These authored questions assess recognition and application of the taught distinctions, not professional qualification. You may review the lessons and retry. Repeat attempts reuse the question bank; a remembered answer is not proof of transfer to a new situation.

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Question 1

Two synapses release the same average number of packets, but one has four times the release probability at one quarter as many sites. Both show the same mean evoked response. What should differ between them?Trial-to-trial variability and the probability of a complete failure, because fewer independent sites with higher release probability release in a less predictable pattern.Nothing measurable, because equal mean quantal content means the two synapses are functionally identical.

Question 2

During a burst of excitatory input a cell is depolarized to about 40 millivolts above its resting level. Which change in the postsynaptic arithmetic follows?Both driving forces increase together, so excitation and inhibition scale by the same factor and net effect is unchanged.The excitatory driving force falls while the inhibitory driving force rises, so inhibition becomes more effective exactly when excitation is strongest.

Question 3

A cell-wide manipulation multiplies every excitatory synaptic current by 1.4 over a day, while weights measured relative to one another are unchanged. Which mechanism is this and what does it explain?Multiplicative homeostatic scaling, which adjusts overall gain without changing the pattern of relative synaptic weights.Long-term potentiation, because every synapse became stronger and potentiation is defined as an increase in efficacy.

Question 4

An investigator reports that hippocampal damage impaired a memory at one day but not at twenty-eight days and concludes that consolidation finished within four weeks. What is the strongest objection?The conclusion is too conservative, because spared performance at four weeks proves the hippocampus is no longer involved at all.Two time points cannot measure the shape or rate of a temporal gradient, and the spared result is also consistent with compensation or a change in retrieval strategy.

Question 5

A study pairs an auditory cue with learned material during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep and finds that cued items are retained better, with spindle-related processing implicated. Which additional claim is supported?That an experimenter-controlled event during sleep can selectively bias consolidation of the cued material under those laboratory conditions.That sleep spindles are necessary for all forms of memory and that increasing spindle density will improve any learner's retention.

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