Chapter 13 Flashcards

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1
Q

left and right hemisphere connect to..

A

..each hemisphere connects so muscles and skin receptors on their contralateral body side


-exceptions: trunk and facial muscles (controlled by both), taste and smell are 
 uncrossed

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2
Q

lateralization

A

each hemispheres has a different function

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3
Q

connection of the two hemispheres through …

A
  • the corpus callous ( set of axons)

- anterior commissure and hippocampal commissure

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4
Q

visual connection of hemispheres

A
  • both eyes are connected to both hemispheres


  • information from the right visual field falls into the left half of each retina which connects to the left hemisphere

 - optic chiasm (cross) axons from the left half of the right retina got o the left 
hemisphere (and vice versa)
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5
Q

split- brain operations

A
  • surgically damage of corpus callosum in severe epilepsy

- either remove the focus point within corpus callosum where seizures begin
 or cut out the whole corpus callous

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6
Q

consequences of damaged corpus callosum

A
  • split brain people remain fairly normal 

  • but : struggle on unfamiliar tasks when both hands are needed 

  • can use both hands independently in ways other people cannot 
-> BUT hemispheres still do not act in complete isolation!
    => left hemisphere is responsible for speech production,
    whilst both hemispheres can comprehend
    -
> split brain patients can understand with both hemispheres but only information shown to the left hemisphere can be vocalized!
    -as time passes after the surgery, brain learns to use smaller connections between hemispheres to make up for the lost corpus callosum
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7
Q

the interpreter

A

tendency of the left hemisphere to make up explanations for what the right hemisphere did

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8
Q

comparison left and right hemisphere

A
  • right hemisphere (holistic): better than the left at comprehending spatial relationships
  • > focuses more on overall patterns whereas the left focuses on detail
  • > right hemisphere sees the ‘bigger picture’, relates what’s been heard to the overall context 

  • is more responsive to emotional processing
-> more fine tuned to gestures, tone of voice, sarcasm, happiness or sadness of others
  • left hemisphere (analytical): responsible for processing language
  • > but without right hemisphere, left hemispheres understanding would be very literal
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9
Q

plantum temporale (temporal cortex) is larger in 1……..hemisphere from when we are born -> resulting in 2…. handedness

A

1- left , 2- right

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10
Q

Maturation of the Corpus Callosum

A
  • gradually grows and thickens as some axons are myelinated in childhood/adolescence
  • matures through discarding many axons
  • > overproduction in early development and two neurons connected 
each other to corpus callosum. These two neurons need to have corresponding functions
  • connections that integrate info from both hemispheres develops between 3-5 years
  • 
> before, some behaviors of children resemble adult split brain behaviors
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11
Q

human language has..

A
  • productivity = ability to improvise new combinations to represent new ideas
  • this makes human language distinct
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12
Q

teaching language to chimpanzees

A
  • attempts failed because humans vocalize while breathing out, chimpanzees vocalize whilst breathing in
  • when taught to communicate in symbols, it remained unclear whether they understood the meaning

  • > their use was short in productivity

  • > only used symbols to request and not to describe
  • However, they were able to differentiate between who, where, and what questions

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13
Q

teaching language to bonobos

A
  • > Bonobos are similar to humans in many aspects (sex face to face, outside of fertile periods, build bonds, male contributes to childcare)
  • > Kanzi could understand, follow instructions, describe, but not produce 

  • > learned when he was young, learned by observation since his mom was taught
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14
Q

teaching language to non primates (parrot)

A
  • african gray parrot could speak without food rewards
  • > has implications for how to teach people who do not learn language well
  • our language has evolved from other species
  • > we cannot decide whether chimpanzees or parrots have language unless we define it more clearly
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15
Q

possible explanation for development of language in humans

A
  • development of the phonological loop might have facilitated language
  • 
> stronger connections between auditory cortex and pre-frontal cortex => better auditory memory
  • language developed out of gestures
  • 
> especially mouth gestures in monkeys
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16
Q

evolutionary theory on language

A
  • humans have evolved bigger brains and language is a by-product of this
  • criticism: whales have even bigger brains but no language
  • 
> not everyone with a full sized brain and normal intelligence has normal language 
( williams syndrome)
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17
Q

williams syndrome

A

people can speak normally but have low intelligence

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18
Q

language acquisition device (LAD) ( chomsky)

A
  • language as a built in mechanism 

  • > kids learn so quickly as if they were biologically prepared
    • 
> FOXP2 gene regulates proteins that promote synapse formation in cerebral cortex 

  • > this has an effects of jaw- and throat structures related to speaking
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19
Q

Bilingualism/ sensitive periods for language acquisation

A
  • people who learned a second language before 12 have native-like proficiency
  • bilinguals from infancy show bilateral activity during speech of both languages
  • 
> people who learn after age 6 show only left hemisphere activation for both languages
  • bilinguals have better attention control
  • a child who learns no language within the critical period will not become proficient at any language later in life
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20
Q

aphasia

A

language impairment
- brain damage in general can be a way to study specializations for language by correlating damage brain region to deficits in verbal behavior

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21
Q

Broca’s Aphasia

A
  • Nonfluent Aphasia
  • brain damage in left frontal cortex impairs language production
  • mostly: broca’s aphasia relate to combined damage to several brain parts, not only broca’s area
  • awkward communication forms: speaking, writing, gesturing
  • generally omit pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions (closed class words) “apple green” instead of “the apple is green”
  • 
> have actual struggle saying closed class words out loud
-> linked to difficulties understanding the meaning, not difficulties in pronunciation
  • still residual knowledge of grammar
  • 
> can say when a sentence is grammatically incorrect but not how to improve it

  • > infer meaning themselves
22
Q

closed class words

A

Prepositions, conjunctions, helping verbs

-> “closed class” because they rarely change within a language

23
Q

Wernickes Aphasia

A
  • Fluent Aphasia
  • damage in left temporal cortex (near auditory cortex)
  • > can articulate themselves but make little sense
  • 
> omit nouns and verbs (open class words)
  • have anomia: difficulties recalling object names
  • 
> make up names or describe it in other words
  • have struggles with language comprehension of any form because sentences without nouns and verbs make little sense
24
Q

anomia

A

difficulties recalling object names

-> seen in patients with Wernickes Aphasia

25
Q

open class words

A
  • nouns and verbs
  • > often changed within a language ( add new open class words)
  • open class words are not used by patients with Wernickes Aphasia-> makes it hard to understand them
26
Q

relationship between music and language

A
  • music as well as language relate to detecting small changes in sound
  • > high correlations between detection of changes in pitch of sounds and tone of voice
  • evolutionary process that helped us develop language also helped us develop music
  • we prefer music that resembles our language in tone and rhythms which suggests that they are related
27
Q

Dyslexia

A
  • reading impairment in people who have adequate vision, motivation, cognitive skills and educational opportunity
  • more common in boys
  • more common in English because it has a large number of irregular, nonphonetic spellings
  • results out of difficulty converting symbols into sounds
28
Q

brain anomalies in Dyslexia

A
  • patients with dyslexia are more likely to have bilateral symmetry (no enlarged planum temporale in left hemisphere)
  • brain areas in parietal and temporal lobe have lower than average gray matter
  • 
> can be cause as well as consequence of poor reading
29
Q

dysphonetic dyslexics

A
  • trouble sounding out words so they try to memorize words a whole
  • > when they don’t recognize a word, they infer it from context (read ‘laugh’ as ‘funny’)
30
Q

dyseidetic dyslexics

A
  • can sound out words but fail to recognize words as a whole
  • > read slow and struggle with irregular spellings
31
Q

explanations and treatment for dyslexia

A
  • dyslexia might result from:
  • > poor auditory memory
  • > difficulties detecting order of sounds
  • > attention focus problems
  • can be treated with teaching them to focus on one word at the time (with a cut out sheet of paper)

  • > but this changes their attention strategy in other activities too: are then not able to multitask anymore
32
Q

3 kinds of monism


A
  1. materialism = everything is matter, the mind doesn’t exist
    
2. mentalism = the outside world doesn’t exist unless a mind perceives it
    
3. identity position = mental processes ARE brain processes (consciousness = brain activity)

=> monism is generally widely accepted nowadays
-> brain activity and experience are inseparable

33
Q

easy and hard problems concerning consciousness
 (Chalmers)

A
  • easy: difference between sleep and wakefulness

  • hard: why does consciousness exist at all? why does info-processing feel like something at all?

–>today we are limited to easy problems before we can get to the hard one

34
Q

flash suppression

A

experiment: a dot on screen, followed by a flashing ring around it
- > makes people unable to see the stationary dot

- > strong response to flashing stimulus decreases the response to the steady stimulus (steady dot)

35
Q

Consciousness

A

when we are conscious, we see and recognize things

  • > gamma waves (precisely synchronized in several areas) are evoked and spread widely

  • > being conscious of a stimulus means that it evokes more overall brain activity
36
Q

masking and backward masking

A
  • masking: brief visual stimulus is preceded and followed by by longer interfering stimulus (often a pattern) 

  • backward masking: only brief stimulus followed by final stimulus

–
> when stimuli are masked, we have no consciousness of them

37
Q

binocular rivalry

A

perception switches between the two stimuli that are presented to each eye independently.
-> are competing for consciousness

38
Q

experiments using binocular rivalry

A
  • some stimuli (e.g. facial expressions) hold attention longer than neutral ones (stripes)
  • > using a pulsating stimuli on one eye results in distinct brain activation for the pulsating and stationary stimulus
  • > shifts are evident in fMRI scans
  • > large scale activation in differing brain areas
  • 
> conscious stimuli virtually take over brain activity
39
Q

unattended stimuli and consciousness

A
  • much of our brain activity is unconscious and even unconscious activity can influence behavior
  • > binocular rivalry experiments: when a word or even your name appears in the unattended field, the attention switches rapidly to that eye
  • ->means that unattended stimuli are still somehow attended to 
and that the brain detects it before you become conscious
40
Q

Consciousness as a Threshold Phenomenon

A
  • consciousness of a stimulus seems to be a yes-or-no thing
  • when a stimulus activated enough neurons to some extend, activation magnifies and spreads over much of the brain
  • if a stimulus fails to reach that level it just fades away
  • fMRI support: brains response is either weak or strong, not intermediate
41
Q

phi phenomenon

A

dots appearing one by one later seem as if they were one dot that moves in a circle (inferred that movement afterwards)

  • > intepretation/consciousness depends on timing and context: also with words that sounds half way like dent or tent
  • > depending on which sentence it appears in, you will perceive it as either one or the other
  • -> we are capable of becoming conscious of something after it is gone
42
Q

anaesthetic patients

A
  • loosing consciousness marked by decreased overall activity

  • > especially between cerebral cortex and subcortical areas
  • 
> consciousness returns with increased activity between cerebral and subcortical

  • > further alertness returns with increased cortex activity
  • 
> loss of connectivity leads to a stimulus that cannot spread = reach consciousness
  • people in a vegetative state can sometimes show wilful brain responses to verbal instructions (indicating some consciousness)
  • brief magnetic stimulation of one area results in spreading activation in conscious people and only brief, local activation in sleeping, anesthetized or vegetative people
43
Q

attention

A
  • attention is not a synonym of consciousness but closely related 

  • > we can be conscious without paying attention but we cannot pay attention without being conscious
44
Q

inattentional blindness

A

(change blindness) =

when something changes slowly or changes while you blink you don’t notice the change

45
Q

Brain Areas Controlling Attention

A
  • bottom-up: stimulus dependent attention
  • top-down: intentional attention
  • 
> top-down depends on PFC and parietal cortex
  • 
> evident in stroop task: hard to suppress reading (top down interfering with bottom up)-
> fluctuation makes you resist distraction
46
Q

Spatial neglect

A
  • often in people with right hemisphere damage
    
-> ignore left side of body and visual field
  • mainly loss of attention!! rather than loss of sensation 

  • we can make these people aware of their neglected side 

    -> telling them to pay attention or crossing over left (neglected) arm under right arm increases attention for neglected arm
47
Q

social neuroscience

A

study how genes, chemicals and brain areas contribute to social behavior

48
Q

Love related brain activity

A

pictures of the person you love result inn increased brain activity 
in :

  • reward area = similar to that of drug addicts 

  • hippocampus and other areas for memory and cognition
=> what we call love combines motivation, emotions, memories and cognitions
49
Q

oxytocin

A
  • is a hormone that is released during and after child birth
-> stimulates breast to produce milk

  • > promotes bonding in general
  • 
> both men and women release it during sex -> called “love enhancing, magnifying hormone”

  • > in studies it increased attraction to partner not just everyone 
and made men stand further away from other attractive women
  • 
> results in greater attention to facial expressions
  • 
> increases conformity of opinions in in-group
  • 
> can increase attention to threats
50
Q

empathy

A
  • ability to identify with other people
 (often towards people who are similar to us)
  • 
> helpfulness depends on empathy
  • 
> stronger in humans than in other species

varying degrees of empathy and altruism are reflected in brain activity
–> psychopaths show less empathetic brain activation