Injury to the cerebral hemispheres

Question 1

What 5 things does the left side of the brain do?

Answer 1

• Controls the right hemibody
• Verbal information
• Language skills
• Arithmetic
• Linear reasoning

Question 2

What 5 things does the right side of the brain do?

Answer 2

• Controls the left hemibody
• Spatial information
• Nonverbal communication
• Number estimation
• Holistic problem solving

Question 3

What are the subregions of the frontal lobe?

Answer 3

• Motor, premotor and SMA
• Inferior frontal cortex
• Prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral, ventromedial and orbital)

Question 4

What are Brodmann areas?

Answer 4

Regions of the brain defined by their histological structure and organsiation of cells

Question 5

What does the SMA do?

Answer 5

• complex and bimanual movements

Question 6

What does the premotor area do?

Answer 6

voluntary motor activity (trunk)

Question 7

What does the primary motor cortex do?

Answer 7

voluntary motor activity (limbs)

- has a somatotopic organisation

Question 8

What is Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 8

Severely reduced verbal output - halting and effortful

- know what to say but they cant get the words out

Question 9

What does the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex do?

Answer 9

Self-monitoring
Planning and problem solving
(“Executive function”)

Question 10

What are the main functions of the parietal lobe?

Answer 10

Sensations of touch, smell and taste

• Dominant side = numeracy and goal-directed movement (praxcis)
• non-dominant side = understanding spatial relations

Question 11

What is the main function of the occipital lobe?

Answer 11

• Visual information is transmitted from the retinal photoreceptors in the optic nerve via the thalami

Question 12

What are the main functions of the temporal lobe?

Answer 12

• Hearing - the primary auditory cortex is in the superior temporal gyrus
• Language comprehension - Wernicke’s area is adjacent to the primary auditory cortex

Question 13

What is Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 13

Fluent but nonsensical speech, often containing meaningless world-like sounds
- Poor speech comprehension

Question 14

What types of lesions are there?

Answer 14

• Haemorrhage - develops over seconds, caused by hypertension
• Infarction - develops over minutes
• Infection - develops over hours
• Inflammation - develops over hours to days
• Neoplasia - Develops over days to weeks
• Degeneration - develops over months to years