Biopsycology Flashcards
A01-plasticity and functional recovery- plasticity
Refers to the ability of our brain to adapt its structures/ functions as a result of our life experiences
- if a new task is learned a new pathway is formed, if this pathway is repeated/ used they are strengthened
- if the pathway is not used its weakened and the connections are deleted this is known as synaptic pruning
- research suggests that the brain continue to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones in response to changing experiences
AO1 plasticity and functional recovery- functional recovery
-an important part of neural plasticity
-involves ability of the brain to recover loss of function after brain damage
- its the transfer of functions from a damaged area of the brain after trauma or physical damage to other undamaged areas
-the brain can reorganise itself by forming new synaptic connections
-secondary neural pathways are activated ‘unmasked’ to enable functioning to continue and recovering any damage that has occurred in a specific region.
A03- brain plasticity and functioning- supporting evidence for platisicity
- supporting evidence to support plasticity come form McGuire et al, she studied brains if London taxi drivers and found they has significantly higher volume of grey matter in the posterior hippocampus than a control group
-part if a taxi drivers training is to improve spatial and navigational skills and are tested on this - this is a strength as the results from this study show that this learning alters the structure of their brains supporting brain plasticity
-additionally this can be useful in real work application
-perhaps companies can be aware when their drivers knowledge needs to be trained again by looking at brain scans to optimise taxi performance
-however sample was androcentric
-doesn’t include women
-there are likely t be femal taxi drivers and the females navigational skills may be different to males - weakness as conclusions cannot be genralised to total population and can’t generalise to all cultures so culture bias.
-but does give general idea f how brain plasticity works
A03- brain plasticity and functional recovery- application -strength
-real life application
-plasticity helped contribute to the development of neurohabilitaion
-helped us understand functional recovery as a form of plasticity
-means even though the brain can change and adapt its often not that reliable as time passes by, the ability of the brain to change its functions or physical structures diminishes
- brought about forms of physical therapy to help the breaking compensate for its motor and cognitive damage
-therefore a strength as its helped us to understand and make the best treatments such as movement therapy or those ho need it when the breaks recovery slows down
-A03 functional recovery and plasticity - FR —strength FR supporting research
- Gaby Giffords was shot in the left hemisphere and place in a coma so her brain could recover
-within months + some rehabilitation she could walk and regard control of left arm/leg
-could read, understand and speak in short phrases
-an now has some control over her right arm/leg
Which is controlled by the left hemisphere so should be impossible
-strength as fit gives support for functional recovery
-however not very generalisable and also has economic implications as people with brain damage can potentially go back to work and contribute again
-only one idographic case so can’t assume same succesful recovery os everyone else
-also was a female so can’t assume males will ave the same level of functional recovery
So weakness as its ungenralisable.
A01 split brain research + Lateralisation
-based on concept of of hemispheric lateralisation which is the idea that the two hemispheres of the bran have different specialisations , they are not entirely the same
-sperrin and Gazzaniga were the first to investigate this with the use of split brain patients
- this is a procedure where the corpus callosum which connects the two hemispheres is cut,
-the aim of their research was to examine the extent to which the two hemispheres are specialised for certain functions
-findings hilights a number of differences between the two hemispheres
-left is dominant in terms of speech and right is dominant of visual and motor tasks.
A01 -split brain and lateralisation -procedure
- Sperry (1968) sought to demonstrate that the 2 hemispheres were specialised to certain functions
-normally concrete by corpus callosum yet sperry studied a group of people who had theirs cut to control epileptic procedures . A commissurtomy. - an image or word was projected to a patients left hemisphere and another image to the right
-in a Normal brain the corpus calllosum shares info between both hemispheres
-in split brain the info cannot be converges from the chosen hemi to the other
-other experiments were used such as deceive what they we and a drawing task and the ps has to respond with either their right hand, left hand or verbally
A01 split brain research and lateralisation - finings
-when asked to describe the picture presented to the right visual field the patient could derscribe what they saw
-demonstrating superiority of the left hemisphere when it comes to language
-whereas when patient had to describe the picture presented to the left visual fiend they could not and often reported that there was s nothing there -
- however patainets could draw the image what their left had as the task does not require language
-sperry concluded that the left hemisphere is dominant for speech and language while the right hemisphere is specialises for visual spatial motor skills
A03- split brain and lateralisation — weakness generalisation
- many researches have said these finding cannot be genralised to the wider population or widely accepted as split brain patients are such an unusual unique sample of people
-only 11 patients took part in all variations and all had history of seizures
-this may have caused unique changes in the brain that influences the findings
-limitation as it lilies the extent to which the findings can be genralised to normal brains therefore reducing its validity
A03- split brain and lateralisation— strength application
-supporting evidence coed from rogers et al who studies chickens
-he found that brain lateralisation is linked woth the ability to form 2 task s simultaneously
-this is using only one hemisphere while the other is free to engage in other tasks
-therefore this is a strength as it provides evidence of the advantages of brain lateralisation and shows how it can improve brain efficiency on cognive tasks
-however this is an animal study
- this is therefore hard to generalise these findings to humans as chickens and humans are biologically different.
A03- split brain and lateralisation— strength methodology
-sperry carefully standardised the procedure of presenting visual info to one hemisphere field at a time which was quite ingenuous
-the image flashed on front of the patients eye for 0.1 seconds so the patient hd no Time to move their eyes over the image and spread info across both sides of the visual field or both sides of the brain
- this allowed sperry to vary aspects of the basic procedure and ensure only one hemisphere received the info at a time
-therefore a strength as it was a well controlled procedure so has high internal validity
A01 localisation - motor and what
-refers to the belief that specific areas of the brain are responsible for particular psychical and psychological functions
-motor area located at back of the frontal lobe, responsible for voluntary movement sending signals to the muscles
-right hemisphere controls left side of body and left hemisphere controls right
A01 localisation- brocas and somatosensory
-brocas -located in the left frontal lobe and involved its speech production
-if damaged (brocas aphasia) a persons speech is slow and lacks fluency
-somatosensory-, located at the front of the parietal lobe
-receives sensory info from skin to produces sensations related to pressure, temp and pain
A01 localisation- visual and auditory
- visual area-back of occipital lobe
-receives and processes visual info
-damage to left visual area can produce blindness in the right visual field and vice versa - auditory- temporal lobe
-responsible for analysing and processing acoustic information
-info from left ear goes to right hemisphere and vice versa
A03-localisation - strength- supporting evidence
-phineas gage
- experienced huge changes to his personality when a iron rod was blasted through his frontal lobe
- before acccident he was kind, calm ,reserved and after he was rude hostile and quick tempered
-demonstrates that there are localised areas of the brain as the area gage damaged links to reasoning control and mood.
-however this was a unique case study therefore we cannot generalise to the rest of the population and slo difficult to replicate so lowers the validity of the study
