Neuropsychology 3 Flashcards
Priority 2
What are the major functions in which the temporal lobe is involved?
Receptive language, memory, emotion, and, in the primary auditory cortex, mediation of auditory input.
How might damage to the temporal lobe affect an individual?
Hallucinations, delusions, mood disturbances, selective attention deficits, and auditory agnosia.
What is Wernicke’s area?
A region of the (usually left) temporal lobe involved in language comprehension. Damage can result in receptive aphasia and/or dysnomia.
What is receptive aphasia?
Ability to produce speech that is normal in prosody and articulation, but which makes little or no sense. A.k.a., fluent, or Wernicke’s aphasia. Individual is often unaware of deficit.
What is dysnomia?
In ability to name familiar but recognized objects.
What is the arcuate fasciculus?
Tract connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Lesions produce conduction aphasia.
What is conduction aphasia?
Ability to speak fluently and comprehend others with inability to repeat what is heard.
What are the characteristics associated with temporal lobe epilepsy?
Intense emotions, religious or philosophical preoccupations, social clinginess, focus on circumstantial details, and changes in sexual behavior.
What are the major functions in which the parietal lobe is involved?
Through the somatosensory cortex, somatosensory processing, as well as integration with visual, auditory, and other data.
What is the somatosensory cortex?
Portion of the parietal lobe immediately posterior to the central sulcus. Processes contralateral touch/pressure, kinesthetic, pain, and temperature data.
How might damage to the parietal lobe affect an individual?
Contralateral loss of sensation or disruption of movement due to loss of kinesthetic feedback; tactile agnosia, impaired spatial orientation, prosopagnosia, apraxia, contralateral neglect, asomatognosia, anosognosia, or agraphia.
What is tactile agnosia?
Inability to identify objects by touch (usually contralateral to parietal lesion).
What is prosopagnosia?
Inability to identify faces.
What is apraxia?
Inability to execute purposeful movement despite normal motor functioning. Person may know what to do but be unable to recall how; may be able to perform movement spontaneously but not purposely.
What is contralateral neglect?
Loss of knowledge about or interest in one side of the body.
What is asomatognosia?
Inability to recognize body parts.
What is anosognosia?
Inability to recognize one’s own impairment. Usually due to a stroke in the right parietal cortex; 5% of right-side parietal stroke patience exhibit anosognosia. Commonly associated with hemiplegia. DiffDx, contralateral neglect: CN applies to everything in affected visual field; anosognosia limited to impairment.. CN Pts can have attention directed to neglected are; anosognosia Pts deny and may confabulate.
What is agraphia?
Loss of ability to read or write.
What is Gertsmann’s syndrome?
A pattern of deficits attributed to lesions in the dominant parietal lobe. Characterized by agraphia, acalculia, left-right disorientation, and finger agnosia.
What is acalculia?
Loss of ability to perform simple mathematical tasks (adding, subtracting, etc.).
What is finger agnosia?
Inability to distinguish, name, or recognize one’s or others’ fingers.
How might damage to the occipital lobe affect an individual?
Contralateral visual disruption ranging from blindness to image distortion, blind spots, persistent after-images, loss of depth perception, or visual agnosia.
What is visual agnosia?
Inability to recognize familiar objects by sight.
Which side of the visual field refers to which side of the brain?
Visual fields are contralateral, with right hemisphere receiving information from the left visual field. This is due to optical reversal of the image: ganglion fiber bundles from the right side of each retina go to the right hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa, but the right side of the retina processes the left visual field because the image is flipped by the eye’s lens.
