Lecture 5 Flashcards
What is epilepsy?
a condition that causes frequent seizures
- Seizures = bursts of electrical activity in the brain that temporarily disrupt functioning
Describe temporal lobe epilepsy.
-TLE is among the most common forms of epilepsy
§ Causes: Traumatic brain injury, infections (e.g., encephalitis or meningitis), brain tumor, stroke; often cause is unknown.
§ Age of onset: Can start at any age; usually starts in childhood or after age 60
§ Treatments: Medications, surgeries, brain stimulation; often not completely controlled by treatments.
§ Side effects: Drowsiness, forgetfulness, anxiety, loss of creativity.
What are Deja Vu auras?
Déjà vu, the sense that something has happened before. Impending doom.
What are the 3 types of seizures?
§ Focal onset
* Most common type for epilepsy
* Person is aware
§ Generalized onset
* Person loses awareness
§ Unknown onset
* This happens when the seizure isn’t witnessed by anyone and the patient doesn’t remember whether or not they were aware during the seizure (because seizures can affect memory)
Describe tonic-clonic seizures.
-This is the seizure type often depicted in movies
§ If onset is unilateral, then it is focal
§ If onset is bilateral, then it is generalized
-Tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizures = cause a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions; abnormal electrical activity throughout the brain
§ Signs of onset = a partial seizure (called an “aura”), abnormal sensations such as a particular smell, vertigo, nausea, or anxiety
§ Tonic phase = sudden stiffness or tension in the muscles of the arms, legs or torso; if they are standing, then they may fall
§ Clonic phase = repeated jerking movements of the arms and legs on one or both sides of the body, sometimes with numbness or tingling
§ Postictal Period = period after a seizure when the brain is recovering
Why can EEG detect seizures?
Electrical changes can be seen on EEG when gross motor changes aren’t obscuring the signal
What is a clinical seizure vs an electrical seizure?
-Clinical seizure: What’s going on in the brain when you can see that someone is having a seizure (a lot of noise because of movement of the person)
-Electrical seizure: What’s going on in the brain when you can’t see that someone is having a seizure (more clear because of no movement)
Identify the major parts of the Temporal Lobe and describe their functions.
● Superior temporal gyrus = auditory processing
● Medial temporal gyrus (limbic cortex): Includes amygdala, hippocampus and fusiform gyrus.
● Inferotemporal cortex = visual processing
● Pyriform cortex = olfactory processing & memory
● Fusiform gyrus = facial recognition & processing
● Temporal-parietal junction (TPJ): Attention, memory, language and social processing
- Located on the boundary of the temporal and parietal lobe
● Corpus callosum = bilateral communication
● Hippocampus and hippocampal gyrus: spatial navigation & spatial and object memory
● Amygdala: emotion
● Insula: subjective feeling, salience (meaning) detection
● Superior temporal sulcus (STS): biological motion
Where is the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) and what four things is it consistently shown to be active for in neuroimaging studies?
- Located on the boundary of the temporal and parietal lobe
Attention, memory, language and social processing
What are the TE and TEO, and what do they seem to do?
● TE: feature analysis & category processing
● TEO: unknow
● TEO and TE: together used for object categorization
- Without TE, object can still be recognized and categorised
- without TEO some impairment in object recognition
- if both are removed, object recognition not possible anymore
What are the neuron columns in the TE?
What is cross-modal matching?
Matching visual and auditory information, depends on the superior temporal sulcus
Where is Heschl’s gyrus and what is its role in music processing?
Heschl’s gyrus = Primary auditory cortex in the right temporal lobe: function is pitch (tone) discrimination
Apply what you know: What is the relationship between music and language processes in the Temporal Lobe and Broca’s Area?
The study found shared activity in the temporal lobe for both music and language, with separate areas becoming engaged when complexity in melodies or grammar increased.
Broca’s area, located in the left hemisphere, is associated with speech production and articulation. Our ability to articulate ideas, as well as use words accurately in spoken and written language, has been attributed to this crucial area.
What is the special function that the Temporal Lobe appears to have in music processing?
Special function that the Temporal Lobe appears to have in music processing: Extracting pitch from sound, whether its speech or music
