Association cortices Flashcards
Describe the hierarchical organisation of the sensory system in descending order
Association cortex Secondary sensory cortex Primary sensory cortex Thalamic relay nuclei Receptors
Describe the areas of the association cortex
Unimodal association areas (single modality)
Multimodal association areas (>1 modalities)
Multimodal sensory association areas project to multimodal motor association areas (rostral to M1)
What is the primary sensory area?
initial stage of processing,
What is the primary motor area?
final stage for cortical processing of motor commands
What are the 3 main multimodal association areas
Posterior association area (perception, language)
Temporal association area (emotion, memory)
Prefrontal association area (executive functions)
What changes can be seen in a person in a person to damage with their association cortex?
Personality changes.
Long term planning and
judgment.
Working memory.
Continuity of behavioural
planning (stored program
of action).
Anxiety for the future?
What is motor planning?
General outline of behaviour -> concrete motor responses
Describe the action of the frontal cortex in the motor system
individual neurons fire for a range of related behaviours (not specific motor responses).
Movements and complex actions result from patterns of firing of large networks of neurons in the frontal lobe
Describe the activity of the premotor cortex in the motor system
generates motors programs and the neurons are active during preparation of movement.
What do motor cortex neurons do?
Motor cortex neurons mainly fire to produce movements in particular directions around specific joints
Name some specialised language areas in the brain
-region of dominant left frontal lobe, articulate speech Motor control of mouth and lips Motor cortex Angular gyrus Auditory cortex Wernickes area Auditory cortex
What is the wada procedure used for?
Used to determine hemisphere dominant for speech
What types of aphasia exist?
Broca’s, motor, nonfluent aphasia
Wernickes aphasia - fluent speech, poor comprehension
Aphasia in bilinguals (order, fluency, use of language)
Aphasia and sign language
