Cerebral Cortex Notes sheet Flashcards
cortical Areas
primary somatosensory area
Function and deficit if damaged
- discriminates shape, texture, size of object
- loss of tacile localization and conscious proprioception
cortical Areas
Primary Auditory
Function and deficit if damaged
- conscious discrimination of loudness and pitch of sounds
- loss of localization of sounds
cortical Areas
Primary Visual
- Function: distinguishes intensity of lightm shape, size, and location of objects
- Lesion: homonymous hemianopia (a field loss deficit in the same halves of the visual field of each eye)
Cortical Areas
Primary vestibular
- Function: discriminates amoung head positions and head movemetns, contributes to perception of vertical
- lesion: change in awareness of head position and movement and perception of vertical
Cortical Areas
Secondary somatosensory
- function: stereognosis and memory of tactle and spatial environment
- lesion: astereognosis
Cortical Areas
Secondary visual
- Function: analysis of motion, , color, recognition of visual object, understanding of visual and spatial relationships, control visual fixation
- Lesion: visual agnosia or optic ataxia
Cortical Areas
Secondary Auditory
- function: classification of sounds
- lesion: auditory agnosia
Cortical Areas
Primary motor cortex
- Function: voluntary controlled movements
- lesion: paresis, loss of finemotor, spastic dysarthria
Premotor area
- Function: control of trunk and girdle muscles, anticipatory postural adjustments
- lesion: apraxia
a disorder of the brain and nervous system in which a person is unable to perform tasks or movements when asked
Supplementary motor area
- Function: initiation of movement, orientation planning, bimanual and sequential movements
- lesion:apraxia
Brocas area
- Function: motor programming of speeach usually only in L hemisphere
- lesion: brocas aphasia (imparied speaking and writing)
Inferior frontal gyrus
usually only in R hemisphere/opposite brocas area
- Function: planning nonverbal communication such as emotional gestures, tone
- lesion: difficulty producing nonverbal communication
Lateral prefrontal cortex
function and what would occur with a lesion
1. Function:
- goal-oriented behavior,
- working memory,
- judgement, planning,
- abstract reasoning,
- divided attention,
- sequencing activity,
- self-awareness
2. lesion:
- loss of goal-oriented behavior,
- divergent thinking (inability to conceive alternative possibilities) and
- conscientiousness
Medial prefrontal cortex
- Function: emotions, self awareness and motivation
- lesion: apathy, lack of emotions and insight
Ventral prefrontal cortex
- Function: social behavior and decision making
- lesion:disinhibition, lack of concern about consequences, impulsiveness, inappropriate behaviors and emotional lability
Temporoparietal cortex
- Function: sensory integration, understanding communication, spatial comprehension, verbal and spatial intelligence
- lesion: inability to handle new information effectively, difficulty with concrete thinking and generalizing information, personal and spatial neglect, tendency to become upset even with minor changes in routine
L hemisphere = wernicke’s aphasia
R hemisphere = spatial neglect and or difficulty understanding nonverbal communication
Communication disorders
Dysarthria
- Synonyms:
- characteristics:
- Comprehend spoken speech
- speak fluently
- produce meaningful language
- normal use of gramar
- read
- write
- structures involved
- Synonyms: none
- characteristics: lacks motor control of speech
- Comprehend spoken speech: yes
- speak fluently: no
- produce meaningful language: yes, difficult to understand
- normal use of gramar: yes
- read: yes
- write: yes
- structures involved: LMN’s or corticobrainstem tract
Communication disorders
Broca’s Aphasia
- Synonyms:
- characteristics:
- Comprehend spoken speech
- speak fluently
- produce meaningful language
- normal use of gramar
- read
- write
- structures involved
- Synonyms: motor expressive or nonfluent aphasia
- characteristics: grammatical omissions and errors, short phrases, effortful speech
- Comprehend spoken speech: yes except grammatical function words
- speak fluently: no
- produce meaningful language: yes with grammatical words missing
- normal use of gramar: no
- read: yes
- write: no
- structures involved: Broca’s usually in left hemisphere
Communication disorders
Global aphasia
- Synonyms:
- characteristics:
- Comprehend spoken speech
- speak fluently
- produce meaningful language
- normal use of gramar
- read
- write
- structures involved
- Synonyms: total; aphasia
- characteristics: cannot speak fluently, cannot communicate verbally, cannot understand language
- Comprehend spoken speech: no
- speak fluently: no
- produce meaningful language: no
- normal use of gramar: no
- read: no
- write: no
- structures involved: wernick’es area, brocas, area and the intervening cortical and subcortical areas
Communication disorders
Wernicke’s aphasia
- Synonyms:
- characteristics:
- Comprehend spoken speech
- speak fluently
- produce meaningful language
- normal use of gramar
- read
- write
- structures involved
- Synonyms: sensory recepitive or fluent aphasia
- characteristics: cannot comprehend language; speaks fluently but unintelligibly
- Comprehend spoken speech: no
- speak fluently: yes
- produce meaningful language: No
- normal use of gramar: no
- read: no
- write: no
- structures involved: wernicke’s area (left side typically)
Communication disorders
Conduction aphasia
- Synonyms:
- characteristics:
- Comprehend spoken speech
- speak fluently
- produce meaningful language
- normal use of gramar
- read
- write
- structures involved
- Synonyms: disconnection aphasia
- characteristics: understands language, language output has word errors(caption instead of principal)
- Comprehend spoken speech: yes
- speak fluently: yes
- produce meaningful language: usually yes, only in severe cases is it unintelligible
- normal use of gramar: yes
- read: yes
- write: somewhat impaired
- structures involved: neurons connecting wernicke’s with broca
Working memory
- information
- location
- goal-relevant information for a short time
- prefrontal and temporoparietal association cortex
Declaritive memory
- information
- location
- facts, events concepts and locations
- lateral prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe
Procedural memory
- information
- location
- Skilled movements and habits
- frontal cortex thalamus, and basal ganglion
What structures function in declarative memory processing
- medial temporal lobe
- medial temporal cortex
- hippocampus
What strucutres function in perceptual integration
temporoparietal assoication cortex
whatstructures are involved
Organization and categorization of information
- lateral prefrontal cortex
Left hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Motor, visual and somatosensory
- hemiparesis
- hemiplegia
- hemisensory
- loss affects right side of body and face and right visual field
Left hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Communication
- difficulty understanding adn producing language
- aphasia, agraphia and dysarthria
Left hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Spatital comprehension
- normal
Left hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Behavior emotions
- cautous behavior
- hesitant to try new tasks
- anxiety, depression
- catastrophic reactions
- easily frustrated and angered
Left hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Intelect, cognitive processing
- impaired because intellect is usually assessed verball
- loss of linear processing (serial, analytic, logical)
- tend to neglect details
Right hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Motor visual and somatosensory
- hemiparesis or hemiplegia
- hemisensory loss
- affecting left side of body, face and visual field
Right hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
communciation
unable to comprehend and produce emotinal content of speech
Right hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
spatial comprehension
left neglect
loss of navigation skills
unable to recognize faces
Right hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Behavior emotions
- impulsive behavior
- unware of deficits
- overestimate own abilities
- may drive with devastating results
- may walk without necessary AD
- unintentional fabrication of infomration caused be deficits in recognizing errors and memory and by disinhibition
Right hemisphere lesion signs and symptoms with
Intellect congitive processing
- loss of holistic processing (pictorial and intuitive
- tend to only focus on details
- because language is intact other people may think the person is much more capable than they are
Frontal lobe has what areas
- primary motor cortex
- premotor area
- supplementary motor
- brocas area
- right inferior frontla gyrus
- lateral prefrontal
- medial prefrontal
- ventral prefrontal
Parietal lobe has what areas
- primary somatosensory
- secondary somatosensory
- parietal association cortex
Temporoparietal junction has what areas
- Bilateral temoroparietal junction
- wenicke’s area
- right temporopariteal junciton
Temporal lobe has what
- primary auditory
- secondary auditory
- temporal pole
- hippocampus and parahippocampus gyrus (declarive memory)
Occiptial lobe has what
- primary and secondary visual areas
Amygdala
- Nuclei that interpret facial expressions and social signals.
- Together the amygdala, orbital cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex regulate emotional behaviors and motivation.
- Located deep to the uncus in the temporal lobe.
Assoication areas
- Regions of the cerebral cortex that are not directly involved with sensation or movement.
- Involved with personality, integration and interpretation of sensations, processing of memory, and generation of emotions.
- The four association areas are the lateral, ventral and medial prefrontal and temporoparietal
Assoication fibers
Axons connecting cortical regions within one hemisphere.
Assoication nuclei
- Thalamic nuclei that connect reciprocally with large areas of cerebral cortex.
- Association nuclei are found in the anterior thalamus, medial thalamus, and dorsal tier of the lateral thalamus
Brodmann’s area
Histologic regions of the cerebral cortex mapped by Brodmann. Often used to designate functional areas.
Commisural fibers
Axons that connect homologous areas of the nervous system.
Contralateral area corresponding to brocas area
- Plans nonverbal communication, including emotional gestures and adjusting the tone of voice.
- Region of the cerebral cortex inferior to the premotor area and anterior to the face and throat region of the primary motor cortex.
- Usually in the right hemisphere.
- Lesion causes monotone voice, inability to effectively communicate nonverbally, and lack of emotional facial expressions and gestures.
Epithalamus
The major structure of the epithalamus is the pineal gland, an endocrine gland innervated by sympathetic fibers. The pineal gland helps regulate circadian (daily) rhythms and influences the secretions of the pituitary, adrenal, and parathyroid glands.
hippocampus
- Part of the declarative memory system.
- Important in processing, but not storage, of declarative memories.
- Formed by the gray and white matter of two gyri rolled together in the medial temporal lobe.
Hypothalamus
The ventromedial part of the diencephalon. Plays a major role in regulation of the autonomic and endocrine systems and contributes to emotional and motivational states
Projection fibers
Axons that connect subcortical structures to the cortex and axons that connect the cerebral cortex with subcortical strucutres
relay nuclei
- Thalamic nuclei that receive specific information and serve as relay stations by sending the information directly to localized areas of cerebral cortex.
- All relay nuclei are found in the ventral tier of the lateral nuclear group.
Subthalamus
- Part of the basal ganglia circuit that is involved in regulating movement.
- The subthalamus facilitates the basal ganglia output nuclei and is located superior to the substantia nigra of the midbrain.
Temoroparietal assoication cortex
Part of the cerebral cortex devoted to intelligence, problem solving, and comprehension of communication and spatial relationships. Located at the junction of the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes.
Thalamus
Groups of nuclei deep in the cerebrum. Three groups of nuclei: (1) relay information to the cerebral cortex; (2) process emotional, memory, and sensory information; (3) regulate consciousness, arousal, and attention
Ventral striatum
- Group of neurons located at the junction of the head of the caudate and the anterior part of the putamen. - Involved in reward, pleasure, and addiction.
- Also essential for initiating locomotion
Agnosia
General term for the inability to recognize objects when using a specific sense, even though discriminative ability with that sense is intact. Specific types of agnosia include astereognosis, visual agnosia, and auditory agnosia.
Agraphia
Diminished or lost ability to produce written language
Alien hand syndrome
Involuntary, uncontrollable movement of the upper limb. The limb may elevate when the person is walking, may unintentionally grasp objects, and may interfere with movements of the unaffected hand.
Alexia
Diminished or lost ability to comprehend written language
Aphasia
Disorder of language expression or comprehension. Deficit in the ability to produce understandable speech and writing or the ability to understand written and spoken language
Apraxia
Inability to perform a movement or sequence of movements, despite intact sensation, automatic motor output, and understanding of the task
Astereognosis
Inability to identify objects by touch and manipulation, despite intact discriminative somatosensation.
Dysarthria
- Speech disorder resulting from paralysis, incoordination, or spasticity of muscles used for speaking.
- Due to upper or lower motor neuron lesions or muscle dysfunction.
- Comprehension of spoken language, writing, and reading are not affected by dysarthria.
- Two types of dysarthria: (1) spastic, due to damage of upper motor neurons and (2) flaccid, resulting from damage to lower motor neurons or muscles.
Flaccid Dysarthria
Breathy, soft, imprecise speech caused by damage to lower motor neurons in cranial nerves 9, 10, and/or 12.
Motor Perservation
uncontrollable repetition of a movement
optic ataxia
Inability to use visual information to direct movements, despite intact ability to visually identify and describe objects.
Paraphasia
Use of unintended words or phrases, ranging from word substitution to the use of nonsensical, unrecognizable words.
pusher syndrome
Powerful pushing away from the less paretic side in sitting and during transfers, standing, and walking. Syn.: lateropulsion. Occurs with lesions to posterior thalamus.
Spastic dysarthria
harsh awkard speech caused by UMN lesion
Thalamic pain syndrome
Severe contralateral pain that may occur with or without provoking external stimuli, occurs only rarely following a thalamic lesion
visual angosia
Inability to recognize objects visually, despite intact vision.
