Chapter 13: Cognitive functions

Question 1

Lateralization

Answer 1

Hemispheres operate on different tasks.
i.e left hemisphere is responsible for speech production, left hemisphere comes up with interpretations and explanations of actions. Right H. detecting the emotions of others.Right detect overall patterns but the left is better in details.

Question 2

Epilepsy

Answer 2

A condition which manifests itself through excessive syncjronized neural activity. Causes: brain tumors, toxic substances, gene mutation, brain infection and trauma. GABA is decreased.

Question 3

Why people have a better ability to learn language?

Answer 3

1. Language was a by-product of overall brain development. Problem: genes impair language abilities without impairing iIQ, Williams syndrome: a person is mentally rearder but its lamguage is fairly fluent.
2. Language evolved as a specialized brain mechanism, innate system for learning language- language acquisition. +innate grammatical rules.

Question 4

Aphasia

Answer 4

It refers to language impairment. Damage in Broca’s area. (Brocs’s aphasia, non-fluent aphasia). Trouble in expression oneself, not just speaking (writing, gestures), Speech: avoid grammatical forms (prepositions).

Question 5

Wernice aphasia

Answer 5

No problems in expression but in understanding (comprehension), and in remembering objects name (anomia). 1. articulated speech, 2. trouble finding the right word, 3. bad language comprehension (especially with nouns and verbs).

Question 6

Dyslexia

Answer 6

It is a reading impairment, when a person has otherwise proper academic skills and vision. They have some minor brain abnormalities (bilaterally symmetrical cerebral cortex). They have problems detecting the temporal order of sounds and attention problems.

Question 7

Dysphonetic dyslexcs

Answer 7

Problems in sounding out words

Question 8

Dyseidetic dyslexics

Answer 8

Failure to recognize a word as a whole

Question 9

Consciousness and attention

Answer 9

Bottom-up theory: process depends on a stimulus
Top-down: processes are intentional and they depend on the prefrontal and pariental cortex. A meaningful stimulus captures attention faster than a meaningless stimulus. The brain somehow processes the stimulus before becoming consious of it.

Question 10

Inattentional blindness (change blindness)

Answer 10

we are conscious only of the things to which we direct our attention.

Question 11

inocular rivalry

Answer 11

When two different stimuli compete for attention