Class 23 Flashcards
Libet’s task:
an unscheduled task – move your finger whenever
• A ramp-up of an EEG signal (the RP) preceding the intention to move and the onset of movement
The RP ( in Libet’s task ) can be modeled with ___
random fluctuation of the brain’s neural activity, and just looks the way it does because it doesn’t capture times when a movement doesn’t happen
• The RP doesn’t show up when decisions to move are deliberate and not arbitrary
Generalized cognitive disorders Usually due to
damage that is not limited to one brain area, but can manifest across multiple brain regions
ex. closed-head injuries (when the brain is damaged due to the head hitting another object, but doesn’t pierce the brain), dementias, multiple sclerosis
Psychopathologies
Mental illnesses
Damage to certain brain regions as a consequence of
degeneration or disease can be associated with the development of sets of symptoms such as those associated with anxiety, depression, schizophrenia
PTSD
- Persistence of intense, distressing avoidance of stimuli that remind someone of a triggering event (Shalev et al., 2017)
- Consequence of exposure to traumatic events
Fear conditioning: PTSD is associated with
abnormal retention of conditioned fear
fear memory gets very strong.
Contextual processing (pratularly PTSD)
hippocampus, medial PFC show altered processing in indivduals with PTSD
Hippocampal volume in PTSD
was reduced in combat-exposed veterans who developed PTSD compared to controls
This was also true for the non-combat exposed twins!
PTSD treatment outcomes are predicted by
hippocampal size
‘COVID brain’
“brain fog”
Patients tested over the phone post-COVID-19 show deficits in
various aspects of cognition (e.g. attention, language, memory) – the ‘brain fog’
Early reviews of acute COVID brain imaging report ___ which are associated with
white matter hyperintensities
which are associated with cognitive decline
Culpability
the degree to which someone is responsible for an action
• e.g. involuntary manslaughter for killing someone while drunk driving, vs. firstdegree murder for deliberately planning to and then killing someone
adolescent’s brain and Law
adolescent’s brain is still developing
Guilty Knowledge Test / Concealed Information Test
Testing response to something that only a ‘guilty party’ would know
Teachers & Brain/Learning
Teachers may still be susceptible to some myths about the brain and how this interacts with the way children learn
Dyslexia
an inability to learn to read at an age appropriate level despite having adequate amounts of opportunity, training, and no differences in intelligence
(Dyslexia) Deficits with __ awareness
phonological awareness (being able to break a word into phonemes and understand how they are represented)
(Dyslexia) Strength of N1 in response to words at kindergarten
Strength of N1 in response to words at kindergarten was predictive of differences in reading performance 2 years later, more so than behavioral assessments
White matter hyperintensities are
lesions in the brain that show up as areas of increased brightness when visualised by MRI
