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Clinical and Neuropsychology - 1 > NP2 History of neuropsychology > Flashcards

NP2 History of neuropsychology Flashcards

1
Q

'’All science is either physics or stamp collecting.’’ What does it mean? How is it related to neuropsychology?

A

Physics: mechanistic explanation
Stamp collecting: establishing phenomena
Clinical neuropsychology is both

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2
Q

How do we sort the phenomena (stamps)?

A

Clear categories - more trivial: which country? which colour?
Fuzzy (complex) categories - more ambigous decisions: animals vs people
Clinical neuropsychology includes both types

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3
Q

What are the four periods that are important for the history of neuropsychology?

A
  1. Antiquity
  2. Renaissace
  3. 19th century
  4. 20th century
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4
Q

Antiquity

What are the years that antiquity happened and what is the main idea of this period?

A

400BCE - 300 CE
Philosophy meets empiricism
Philosophy - exercise of thinking and building theories
Empiricism - observations and experimenting

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5
Q

Antiquity

Who were the four important people in Antiquity?

A
  1. Aristotle
  2. Hippocrates
  3. Herophilus
  4. Galen
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6
Q

Antiquity

What were Aristotle’s ideas? What years?

A

384 - 322 BCE
- Highly influential thinker
- Carefully observed and then built theories on these observations
↪ body is sacred, no dissacting (only animals, e.g. all have a heart > must be important)
- Heart is the seat of intelligence (heart produces heat)
- Brain cools the body
- Physiognomy - the interpretation of the face
↪ Early recognition of individual differences in personality, i.e. character

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7
Q

Antiquity

What were Hippocrates’ ideas? What years?

A

460 - 370 BCE
- Father of modern medicine
- Brain is for mental functions
- All abnormal behaviours and emotions stem from the working of the brain
- Pioneered lesion observations

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8
Q

Antiquity

What were Herophilus’s accomplishments? What years?

A

335 - 280 BCE
- Pioneered observation over philosophising - first dissection of the body
- Described the nervous system through dissections - basic anatomy established

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9
Q

Antiquity

What were Claudius Galen’s accomplishments? What years?

A

129-216 CE
- Pioneered dissection and comparative anatomy
- Mapped ventricular system (cavities) and cranial nerves (from the brain to the body)
- Distinguised sensory and motor nerves

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10
Q

How did neuropsychology look before the Renaissance?

A
  • Gross anatomy established
  • Some idea that the brain is important for mental function
  • No specific theory of brain-behaviour relationships
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11
Q

Why was there so little progress over hundreds of years?

A
  • Notion that the soul had no physical basis
    ↪ didn’t look at brain-behaviour relationship because this thought was too deeply rooted
  • Experimentation on humans is forbidden
  • Scientific methos is not fully established
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12
Q

Renaissance

What are the years that Reinassance happened and what are the main accomplishments of this period?

A

1500-1900
- The scientific method takes hold
- The soul gets localised

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13
Q

Renaissance

Who were the three important people in Renaissance?

A
  1. Vesalius
  2. René Descartes
  3. Franz Joseph Gall
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14
Q

Renaissance

What were Vesalius’s accomplishments? What years?

A

1515-1564
- Founder of human anatomy
- created detailed descriptions and drawings of the anatomy of the brain

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15
Q

Renaissance

What were René Descartes’ accomplishments and ideas? What years?

A

1596-1650
- Shaped mind-body dualism (separation)
↪ meditations: ‘I think, therefore I am’ (the thought is the only thing we can be certain of, anything else could be an illusion)
- Viewed the body as a machine and the soul as located in pineal gland (meta-physical)
- Influenced empirical physiology
↪ experiments on animals studying physical processes

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16
Q

Renaissance

What were Franz Josef Gall’s accomplishments? What years?

A

1758-1828
- Shaped the idea of localisation (one area = one function)
↪ The mind should be sought on the edge of the brain, i.e. cortex
- Developed phrenology
↪ pseudoscience
↪ the brain is a muscle = train and becomes bigger > results in lumps on the skull

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17
Q

What did neuropsychology look like before the 19th century

A
  • More knowledge about the structure of the brain
  • Relationship between brain and behaviour is unclear
    ↪ No conceptual framework that ties both together
  • Views were heavily influenced by religious and political ideas
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18
Q

19th century

What is the main accomplishment of the 19th century? What problem lead to further development of neuropsychology?

A

1800-WWI
- The dawn of brain mapping and related behaviours
- Language problems in France and Germany

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19
Q

19th century

Who were the five important people in the 19th century?

A
  1. Jean-Martin Charcot
  2. Paul Broca
  3. Carl Wernicke
  4. John Hughlings Jackson
  5. Francis Galton
20
Q

19th century

What are the accomplishments of Jean-Martin Charcot? What years?

A

1825-1893
- First Professor of Neurology
- First described and categorised many neurological disorders (e.g. multiple sclerosis)
- Developed systematic examination (set of questions to see what the patients have in common)
- First associated specific lesions with clinical symptoms

21
Q

19th century

What are the accomplishments of Paul Broca? What years?

A

1824-1880
- Indentified a critical area of language production
- Build on ideas of Bouillaud who thought that language are is at the front of the brain
↪ examined through the clinico-anatomical method
- Studied Mr Leborgne - Patient Tan
- Established methods of behavioural observation and post-mortem anatomy
↪ post-mortem: linked the lesion in the left-hemisphere with behaviour observed during the life (difficulty producing language)
↪ Helped to establish the assymetry of the two halves of the brain

22
Q

19th century

What are the accomplishments of Carl Wernicke? What years?

A

1848-1905
- Identified a critical area of language comprehension (double dissociation)
- Established the idea of disconnection aphasia
↪ the disconnection could produce its own set of symptoms

23
Q

19th century

What are the accomplishments of John Hughling Jackson? What years?

A

1835-1911
- Established neurology in the UK
- Suggested a hierarchical organization of the brain
- Founded the first journal dedicated for neurology (Brain)
- Distinguised between different types of epilepsy
↪ discovered that some areas take over other damaged areas
↪ Stated that we shouldn’t confuse the location of a lesion that resulted in a specific loss of function with the location of a function

24
Q

19th century

What are the accomplishments of Francis Galton? What years? What was the problem with him?

A

1822-1911
- Brought mathematical concepts to psychology
- problematic figure - racist > wanted to prove that some people are superior
↪ to do that he had to develop assessment of intelligence
- Pioneered psychometric assessment (e.g. intelligence test)

25
Q

20th century

What characterisis the 20th century regarding neuropsychology?

A

1900-1990
- Guns revolutionise neuropsychology
- Strict localization fades away

26
Q

20th century

How did guns & rifles revolutionise neuropsychology?

A
  • Treatment of headshot wounds in WWI and WWII advances neuropsychology
  • Realisation that the brain functions as an integrated whole (holism)
    ↪ brain is closely related > brain injury causes gobal problems, not just on one specific function
27
Q

20th century

What developments has research in the USA with spli-brain patients brought?

A
  • Roger Sperry
    ↪ Research with split-brain patients
    ↪ Hemisphere specialisation (right side better at some functions than left)
  • Methods to study localization of the brain on individuals who have not suffered any brain injury
  • Psychologists started working with patients with brain disorders from a neuropsychological perspective
  • Arthur Benton development new neuropsychological tests
28
Q

20th century

Who were the three important people in the 20th century?

A
  1. Aleksandr Luria
  2. Jerry Fodor
  3. Brenda Milner
29
Q

20th century

What were the accomplishemts and ideas of Aleksandr Luria? What years?

A

1902-1977
- Studied soldiers with brain injuries
- Pioneered systems view of brain function
- Functional subsystems - result from interaction between nature and nurture
- Whole brain adaptive and flexibe
- Developed a comprehensive assessment battery
- Developed rehabilitation protocols for brain injury
↪ what to work on to improve

30
Q

20th century

What are Luria’s Functional Units?

A
  1. Arousal and Tone
  2. Processing Information
  3. Planning and Executing
31
Q

Luria’s Functional Units

What brain parts execute Arousal and Tone and what is the function?

A
  • Brain stem and medulla
  • Regulates wakefulness, alertness, state of consciousness
32
Q

Luria’s Functional Units

What brain parts execute Processing Information and what is the function?

A
  • Posterior parts of the brain
  • Perception and storing and retrieving information
33
Q

Luria’s Functional Units

What brain part executes Planning and Executing and what is the function?

A
  • Frontal lobe
  • Planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and executing complex behaviour
34
Q

Luria’s functional units

In what ways was Luria close to nowadays’ knowledge of the brain?

A
  • Some of the locations are correct > planning and executing in prefrontal cortex
  • However, now we don’t think that the whole back of the brain is responsible for processing of information
35
Q

Luria’s Functional Units

What is Luria’s hierarchical organization? What are the levels and how do they compare to nowadays’ knowledge?

A
  • Hierarchical processing within each functional unit
    1. Primary: input (sensory info comes in - sensory cortex)
    2. Secondary: processing
    3. Tertiary: integration with other areas (association areas)

What is in italics applies to nowadays’ knowledge

36
Q

20th century

What are the accomplishments of Jerry Fodor? What years?

A

1935-2017
- Introduced the concept of modularity: brain processes that operate independently
↪ modules
- Turned away from holism and connectionism
↪ Analysing the effects of damage on cognitive functions by breaking down normal processes to sub-processes

37
Q

Jerry Fodor’s modules

What characteristics does a module have to comply with?

A
  1. can only process certain information
  2. is innate
  3. is encapsulated from the workings of other processes
  4. is computationally autonomous and has a its own neural architecture
    ↪ no sharing of memory processes, attention capacity, etc., with other modules
38
Q

20th century

When was Brenda Milner born and what are her accomplishments?

A
  • Born in 1918
  • Uncovered the brain basis of memory through her work with Henry Molaison (patient H.M.)
    ↪ Developed the mirror-tracing task - trace star shape reflected in the mirror > H.M. could do it after some days but didn’t remember how
    ↪ episodic memory not working but procedural does
  • Established dissociations between different aspects of memory
39
Q

Why is it difficult to study brain-behaviour relationship?

A
  1. Diaschisis
  2. Compensation
  3. Individual differences
40
Q

Lessons learned

Diaschisis

A
  • Greek for shocked through
  • Brain injury or disease may have more widespread effects:
    ↪ Differences in organisation may influence information processingh systems
    ↪ Connections may affect transfer between areas (axonal lesions)
    ↪ Differences in synchronisation may affect communication

slide 31

41
Q

Lessons learned

Compensation

A
  • Damaged areas’ function can be replaced by other area to compensate for the damage
  • Test performance doesn’t necessarily reflect the disrupted processing of a damaged mechanism
  • Tasks can be performed using different strategies
  • Participants can learn to adapt, e.g. use different substrates to perform the same task
42
Q

Lessons learned

Individual differences

A
  • Variation in typical brain anatomy and physiology
    ↪ Might result in faulty assumptions if generalised from an ‘average’ brain
  • Research done by Mignight Scan Club
  • Example: Broca’s area cannot be identified on the basis of morphology in 20% of the typical population, despite typical language formation
43
Q

What are the limitations of the past?

Confronting a difficult past, doing better in the future

A
  1. Ethical practices
  2. Socio-cultural Context
  3. Interdisciplinarity
44
Q

Limitations

What were the ethical practices in the past?

A
  1. Experimentation without consent
  2. Using experimental medical procedures
  3. Racial and class judgment
  4. Misuse of assessments and disregarding individual differences (e.g. access to education)
45
Q

How can the ethical practices be improved in the future/present?

A
  1. Informed consent and indpendent ethical review
  2. Monitored guidelines for introducting new treatments
    ↪ Inform participants of involved risks
  3. More inclusive research, including Gobal Majority (now mostly WEIRD participants)
  4. Incorporating theories from other disciplines and cultures

Clinical and Neuropsychology - 1 (21 decks)

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