NEUROANATOMY Flashcards
Three parts the brain is divided into
The brainstem, cerebellum, and cerebrum
What is the brainstem and its function?
The Section of the brain controls breathing, heart rate, and digestion.
What two things could diagnose a patient brain dead?
- Severe injury to brainstem.- Requiring life support
- Significant tissue loss of the cerebral cortex.
Why is the cerebral cortex so important?
In charge of conscious experience.
What is included within the brainstem? (4)
Medulla, pons, midbrain and diencephalon.
What two things make up the diencephalon?
Thalamus and Hypothalamus
Who is in charge of the sleep-wake cycle? And what else do the regions do?
Collectively, the brainstem, some sensory and motor functions, growth, and other hormonal behaviors.
What are the three areas that differentiate early in embryonic development and later give rise to the main structures?
The hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain
What does the hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain further subdivide into at later stage of development?
telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon, metencephalon, and myelencephalon
What is the cerebellum for?
Critical for coordinated movement and posture.
Which struture of the brain contains the most neurons?
Cerebellum
What are the cerebral hemispheres responsible for?
Our cognitive abilities and conscious experience.
What builds up the cerebral hemispheres?
Cerebral cortex and accompanying grey matter. Plus subcortical structures
What are the subcortical structures that form cerebral hemispheres?
Basal ganglia, amygdala, and hippocampal formation
Names for the folds and grooves of the cerebral cortex.
Gyri and Sulci
What is the occipital lobe responsible for?
Vision
What is the temporal lobe responsible for?
Auditory processing, memory, and multisensory integration (e.g., the convergence of vision and audition).
What is the parietal lobe responsible for?
The somatosensory cortex, structures involved in visual attention, and multisensory convergence zones.
What is the frontal lobe responsible for?
Houses the motor cortex and structures involved in motor planning, language, judgment, and decision-making.
Why is the basal ganglia critical?
To voluntary movement and, as such, make contact with the cortex, the thalamus, and the brain stem.
What is the limbic system?
The limbic system is the part of the brain involved in our behavioral and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviors we need for survival: feeding, reproduction, caring for our young, and fight or flight responses. Aversion and gratification
What system does the amygdala and hippocampal belong to?
Limbic system.
What is the corpus callosum?
Dense bundle of white matter tracts that connect the cerebral hemispheres.
Which hemisphere is mainly focused on language?
Left
What composes gray matter?
composed of the neuronal cell bodies
What does soma contain?
Contain the genes of the cell that are responsible for metabolism (keeping the cell alive) and synthesizing proteins.
What composes the white matter?
The white matter is composed of the axons of the neurons, particularly those covered with a sheath of myelin.
What occurs to a patient if they lose white or gray matter?
Deficits in language, memory, reasoning, and other mental functions.
What is meant by converging evidence?
Similar findings were reported from multiple studies using different methods.
Tell me about phrenology.
A now-discredited field of brain study, popular in the first half of the 19th century, correlated bumps and indentations of the skull with specific brain functions.
When did Aristotle first publish his dissections?
340 BC
Some researchers induce lesions or ablate
Ablation
Surgical removal of brain tissue.
(i.e., remove) parts of the brain in animals. If the animal’s behavior changes after the lesion, we can infer that the removed structure is important for that behavior. TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE
Because the brain works by generating electrical signals, it is not possible to alter brain function with electrical stimulation as it cancels out. TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE. You can use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
What is TMS?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique whereby a brief magnetic pulse is applied to the head with a TMS coil that temporarily induces a weak electrical current in the brain.
For depression, what region of the brain is treated with TMS?
Pre-frontal cortex.
What does TMS interfere with?
Interference with neurons’ everyday communication with each other.
What are the benefits and disadvantages of TMS?
TMS allows a very precise study of when events in the brain happen, so it has a good temporal resolution Temporal resolution but its application is limited only to the surface of the cortex and cannot extend to deep areas of the brain.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)
It uses electrical current (AA battery) directly, rather than inducing it with magnetic pulses, by placing small electrodes on the skull. This takes slightly longer than TMS.
What neuroimaging records blood flow in the brain?
Positron emission tomography (PET)
How does the PET work?
The PET scanner detects the radioactive substance that is injected into the bloodstream of the participant just before or while he or she is performing some task.
Tell me about (fMRI)
Measures the changes in oxygen levels in the blood and does not require any substance to be injected into the participant.
Which has the best temporal resolution, PET or fMRI?
None. They both have poor.
Do PET and fMRI have good spatial resolution?
Yes, they do.
What does Electroencephalography (EEG) measure?
It measures the brain’s electrical activity, and therefore, it has a much greater temporal resolution (millisecond precision rather than seconds) than PET or fMRI.
Does EEG have good spatial resolution?
Nope, because the electrical activity picked up at any particular electrode can come from anywhere in the brain.
What form of imaging can give researchers the best of both worlds: high spatial and temporal resolution?
Diffuse optical imaging (DOI)
How does Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) work?
One shines infrared light into the brain and measures the light that comes back out.
What does Diffuse optical imaging rely on, and what conclusions can be drawn?
DOI relies on the fact that the properties of the light change when it passes through oxygenated blood or encounters active neurons. Researchers can then infer from the properties of the collected light what regions in the brain were engaged in the task.
Is the temporal solution of DOI high or low when set up to detect changes in blood oxygen levels?
When DOI is set up to detect changes in blood oxygen levels, the temporal resolution is low and comparable to PET or fMRI.
When DOI is set up to detect active neurons directly, it has both high spatial and temporal resolution. TRUE OR FALSE.
TRUE
In the brain, which hemisphere is responsible for recognizing faces in objects?
Right hemisphere.
What is an isotope?
Two elements or form of two elements with the same number of protons but different neutrons in the nuclei.
How do Isotopes work with the PET scanner?
Isotopes release protons, which interact with surrounding electrons, annihilating both particles and producing two photons in opposite directions which reach the PET scanner.
