1001 - The Brain, A Working Model Flashcards
What is the role of the prefrontal cortex?
Complex moral/ethical/behavioural traits that make up individual personality. Also plays a critical role in working memory and moment to moment processes of thinking.
What is the role of Wernicke’s area?
Sits at a convergence of auditory, visual, and somatosensory information. Allows for interpretation of spoken, read, and lipreading language - by others AND self. Connects to Broca’s area via arcuate fasciculus that travels through the angular gyrus.
What is the role of the posterior parieto-occipital area?
Specialised for spatial cognition and orientation of space, including ‘self’ in space. Pays particular attention to contralateral limbs.
Lesions can introduce a loss of ability to write and recognise ones own fingers, and a loss of reading and writing skills (Gerstmann Syndrome).
Continuous with precuneus.
What is the role of the posteromedial cortex.
Very high place in the functional hierarchy, with no connections with primary areas - all about association.
Connects with parietal and temporal association areas, premotor regionas and frontal eye fields, and anterior cingulate gyrus/entorhinal Cx.
Is highly active in the resting state, with activity devlining during goal-directed behaviour.
All about surviving in your environment (physical and social).
Medial view, at posterior aspect of corpus callosum anterior to occipital lobe, extending to around central sulcus, and half way up the cortex.
Most highly metabolically active cortical region, using 35% more glucose than other areas in Cx.
Discuss in general terms the way that information is brought together in high order association areas, and how it is used to inform behaviour
Heirarchies - Highly connected areas connect to very highly connected areas connect to extremely highly connected areas. Reciprocal connections mean that the information comes together and ‘reverberates’ between areas, while diverging out to others. This allows auditory, visual, sensory, and motor cortices to come together, so each knows what’s happening in the others, allowing association of everything that’s happening.
Discuss the relationship of self to consciousness
You have maps for internal structure, proprioception, and the external world. They are very low in the brainstem (primitive) and you need these to be able to survive. Centred around Nucleus solitary tract, periaqueductal grey, and parabrachial nucleus. These create a protoself.
Primordial feelings (hunger, cold etc) are the basic product of this protoself. These are unavoidable if you are alive.
Protoself interacts with outside objects to improve survival.
What we actually experience is beyond this proto-self, and is an autobiographical self, including your place in the group. This is generated in the neocortex. It allows reflection on this protoself.
Explain what is meant by the term mirror neuron, and how their function is different from modality-specific neurons
Neurons that fire the same way whether you’re carrying out an action or watching someone else do it. They’re not carrying out a motor function, but registering an understanding of what the goal of the action is.
