Discussions, Lectures & Videos Flashcards
Monkey control study
Experimenters attached electrodes to specific motor neurons of a monkey, which connected to a computer. They monkey was able to manipulate a bionic arm just by mentalizing the motor movements. (lots of detail in essay question version of this).
Visual Agnosia Patient
John’s trip in the train station. He was able to see, but he wasn’t able to recognize objects. He couldn’t read signs and had trouble finding his way around. He only recognized his wife after he recognized her shoes.
Visual Neglect Patient
Peggy video— she ignored objects in the contralateral half of body caused by damage to right parietal lobe, usually. When she drew flowers, she only drew one-half of them. She was able to realize she had done this if someone else pointed it out to her, but thought everything was normal while drawing it.
Prosapagnosia Patient
Larry video—unable to recognize faces and specific objects belonging to a complex class of objects. he was able to make out specific facial details, but couldn’t put them together for the total picture. Interestingly, EEG results showed that some part of his brain recognized certain faces, but it was not conscious. Damage to a small part of dorsal (what) pathway.
Phantom Limb Syndrome
Dr. Ramachandran video showing mapping of somatosensory cortex, and how different parts take over connections for missing limb (i.e. brushing the side of his face elicits feelings in phantom limb).
Long term potentiation
Synapses are made stronger by repeated stimulation. Three part process—induction—learning, maintenance—memory, expression—recall. Connection to learning—learning can produce LTP-like changes, elicited by levels of stimulation that mimic normal neural activity, LTP effects are greatest in brain areas involved in learning and memory. Drugs that impact learning often have parallel effects LTD.
Rajan
Rajan memorized a ridiculous amount of pi. He could even do so starting from specific lines and places within pi tables.
Clive Wearing
Trapped in eternal present—anterograde amnesia, contracted viral encephalitis in his brain. Clive was the man who kept falling in love with his wife, and saying “I am awake for the first time.”
Daniel Tammet
Synesthesia—able to see images of numbers stored in memory. Words and numbers associated with colors. Allowed him to learn Icelandic in a week and to do complex math (born on a blue day).
Kim Peek
Kim Peek was the real-life Rain Man. Had no corpus callosum, but could retain vast amounts of knowledge (read two pages at a time). However, he could not take care of himself, and relied on his father to help him with basic needs/tasks.
Split brain patient
when corpus callosum cut, each hemisphere functions independently. He would see something in his left visual field, but would be unable to describe it. However, his left hand could draw it, and he could figure it out from the drawing. On the fruit-face paintings, his left hemisphere saw fruit, while the right hemisphere saw the face.
Broca’s & Wernicke’s areas.
Broca’s patient was the lawyer who could comprehend speech, but he spoke with a slurr and very slowly and carefully. He couldn’t figure out what killed what in “the lion killed the tiger” - due to the characteristic grammar difficulties of Broca damage. Wernicke patient would talk and sound pretty normal, but his words would have no semantic meaning
Schizophrenia
Frontal and temporal lobe structure differences. Fewer synapses, larger ventricles, smaller hippocampus, and haphazard neural orientation, particularly dendrocites, .
