20th Century Neuroscience Flashcards
What was Karl Lashley’s perspective on localisation and his two hypotheses?
Ablation depended on size of damage rather than location.
Lashley formed two hypotheses:
1. Equipotentiality: apparent capacity of intact parts to carry put the memory functions which are lost by destruction of other parts.
2. Law of mass action: performance of complex function may be reduced in proportion to extent of brain injury.
How did Egas Moniz contribute to Neuroscience?
OCD, schizophrenia, affective disorder.
Lobotomy and the idea that it reduces emotional tension but blunts personality.
How did Ramon y Cajal contribute to Neuroscience?
He discovered the synaptic cleft.
How did Otto Loewi contribute to Neuroscience?
He discovered that neutrons communicate chemically.
What did Carlsson and Lindquist hypothesise?
The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia.
What did Schildkraut hypothesise?
The affective hypothesis of depression.
How did Donald Hebb contribute to Neuroscience?
Effects of light deprivation on rats.
Developed new tests and mazes - argued the important of the frontal lobes in early learning and development.
Define Hebbian learning.
Brain is in a constant state of electric excitation.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
This influenced later history - sensory deprivation, AI.
How did Wilder Penfield contribute to Neuroscience?
Founded The Montreal Neurological Institute.
Experimentally induced auras on patients by brain stimulation - hallucinations and memories.
Mapped out some of the brain - the homunculus!
Worked with Brenda Milner.
How did Brenda Milner contribute to Neuroscience?
Studies of Henri Molaison.
Explained the function of the hippocampus in memory.
Explain HM’s amnesia.
Couldn’t encode new memories but had a good memory of past events.
No declarative memory but had procedural memory.
When was the Cognitive Neuroscience Society funded?
1994.
What did Craig Bennett (dead salmon) recently show about one of the largest weaknesses of Neuroscience?
Neuroscience suffers from easy false positiveness.
Neuroscientists do not often reason like good Popperians - select the hypothesis ti fit the most impressive results.
Why are neuroimaging techniques a strength of Neuroscience?
They provide hard visible facts.
