Lecture 2 part 1 Flashcards
Neurocognition
- Brain and cognition together
- Cognition a result of different brain states
Dissociation
Disruption in one component of mental functioning but no impairment of another
Neurons
- Basic building block of the brain and nervous system
- Cell specialized for receiving and transmitting a neural impulse
Dendrites
Gather neural impulses into the neuron (input)
Soma
Cell body
Axon
Long extension from soma
Axon terminals
- Output to other neurons
- Tree like
Myelin sheath
- Insulator for the axon
- Mainly on neurons that are long
- Not all neurons have this
Action potential of neural communication
- Change in electric charge of a neruon from negative to positive
- Charge propagates from the dendrites and down the axon
All or none principle of neural communication
- All action potentials are the same
- Either a neuron fires or it does not
Synapses
- Region in which axon terminals of one neuron and dendrites of another come together
- May be a few or many synapses
Neurotransmitter
- Chemical substance released into the synapse between 2 neurons
- Responsible for activating or inhibiting the next post-synaptic neuron
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
- Changes in the ease at which 2 connected neurons will fire
- Lasts a few hours, days, or weeks
Consolidation
- Long-term change over days, week, months, or years
- Small scale between individual neurons
- Large scale change in assemblies of neurons over long period of time
Thalamus
- Gateway to the cortex
- Almost all messages pass through here
Corpus callosum
Primary bridge for messages to cross to left and right hemispheres
Hippocampus
Implicated in storing new information in memory
Amygdala
important for processing emotional qualities of information
Neocortex/cerebral cortex
- Top layer of brain responsible for higher-level mental processes
- Frontal lobe, Parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe
Contralaterality
Control of one side of the body is localized in the opposite side cerebral hemisphere
Left hemisphere specialization
- Language
- Sounds
- Letters
- Words
- Speech
- Reading
- Writing
- Arithmetic
- Verbal memory
- Complex voluntary movement
Right hemisphere specialization
- Non-language sounds
- Geometric patterns
- Faces
- Nonverbal memory
- Prosody
- Narrative
- inference
- Spatial processes
- Movements in spatial patterns
Cortical specialization
- Sensory cortex
- Motor cortex
Structural measures of neuroimaging
- CT scans
- MRI
Electrical measures of neuroimaging
- Single-cell recording
- Electrocephalograms (EEG)
Single-cell recording
Electrodes record firing rate of individual cells
Electrocephalograms
- Electrodes attached to scalp to record patterns in brain waves
- Event-related potentials
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Electrical field is targeted over brain areas to influence cortical processing
Metabolic measures of neuroimaging
- Positron emission tomography (PET)
- Functional MRI (FMRI)
Positron emission tomography
- Radioactive isotope injected
- Image shows regions of brain with heightened neural activity based on levels of blood flow
Functional MRI
- More detailed image than PET and does not require radioactive isotope
Lesions
- Used by Sperry
- Site and extent of brain lesion are important guides to kind of disruption that is observed
Direct stimulation
- Pioneered by Penfield
- Patient in brain surgery remained conscious and small electrical charges administered to exposed brain thus triggering small regions
