Day 2 Flashcards
What is structural imaging
they are highly detailed pictures of the brain t scans mris xs rays
What is Functional imaging
Brain activity
Sees what areas of the brain are active
What are uses of imaging?
Can examine normative changes
Explain changes
Identify different mechanisms of the brain
Find out where and what different systems of the brain are doing
Helps design intervention (helps figure out what’s wrong and how to stop it)
What is the neuropsychological approach? And how does it help?
Neuropsychological: Compare brains of healthy older adults with adults of any age with a condition, we compare areas of damage
Helps us understand what’s going on in the illness or damage
What is a neuron
brain cell
neuro transmitter
Caries information
myelin sheath
fatty layer that insulates the tail of the neurons
It protects and helps info move faster
White matter
Network of neurofibers that make up the denser inner part of our brain
Cerebral cortex
Outermost part of brain. It has two hemispheres connected by thick bundles of neurons called corpus
ventricles
Ventricle transport cerebral central fluid
(Air bag)
Corpus colosum
Bundles of neurons that connect the two hemispheres of the brain
Prefrontal frontal cortex
In control of executive functioning.
ex. Decision-making
inhibiting our responses
regulation of impulses
Cerebellum
Controls coordination and equilibrium, balance (important for aging
Lympic system
emotion motivation and memory
Hippocampus (in lymbic system)
In charge of memory highly and is effected by age
Amygdala (in limbic system)
Fight or flight emotion processing threat detection
can preserve threats in social environments
Semantic or neurosystem therapy works with Amygdala - you think everything is a threat
What are normative age related changes with the brain?
- number of neurons declines
- number and quality of dendrites (ability to have connections between bran cells) decrease this effects: processing speed longer, memory bad, less info processing
- Fibre tangles in our axons-they get wrapped around each other: slower processing speeds
- Protein deposits in and around neurons (this is debris) slows down system
What is normative aging vs non-normative aging?
Non-normative aging has the same structural and changes as normative aging but just with a different severity and speed.
White matter hyperintensities
This is declining white matter in the brain
looks like holes in the brain on MRIs
Dopamine and aging
Dopamine lowers= less high effort cognitive processing (memory recall)
Abnormal serotonin processing-related to normative age decline, dementia and schizophrenia
Brain size and aging
Starting at age 40 you lose about 5% of your brain size every decade
At age 70 we see increases in brain size in prefrontal cortex hypocampus and cerebellum
Cerebral cortex and aging
- thins out- slower less efficient information processing
Ventricles and age
- They get bigger
What are the behavioural changes that we see tied to structural changes?
Emotion processing-they pay more attention to emotional meaning
older adults show different additional brain patterns than young adults
provides us with evidence that the brain keeps developing
Theory of mind and executive functioning
Our understanding that other people have different perspectives than us
theory of mind is related to executive functioning
Memory
Temporal lobe important for memory
Normative aging= decreased volume,
There are different paterns of activity in the brain this is evidence that the brain is trying to work around this structural damage.
Theses new roots might not be as effective but work
Pareto-Frontal integration theory (P-fit)
Different intelligence is based on individual diff. in brain structure and function
As we age our brains reconfigure the neural pathway we use. We rely on diff intelligence
theory to explain why older ad younger brains act differently
The Crunch model
looks at how brain adapts to normative decline by picking up other neural circuits
Older people recruit more help from across the brain as apposed to just one hemisphere
as tasks get harder, the brain will recruit more help until it hits the point it can’t recruit anymore, at this point the performance on the task will suffer
- older people hit that crunch point earlier
The STAC-r model
brains compensate for cognitive design create backup nero pathways
Considers Life course factors and resources (brain energy)
looks at neuro resource enrichment (education, fitness, multilingualism) and depletion (stress)
What is the neurocorrelational approach?
An approach that attempts to relate measures of cognitive performance to measures of brain structure or functioning ( not in real time)
Ex. In fMRI and doing tasks looks for correlation between brain scan and issue
What is the activation imaging approach?
Attempts to directly link functional brain activity with cognitive behavioural data
What are Compensatory changes?
Changes that allow older adults to adapt to the inevitable behavioural decline resulting from changes in specific areas of the brain
What are dendrites
A feature of a neuron that acts like antennas to recive signals from other neurons
Axon
Part of neuron that contains neurofibers
Neurofibers
Carries info inside neuron from dendrites to the terminal branches
terminal branches
Endpoints of neurons that transmit signals across the snyapse
