Summary Flashcards
Weight loss definition
5% in last month
Delusion
Firmly held belief not in keeping with pt. cultural background
Bipolar
2 or more episodes of elevated/lowered mood
Dysthymia
Chronic subthreshold depression
Cyclothymia
Persistent mood instability subthreshold bipolar
Frontal lobe
Decision making and movements
Temporal lobe
Emotion
Primary auditory cortex
Parietal lobe
Sensation
Occipital lobe
Vision
Techniques for analysing brain
Animal testing
Operative
Rabies virus affects limbic system causes personality change
Imaging
Striatum
2 parts ventral and dorsal
Ventral- reward system (addiction)
Dorsal- motor function
Cerebrum
Large part of brain
Contains 4 lobes
Parietal, frontal, temporal, occipital
Cerebral cortex
Outermost layer of cerebrum
- neocortex almost all of it, divided into different areas e.g. Motor, prefrontal cortex
- allocortex hippocampus, olfactory
Prefrontal cortex
Front part of frontal lobe
High order executive function personality
In psychotic patients observed reduction in volume and number of neuronal connections
Limbic system
Structures below cerebrum
Include e.g. Hypothalamus, hippocampus amygdala, limbic cortex
emotion, long term memory, behaviour
Cingulate gurus
Limbic
Links behavioural outcomes to motivation
Hippocampus
Limbic
Memory, emotion
Amygdala
Limbic
Emotional responses reactions
Many sensory inputs
Many motor, neuroendocrine outputs
Hypothalamus
Releasing hormones—> ant pit (adenohypophysis)
Oxytocin, ADH—> post pit (neurohypophysis)
MRI
Decreased grey matter in limbic and cortical systems e.g. Hippocampus
Increased/structurally poorer white matter
Changes to hippocampus
Smaller correlates to length of illness
fMRI
Functional MRI blood flow
Amygdala and cingulate gyrus abnormal
Normalise after CBT
PET
Positron emission tomography
Radioactive glucose to patient taken up by metabolically active tissue, reduced in brain depressed
Prefrontal cortex 3 parts and function
Ventro-medial: pain threshold, aggression, sexual function (hyper=pain, anxiety)
Lateral orbital: assesses risk
Dorsolateral: executive function and attention (hypo= psychomotor retardation)
HPA axis
Hypothalamus corticotropin releasing hormone
Ant pit ACTH
Adrenal cortisol (-ve feedback on ant pit and hypothalamus)
Hippocampus inhibits it so atrophy induces dysregulation
HPA axis dysfunction
Excess cortisol stress hormone produced
Related to hippocampus atrophy
Thyroid dysfunction
TSH response to TRH blunted
Thyroxine sometimes rx
Cytokine dysfunction
Overactivity
Possibly due to increased sympathetic tone (high cortisol)
Cause hypersensitivity to pain, loss of appetite libido