Learning and Memory, Speech, Language, Cerebral Dominance, and Cortical Function Flashcards
Which area of the brain deals with primitive emotional responses like fighting, feeding, fleeing, mating?
Hypothalamus
Which region of the brain deals with the highest cognitive functions (judgement, morality, compassion) and has control over emotions?
Frontal Cortex
Which region of the brain deals with production of art and appreciated of art as an emotion?
Prefrontal Cortex
Which area of the brain deals with storage of emotional memories?
Amygdala
Which area deals with episodic memory that are activated and inhibited by emotionality?
Hippocampus
What is synaptic plasticity?
The ability of synapses to change their strength in response to experience and a cellular model of learning and memory
Which receptors in the cellular model for learning and memory have basal synaptic transmission ?
AMPA receptors
Which receptors are blocked by Mg+ but when depolarized lead to Calcium entry and are important for synaptic plasticity?
NMDA receptors
Spatial Memory (the water maze) is dependent on which brain region vs contextual fear conditioning?
Hippocampal vs Amygdala dependent
Term for enhancing synaptic strength
long term potentiation (LTP)
Term for depressing synaptic strength
long- term depressiong 9LTD)
Which molecule downregulates AMPA receptors by dephosphorylation?
calcineuron
Which receptor upregulates AMPA receptors by phosphorylation and contributes to synaptic plasticity?
CaMKII activated by Calcium
What is neurogranin’s role in synaptic plasticity?
Controls synaptic plasticity through its regulation of CaM availability
Low CaM>calcineurin>LTD
High CaM>CaMKII> LTP
What is associated with synaptic plasticity imbalance and decreased neurogranin and easier activation of Calcineuron?
aging
Which side is most commonly dominant and what does this mean?
Left- language is on the left
What is the condition that occurs after early hemisphere damage where development of language shifts to the right hemisphere at the expense of development of cognitive capacities typically associated with the right hemisphere such as visual-spatial skills?
crowding
What is pathological left-handedness?
left-handedness as occured because early injury to the left hemisphere caused a shift in natural handedness patern
If you wanted to know the handedness of a patient which task could you have them perform?
Hand-writing
can also ask hand used to throw, eat or cut
What percentage of people are right handed?
90%
What are two methods for measuring dominance? Which is less invasive?
Intracarotid Amobarbital Test (IAT)- surgical tx to anesthetize one hemisphere and test the other hemisphere
vs. Functional Neuroimaging fMRI much less invasive
Are right or left handers more likely to have bilateral or right cerebral dominance?
left handers
What is associated with pathological left-handedness?
early damage from sz or trauma
Name 4 areas of language?
left frontal, parietal, temporal lobes, and right cerebellum
What may be more predictive of atypical dominance than left-handedness?
family hx of left handedness
How well a patient develops language functions after injury is predicted by what?
age at the time of injury
A patient with past history of left hemisphere injury comes in and language functions are okay but they have some cognitive deficiets…how old were they when the injury occured?
less than 1
Another patient comes in with visual-spatial problems but their language is okay. What ages could they have been when they had left cerebral injury?
1-5
After what age is language no longer spared with left hemisphere injury?
5
When does cross-dominance occur?
Injury to the core or central speech zones
Term for absence of speech and likely lesion?
Mutism caused by bifrontal brain disease or supp. motor region lesion
Vocal cord innervation problems lead to?
Aphonia (no sound production)
The term for loss of capacity to verbalize, patient may grunt or produce sounds but no clear words?
Aphemia- lesion below Broca’s area damages final common path
Impaired capacity to articulate speech due to impaired neuromuscular control?
Dysarthria
All aphasias can be classified by the integrity of what?
FLUENCY, comprehension, repetition
Non-fluent aphasias tend to occur with dysfunction in which region?
anterior regions
Fluent aphasias occur with dysfunction in which region?
posterior regions
What is a literal paraphasia vs. verbal paraphasia?
bork for fork vs spoon for fork
Fluency is evaluated on what 3 dimensions?
phrase length (6-7), degree of effort, prosody (melodic elements)
What tool can you use to evaluate fluency of speech?
“Cookie Theft Card” or open ended questions
What is the core language zone according to the Wernick-Geshwind Model of Language
zones around the sylgvian fissure, Wernkickes, Brocas and the arcuate fasiculus connecting them
Which area is critical to repetition speech?
arcuate fasciculus the whitematter between Broca’s and Wernicke’s Area
Which are intact in Broca’s Aphasia
a. Fluency
b. Comprehension
c. Repetition
only b. comprehension
Which are intact in Wernicke’s Aphasia
a. Fluency
b. Comprehension
c. Repetition
only. a fluency
Which aphasias is repetition preserved?
transcortical motor and sensory
What is a transcortical sensory aphasia?
fluent aphasia with language comprehension deficiets at the word level, usually lesion of the angular gyrus or posterior and inferior temporal lobe
Is alteration of consciousness may due to a lesion where?
Usually not unless very broad diffuse damage to the cortex
Brainstem ARAS (reticular activating system)
Bilateral Thalami
Bilateral Cerebral Hemispheres
Anterior cortex vs posterior cortex deal with which functions?
Anterior motor
posterior perception- sensory
Activation of the primary cortex leads to what specific issue?
Jacksonian March seizure that spreads along motor cortex
What is a term for lack of tone?
Aprosodia
Which side of the brain handles music?
R
Which side of the brain handles tones?
L
What occurs in frontotemporal dementia (Pick’s disease)?
change in personality, poor judgement, inappropriate behavior
Which part of the frontal cortex deals with resiliency and adaptability and contains the micturition inhibitory center?
Medial Frontal cortex
Which side of the post. hemisphere is associated with neglect?
Right
A patient is no longer able to dress themselves or brush their hair although they know what to do?
Apraxia
What is Gertmann Syndrome?
Angular gyrus L parietal lobe- agraphia, acalculia, finger agnosia, R/L confusion
A 78 year old patient suffers ischemic stroke in left MCA which symptoms are expected?
Right hemiparesis, inability to calculate, inability to comprehend, gaze to the left, inattention to objects in right visual field
An 82 y/o patient suffers ischedmic stroke that leads her with right superior hemiquandrantanopia ( can’t see right upper quandrant of visual fields) what else would be expected?
Inability to comprehend
