Lecture 18

Question 1

What is neuropsychology?

Answer 1

The study of the relationship between brain function and behaviour, especially in humans

Question 2

What is behavioural neuroscience?

Answer 2

Study of the biological basis of behaviour in humans and other animals

Question 3

Who discovered Broca’s Aphasia and who was the patient that had it?

Answer 3

Paul Broca- patient was Leborgne-had good overall mental abilities and good comprehension, but could only say the word Tan.

Question 4

What is aphasia?

Answer 4

An impairment of language ability.

Question 5

What did the video of Sara Scott demonstrate?

Answer 5

Showed how you can have significant recovery after Aphasia.

Question 6

What types of behavioural assays test human memory?

Answer 6

Corsi block test (spatial STM), mirror tracing task (procedural memory), recency memory task (STM).

Question 7

What is the Morris Water Task?

Answer 7

Used to assess spatial memory in animals. Find a platform in a pool of water-eventually the rat will find the submerged platform and in subsequent trials, can do this almost immediately. Asses time and distance travelled.

Question 8

What are the 3 tasks assessed by the Morris Water Task?

Answer 8

Place-learning, matching to place, and land-mark learning

Question 9

What is the place-learning task and what type of damage impairs this ability?

Answer 9

Subject uses visual cues in the room to locate the hidden platform, hippocampal damage impairs.

Question 10

What is the matching to place task and what type of damage impairs this ability?

Answer 10

Platform location is moved each day. Must remember where the new location is. Damage to hippocampus AND frontal cortex causes issues (always goes to old location).

Question 11

What is the land-mark learning task and what type of damage impairs this ability?

Answer 11

Platform is associated with discrete cues (landmark). Damage to striatum makes one unable to identify the cues.

Question 12

What types of things cause a disruption of behaviour in spatial ability?

Answer 12

Aging, dementia, hippocampal damage, frontal cortex injury.

Question 13

What is SeaHero Quest?

Answer 13

The worlds largest dementia research experiment (over 2.4 million downloads). While you play the game, anonymous data is sent to research scientists measuring sense of direction and navigational abilities.

Question 14

How accurate are different age groups on the flare task in seahero quest?

Answer 14

19 year olds: 74% accurate. 75 year olds: 46% accurate.

Question 15

What is some of the data on different countries that has been collected on SeaHero Quest?

Answer 15

People in Nordic countries, North America, Australia, and New Zealand have best spatial navigation
Men performed better than women, gender gap narrows in nations with greater gender equality
Greater Gross Domestic Product of a country results in better navigation.

Question 16

What is the Skilled Reaching Task?

Answer 16

Designed to assess movement in a rat-reach through slot to obtain food pellet. Movement broken down into segments-used to look at compensation for brain damage. (stroke recovery etc)

Question 17

What are the steps in the modification of brain and assesement of behaviour?

Answer 17

1) Develop and test a hypothesis about what the role of brain is in behaviour. 2) development of animal models of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Question 18

What are some of the methods of studying the brain?

Answer 18

1) Disabling/decreasing function (lesions, TMS, opogenetics, DREADDS
2) Enhancing function: Electrical stimulation, TMS, optogenetics, DREADS
3) Measuring activity (single unit recording, fMRI, EEG)

Question 19

What is clarity?

Answer 19

Makes the brain transparent so you can see the organ as a whole.

Question 20

What did Karl Lashley do and why?

Answer 20

Was the first person to use the ablation technique to study an engram (changes in the brain that results with memory).

Question 21

How did Karl Lashley test his idea?

Answer 21

Trained rats on several behavioural tasks (mazes), then made cortical lesions of different sizes and locations

Question 22

What were Karl Lashleys findings?

Answer 22

Number of errors an animal makes depends on the SIZE of the lesion.

Question 23

What is Karl Lashley’s Theory of Equipotentiality?

Answer 23

Memories are not stored in a specific region of the brain.

Question 24

What were some of the issues with Karl Lashley’s findings?

Answer 24

1) Techniques available (ability to lesion, ignored anything below the cortical circuit)
2) Task he chose (highly complex)
3) where he was looking (only damaged surface of brain)

Question 25

What are some of the advances that have been made in lesioning?

Answer 25

We can now damage areas below the surface, and damage the brain more selectively

Question 26

What is a neurotoxic lesion?

Answer 26

Lesion produced by the infusion of a chemical that selectively targets neurons or specific types of neurons- allows us to create animal models of human diseases

Question 27

What is stereotaxic surgery?

Answer 27

Fixes the head in place-allows us to create animal models of human diseases

Question 28

What is Bregma?

Answer 28

The junction of frontal and parietal lobe

Question 29

What are some issues with lesioning?

Answer 29

Irreversible, damage surrounding tissue, potential degradation of connected areas, compensation

Question 30

What are some temporary (reversible) lesions?

Answer 30

Infusion of local anesthetics, cortical cooling techniques.