Cognitive Functions Flashcards
Explain lateralisation.
Division of labour between the two hemispheres.
Name three areas where information is exchanged through the hemispheres.
The corpus callosum, the anterior commissure, and the hippocampal commissure.
What do the corpus callosum, the anterior commissure, and the hippocampal commissure have in common.
They are all areas where information is exchanged through the hemispheres.
What is the left hemisphere usually specialised for?
Language.
Where does each hemisphere of the brain get visual input from?
The opposite half of the visual world.
Where does light from the right half of the visual field hit the retina?
The left half of both retinas.
Where does light from the left half of the visual field hit the retina?
The right half of both retinas.
Which ear does each hemisphere pay most attention to?
The ear on the opposite side.
Where do the ears send information?
Both sides of the brain, where input is compared from the two ears.
What does damage to the corpus callosum prevent?
The hemispheres from exchanging information.
What is epilepsy?
A condition characterised by repeated episodes of excessive synchronised neural activity.
What do most split-brain people have trouble with?
Naming objects briefly viewed in the left visual field, as the left side of the brain is dominant for language in most people.
What occurs just after split-brain surgery?
The brain hemispheres are often in conflict.
What did Gazzaniga propose regarding the left brain?
The left brain is the interpreter, and invents and defends explanations for actions.
What is the right hemisphere adept at? (2)
Comprehending spatial relationships and seeing the bigger picture.
Name three things that the right hemisphere recognises.
Patterns, language comprehension, and emotion.
What does damage to the right hemisphere result in?
Difficulty perceiving other’s emotions, failure to understand humour and sarcasm, and a monotone voice.
What happens when the left hemisphere is inactivated?
The patient cannot speak.
What happens when the right hemisphere is inactivated?
The patient can describe traumatic or emotional experiences, but do not remember feeling the emotion.
What is the planum temporale?
An area of the temporal cortex that is larger in the left hemisphere in 65% of people.
What happens when the planum temporale is larger in the left hemisphere?
A preference for using the right hand occurs.
What happens to the corpus callosum during childhood and adolescence?
It grows and thickens as myelin increases around certain axons.
What happens to the axons that the brain does not need?
Many are discarded to allow for neurons to connect with functionally corresponding neurons.
What do most tasks require?
Cooperation from both hemispheres.
What three things differentiate chimpanzee’s language from human’s?
They seldom use symbols in new original combinations, use of symbols lack productivity, and use of symbols is primarily used to request and not describe.
The African grey parrot show a great ability for:
Imitating sounds and also using sounds meaningfully.
What do studies of non-human language abilities allow?
Insights into how best to teach language to those who do not learn it easily or those at early stages of language development.
Explain a phonological loop.
Ability to hear something and remember it.
What do humans have a stronger connection between than other species?
The auditory cortex and prefrontal cortex.
What form of memory is necessary for language?
Auditory working memory.
What form of communication may language have evolved from, and what evidence is there to support this? (2)
Gestures, and sound plus mouth gesture.
Name two brain language theories.
A by-product of overall brain development, or language evolved as a specialisation.
What did Chomsky and Pinker propose?
Humans have a language acquisition device, a built in mechanism for acquiring language.
What is the evidence for Chomsky and Pinker’s theory?
The ease at which most children develop language.
Name some possibilities as to why humans developed language. (2)
A long period of childhood dependency, or social interactions favoured evolution of language.
What aspects of language do children excel at learning?
Pronunciation and unfamiliar grammar.
What aspects of language do adults learn best?
Vocabulary.
People who begin learning a second language after age 12:
Rarely gain fluency equal to a native speaker.
What activity do people who are bilingual from a young age show?
Bilateral activity during speech for both languages.
Second language learners after age 6 tend to show only ___ hemisphere activity.
Left.
If children are not exposed to language, what can occur?
A limited ability to learn the language later.
What does damage to Broca’s area result in?
A language disability.
Explain Broca’s aphasia.
A serious impairment in language production.
Give another name for nonfluent aphasia.
Broca’s aphasia.
Explain Wernicke’s aphasia.
Characterised by impaired language comprehension and ability to remember object names.
What is impaired in Wernicke’s aphasia?
The ability to find words is impaired, but recognition of items is not.
What are the characteristics of Wernicke’s aphasia?
Articulate speech, but with pauses to find the right word, anomia, poor language comprehension, and difficulty understanding speech, writing and sign language.
Explain anomia.
The difficulty recalling the name of objects.
Name two parallels between music and language.
Relies on small changes in sound, and music composed by different-language speakers are often different in emphasis.
What brain area is strongly activated when musicians sight-read music?
Broca’s area.
What is dyslexia?
A specific impairment of reading in a person with adequate vision, motivation and cognitive skills.
People with dyslexia are more likely to have a:
Bilateral symmetrical cerebral cortex.
Most people with dyslexia have problems with what?
Poor auditory memory.
Name four characteristics of dyslexia.
Difficulty with the temporal order of sounds, difficulty trading the first consonants of two words, abnormalities in attention, and they can more easily identify letters slightly to the right of the visual fixation point.
What is Spoonerism?
Difficulty trading the first consonants of two words.
What is dualism?
Belief that mind and body are different substances that exist independently.
At what point did Descartes propose that the mind and brain interact?
The pineal gland.
What are two problems with dualism?
It conflicts with physics, a mind not composed of matter or energy could not make anything happen, and muscle movements could not be attributed to the mind.
Explain monism.
A belief that the universe consists of only one substance.
Give three categories of monism.
Materialism, mentalism, and identity position.
Explain materialism.
Everything that exists is physical or material.
Explain mentalism.
Only the mind really exists, and the physical world could only exist if the mind were aware of it.
Explain identity position.
Mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing in different terms.
What is the operational definition of consciousness?
If a cooperative person reports the presence of a stimulus but cannot report the presence of a second, they were conscious of the first and not the second.
What is masking?
A brief visual stimulus is preceded and followed by longer interfering stimuli.
Explain backward masking.
A brief stimulus and final stimulus presented.
What does consciousness of a stimulus depend on?
The amount and spread of brain activity.
Explain binocular rivalry.
Slow and gradual shifts of the eye sweeping from one side to another.
What is consciousness?
A threshold phenomenon.
When does Phi phenomenon occur?
When we see a dot in one position alternating with a similar dot nearby, appearing as though the dot is moving back and forth.
Where is there decreased connectivity n the brain during anaesthesia?
Between the cerebral cortex and thalamus, hypothalamus and basal ganglia.
What is bottom-up stimulus?
A reaction to a stimulus.
What is a top-down process?
Intentional.
Which brain area is activated by the Stroop effect?
In colour-vision areas of the cortex.
What body part do both hemispheres control?
The trunk and facial muscles.
Each hemisphere gets ___ information from both sides of the ___.
Taste, tongue.
Where do the brain hemispheres get smell information from?
The nostril on the ipsilateral side.
What is epilepsy characterised by?
Repeated episodes of excessive synchronised neural activity.
What can epilepsy result from? (4)
A gene controlling the GABA receptors, trauma or infection in the brain, brain tumours, or exposure to toxic substances.
How do anti-epileptic drugs work? (2)
By blocking sodium flow or enhancing the effects of GABA.
What did Ornstein believe about the hemispheres?
The left focuses on details and the right on overall patterns.
Listening to laughter or crying activates the ____ ____ more than the ____.
Right amygdala, left.
Who discovered that the planum temporale is larger in the left hemisphere in 65% of people?
Geschwind and Levitsky.
How do non-humans animals communicate?
Visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical (pheromonal) displays.
What is Williams syndrome?
Affecting about 1 person in 20’000, people are poor at tasks related to numbers, visuomotor skills, and spatial perception, as well as frequent lapses of attention, poor planning and difficulty inhibiting inappropriate responses.
What is the cause of Williams syndrome?
A deletion of several genes from chromosome 7, leading to decreased grey matter, especially in visual processing areas.
What does the gene FOXP2 regulate?
A protein that promotes synapse formation in the cerebral cortex.
What are most cases of aphasia related to?
Combined damage to parts of the cortex, thalamus and basal ganglia.
What do people with Broca’s aphasia omit from speech?
Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, quantifiers, and tense and number endings.
Name the three typical characteristics of Wernicke’s aphasia.
Articulate speech, difficulty finding the right word, and poor language comprehension.
What are the two categories of dyslexics?
Dysphonetic dyslexics and dyseidetic dyslexics.
Explain dysphonetic dyslexia.
Have trouble sounding out words, so they try to memorise each word as a whole, and when they don’t know a word they guess based on context.
Explain dyseidetic dyslexia.
Sound out words well, but fail to recognise a word as a whole.
Explain flash suppression.
A strong response to a flashing stimulus decreases the response to the steady stimulus.
What are gamma waves?
Activity precisely synchronised in several brain areas, in the frequency of about 30 to 50Hz.
What is one consequence of synchronised action potentials?
Their synaptic inputs arrive simultaneously at the target cells, producing maximal summation.
What kind of phenomenon is consciousness?
Yes-no.
Explain inattentional blindness.
If something is a complex scene changes slowly or while you blink, you will probably not notice it unless you are paying attention to that specific object.
What is spatial neglect?
A tendency to ignore the left side of the body, the left of objects, much of auditory information in the left ear, much touch in the left hand, especially when there is conflicting information coming from the right.
