Localisation Of The Brain Flashcards
What is localisation?
Idea that specific areas of the brain are associated with specific internal mental(cognitive)processes
What is the hemisphere?
A side of the Brain either left or right
What is lateralisation/hemispheric lateralisation?
Two halves of the brain are functionally different
Different mental processes and behaviours are mainly/soley controlled by one hemisphere.
What does contralateral brain mean?
Where the right hand of the brain deal with the left hand side of the brain and visa versa
What is the corpus callosum?
A large bundle of nerve fibres that connects the hemispheres
What is the cerebral cortex?
Outer layer of hemisphere
Highly devoloped
Separates us from animals
What is the frontal lobe?
Speech,thought and learning and descision making
What is the parietal lobe?
Controls sensory information such as touch,temperature,pain,movement and numbers
What is the occipital lobe?
Visual information
What is the temporal lobe?
Hearing language and memory
What is the motor cortex?
Back of the frontal lobe
Responsible for planning and executing voluntary movements in the opposite side of the body
What is the somatosensory cortex?
Located at the front of the parietal lobe
Processes sensory information such as touch,pressure,pain and temperature
What is the visual cortex?
Located at the back of the occipital lobe
Occurs when nerve impulses from the eye are transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve
Right visual cortex= input from left visual field
(Visa versa)
Processes visual information such as object location,colour shape and movement
What is the auditory cortex?
Located in temporal lobe
Responsible for analysing and acoustic information such as features of sound including volume tempo and pitch
What is Broca’s area?
Located-left hand frontal lobe
Responsible for speech production
What is brocas aphasia?
-Slow laborious speech and difficulty producing grammatical sentences
-Although their understanding of speech is relatively good
What is Wernickes area?
Located -in left temporal lobe
Responsible for speech comprehension(interpreting words in order to obtain meaning/undertanding)
What is wernickes aphasia?
Damage to area which causes bad understanding often producing sentences that are fluent but meaningless
What brain scan evidence was found to support localisation?(
Peterson et al-
Used brain scans to demonstrate how wernickes area was active during a listening task
Broca’s area was active during a reading task
Suggesting areas have different functions.
What was tulving et al experiment?(brain scan evidence)
Studying long term memory
Revealed semantic and episodic memory reside in different parts of the prefrontal cortex
What are lobotomies?(neurosurgery)
Destroying areas of the brain to control aggressive behaviour.
What did Dougherty et al?(neurosurgery)
44 patients with OCD underwent a cingulatomy
32 weeks follow up 1 third showed a successful response
What case study study evidence supports localisation?
Phineas gage
Caught in an explosion which resulted in a meter length pole being hurled through his head and tearing out his frontal lobe
Gage survived but became
-short tempered
-rude
-aggressive
Suggests frontal lobe may be responsible for regulating mood-supports localisation.
What are the limitations of localisation of the brain?
Holistic theory contradicts the localsstion theory
It claims that rather than one specific region being responsible for a specific function several areas of the brain work together to perform a specific function
Individuals with Brain damage can be rehabilitated-functional recovery(cognitive functions are relocating them to an undamaged area
What is the Lashley experiment?
Memory in rat Brains was located in several different regions thereby questioning the validity of the localisation theory
However because it was conducted with rats it may have a very different brain functionality compared to humans
What did Sperry investigate?
Investigated with a Series of experiments with 11 split brain patients who had their corpus callosum severed in order to control the servere epileptic seizures they had been experiencing
How did sperry carry out his experiment?
He compared their findings to a control group who had their corpus callosum in tact
Recorded the participants performance on a range of visual and tactile tasks
Sperry asked participants to look at black dot in the centre of a screen using a tachistoscope (displays an image for a very short amount of time)
Presented items to either the left or right visual fields or both visual fields
Participants were then asked to complete a series of tasks on the visual information they had been shown
What were the results of Sperrys experiment?
Split brain patients
Left eye goes to right hemisphere-can only write it down or draw it but cannot verbalise it
Right eye goes to left hemisphere-can verbalise it
