Cognition & The Brain Flashcards
The Nervous System
- Central Nervous System
* Peripheral Nervous System
Central Nervous System (CNS)
- Brain & spinal cord
- Protected by bones & cerebral spinal fluid
- Processes information FROM the peripheral nervous system
Peripheral Nervous System
- All other nerves (in the body)
- Not protected by bones & spinal fluid
- Carries info TO the CNS
The Brain
- Hindbrain
- Mid-Brain
- Forebrain
- 4 lobes
- Neurons
Hindbrain: Medulla
- Regulates life support
* Breathing, life support, blood pressure, etc.
Hindbrain: Pons
- Bridge btwn. right & left side of the brain
- Balance, sleep & arousal.
- Implicated sleep paralysis & dreams
Hindbrain: Cerebellum
•Coordinates muscle activity
Midbrain
- Center for auditory & visual information
- Eye movement, lens shape, pupil dilation
- Reticular information (sleep-wake cycle)
- Inferior Colliculi’s
- Superior Colliculi’s
Inferior Colliculi’s
• Auditory
Superior Colliculi’s
• Visual structure
Forebrain
- Corpus Callosum
- Cerebral Cortex
- Hypothalamus
- Thalamus
- Pituitary
- Amygdala
- Hippocampus
Forebrain: Corpus Callosum
- Allows right & left hemisphere to communicate
* left side of the brain controls right side of the body & vise versa
Forebrain: Cerebral cortex
- Grey matter
- 2 hemispheres
- 4 lobes
Forebrain: Hypothalamus
- Located below the thalamus
* directs maintenance activities= eating, drinking, body temp.
Forebrain: Left hemisphere
• verbal tasks
Forebrain: Right hemispher
• spatial, non verbal tasks
Forebrain: Thalamus
- Gives info TO cerebral cortex
- Motor Control
- Receives Auditory, Somatosensory and Visual Sensory Signals
- Relays Sensory Signals to the Cerebral Cortex
- Controls Sleep and Awake States
- Located ABOVE the hypothalamus
Forebrain: Pituatary
• Endocrine system (hormonal system)
Forebrain: Amygdala
- 2 almond shape neural clutters
* Linked to EMOTIONS
Forebrain: Hippocampus
• Memory
4 Lobes
- Frontal
- Parietal
- Occipital
- Temporal
Frontal Lobe
- Front of the head
- Voluntary movements
- Attention
- Goal oriented behavior
- Receives info. from all of the senses
- Plays important role in perception that involve coordination of 2 or more senses.
- May be linked to emotional temperment
Occipital Lobe
- Back of the head
- Everything about seeing BEGINS here
- Receives & processes visual information
Parietal Lobe
- Language comprehension (also in temporal lobe)
* Processes touch, pain, temperature, figures special abilities
Temporal Lobe
- Smelling
- Hearing
- Language comprehension
- Helps us perform complex tasks.
Neurons
- Cannot do anything by themselves
- Neuron activity is simple, but behavior is complex
- Underlines ALL activity in the nervous system
- Allows body to work
Dendrite
• Picks up msg. from other neurons & deliver them to the cell body
Neuron Parts
- Axon
- Dendrite
- Cell body
- Cell nucleus
- Synapses
- Myelin Sheath
Synapses
• Space btwn. 2 neurons
Myelin Sheath
- Helps speed neural impulses
* Amplifies msg. of Axon
Cell bodies
- “Soma”
- Largest part of the cell
- HOLDS the nucleus
- Where the DNA is, located in the chromosomes.
Neural Communication
• Synaptic gap or cleft = separating neurons
Action Potentials
- Electricity
- Spike
- Has to go down the Axon
- Stronger stimulus will trigger more neurons
- Switches ion
- Generated by + charged ions
- Resting potential waiting for something to happen
Firing Rate
- Increasingly bright lights produce more firing (which is why we can distinguish a brighter bulb from a dimmer bulb)
- Bigger stimulus=Higher frequency of action potential
Position Emission Tomography (PET)
- Functional
- Radioactive trackers used
- Consumption of glucose, blood flow, oxygen
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- Functional
- Blood flow
- Can be measured w/out radio trackers
- Indicates presence of brain activity
Brain Imagery
- Shows area of the brain that are active while the brain is completing cognitive tasks
- Enables researchers to determine which brain areas are being activated
Prosopagnosia
• Cannot recognize familiar faces
Communication btwn Neurons
•latch like a key & a lock.
Neurotransmitters
- Have to find their appropriate “lock”
- Have their own identity
- Only found in certain areas of the brain
- Interact with post synaptic membrane= can be excitatory (increase behavior) or inhibitory (decrease behavior)
Dopamine
- Movement
- Learning
- Attention
- Emotion
- Excess linked to schizophrenia
- Undersupply= tremors, decrease of mobility of parkinson’s disease.
Sending Neuron
• Pre-synaptic neuron
Receiving Neuron
• Post-synaptic neuron
Process of neurotransmitter
- Action potential travel from one neuron to another across the synapse
- When an action potential reaches an axon terminal = stimulates the release of neurotransmitter molecules from vesicles. Those molecules cross the synaptic gap and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron. Allows electrically charged atoms to enter the receiving neuron and excite or inhibit NEW action potential.
- REUPTAKE. Sending neuron normally reabsorbs excess neurotransmitter molecules.
Norepinephrine
- Helps control alertness & arousal
* Undersupply: depress mood
GAMA (Gama-aminobutyric acid)
- MAJOR inhibitory (decrease in behavior) neurotransmitter
* Undersupply=linked to seizures, tremors & insomnia
Glutamate
- Major excitatory (increase behavior)
- important to memory
- oversupply= can overstimulate brain producing migraines & seizures
- why some ppl avoid MSG
Acetylcholine (ACh)
- Best understood
- Vital role in learning & memory
- Messenger at every junction btwn. a motor neuron & skeletal muscle
- ACh released to our muscle cells=contracts
- ACh is blocked = muscle cannot move
Curacare
• Causes animal to become paralyzed
Butulin
• Poison caused by improperly canned food
Neurotransmitter “locks”
- The right one
- Agonist
- Antagonist
The right “lock”
• Molecular structure that fits the receptor site on receiving neuron
Agonist “lock”
- Mimics neurotransmitter
- Excites
- Similar enough that it mimics the effects of a receiving neuron
Antagonist “lock”
- Blocks neurotransmitter
* Similar enough to occupy receptor site, block action, but not similar enough to stimulate receptor.
Drugs & neurotransmitters
- block repute process=oversupply in synaptic gap
- may stop producing its own opiates
- Results=withdrawal symptoms
Localization of funtion
- Phineas gage was in a explosion where propelled tampered into skull. Woke up hours later w/ diff personality.
- before: nice, hard-worker, responsible
- after: impatient, profane, child-like
- taught us diff. areas of function
Phrenology & location
- Believed you had to exercise your brain to maintain abilities
- believed that brain changed shapes
- First way of cataloging the brain
Wernicke’s Aphasia
- Larger lesion
- speaking grammatical sentences, that don’t really have meaning
- longer sentences
- Random responses
Broca’s Aphasia
- Short sentences
* Ungrammatical sentences
Plasticity
- The ability of our brain to be retrained
- happened specifically in the case of the girl who was having seizures, had a hemisphere removes & still lived a normal life.
Limbic system
Emotional brain
Axon
Transmits signals to other cells
