Nervous System 6 - Association Cortices Flashcards
How much of the Brain is Association Cortices?
80% of the brain
What are Association Cortices involved in?
Cognition: attention, identification of relevant stimuli, recognition of objects, planning behavior and memory storage
What do Association Cortices do?
Integrate information from multiple brain regions, linking different sensory modalities to motor actions
What is the Prefrontal cortex important for?
Temporal organization of behavior
What do Lesions of the Prefrontal cortex result in?
- Difficulties in initiating and executing new goal-directed behavior
- Deficits in short term memory
What do Lesions of the Prefrontal cortex not result in?
They do not affect ordinary motor routines or generating IQ
Which part of the brain is required for remembering specific sensory cues that are linked to motor actions?
The Prefrontal cortex
What is another name for Short Term memory?
Working memory
What is Working Memory?
A temporary memory store used for planning and guiding motor actions
What tasks test the function of the Prefrontal cortex?
Delayed action tasks
What is the test for monkeys of the Prefrontal crortex?
Two dishes are placed in front of the money. A screen is lowered and the food is covered leaving a delay period. The screen is raised and the monkey must uncover the well with the food
In the monkey test, what did the brain of the monkeys look like?
Neurons show sustained, increased firing during the delay period - believed to represent the working memory of a cue
What is Prosopagnosia?
Defective facial recognition in humans
What does Prosopagnosia result from?
Damage to the Fusiform face area
What are the face recognition areas of the human brain?
- Fusiform face area
- Occipital face area
- Superior temporal sulcus
What is the function of the Fusiform Face Area?
Identification of person
What is the function of the Occipital Face Area?
Perception of specific facial featurs
What is the function of the Superior Temporal Sulcus?
Perception of facial expression
What links do the FFA, OFA and STS have?
They link faces to emotions, memory, social info and speech processing
Which regions do the FFA, OFA and STS link to?
- Amygdala
- Anterior temporal cortex
- Anterior paracingulate area
What occurs in the Oculomotor delayed response task?
A monkey fixates on the center
A light flashes in a location
Delay
Monkey must direct eyes to the location of the cue for a reward
What is the result of the Monkey oculomotor task?
During the delay there was activity of the prefrontal cells which may be linked to the impending motor response and not always the memory of the cues location
What did Hubel and Wiesel demonstrate?
That some cells in the Primary Visual Cortex (V1) fire when specific light patterns are presented
When do regions of the neocortex beyond V1 fire?
When more complex visual stimuli are presented
What does the Striate/ Extrastriate cortex contain?
Neurons that respond to a particular feature of visual infor (ie color, motion, orientation)
What is the starting point of the Visual Cortex Hierarchy?
It starts with the Striate cortex (V1)
What does each region of the visual cortex do?
Processes info and passes it to higher regions for more analysis
What does perception of entire visual scenes require?
Info from separate cortical regions be combined in the visual association cortices
What is the Posterior Parietal Cortex concerned with?
determining where an object is located
What is the function of the Inferior Temporal Lobe?
Processing info to assess what an object is
What does damage to the inferior temporal lobe do?
Impairs the ability to recognize familiar objects
What is Agnosia?
The ability to recognize familiar objects
What is the grouping behind perception of objects?
Populations of cells, not single cells encode perception of objects
How are neurons in the IT cortex arranged?
In vertical columns
What do neurons in the Inferotemporal cortex respond best to?
Complex 3D objects or pictures of those objects
