Relationship between brain size + beh

Question 1

Savant syndrome

Answer 1

• people who have brain damage often caused during child birth
• severly restricted in most mental activities but have extraordinary talent + skill

Question 2

Neuroethology

Answer 2

= comparing brain of diff species
- during evolution dev adaptations
- different talents reflect specialisation of the brain

Question 3

Does brain size correlate with cog ability

Answer 3

• relationship between brain size + cog shows that some animals who we consider to have complex ben often have smaller brains

Question 4

Allometry

Answer 4

• importance of brain size relative to body size
• Animals with larger bodies have larger brain control it
• However some animals have smaller/larger brains than predicted
• Humans have much larger brains than predicted
• Eel have smaller brains than predicted

Question 5

Residual brain

Answer 5

• difference between predicted + actual brain size = residual
• evidence that larger residual brain = more complex beh
• Foraging Hypothesis = more complex patterns of beh to find food lead to larger brain size

Question 6

Genes may underline evolutionary changes in brain size

Answer 6

• microcephaly = damage to microcephalin (1 gene) leads to brain being much smaller

Question 7

localisation of brain function

Answer 7

Beh are localised to specific regions of the brain

Question 8

Principle of proper mass

Answer 8

• size of a brain region controlling a particular function will be proportional to the complexity of processing
• overrepresentation of body parts most sensitive to touch/ used most

Question 9

Hippocampus + evolution of learning + memory

Answer 9

• size hippocampus varies according to whether birds store or don’t store their food
• Birds that store food have a larger hippocampus than predicted

Question 10

Neocortex size + evolution of social intelligence

Answer 10

• social intelligence theory says the demands of navigating complex social groups favoured the evolutionary advanced brain structures
• size of advanced brain structures (neocortex) correlates with social complexity
• more cerebral cortex = more complex beh

Question 11

Face regions + social networks

Answer 11

• Ability to recognise indivs is discriminating faces
• size of face regions is greater in indius raised in larger groups
• monkeys put in different group sizes + investigated years later
  found there was larger cerebral cortex when grew up in larger groups

Question 12

Broca’s area + evolution of lang

Answer 12

-2 regions in left hemisphere play critical role in lang production
- Broca’s area for production
- Wernicke’s area for comprehension
- Regions are larger in humans compared to monkeys - reflects more dev lang processing
- complex beh = larger region size

Question 13

Historical perspectives on variation in brain size in humans

Answer 13

• Broca suggested brain size predicted a persons intelligence
• used to support racial + gender superiority

Question 14

correlation between IQ + cortical thickness

Answer 14

• children with highest intelligence exhibited late thickening of prefrontal cortex
• BUT it’s difficult to get a measure of intelligence

Question 15

size of hippocampus in taxi drivers

Answer 15

• role in memory
• Taxi drivers have larger hippocampus than controls
• Size of hippocampus correlated with number of years worked in profession