Module 4: Brain Disorders Flashcards
do humans have a dominant hemisphere in their brain?
no. There is no overall dominant hemisphere, but some functions are more dominant in one hemisphere than in the other.
what is the most strongly lateralized function in humans? and in which hemisphere is it lateralized?
language and speech.
Mostly dominant in the left hemisphere for most of the population.
what are the main functions of the right hemisphere?
face perception -> areas of the visual cortex.
voice tone / prosody
perceptual grouping
what is prosody?
the rhythm of speech
what are contralateral functions?
the hemispheres will control opposite sides of the body.
R hemisphere controls left movement, vision, and sensation.
The l hemisphere controls right movement, vision, and sensation.
what was the relation found between hand dominance and laguage?
95% of right-handed people had language in their left hemisphere,
whereas 70% of left-handed people had language in the left hemisphere.
what proportion of the population is left-handed?
10%
what sides of vision go to which hemisphere?
the right side of vision goes to the left hemisphere, and the left side of vision goes to the right hemisphere.
what do we call the overlap of vision between our left and right eye? and what does it do?
binocular disparity.
it helps with sense of depth
what are the language abilities found in the right hemisphere?
comprehension and reading
what are the language abilities NOT found in the right hemisphere?
Verbal reports
True or False
True or False
the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe constitute the biggest proportion of the brain volume and are highly evolved in humans.
True
what does the parietal lobe do?
it mediates attention
what are the 2 processes of attention?
bottom up and top down processes
what is the top down process of attention?
-it is our conscious control over our behaviours.
-the top down process is driven by conscious thoughts and those are regulated by thoughts and experiences.
give and example where of the top down process is at work.
-the conscious controlled behaviour of not eating cake in the context of being on a diet.
-seeing a messed up picture but still seeing it as normal due to our experience and our expectation of how it should be.
what is the bottom up process?
it is the unconscious control over our behaviours: biological urges and desire will control our behaviours and thoughts.
-it is driven by salient external stimuli
what results from damage to the parietal lobe?
a syndrome called “Spatial Neglect”
how is the parietal lobe responsible for attention?
-it helps direct our attention to things through our eye movements; what i’m looking at = where my attention is directed to.
what is spatial neglect?
loss of awareness to one entire side of space.
what is the problem of attention in psychology?
it is very common. according to William James, everyone knows what attention is. The problem is that everyone has a different idea of what attention is.
what is attention all about?
attention is about selectivity
what is attention selectivity?
it’s the taking possession of the mind in a clear form of ONE thought among many many others.
what does selectivity rely on?
Location and Specificity of features.
what can we identify our attention as?
attention acts like a filter: it prioritizes and selects the features we will focus on for our limited capacity processing resources in the brain