Modularity - Investigating the brain w5 Flashcards
What is the case of Phineas Gage?
He had an accident causing damage to front part of brain. Results in changes to personality.
How do behaviourists see behaviour?
Stimulus leads to response
How do psychophysicists see behaviour?
Excitation = sensation
Or stimulus = sensation
Fodor’s theory of the modular brain: what does domain specific mean?
A task is done in a particular brain region/domain.
Fodor’s theory of the modular brain: what does mandatory mean?
input = automatically output info of that kind
Fodor’s theory of the modular brain: what does a fixed neural architecture mean?
Should be in same location in different people’s brains. Brain should develop in a specific way - common across all people.
Fodor’s theory of the modular brain: what does exhibit specific breakdown patterns mean?
Impairment = resolves in a particular pattern of behaviour
What are standardised neuropsychological tests?
IQ test?
Compares data to large sample of normal (no damage) people. e.g. IQ tests allow for comparison with what’ considered normal, may reveal general deficit in abilities but not particular cognitive deficits.
Different ways a patient with a cognitive impairment may be assessed?
Anatomical brain scan (CT/MRI) = locality of damage. Interviews with patient/family/friends and behavioural assessment - what tasks find hard. Normal psychometric tests. Stand+unstand tests.
Purpose of unstandardized tests? - what is a downside?
Able to probe individual problems of a particular case. But there is an absence of extensive age-matched controls to compare patients results against.
What is the WAIS?
What is the National Adult Reading Test?
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - made up of lots of tests to measure full-scale IQ. NART - measure of ‘pre-morbid’ IQ before damage - pronunciation of irregular word list.
Why is a combination of standardised tests and unstandardized tests used?
because stand might be in average range and suggest usual behaviour BUT unstandardized may reveal a deficit
What are associations?
Tasks that are consistently impaired across patients with similar lesions. = suggests tasks employ similar systems.
What are dissociations?
When Task A is impaired but Task B isn’t = suggests different systems are affected - can be problematic.
What are double dissociations? (two patients)
When Task B is impaired but Task A is not impaired and vice versa for another patient.
What are Broca and Wernicke’s case studies an example of?
Potential problems of double dissociations. - broca could only say tan, and understand lang. Wernicke could speak nonsense, didn’t understand lang.
Issues with double dissociations?
Patients may have developed unusual coping strategies for some tasks. Patients may have differed prior to brain damage.
What is an example of double dissociations?
Prosopagnosia and Capgras delusion are opposite conditions. Can’t recognise faces vs recognises but believes to be imposters. Feeling vs no feeling.
What does an fMRI do?
Ads/Disads?
Measures blood oxygen levels in brain to show regional activity. High spatial res + records in 3D. Indirect measure + slow responses (bad temp res).
What does an MEG or EEG do? Ads/Disads?
Measures electrical action potentials at the scalp to infer synaptic activity. High temporal res but poor spatial res.
What do ERPs do?
Measure pattern of potentials following a particular event. Repeat many times to get an average pattern for a certain event.
What does TMS do?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses powerful magnets to stimulate parts of the brain. Knock out technique - virtual lesion.
