Lecture 23: Frontal Lobes (Medial Aspect) Flashcards
In the medial view of the brain, what is a boundary to the ventromedial frontal cortex?
Below the rostrum of the Corpus Callosum
Who is Phineas Gage?
- Man with rod that traversed his skull through his cheek
- Before accident:
- Moral man
- Temperate in hibit, strong and active
- Favourite among his men
- Having considerable energy
- Efficient and capable of their foreman
- Recovery:
- Less than a year after accident
- Good physical health
- Memory seemed impaired
- After the accident:
- planning
- self-regulation
- social interactions
How was Gage’s skill to plan affected?
- Capricious and vacillating in devising plans for the future
- Abandoning them for apparently more feasible ones
- Irregular and spasmodic activity
How was Gage’s ability to self regulate after the accident?
- child capacity and manifestations
- animal passions of a strong man
- gross profanity
- impatient of restraint or advice conflicting with his desires.
How were Gage’s social interactions affected by the accident?
Irreverent, Impolite
What main events happen in Phineas Gage’s life post-accident?
- Fondness for pets and children
- Chile
- Hotel stable and carriages
- Stage coach
- Seizures
For how many years did Gage live after the accident?
11
What is something surprisful about Gage’s life in Chile?
That he was able to be a stagecoach driver since it requires a great complexity of cognitive skills
What are the two reasons why Phineas Gage is so important in the history of neuroscience?
- Extraordinary physical recovery
- Dramatic chage in personality
- Planning impairment
- Self-regulation impairement
- Social interaction impairment
What part of the brain is associated with judgement, decision making, social conduct and personality?
Frontal lobe
Who modelled the trajectory of the iron rod that damaged Phineas Gage’s brain?
Damasio and Ratiu
They did this based on the skull since the brain was not conserved
True or False
Both groups had exactly the same results.
False
What did Damasio and Ratiu found?
- No damage to the motor and language areas of the frontal lobe
- No damage to the outside of the frontal lobes
- Damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex of the left hemisphere
What could explain the differences in results between Damasio’s and Ratiu’s teams?
Maybe there because of different tech and methods accessible
What can cause damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex?
- Aneurysm located in the anterior cerebral or anterior communicating areas (bilateral)
- Surgical removal of tumours
- Head injury (bilateral)
What are the symptoms of the patients with damage to their ventromedial frontal cortex?
- Emotional and behavioural changes
- difficulty with decisions
- impaired processing of emotion
- Few, if any, cognitive deficits
- Normal performance/ability on/to:
- solve abstract problems
- recall and pay attention
- tests of executive function
- Normal performance/ability on/to:
True or False
ventromedial frontal cortex is the same thing as ventromedial PFC?
True
What are the different functions of the ventromedial frontal cortex?
- Emotional aspect of decision making, learning and social behaviour
- Connections with limbic and subcortical structures
Who is patient C.D.?
- Similar to Gage’s case
- Cognition:
- high intellect
- high verbal abilities
- Perceptual/organizational skills
- Word-finding skills
- Reading ability
- Drawing skills
- Block construction
- Simple motor speed
- Verbal and non verbal memory
What is the D-KEFS Color-Word Interference Test?
- Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Color-Word Interference Test
- CWIT
- As fast as you can do:
- Color naming trial
- Name the color of red, green and blue squares
- Word reading trial
- Read words “red”, “green” and “blue” painted in black ink
- inhibition trial
- Say the color of the ink in which each word is printed as quikly as you can without making mistakes.
- Inhibition/Switching trial
- Say the color of the ink
- When the word is in a box, read the word out loud
- Measurement: Completion time on each trial
On which other test is the third part of the D-KEFS Color-Word Interference test based on?
Stroop test
What were the results of patient C. D. in the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Color-Word Interference Test?
- Fast:
- Color naming
- Word reating
- Inhibition trial
- inhibition/Switch trial
- HIGH ERROR RATE:
- Inhibition/Switch trial
Give a summary of patient C.D.
- Bilateral ventromedial frontal cortex damage
- Cognitive flexibility and assesses shifting skills
- Inability to slow down in order to provide more accurate responses
- Impulsivity and Disinhibition
True or False
Ventromedial frontal cortex contributes to cognitive functioning
True
What is depth electrophysiology recording?
It is the process of inserting different types of electrodes into the brain. For humans, this is usually done during a procedure and can be on top of the brain or deeper in it.
True or False
MRI’s are helpful to see where and how deed the electrodes are
True
Describe the study by Kawasaki et al. 2001
- Goal: investigate the involvement of the ventromedial frontal cortex in the processing of human emotion at the single-cell level.
- Procedure:
-
right ventromedial frontal cortex
- 93 cells
- Stimuli:
- visual scenes and facial expressions
-
right ventromedial frontal cortex
- Results:
- Single neuron responses to aversive visual scenes ≠ pleasant or neutral scenes
- Single neuron responses to facial expressions of fear ≠ facial expressions of happiness
- Observed responses may be related to increased emotional arousal or increased allocation of attention to such affective stimui
- Conclusion:
- Single neurons in the ventromedial frontal cortex encode the emotional value of visual stimuli
True or False
From Kawasaki et al. 2001, we know that the single neurons in the ventromedial frontal cortex encode emotional value of visual stimuli, with which other brain part do you think it is connected?
Ventromedial frontal cortex and amygdala are reciprocally connected.
What causes the pathological experience of negative affect in anxiety disorders?
- Common damage/dysfunctional interaction between the ventromedial frontal cortex and the amygdala
What could be the result of having a ventromedial frontal cortex dysfunction?
- Major depressive disorder (MDD)
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)