Domains of Neuropsychology

Question 1

specific major domains of neuropsychology

Answer 1

intelligence, attention/concentration and processing speed, language, visuospatial, memory, executive functions, sensorimotor, emotional/neuropsychiatric

Question 2

subsumed measures of intelligence

Answer 2

ability to problem solve, think rationally but abstractly, adapt to circumstances, act in a goal-directed manner, reason, learn, comprehend

Question 3

emotional intelligence

Answer 3

ability to perceive, process, understand, control emotion in oneself and others

Question 4

theory of mind

Answer 4

ability to make inferences about other people’s intentions, motivations, and emotional states

Question 5

savantism

Answer 5

rare syndrome in which ppl with ID or ASD have 1 or more specific or narrow remarkable talents that exist in contrast to their intellectual disability

may be congenital or acquired as result of CNS disease/injury

6 times more common in males

most commonly involve exceptional memory, can also involve exceptional calculation, calendar knowledge, artistic, and/or language abilities

Question 6

attention

Answer 6

process whereby individuals receive and subsequently process incoming information. closely associated with perception, EF, memory, WM

types: simple, focused, selective, sustained, alternating, divided

Question 7

working memory

Answer 7

form of processing speed (or often executive function) information before it is sent to STM whereby information that is being actively maintained or rehearsed can be retained for up to several minutes

Question 8

concentration

Answer 8

ability to sustain attention over time or to mentally manipulate information

Question 9

simple attention

Answer 9

voluntary
capacity
attention to info that’s lost if not referred

digit span, corsi blocks

Question 10

focused attention

Answer 10

ability to allocate and direct attention that’s dependent on capacity

digit symbol coding

Question 11

selective attention

Answer 11

process by which one chooses some information from amidst other surrounding information or distractors

cancellation

Question 12

sustained attention (vigilance/concentration)

Answer 12

maintaining attention over a period of time

CPT

Question 13

alternating attention

Answer 13

shifting one’s attention back and forth between tasks

TMT-B

Question 14

divided attention

Answer 14

concentrating on more than 1 task at a time or multiple aspects within a task, referred to as multi-tasking by some in the lay public

PASAT

Question 15

Posner and Petersen’s (2012) model of attention

Answer 15

divides attention into posterior and anterior networks

posterior: orienting and shifting attention

anterior: detection subsystem (executive attention subsystem) and involves detecting stimuli either from sensory events or from memory

Question 16

ARAS

Answer 16

ascending reticular activating system

the alerting network of attention

can influence both anterior and posterior networks, operating at high or low levels of arousal

Question 17

processing speed

Answer 17

speed with which mental activities are performed

prominent feature of brain’s cognitive efficiency, affects attention and other higher-order cognition

dependent on neural transmission and integrity and volume of white matter making up portico-cortical connections

also affected by basal ganglia, frontal (dorsolateral prefrontal), cerebellum

coding and PASAT

Question 18

how ARAS is relevant to attention

Answer 18

arousal and attention

Question 19

how anterior cingulate and limbic system is relevant to attention

Answer 19

determines saliency of stimuli and associated emotion/motivation

Question 20

how prefrontal is relevant to attention

Answer 20

response selection, control, sustained attention, focus, switching, searching, and alternating attention

Question 21

how orbitofrontal is relevant to attention

Answer 21

inhibition of responses
sustained attention

Question 22

how dorsolateral frontal is relevant to attention

Answer 22

initiation of responses
sustained attention
shifting attention

Question 23

how medial frontal is relevant to attention

Answer 23

motivation
contingency of responding
focused attention

Question 24

how thalamus is relevant to attention

Answer 24

sensory relay between subcortical areas and the cortex

various nuclei play a role in specific attentional focus

pulvinar nuclei: extracting info from the target location and filtering distractions

superior colliculus: shifting attention, eye movements

inferior colliculus: orientation to auditory stimuli

Question 25

how inferior and posterior parietal are relevant to attention

Answer 25

underlies disengagement from a stimulus and the representation of space

damage is associated with hemispatial inattention/neglect

Question 26

how right hemisphere is relevant to attention

Answer 26

spatial attention

appreciation of gestalt

associated with hemispatial inattention/neglect

Question 27

what is the most common type of cognitive impairment following brain injury or illness and why?

Answer 27

attentional difficulties

because white matter tracts and structures subsuming these functions are diffusely represented thru the brain

Question 28

specific disorders with deficits of attentions

Answer 28

delirium: span and arousal

adhd: executive (self-regulation and sustained

hemispatial inattention (neglect): most commonly associated with lesions in temporal-parietal; usually contralateral; spatial focused and selective attention

TBI: mod-severe TBI leads to issues with arousal, poor attentional capacity, distractibility, executive, processing speed. concussion leads to working memory, attention, processing speed

depression, anxiety, fatigue, sleep, low/poor arousal, environmental factors, medications

Question 29

4 areas that comprise language competence

Answer 29

phonology
syntax
semantics
pragmatics

Question 30

brain regions that control language

Answer 30

expressive: anterior

receptive: posterior

both language dominant hemisphere (left mostly, especially for semantics and syntactics and right can deal with prosody)