Lecture 2 - The Lesioned Brain

Question 1

What is Classical Neuropsychology?

Answer 1

Study of brain and behaviour - what cognitive functions are disrupted by damage to X.

Question 2

What is Cognitive Neuropsychology?

Answer 2

Seeks to understand normal cognitive processes by studying individuals with cognitive impairments from brain damage

Question 3

What is split brain surgery

Answer 3

Cuts through the fibers (corpus callosum) of the brain’s two hemispheres

Question 4

What is an Aneurysm

Answer 4

Localised weak spot / enlargement of the wall of an artery that is prone to rupture

Question 5

What is a stroke?

Answer 5

Damage to the brain from interruption of its blood supply

Question 6

What is Ischemia?

Answer 6

Blood flow restricted - lack of glucose / oxygen

Question 7

What is a Haemorrhage?

Answer 7

Bleeding into brain tissue

Question 8

What is Hemianopia?

Answer 8

Blindness in one half of the visual field

Question 9

What is single dissociation?

Answer 9

Being impaired in one task (A) but relatively spared on another task (B)

Question 10

What is classical single dissociation?

Answer 10

Being impaired in one task (A) but completely spared in another (B) (compared with control)

Question 11

What is strong single dissociation?

Answer 11

Being impaired in both tasks but one task is worse than the other (A and B may use different cog processes OR one is harder than the other)

Question 12

Patient CF - Classical single dissociation - Cubelli 1991

Answer 12

Suffered an Ischemic stroke - damage to left parietal area. Couldn’t speak but could communicate through gestures. Wrote with left hand but omitted VOWELS

Question 13

Kay & Hanley 1994 - classical single dissociation

Answer 13

Patient omitted / made errors with consonants

Question 14

What do these case studies suggest for classical single dissociations?

Answer 14

Brain has separate neural resources for processing of written vowels compared to consonants - same location but different interspersed neurons. FUNCTIONAL DISSOCIATIONS

Question 15

What is double dissociation

Answer 15

When two different functions are selectively impaired in separate patients - DISTINCT NEURAL SYSTEMS (processing vowels and not consonants)

Question 16

Speech aphasia - Julia case study

Answer 16

Could not speak after a stroke, but has re-learnt how to.
Cannot name things she is shown (drawing or picture) but can describe what they are.

Question 17

What brain areas are involved in Julias case study

Answer 17

Frontal lobe (left) = Brocas area intact (language production)

Temporal lobe = Wernickes area = damaged (language comprehension)

Question 18

Knech et al., 2000 study - lateralisation

Answer 18

Strong lateralisation of language (left hemisphere) less likely to experience language deficits after unilateral brain lesion COMPARED TO weak lateralisation or bilateral language representation

Question 19

Problems with single case studies

Answer 19

Everyone is different - no guarantee same lesions will have the same cognitive effects

Question 20

Group studies - what is good about GROUPING BY SYNDROME?

Answer 20

Good for investigating neural correlates of a disease pathology (ALZHEIMERS)

Question 21

Group studies - what is good about GROUPING BY BEHAVIOURAL SYMPTOMS?

Answer 21

Identify multiple regions impacted - lesion location - can test predictions from functional imaging