The Brain that Changes Itself Flashcards
Who is Cheryl Schiltz?
A woman who the feeling that she was perpetually falling, due to damage to her vestibular apparatus. Damage was caused by The into biotic gentamicin used to treat an infection after a routine hysterectomy. She has been effectively cured by neuroplasticity treatment by Bach-y-Rita.
What is the Vestibular apparatus?
A sense organ that consists of three semi circular canals in the inner ear, The canals contain tiny hairs in a fluid bath and the fluid to stirs the hairs as we move
What is the Vestibular nuclei?
A specialized clump of neurons in our brain which process information sent from the vestibular apparatus. Also links to the visual system and eye movement.
Who is Paul Bach-y-Rita?
One of the pioneers of neuroplasticity who created a device for a patient Cheryl to wear as an external vestibular apparatus. The external device was attached to electrodes on her tongue. He is both a basic scientist and a rehabilitation physician.
What is Gentamicin?
A cheap and effective antibiotic whose side effects include hearing loss ringing in the ears and devastation to the balance system
Who are Wobblers?
A self-defined group of people who cannot move without feeling they are going to fall due to damage to their vestibular system
How does the visual system function to tell us we are upright?
We search for horizontal lines to indicate that we are standing upright so if no horizontal lines are present we can be confused when we do not have vestibular apparatus function
What are falls in the Elderly and why do they matter?
According to an article in the New York Times old people are more frightened of falling up and being mugged and over a third of the elderly fall, which leads to staying at home and limit disuse and subsequent frailty.
What is the Bach-y-Rita 1969 Nature Article?
Talked about the invention of the device which allowed to blind people to see by using a two dimensional array of electrodes which stimulated the tactile nerves on the individuals backs. This worked even on people who were blind from birth. The device used more intense vibration for dark parts of a scene and the less vibration for brighter parts.
What is a Congenital defect?
One of which has been afflicting a patient from birth.
Who is Twiggy?
An anorexic supermodel of the 1960s.
What is Localizationalism?
The doctrine in the neuroscience which stated that each part of the brain performed a specific function and exists in a genetically predetermined or hardwired location
Who is William Harvey?
Born in 1578 died in 1657 studied anatomy in Pauda, Italy discovered how are blood circulates through bodies and demonstrates that the heart functions like a pump.
What model for the nervous system did René Descartes propose?
The model that argued that the nervous system functions like a pump with our nerves as two and fluid redirected from our sense organs to the brain and back, The entire system was mechanistic.
What is sensory substitution?
When the function of one sentence can take over for and compensate for loss of function of another sense.
How can the skin substitute for a retina?
Since both the skin and a retina involve sensing on a two-dimensional plane that two-dimensional plane can be used to perceive an image when one knows the input is visual in nature.
Who is Paul Broca?
He had a stroke patient who could only utter a single word, tan. Once the patient died he dissected his brain and found that there was damage to a very specific part of the brain. This was confirmed in the other patients as well and at the area is now called Broca’s area. This area was presumed you to coordinate the movements of the muscles of the lips and tongue.
Who is Carl Wernicke?
He connected damage in one brain area to the inability to understand language. This area came to be known as “Wernicke’s area”
Who is Jules Cotard?
He studied children in 1868 who had a massive brain disease where the left hemisphere wasted away but the children could still speak normally.
What is Broca’s area?
The area where part of the left hemisphere of the brain presumably used for coordination of the movement of the lips and tongue to produce intelligible speech.
Who is Otto Soltmann?
The man who in 1876 removed the motor cortex from infant dogs and rabbits but found they were still able to move.
What experiment convinced Bach-y-Rita to think that localizationism was wrong?
An experiment that was studying electrical discharge from the visual processing area of a cats brain. They found that the visual processing area sent off electric spikes when the cat’s paw was stroked and when the cat heard sounds.
Who is Vernon Mountcastle?
The man responsible for the discovery that the visual, auditory, and sensory cortices all have a similar six layer processing structure. Micromapped brains with microelectrodes in the 1950’s.
Who is Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens?
Showed in 1820 that the brain could reorganize itself?
Who is Ragnar Granit?
Bach-y-Rita’s mentor, received the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1965 for his work on the retina.
Why is the tongue an ideal brain machine interface?
Because the tongue has no insensitive layer of dead skin surrounding it and so it’s nerves are more exposed and easier to access
Who is Pedro Bach-y-Rita?
The father of Bach-y-Rita, suffered a stroke and was unable to speak. Was diagnosed with no hope of recovery but was successfully rehabilitated by his son Who used teaching methods similar to how you would teach a baby to walk. He made a full and miraculous recovery. His brain was autopsied after his death and was found to have massive damage despite his recovery. 97% of the nerves that ran from his cerebral cortex to his spine were destroyed.
Who is Shepherd Ivory Franz?
An American psychologist who showed of the patients who had been paralyzed for 20 years were capable of making late recoveries with brain stimulating exercises in 1915.
Who is Mriganka Sur?
A neuroscientist surgically rewired the brain of a young ferret so that the optic nerve ran to the auditory cortex instead of the visual cortex and found that the ferret was able to learn to see.
Who is Barbara Arrowsmith Young?
A patient whose most debilitating problem was the inability to understand relationships between the concepts and symbols. Designed exercises for herself to intentionally attempt to improve areas in which she had disabilities and later founded the Arrowsmith school, which used similar treatments to improve brain function in specific areas.
What is Kinesthetic perception?
This sense allows us to be aware of where our body or limbs are in space enabling us to coordinate our movements and recognize objects by touch.
What is Mirror writing?
The disability of the causes one to write from right to left.
Who is Aleksander Luria?
A Russian psychoanalyst Born in 1902 who wanted to develop object of methods to assess Freudian ideas. Had one patient, Lyova Zazetsky, Who sustained a bullet wound deep in the left side of his head. He was unable to understand grammar that dealt with relationships, he was also unable to read clocks.
What is the Temporal lobe?
The lobe that normally processes sound and language in the left hemisphere.
What is the Occipital lobe?
The lobe that normally processes visual images
What is the Parietal lobe?
The lobe that normally processes spatial relationships and integrates information from multiple senses.
Who is Mark Rosenzweig?
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley studied rats in stimulating versus non-stimulating environments and found differences in brain neurotransmitters, weight, and blood supply. Showed that activity could produce physical changes in the structure of the brain.
What is the Left premotor cortex?
Believed to be the location where our brain converts symbols into a sequence of movements made by our tongue and lips to generate speech.
What have we lost in modern education?
We used to put a huge emphasis on rote memorization of foreign texts which likely strengthened our auditory cortex, and huge attention to handwriting, which promotes motor cortex function.
How does the number of synapses vary in the young brain?
Young children have approximately 50% more synapses then adults between their neurons.
What is a sensory system?
A system which represents the state of an organism and its environment, in humans organized in the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes (behind the frontal lobe)
What is a Motor system?
One that organizes and generates physical actions.
What is an Associational system?
One that links the sensory and motor sides of the nervous system allowing for attention, cognition, emotions, rational thinking, and other complex brain functions
What is Reticular theory?
The theory that nerve cells are connected by protoplasmatic links forming a continuous nerve cell network or reticulum, championed by Camillo Golgi.
Who is Michael Merzenich?
The man who theorized that brain plasticity can be as useful as drugs for treating defects and that it lasts us our entire life, developed FastForWord and helped to develop the Cochlear implant. Did an experiment on monkeys where he cut the medial nerve and waited, and then found the brain map for the medial nerve had been taken over by that of the radial and ulnar nerves. Found out later that these maps appeared immediately. Also amputated a monkey’s middle finger, and found that the brain map responsible for the middle finger disappeared and was taken over by the adjacent fingers. Also sewed monkeys fingers together and found the maps merged.
Who is Wilder Penfield?
The man who, at the Montreal Neurological Institute in the 1930’s discovered that when he touched cancer patients brains with an electrode it caused them to experience movement or sensory input. Discovered the topographical nature of sensory and motor maps in the brain.
What is the Critical Period?
Discovered by David Hubel and Torsten Weisel in the micromapping of the visual cortex of kittens. They discovered shutting one eye of a kitten during the first few weeks of development prevented proper visual development in that eye for the kitten’s entire life. Also discovered that the part normally responsible for the closed eye instead processed input from the one good eye. Received the Nobel Prize for this.
Who is Konrad Lorenz?
The man who found that goslings would bond to a person instead of their mother when exposed between their first 15 hours and 3 days of life. Coined the word “imprinting”.
Who are Graham Brown and Charles Sherrington?
The people who Showed in 1912 that stimulating one point in an animal’s brain one day caused bending of the leg, and another day caused straightening of the leg. They found that maps were dynamic.
Who is Donald O. Hebb?
A Canadian behavioral psychologist who proposed the idea of “those that fire together, wire together”, articulated by Carla Schatz.
