U1 AOS 2 (Chapter 4) Flashcards
Information focused on the brain
What are the 3 zones of the brain?
Forebrain, forebrain, hindbrain
What is the role of the cerebellum?
Coordinate balance and movement
What is the role of the medulla?
Controls vital bodily movements, in charge of subconcious actions
What is the role of the pons?
Sleep, dreaming, breathing and coordination.
What is the role of reticular formation?
Screens information to not overload the brain - helps maintain consciousness and muscle tension.
What is the role of the hypothalamus?
Homeostasis, regulates secretion of hormones for basic biological needs
What is the role of the Thalamus?
Process sensory and motor information from cerebral cortex
What is the role of the cerebrum?
A network of neurons, primarily responsible for conscious thoughts, feelings, actions
What are the main cortexes/lobes of the brain?
Cerebral, frontal lobe, Parietal lobe, occipital lobe and temporal lobe.
What is the role of the frontal lobe?
Regulation of emotions, aspects of personality, planning + initiation of voluntary bodily movements.
What is the role of the prefrontal cortex?
Involved with sophisticated mental abilities e.g reasoning, problem solving
What does the primary motor cortex do?
Initiates, controls voluntary movements through skeletal muscles.
What is Broca’s area?
A part in the brain that has a crucial role in articulating speech. Only in left hemisphere.
Role of the parietal lobe
recieves and processes bodily (somatosensory) information. e.g body’s position or temperature.
What is the role of the primary somatosensory cortex?
Receives and processes sensory information from skin, body parts.
processing sensations from the body
What does the occipital lobe do?
Devoted to the sense of vision.
What does the primary visual cortex do?
Visual information from eyes. Comes from visual sensory receptors located on retina of eye.
What is the function of the temporal lobe?
Auditory perception, emotional responses to sounds and memory
What is the function of Wernicke’s area?
Comprehension of sounds of speech, interpreting speech
What is CT scan?
Computerised tomography. A non-invasive structural neuroimaging technique where dye is ingested.
What is an MRI?
Magnetic resonance imaging. Uses harmlessmagnetic fields to vibrate atoms in brain’s neurons. In colour and structural. Cannot be used on people who have metal.
What is an fMRI?
Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Detects and records brain activity by measuring oxygen consumptions across brain. Takes many photos over rapid succession.
What is a PET scan?
Position emission tomography. Produces colour images showing brain structure, activity and function. Areas that require increased blood flow have increased neuronal activity.
Name the first brain experiments.
Brain ablation/lesioning, electrical stimulation of brain (ESB), split-brain research
What is brain ablation and lesioning?
Ablation -surgical removal, destruction or cutting of region of brain.
Lesioning - studying effects of induced and/or existing damage to areas of brain.
What is ESB?
Weak electrical signals generated continuously by neurons throughout brain to see if brain activity can be stimulated.
What is split-brain research
Where people with severed corpus callosum, experiment to discover hemispheric specialisation.
