Exam 2 Flashcards
How did we figure out the localization of language?
Lesion studies, stimulation studies and imaging studies.
What happens when you present an object to the right hemisphere by touching it with left hand or presenting in the left visual field?
- Patient can pick out the correct object with left hand, but cannot with right hand
- Patient claims nothing was presented
What happens during neural maturation?
Dendrites and axons develop.
What is the Kennard Principle?
That functions are spared when injury happens during infancy–before 1.
What is alternating attention?
Ability to shift focus and move between tasks with different cognitive requirements.
What conditions are caused by incorrect pathway formation?
Athetosis and dystonia.
Complete this graph of the cognitive-emotional interaction theory.
Name the three types of inattention.
Inattentional blindness
Change blindness
Attentional blink
What is a neural tube?
A rolled-up sheet of cells that will form the brain and spinal cord. It is formed 3 weeks after conception.
What abnormal development is this?
Polymicrogyria
What behavioral changes happened in monkeys after frontal lesions?
- Reduced social interaction
- Loss of social dominance
- Inappropriate social interaction
- Altered social preferences
- Reduced affect
- Reduced vocalization
What happens when you show a word in the left visual field of a split brain patient?
They do not report seeing the word but can draw the word–right hemisphere.
List the embryonic development of the cortical gyri in order.
- Gyrus rector, insula, cingulate
- Parahippocampal, superior temporal
- Prerolandic and postrolandic, middle temporal, superior and middle frontal, occipital
- Inferior and transverse temporal, medial and lateral orbital, angular, supramarginal
- Paracentral
- Anterior and posterior orbital
Which hemisphere is dominant for facial recognition?
The right.
Identify the word processing areas.
Describe the Wernicke-Geschwind model.
A model that explains the relationship between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.
Begins at the angular gyrus (posterior temporal lobe). Information flows towards Broca’s area through
- Wernicke’s area (spoken word comprehension, sound images of words)
- Arcuate fasciculus (connects W with B)
- Broca’s area (motor programs for speaking words)
Complete Posner’s Attention Model
What kind of amnesia is linked to damage to anterior thalamic nuclei?
Anterograde amnesia.
What is the difference between short-term and working memory?
The short-term memory is a temporary storage of information, whereas the working memory allows for temporarily storing and manipulating information.
Describe the role of the cerebellum in memory.
Classical conditioning.
Describe the Papez theory of emotion.
Limbic structures (thalamus, hypothalamus, mammilary bodies, cingulate gyrus and hippocampus) act on the hypothalamus to produce emotional states.
What are the four components of emotion?
- Physiology
- Distinctive motor behaviour
- Self-reported cognition
- Unconscious behaviour
In which hemisphere is the speech if a dichotic listening subject reports hearing in the right ear?
Left hemisphere.
What is Kluver-Bucy syndrome?
It results from bilateral damage to to amygdala and inferior temporal cortex.
Symptoms include:
- Tameness and loss of fear
- Indiscriminate dietary behaviour (will eat anything)
- Indiscriminate sexual activity
- Hypermetamorphosis: irresistible impulse to notice and react to everything in sight
- Examine objects by mouth
- Visual agnosia
Describe the role of the temporal cortex in memory.
The anterior temporal cortex has a role in semantic memory.
What are the stages of brain development?
- Cell birth (neurogenesis, gliogenesis)
- Cell migration
- Cell differentiation
- Cell maturation
- Synaptogenesis
- Cell death and synaptic pruning
- Myelogenesis
What problems can lead to brain deformities?
Genetics, trauma and toxic agents.
Define attentional blink.
Failure to detect a second stimuli if presented within 500ms of the first.
Describe the cognitive-emotional interaction theory of emotions.
Proposed by LeDoux. The emotional system evalutes internal and external stimuli. Circuits in the amygdala interact with several cortical areas to influence affective behaviour.
Describe the role of the amygdala in memory.
Emotional conditioning, storing emotional events and coding emotional signals.
Damage disrupts emotional memory, but not implicity or explicit memory.
What guides synapse formation?
Genes, cues, and signals.
What is the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus in emotion?
Emotional monitoring and evaluation.
Name and describe the cortical components of language.
- Broca’s area: working memory, articulation
- Insula: lesion leads to speech apraxia
- Wernicke’s area: holding sentences in memory, rhyming
- Posterior middle temporal gyrus: lesion leads to fluent aphasia
- Superior temporal gyrus: sentence comprehension
- Arcuate fasciculus: recurring utterances
Name the models of memory.
Sensory modality-based
Content-based
Time-based
Storage capacity-based
What is sustained attention?
Ability to maintain attention and remain alert to stimuli over prolonged periods of time.
What is anterograde amnesia?
Inability to acquire new memories.
What is the purpose of the highlighted areas?
What is the Wada technique?
Putting one hemisphere to sleep with barbiturate sodium amytal, and checking function during that time.
Describe the asymmetry in emotional processing in the frontal lobe.
- Left hemisphere lesions: flattened mood
- Anterior lesions: reduction in facial expression
- Left frontal leasions: decrease in talking
Who was Leborgne?
Broca’s first case. He was also know as Tan–the only word he could say. Had a lesion in Broca’s area.
Which brain structures support the alert function?
Locus coerulus
Right frontal cortex
Parietal cortex
Define change blindness.
Failure to detect changes in the presence, identity or location of objects in scenes.
Describe Korsakoff’s Syndrome.
Characterized by:
- Anterograde and retrograde amnesia
- Confabulation
- Meager conversation content
- Lack of insight
- Apathy
Caused by thiamine (B1) deficiency.
Damage may be in medial thalamus, mammillary bodies, or caused by general atrophy due to alcoholism.
What effects did Wilder Penfield produce with electrical stimulation?
- Total arrest of speech
- Hesitation and slurring
- Speech distortion and repetition
- Number confusion
- Naming difficulties
- Misnaming and perseveration
Name and describe the three pure aphasias.
- Alexia without agraphia: Poor reading. Lesion located in left lateral occipital sulcus (visual word form area).
- Agraphia: Poor writing. Lesion located in left parietal region (supramarginal gyrus or insula).
- Word deafness: Poor comprehension and repetition. Lesion located in tracts between auditory systems and Wernicke’s area.
What happens when you present a word in the right visual field of a split-brain patient?
He can read or name the word–left hemisphere dominant speech.
Describe the role of the amygdala in emotion.
It has a role in emotional conditioning, and may have a fear-specific function. Positive AND negative emotional verbal stimuli elicit activity in the left amygdala.
What are the critical periods for plasticity?
- Before 1: injury leads to function reduction.
- Between 1 and 5: injury is compensated by plasticity
- After 5: Loss of function is more evident
Describe Alzheimer’s disease.
Begins with cellular damage in the medial temporal cortex. Anterograde amnesia is the first symptom.
Later damage to the temporal association and frontal cortical areas lead to retrograde amnesia.
What happened to people with VMPFC lesions?
Impairment in emotion recognition, which can impact social cognition.
Name the store for visual input.
Iconic store.
Which brain structures support the executive attention function?
Anterior cingulate
Lateral ventral
Prefrontal cortex
Basal ganglia
What parts of the brain compose the Papez circuit?
Fornix
Mammillary bodies
Anterior thalamic nuclei
Cingulate cortex
Identify the brain structures responsible for emotion.
How do you assess aphasias?
Assessment tests include:
- Auditory and visual comprehension
- Oral and written expression
- Conversational speech
Describe conduction aphasia.
A fluent aphasia with sometimes hatling speech, but without articulatory disorders. Language errors include:
- Phonemic paraphasias and neologisms
- Poor repetition
- Okay comprehension
Tends to occur as a stage in recovering from Wernicke’s aphasia. Lesion located in arcuate fasciculus.
How is short-term memory like a relay station?
It sends chunks of data to long-term memory, and uses chunks of data right away and forgets them.
Describe severe Broca’s aphasia.
A non-fluent aphasia with laborious articulation. Language errors include:
- Speechlessness with recurring utterances or phonetic disintegration
- Poor repeition
Sometimes appears with right hemiplegia in arm. Lesion located in Broca’s area.
What are the hemispheric advantages of the right hemisphere?
- Visual: nonverbal information and faces
- Auditory: faster processing of non-verbal sounds
- Tactile: visual matching of shapes felt by hand
When does the decline in grey matter begin?
Age 7, a result of pruning.
Describe the role of the frontal cortex in memory.
Activated during encoding, autobiographical retrieval and working memory tasks.
Describe Wernicke’s aphasic patients.
- The damage was on 1st temporal gyrus (left)
- No contralateral paralysis
- Speech was fluent but made no sense
- Could hear, but not understand or repeat
Complete this model of working memory.
Which brain structures support the orientation function?
Superior parietal
Temporal parietal junction
Frontal eye fields
Superior colliculus
What happens when you present two objects at the same time to a SB patient?
The patient can reach into two different bags at the same time and pull out the two objects.
Name and define the selective attention stressors.
Load stress: too much information at once. Speed stress: information presented too quickly.
What is “alien hand”?
A disconnection syndrome that involves either involuntary, compulsive use of things within the patient’s left hand reach; and inter-manual conflict.
Describe global amnesia.
A usually transient state that involves loss of old memories and inability to form new memories.
Name and describe the subcortical components of language.
- Basal ganglia: speech articulation
- Thalamus: cortex activation
What is the purpose of the highlighted areas?
Naming tools.
What area of the brain is activated during infant language recognition?
Left temporal area is activated in forward speech, but not backward speech or silence.
Name and describe the two general types of therapies for aphasia.
- Impairment-based therapies: Improving language functions via direct stimulation of specific listening, speaking, writing and reading skills.
- Communication-based therapies: Enhance communication by any means with support from caregivers.
Describe Herpes simplex encephalitis.
Media temporal lobe damage leads to anterograde amnesia.
Damage to insula and surrounding regions produces retrograde amnesia.
Describe anomic aphasia.
A fluent aphasia without articulatory disorders. Language errors include:
- Anomia
- Occasional paraphasias
- Difficult writing
Lesion located in inferior parietal lobe or in the connections between parietal and temporal lobes.
Define short-term memory.
Temporary storage of information that is being processed in a any range of cognitive tasks.
Define intattentioal blindness.
Failure to notice something during the performance of another task.
What is selective attention?
Ability to maintain focus in the face of distracting stimuli.
Describe the role of the parahippocampal gyrus in memory.
Role in semantic memory.
Name the stores for the other senses.
Gustative, olfactory and tactile stores.
Describe the James-Lange theory of emotion.
Stimulus produces physiological arousal; physical arousal leads to emotion.
Describe the role of the basal ganglia in memory.
Implicit memory.
What is the purpose of the insula in emotion?
Activation during emotional event, real or imagined.
Why were lobotomies performed?
To deal with “psychotic” (behaviour) problems.
What are the three categories of aphasia?
Fluent
Nonfluent
Pure
What is the link between speech and handedness?
- 95% of right-handed subjects are left-hemisphere speech dominant
- 70% of left-handed and ambidextrous subjects are also left-hemisphere dominant for speech
How long does myelination lasts?
Begins after birth and continues until 18 yo.
Describe global aphasia.
A non-fluent aphasia with laborious articulation. Language errors include:
- Speechlessness with recurring utterances
- Poor comprehension
- Poor repetition
Lesions located in perisylvian cortex: Broca’s, Wernicke’s, and deep white matter.
What is the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in emotion?
Learning the emotional and motivational value of stimuli.
Which abnormal development is this?
Lissencephaly
What is divided attention?
Ability to do more than one task at the same time.
During the stimulation of which areas is speech formation impaired?
Left frontal or temporal.
How can we measure cerebral lateralization?
- Handedness
- Wada Test
- Dichotic listening
- Neuroimaging
- Brain stimulation
Name the five types of attention.
Focused Selective Sustained Alternating Divided
What are the advantages of the left hemisphere?
- Visual: verbal information and words
- Auditory: faster processing of verbal sounds
- Tactile: identifying letters drawn on palm
What is micropolygyria?
Gyri are more numerous, smaller, and poorly developed.
Name the three kinds of amnesia.
Anterograde
Retrograde
Global
What syndrome are mammillary bodies linked to?
Korsakoff’s syndrome
How is hemispheric asymmetry involved in emotion?
The right hemisphere is more engaged in automatic components of emotion, whilte the left hemisphere plays a role in cognitive control.
Describe the role of the hippocampus in memory.
Involved in:
- Familiar surroundings, where objects are located
- Appointments or events
- Daily activities
- Memory encoding
- Verbal and visual memory
What is retrograde amnesia?
Inability to remember old memories.
What is the purpose of the highlighted area?
Selecting words.
Describe Wernicke’s aphasia (sensory aphasia).
A fluent aphasia without articulatory disorders. Language errors include:
- Neologisms
- Anomia
- Paraphasias
- Poor comprehension
- Poor repetition
Patients usually unaware of deficits and behave normally. Lesion located in Wernicke’s area.
Describe the somatic marker hypothesis for emotion.
Damasio developed it after studying patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage. It argues that emotion is necessary for rational decision-making.
Stimuli elicit body changes, or “somatic markers”. Stimuli-emotion associations are stored in the VMPFC, which are later called on during decision-making.
What are the issues with sex difference research?
Findings are inconsistent, methods are inconsistent, there is more overlap than differences, and the differences may be sociocultural rather than biological.
What did the Sperry split-brain studies show?
Not much–no deficits in lab animals. People born without a CC also had no reported deficits.
Who was H.M.?
Henry Molaison, epileptic who received a bilateral hippocampectomy.
His intelligence remained intact but he had anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Participated in 55 years’ worth of experiments, mentioned in 12k journal articles.
What is lissencephaly?
Brain fails to form sulci and gyri. “Lisse”
Describe the effects of damange to the cingulate cortex.
Anterior cingulate cortex damage affects goal-directed behaviour.
Posterior cingulate cortex damage is associated with amnesia.
Name which language disorder comes with each brain lesion.
Complete this model of long-term memory.
What is attention?
Awareness captured by a specific stimuli.
Who was Lelong?
Another of Broca’s patients. He was 84, a groundskeeper, and could only say five words:
- Oui
- Non
- Trois
- Toujours
- Lelo
Broca also found a lesion on the left frontal lobe.
What is focused attention?
Ability to respond discretely to specific visual, auditory or tactile stimuli.
What are the phases of synapse formation and pruning?
- 1-2: generation independently of experience
- 3: Rapid growth
- 4: Plateau and rapid elimination (teen years)
- 5: Plateau in middle age, decline with age
Name the store for auditory input.
Echoic store.
Describe the Cannon-Bard theory of emotions.
A perception/stimulus activates the thalamus. AT THE SAME TIME, the thalamus activates physiological responses and emotional experience.
What are the right hemisphere contributions to language?
Mostly emotional expression, as shown in split brain and hemispherectomy studies.
