Lecture 1 Flashcards
Midsagittal
Brain cut directly in half (left/right)
Sagital
Brain cut left and right
Coronal
Brain cut back/front
Horizontal
Brain cut top/bottom
Dorsal
Towards top of brain
Rostral
Towards front of brain
Caudal
Towards back of brain
Ventral
Towards bottom of brain
Central Nervous System
Parts of nervous system encased in bone
- Brain
- Spinal cord
Peripheral Nervous System
Parts not encased in bone
- Inner ear (hair cells)
- Sensory neurons in hand
- Many others
Spinal Cord
- Sends motor signals to body
- Receives sensory information from the body
- Responsible for some reflexes
Brainstem
-Necessary for basic survival functions such as automatic breathing
Diencephalon
- Thalamus
- Hypothalamus
Thalamus
Major relay for sensorimotor information
Hypothalamus
Regulates body temperature, blood volume, hunger and thirst, “set point”, reproduction, and circadian rhythms
Cerebellum
Important for
- Balance
- Timing
- Coordination of fine motor skills
Frontal Lobe
- Responsible for inhibition/self-control
- Last part of brain to develop
- Large consumer of (oxygenated blood)
- Disproportionately affected by intoxicants in the blood
Occipital Lobe
Primarily involved in vision
Temporal Lobe
Important for
- Audition
- Memory
- Speech Perception
- Olfaction
Parietal Lobe
Involved in
- Spatial orientation
- Cross-modal integration
- Somatic sensation
Grey Matter
Contains cell bodies, dendrites, and portions of axons
White matter
contains myelinated axons
Myelin
- Comes from glial (support cells)
- It wraps around the axon and speeds up the transmission of signals down the axon
General Properties
- Bilateral anatomic symmetry
- Unilateral functional differences
- Contralateral sensorimotor control
- Topographical organization
Change Matters
- Sensory systems generally respond most to change
- Sensory neurons will fire repeatedly when there is something new and fire less or not at all after a prolonged period without a change in input
Plasticity
The brain is able to reorganize
- Particularly true for the cortex, less true for more primitive structures
- Plasticity is greater at a younger age
Blind Sight
- The inability to consciously see
- Patients report they have no vision
- They are able to navigate a room with obstacles
- They are able to orient their hand to match a line on a board
- This results from damage to the primary visual cortex
Anterograde (episodic) amnesia
- The inability to form new memories
- H.M. is the most famous case
- Results from damage to the hippocampus
- Patients are able to learn new skills such as mirror drawing
- there are multiple types of memories (episodic, procedural, and declarative)
- Patients can remember things from before the damage
- Old memories are not stored in the hippocampus
Prosopagnosia
- The inability to recognize faces
- Results from damage to the right fusiform gyrus (part of the brain activated by faces)
Phantom Limb Syndrome
- Occurs after amputation
- Person feels pain in limb that is no longer there
