Neuropsychology Fundamentals (Dr Feifer)

Question 1

Four Lobes of Cerebral Cortex

Answer 1

Occipital, Parietal, Temporal, Frontal

Question 2

Occipital Lobe

Answer 2

Is dedicated to visual processing. Includes the visual cortex where the dorsal (spatial/where) and ventral (visual/what) streams originate. 

Question 3

Parietal lobe

Answer 3

Processes sensory, and spatial information, and is the main receptive area for the sense of touch. It also has areas involved with higher level language processing.

Question 4

Temporal lobe

Answer 4

Houses language and memory functions. It is also involved with auditory and visual processing. 

Question 5

Frontal lobe

Answer 5

Handles executive functions, such as planning, working memory, and self monitoring, as well as reasoning, language, and motor planning functions.

Question 6

Basal ganglia

Answer 6

Control of voluntary motor movements, procedural, learning, routine behaviors, cognition, and emotion. 

Question 7

Limbic system

Answer 7

Includes the amygdala, singular cortex, hippocampus, and hypothalamus. 

Question 8

Amygdala

Answer 8

Primarily responsible for fear conditioning and processing emotional responses. Stimulates fight or flight responses. Also involved with memory processing and decision-making. 

Question 9

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (Medial Prefrontal Cortex)

Answer 9

Directs attention, inhibits responses, and plans a behavioral response. Other responsibilities include cognition and emotion, as well as modulating ambiguity. 

Question 10

Posterior Cingulate Cortex

Answer 10

Processes, episodic memories and may be related to working memory performance

Question 11

Hippocampus

Answer 11

Crucial in spatial navigation and the formulation and consolidation of memories. There are two hippocampi, one on each side of the brain. 

Question 12

Brian basis of Dysphonic dyslexia

Answer 12

A deficit in phonology, which is housed in the temporal-parietal gradient along the supramarginal gyrus

Question 13

Brain basis of surface dyslexia

Answer 13

A deficit in orthographical processing, housed in the angular gyrus, a parietal region involved in symbol system processing.


Question 14

Brain basis of mixed dyslexia

Answer 14

Impairment in phonological and orthographical processing skills. Deficit in the inferior parietal lobes, involving both the supramarginal gyrus and angular gyrus.

Question 15

Comprehension deficits

Answer 15

Mechanical aspect of reading is normal, but difficulty persists deriving meaning from print. Deficits may include poor language and vocabulary skills, limited working memory, or poor executive functioning skills that facilitate encoding and retrieval of verbal information. 

Question 16

Verbal dyscalculia

Answer 16

Deficit in the automatic retrieval of number facts stored in a linguistic code. Brain region responsible for this function is the angular gyrus. 

Question 17

Procedural dyscalculia

Answer 17

Difficulty recalling the algorithm or sequence of steps when performing longer math operation, such as multiplication and division. The left prefrontal region is responsible for sequential ordering of symbolic information. 

Question 18

Semantic dyscalculia

Answer 18

Deficits in magnitude representations, understanding, higher level, math, concepts, and transcoding, difficult math operations into a base 10 format. Primary brain region is the horizontal interparietal sulcus.

Question 19

Graphomotor dysgraphia

Answer 19

Motor skill deficits involved in the planning organization, guidance, and automaticity of motor movements that physically transcribe thoughts and ideas on paper. 

Question 20

Dyslexic (spelling) dysgraphias (3 subtypes) 

Answer 20

A. Dysphonic dysgraphia - hinders the ability to differentiate sounds in words. The speller fails to represent every sound with a symbol.

B. Surface dysgraphia - impact the ability to spell phonetically, irregular words due to difficult difficulties, understanding, orthographic spelling patterns and conjuring up a visual image of the printed word form.

C. Mixed dysgraphia - the most severe type of spelling disorder characterized by a combination of poor phonological processing skills, poor orthographic skills, limited working memory, and bizarre spelling errors

Question 21

Executive dysgraphias

Answer 21

A wide range of written language deficits that stem primarily from executive dysfunctions, including difficulty planning and organizing ideas, poor grammar and syntax, lack of a topic sentence, little elaboration, or detail, and poor understanding of how words and phrases can be combined. 

Question 22

Cerebral structures of dysgraphia (written expression, and spelling depend on numerous spring structures working in concert)

Answer 22

A. Supramarginal gyrus - spelling by sound

B. Angular gyrus - visualizing words

C. Limbic system - emotional connectivity to the subject matter.

D. Anterior cingulate gyrus - focusing attention, inward toward internal resources, thoughts and ideas.

E. Hippocampus - retrieval of stored memories

F. Inferior parietal lobes - higher level thinking and problem-solving

G. Frontal lobe - syntactical arrangement of thoughts and ideas in a linguistic manner

H. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - Organization and planning of thoughts, self-monitoring responses, holding ideas in working memory, sustaining attention, initiating task, and maintaining motivational persistence

I. Pre-motor cortex - planning motor responses

J. Motor cortex - execution of metric act of writing

K. Basal ganglia - automaticity of handwriting

L. Cerebellum - motor coordination and sequencing

Question 23

Focused attention

Answer 23

The anterior cingulate direct attention to a particular stimulus while the amygdala registers its emotional attractiveness or aversiveness 

Question 24

Sustained attention

Answer 24

Vigilance is maintained by right inferior parietal lobe

Question 25

Shifting attention

Answer 25

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex shifts attention from one stimulus to another.

Question 26

Arousal

Answer 26

Brainstem regions, including the reticular formation of the midbrain and the locus coeruleus of the pins, are responsible for activating the brain when an external stimulus requires attention.

Question 27

Declarative (conscious) memory

Answer 27

Generally stored in the temporal lobe and retrieved by the frontal lobe

Question 28

Nondeclarative (unconscious) memory

Answer 28

Habits and procedural memories, often involving the stratum and basal ganglia regions 

Question 29

Spatial memory

Answer 29

Memory for time and space house in the superior parietal lobe, hippocampus, globus pallidus, putamen, and ventrolateral thalamus.

Question 30

Episodic memory

Answer 30

Memory for personal experiences; activated by frontal cortices and posterior cingulate gyrus. 

Question 31

Working memory

Answer 31

The ability to hold and manipulate information; mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Question 32

Cognitive executive functions - dorsolateral circuit

Answer 32

Primary projections go through the basil ganglia, helps to organize a behavioral response when solving complex problems. Other functions include planning and organization, time management, self monitoring, and effortful control of attention.

Question 33

Emotional executive functions: orbitofrontal cortex

Answer 33

Mediates empathetic, civil, and socially appropriate behavior 

Question 34

Emotional executive functions: ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Answer 34

Situated adjacent to the orbitofrontal cortex, it is responsible for three facets of social: emotional valuation of stimuli, response, inhibition, and generation and use of behavioral rules in different contexts. It is also involved when taking another perspective on an emotional event (theory of mind).

Question 35

Emotional executive functions: anterior cingulate cortex

Answer 35

Links attention capabilities with a given cognitive task, diverts, conscious energies toward internal cognitive events, or external stimuli, maintains a motivational state, deals with ambiguous situations, and emotional flexibility. 

Question 36

Visual spatial processing: left superior parietal lobe

Answer 36

Stores over learned visual spatial tasks, such as right versus left or directionality

Question 37

Visual spatial processing: right superior parietal lobe

Answer 37

Involved with mental rotation tasks for novel stimuli.

Question 38

Visual spatial processing: lingual gyrus

Answer 38

Color perception

Question 39

Visual spatial processing: fusiform gyrus

Answer 39

Facial perception in right hemisphere

Question 40

Visual spatial processing: extrastriatal cortex

Answer 40

Visual association cortex in occipital lobes

Question 41

Oral language development: superior temporal gyrus

Answer 41

Modulates phonemes, the fundamental sounds of a language

Question 42

Oral language development: frontal lobes

Answer 42

Modulates syntax, the combinations of words in phrases and sentences, and the sequential arrangement of language. Also retrieve specific words.

Question 43

Oral language development: temporal lobes

Answer 43

Stores the lexicon, which is a collection of all the words in a given language

Question 44

Oral language development: Broca’s area

Answer 44

Modulates the production of speech

Question 45

Oral language development: Wernicke’s area

Answer 45

Modulates the understanding of speech

Question 46

Oral language disorders: Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 46

A type of nonfluent aphasia with impaired syntax and impaired comprehension of speech, that hinders speech production due to lesions in the anterior portion of the left hemisphere.

Question 47

Oral language disorders: Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 47

A type of aphasia with fluent speech, but poor language comprehension. Specific damage is usually in the posterior portion of the left hemisphere. The person often produces random jargon or nonsensical words and phrases when attempting to speak.