5: Neurobehavioural Variables Flashcards
Give 2 disease variables.
Diffuse effects of focal brain injuries, and anatomical and functional plasticity.
What can cause generalised deficits following brain injury?
Swelling and brain compression.
Give 4 cognitive impairments experienced in focal brain disease.
Memory, vigilance, EF, and intelligence/reasoning.
Give 2 emotional impairments experienced in focal brain disease.
Flattening and lability.
Define diachisis.
Function loss in a brain area that is anatomically intact due to loss of input from a damaged brain area.
In Parkinson’s disease, what areas are effected by the disease in the substantia nigra?
Basal ganglia, thalamus, and neocortex.
Define disconnection.
Function loss in a brain network due to a disorder of the pathways (white matter) between brain areas.
How do split brain patients show disconnection?
When an object word is presented in each visual field, and patients are asked to pick up an object on one side, they tend to read aloud the word on the opposite side to the one they pick up.
Define plasticity.
Reorganisation of the brain functional modules, so that healthy tissue takes over some function of a lesioned area.
What evidence from patients with epilepsy supports functional plasticity?
No loss of language after a left hemispherectomy.
What impact does cognitive reserve have on Alzheimers diagnoses?
They happen a lot later.
What is cognitive reserve?
Brain reserve, efficiency, and flexibility.
What 2 things improve cognitive reserve?
Completing an education and engaging in hobbies and social activities.
What is associated with good cognitive reserve?
More successful aging, decreased risk of dementia, and reduced clinical changes in traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson’s, MS, and HIV-related dementia.
What do studies show about training cognitive reserve in the elderly?
Trained domains improve, but transference of this to other domains is rare.
Describe the “Information” subtest of verbal comprehension.
General knowledge questions.
Describe the “Vocabulary” subtest of verbal comprehension.
Asked the meaning of words that get progressively more obscure.
Describe the “Similarities” subtest of verbal comprehension.
Asked to explain the relationship between word pairs that get progressively more abstract.
Describe the “Block Design” subtest of perceptual reasoning.
Shown a pattern and asked to recreate it using 1, 2, 4, or 9 blocks, depending on the difficulty level.
Describe the “Matrix Reasoning” subtest of perceptual reasoning.
Asked to choose the image that fits best with a sample.
Describe the “Visual Puzzles” subtest of perceptual reasoning.
Pick out which 3 of 6 pieces are required to make an image shown above.
Describe the “Digit-span” subtest of working memory.
Asked to repeat a list of numbers forward span of backward span.
Describe the “Arithmetic” subtest of working memory.
Mental maths questions varying in difficulty.
Describe the “Symbol Search” subtest of processing speed.
Asked to find a target in a noisy image.
Describe the “Coding” subtest of processing speed.
Use a symbol key to fill in a grid.
What evidence did a study on biological and adopted siblings show about environmental influences on intelligence?
For every point of increased education in adopted parents, there was a 2 point IQ increase in children.
What is the most likely reason depressed people perform worse on memory tasks?
Structural changes in their brain, such as reduction in hippocampus volume.
Vaguely, where are the neural correlated of general intelligence?
The left-hemisphere.
Give 2 key things that help differentiate between dementia and depression in the elderly.
Somatic manifestations in depression and the patients’ insight into the memory problems.
