Lectures and Readings Flashcards
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
State and describe some of the most important issues in Neuropsych assessments
- Cannot be used effectively on everyone.
- Cannot always be used to predict a patient’s performance on everyday tasks
- which is why validity of these tests must always be taken into account.
- Many other outside factors that might affect performance on these tests.
- Mmust be used with ethics in mind.
- can include the number of assessments being used, their impact on the patient, the limitations of the assessment, and how the information might be used by others.
- Effort testing is another issue.
- testing environment bias
- test scores alone not efficient
- doubt in validity of test findings
- bias in tests
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
Discuss the concepts of effort testing, malingering, and self-esteem in the context of Neuropsych Assessment
- Effort testing: evaluating validity of patient’s test scores → poor performance due to impairment in function or less effort or exaggeration
- regarded as essential for patients with cognitive complaints.
- Effort tests are not enough alone to understand the patient’s symptoms
- Current use of effort testing might be used as an excuse to overlook the deeper implications of the patient’s symptoms
- Malingering: consciously modifying one’s behavior when performing cognitive tests to produce false or exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms
- Failure of effort tests often leads neuropsychologists to believe that their patients are malingering.
- Important to try to limit number of neuropsychological assessments a patient must endure to account for the patient’s self-esteem during this long process.
- self-esteem: the ability of a patient to accept and still value themselves after becoming aware of the severity of their condition.
- When clinicians determine that emerging self-awareness might cause a client to become depressed, they may postpone some tests to a later time when there will likely be visible improvements.
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
What information can you get from a standardised assessment vs a clinical interview
- Standardized assessment: gives you information on someone’s behavior based on fixed criteria
- Information on patterns of cognitive functions, neuroanatomic information, behavioral presentation, and more.
- ability to plan, problem solve, concentrate, sustain effort on tasks, social cognition, inhibition and adaptability
- Clinical interview: more information on the life experience of the patient on an individual level
- Helps establish the patient’s perspective on their current problems and personal context
- assesses:
- highlight events of emotional currency
- extent to which client’s autobiographical memory appears intact
- extent to which they can place life events into chronological order
- Helps achieve better diagnosis: It may help to distinguish, for example, two supposedly identical ABIs because they can manifest very differently in two persons with similar demographics.
Haan et al: Split-Brain: What We Know Now and Why This is Important for Understanding Consciousness (to fix)
main point
- Main point: callosotomy or commissurotomy leads to a breakdown of the integration of functions, but many processes also seem to remain unified, specifically regarding consciousness.
- When the corpus callosum is severed or cut, many theories imply that consciousness is also split between the two hemispheres.
- However, current literature does not provide sufficient evidence to determine if split-brain results in a split or unified consciousness.
- Early split-brain studies that tested vision, touch, and verbal communication lead people to believe that the two hemispheres were split regarding consciousness, but more recent literature challenge this position.
- Split-brain patients behaved normally in regards to social interaction.
- Lab tests also challenged the idea of split-consciousness because the two hemispheres were able to communicate at varying degrees across patients and tasks.
- Also evidence that there is unity among the detection and localization of stimuli verbally, physically, and visually among split-brain patients.
- Thus, why perception seems to be split across split-brain patients, response selection, and action control seem to be unified under certain circumstances.
Takemura & DeSchotten: Perspectives given by structural connectivity bridge the gap between structure and function
main point
- extreme localizationism has lost perspective: while areas can be sensitive to specific functions, they are not independently processing the information
- Needs to be more research about the structural connectivity of the human brain at different scales.
- structural connectivity are anatomical connections between brain areas
- Structural connectivity is essential in understanding the circuitry supporting the interaction between brain areas and in bridging anatomy with function.
- Structural connectivity’ is a multidimensional concept that is far from the simplified notion of ‘connected’ or ‘not connected.
- White matter can provide information bout how regions communicate, are organized, and the mechanisms that are related to certain functions.
- There are many different methods and techniques that can be used to study structural connectivity, and each has its limitations and strengths.
- dMRI studies have shown that differences between white matter bundles can show differences in human behavior.
- dMRI can also help estimate the spatial details of white matter.
- This research is especially important because of the lack of research on connectomics in the human brain, especially since many of the techniques being used today have their limitations (such as dMRI).
- This research can also have real-world applications. The article mentioned that the properties of fiber tracts can be used to determine if soldiers need an intervention procedure regarding aggressive behavior after their military deployment.
- Thus, research on structural connectivity can also address real-world problems outside of theoretical research.
Villar‐Rodríguez et al: Left‐handed musicians show a higher probability of atypical cerebral dominance for language (to fix)
main point
Much research has been done on the anatomical differences associated with musicianship, but this study investigated the predisposing and experiential factors that contribute to musicianship.
Does being a musician increase the probability of observing right hemisphere dominance in left handers? → music processing and right hemisphere language lateralization share a common network in right auditory cortex and associated frontal regions
Comparison of left handers with typical left and atypical right lateralization revealed that:
- atypical cases - thicker right pars triangularis and more gyrified left Heschl’s gyrus
- atypical cases - right pars triangularis showed stronger intra hemispheric functional connectivity with the right angular gyrus, but weaker inter-hemispheric functional connectivity with part of left Broca’s area
- Differences in frontal and temporal cortex might act as shared predisposing factors to both musicianship and typical language lateralization.
- Atypical language dominance and musicianship may both arise from specific anatomic and functional characteristics of the brain that enhance the role of the right IFG and right HG.
- Future studies: regarding the bilateral pattern of language lateralization and the results’ relationship to different phenotypes present in atypical lateralization.
Peter Trevino: Are We Ready for Real-World Neuroscience?
general ideas
- Real world does not always conform to laboratory testing
- c) veridical real world situations
- Can help us understand how everyday demands effect our behaviors
- Variables outside the lab- Social, Contextual, Individual
- what are the issues with real world neuroscience?
- real world and lab work together
- Real-world situations are not necessarily an even playing field, you can’t really test things using typical technology such as MRI
- Primary issues: less controlled situations
- goal → create accurate models of how it occurs in every day life
- we must ask if the result of the experiment imply anything about cognition/behavior of this organism in the real world
- variables that are social, contextual, individual, influence the way brains were synchronized
- brain activity who directly interacted before class → more synchronized brain waves during class
- technological limitations
- can usually only measure brain activity at the surface but not what’s underneath
- not complete picture
- comes with sacrifices to do it in the real world
- can usually only measure brain activity at the surface but not what’s underneath
- multisensory research
- integrative processes can occur with feedforward stages
* detection, perception, attention
- integrative processes can occur with feedforward stages
- multisensory processes in real world settings
* naturalistic object recognition and attention allocation
- multisensory processes in real world settings
- new insights about attentional control and functional organization of brain
- object familiarity
* attention control
- object familiarity
Freely share your ideas about how to move (or the need to move) neuropsychology in the real world. Which function would you test and how?
Something I believe would be interesting to study is how people with eating disorders use/navigate social media, and how social media might affect their moods and decisions. I believe that while showing different pictures in a more controlled setting is possible, it is also important to see how people interact with others on the internet in their daily lives. There is more to social media than pictures; it is an amalgamation of pictures, comments, videos, personal friends, strangers, and more. Furthermore, I think it would be interesting to investigate social media’s effect on attention and multitasking, similar to the lab experiments we did in class but in a real-world setting.
I think that it is important to conduct neuropsychology research in the real-world, to be used in addition to normal lab research because it is important to have the two sources of information inform each other. I believe the goal of many researchers/neuropsychologists is to ultimately improve people’s lives, and people live in the real world, not a laboratory where the circumstances are highly controlled. I also think that more technology should be developed that advances the capabilities of the portable EEG headsets so that we can study a wider range of cognitive functioning.
Stephanie Forkel: Language and Aphasia - lesions, single cases, and variability
general ideas
- common methods to study brain
- Some methods make it easier or harder to see a lesion or tumor, and this is very important for patients who have “hidden lesions” that don’t show up on a structural scan but do show up on another scan
- Maybe our current language system functional model is too simple - especially in comparison to our functional models of vision and hearing, though models are definitely being built upon by different aspects of neurology and psychology
- Different types of brain anatomy: Surface, sectional, connectional (tractography), functional (Watch brain at work)
- 3 groups of connections: association fibers (same hemisphere), Commissural (between hemispheres), projection (brain body connection)
- white matter variability
- core of brain is less variable
- more lateral, more variable → areas for high cognitive functions (including language)
- variability - a cognitive advantage?
- experience modifies white matter
- track arcuate fasciclus in left hemisphere, but not in right hemisphere
- advantage if you are more bilateral
- individual differences in lateralization
- women equally distrubuted
- men tend to be strongly lateralized
- patients with more right hemi connections recover from stroke better
- can boost prediction of who’s going to recover up to 60%
- Maybe our current language system functional model is too simple - especially in comparison to our functional models of vision and hearing, though models are definitely being built upon by different aspects of neurology and psychology
Stephanie Forkel: Language and Aphasia - lesions, single cases, and variability
take home
- brain is highly complex
- famous cases can be fascinating and informative
- many different methods to study brain’s architecture and function
- choice of method and frameworks (topological/hodological) matters
- variability matters when we study language aphasia
- current language models need updating
- currently mapping the connectional anatomy of language
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
neuropsychological assessment
represents board area of clinical enquiry, drawing upon many sources of data, and requires considerable skill to integrate and interpret in a clinically meaningful way
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
purpose of neuropsychological assessment
to inform rehabilitation of clients
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
good rehabilitative practice:
is to examine cognition in its broadest sense, including observation and recording of the behavioral, emotional, social, and functional presentation of individuals who have suffered brain injury and/or neurological illness
Jones et al: Neuropsychological Assessment, The Not So Basic Basics
it is critical to:
it is critical to: obtain detailed history of patient, qualitative observation of their functioning, and data available from neuroimaging and other clinical and diagnostic procedures
Takemura & DeSchotten: Perspectives given by structural connectivity bridge the gap between structure and function
limitations
- further research
- understanding white matter anatomy
- developing better methods for studying structural connectivity
- developing tracer technology
