biopsych - localisation - y13

Question 1

what is localisation of function?

Answer 1

the theory that different areas of the brain are responsible for different behaviour processes or activities.

Question 2

what is the motor area?

Answer 2

a region of the frontal lobe involved in regulating movement.

Question 3

what is the somatosensory area?

Answer 3

an area of the parietal lobe that processes sensory information such as touch

Question 4

what is the visual area?

Answer 4

a part of the occipital lobe that receives and processes visual information

Question 5

what is the auditory area?

Answer 5

located in the temporal lobe and concerned with the analysis of speech-based information.

Question 6

what is the brocas area?

Answer 6

an area of the frontal lobe of the brain in the left hemisphere (for most) and responsible for speech production.

Question 7

what is wernickes area?

Answer 7

an area of the temporal lobe of the in the left hemisphere (for most) and responsible for language comprehension.

Question 8

holistic theory vs localisation

Answer 8

historically, scientists supported the holistic theory of the brain- all parts were involved in the processing of thought and action. However, Broca and Wernicke discovered specific parts are associated with different processes.

Question 9

how many millimetres is the cerebral cortex?

Answer 9

3mm

Question 10

where is the cerebral cortex located?

Answer 10

the outer layer of the brain.

Question 11

how many lobes are in the cortex?

Answer 11

4

Question 12

what does the primary motor cortex do?

Answer 12

controls voluntary movement in the opposite side of the body.

Question 13

what does the central sulcus do?

Answer 13

separates the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex.

Question 14

what does the primary somatosensory cortex do?

Answer 14

where sensory information from the skin is represented. the amount of SS area taken up is reflective of the body parts sensitivity.

Question 15

what is the occipital lobe responsible for?

Answer 15

where each eye sends visual information from the right visual field to the left visual cortex to the right visual cortex. this means that damage to the left hemisphere can produce blindness. (back)

Question 16

where is the temporal lobe located?

Answer 16

near the temple.

Question 17

where is the parietal lobe located?

Answer 17

top of the brain.

Question 18

where is the frontal lobe located?

Answer 18

front.

Question 19

what is the somatosensory homunculus?

Answer 19

a map along the cerebral cortex showing the sensations or sensory information of the body which is then sent to the CNS.

Question 20

what can damage to brocas area cause?

Answer 20

brocas aphasia.

Question 21

what is brocas aphasia?

Answer 21

a non-fluent phenomenon which is characterised by slow speech which lacks fluency.

Question 22

what can damage to wernickes area cause?

Answer 22

problems with understanding speech. patients may have problems with producing speech such as neologisms.

Question 23

support by Peterson et al (1988)

Answer 23

showed how Wernickes area was active during a listening task but Brocas area was active during a reading task, suggesting that these areas of the brain have different functions therefore meaning that these tasks must be localised to those areas of the brain.

Question 24

support by Tulving et al (1994)

Answer 24

long term memory study showed that semantic and episodic memories reside in different parts of the prefrontal cortex. This therefore means memory may be localised in the frontal lobe.

Question 25

Dougherty et al (2002)

Answer 25

44 OCD patients who had a cingulotomy. a third of the patients had met the criteria for a successful response to the surgery and 14% for a partial response. This could mean that the cingulate gyrus is associated with symptoms of OCD and is therefore localised.

Question 26

how does Phineas gage support the localisation theory?

Answer 26

an explosion hauled a metre length pole though gages left cheek, passing behind his left eye and exiting his skull from the top of his head taking the left frontal lobe with it. The damage to his brain caused a personality change where he became quick tempered and rude. This supports localisation as the frontal lobes may be responsible for regulating mood.

Question 27

evidence against the localisation theory? (Lashley 1950)

Answer 27

suggests that processes such as learning are distributed holistically in the brain. He removed 10-50% of the cortex of rats that were learning a maze. No single area was found to be more important than any other, suggesting that learning is too complex to be localised to specific areas.

Question 28

however, as rats were used in Lashley (1950) study..

Answer 28

we could argue that rats potentially may only be surviving. This means that their behaviour is hard to compare to humans as we are more complex in terms of learning and do not know as much and therefore cannot generalise.

Question 29

why may plasticity be evidence against localisation?

Answer 29

If different functions of the brain are localised to specific areas than that may mean there is no room for recovery if damage occurs. Lashley calls this the ‘law of equipotentiality’ where all areas of the brain area able to perform a tasks so any surviving brain circuits participates so the same neurological function can be achieved. (may not always happen)