Neural connections carrying signals from the cortex (the brain region responsible for thought) down to the amygdala (...

shunhe on September 14, 2020

Hi @CMarr,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at this stimulus. We’re told that neural connections carrying signals from the cortex to the amygdala aren’t as developed as those going the other way around. And so, the argument concludes, the amygdala exerts a greater influence on the cortex than vice versa.

Now we’re asked for something that makes the argument’s conclusion follow logically; in other words, this is a strengthen with sufficient premise question. Now, we can see that there's a gap here between the conclusion, which is about how much influence these parts exert, and the premise, which is about the neural connections. So what do we need? We need something that suggests a connection between these two things, specifically, that more neural connections is more influence! And that’s exactly what (E) gives us, that the degree of development of a set of neural connections is directly proportional to the influence transmitted across those connections.

Now let’s take a look at (B), which tells us that no other brain region exerts more influence on the cortex than does the amygdala. That could be true, but it could also still be true that the cortex exerts a greater influence on the amygdala. Because maybe things just exert more influence on the amygdala in general. So the conclusion won’t necessarily follow if you assume (B), which makes it wrong.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.