Localisation Of Function

Question 1

Motor area - location and function:

Answer 1

• Frontal
• responsible for voluntary movements by sending signals to the muscles in the body.

Question 2

Somatosensory - location and function:

Answer 2

• Parietal
• receives incoming information from skin to produce sensations related to pain pressure, temperature

Question 3

Visual area - location and function:

Answer 3

• Occipital
• receives and processes visual information. It contains different parts that process different types of information relating to colour, shape or movement.

Question 4

Auditory area - location and function:

Answer 4

• temporal
• responsible for analysing and processing acoustic information.

Question 5

Broca’s area - location and function:

Answer 5

• Left frontal
• thought to be involved in language production

Question 6

Wernicke’s area - location and function:

Answer 6

• left temporal
• thought to be involved in language comprehension

Question 7

AO3 strengths:

Answer 7

-Phineas Gage which show that functions such as personality are localised as Phineas Gage had brain damage to his frontal lobes which altered him from being a polite, respectful man to an aggressive, rude one, suggesting his personality was localised to his frontal lobe.
- Another strength of localisation of function is that damage to the Brocas’s and Wernicke’s area have had proven affects. Damage to broca’s area - can’t speak. Damage to Wernicke’s area - can’t understand language. Damage to both- can’t speak or understand language.

Question 8

AO3 weaknesses:

Answer 8

One weakness of localisation of localisation of function is that a study done by Lashley on rats, showed that localisation of function might not be a valid explanation. He removed between 10 and 50% of the rats brain cortex and then had them compete a learning maze. It was found that there was a minimal difference which suggests that functions are not localised and can shift areas in necessary situations e.g brain damage. However, caution must be taken when generalising from rats to humans as humans have higher order thinking/mental processing.