Week 1

Question 1

What is neuropsychology?

Answer 1

How the brain works to produce the higher mental functions that broadly come under the headings of cognition, emotion and movement.

Question 2

What is clinical neuroscience?

Answer 2

Focused on identifying the underlying molecular and neural substrates of psychopathology and neurological disease.

Question 3

Neuropsychology and clinical neuroscience is a multidisciplinary approach. What disciplines are scientists involved in to help our understanding of brain functioning and pathology?

Answer 3

-molecular genetics
-neurobiology
-neuropsychology
-neuroimaging
-neurophysiology
-communication disorders
-pharmacology
-neurology
and more

Question 4

What are the two broad roles of clinical neuropsychologists?

Answer 4

1. assess through clinical testing to describe the psychological and behavioural impairments.
2. Describe the patients strengths and weaknesses to give advice concerning the patients management and rehabilitation.

Question 5

What is not the clinical neuropsychologists goal?

Answer 5

To describe where the brain damage is located, as this can be better done with neuroimaging or brain scans.

Question 6

What is the role of experimental neuropsychologists?

Answer 6

Asses brain impaired patients and also persons without brain impairment in order to model and further understand how the brain functions work.

Question 7

Clinical neuropsychologists assess and treat people with brain disorders that affect:

Answer 7

• memory
• learning
• attention
• language
• reading
• problems solving
• decision making

Question 8

Because neuropsychological conditions can worsen or improve with time and treatment, neuropsychological assessment can provide a _______ to compare changes over time.
What can this in turn do?

Answer 8

Baseline.

This can predict and enhance social, educational and vocational outcomes. It involves clinical interview and a range of individual tests.

Question 9

What is the extreme localisationist position, as a historical perspective of neuropsychology and clinical neuroscience?

Answer 9

That each part of the brain performs a difference and separate function

Question 10

What is the extreme holistic position, as a perspective of neuropsychology and clinical neuroscience?

Answer 10

Sees the whole brain as being involved in all mental functions.

Question 11

What was Franz Josef Falls extreme localisationist perspective?

Answer 11

That the brain consists of a number of separate organs, each responsible for a basic psychological trait such as courage, friendliness, or combativeness.

(Developed Phrenology and Gall’s twenty-seven attributes).

Question 12

What does Gall’s basic theory of phrenology tell us?

Answer 12

That if a given brain area is enlarged, then the corresponding area of the skull will also be enlarged.

Question 13

Although now discredited, what are two positive influences that came out of Gall’s localisationalist thinking?

Answer 13

1. Drew attention to the possibility that localisation could exist (injury specific effects)
2. Diagnostic and treatment tool. In late 18th century insanity was seen as ‘possession by the devil’, cruel treatment in asylums.

Question 14

Who produced the first piece of actual scientific evidence supporting localisation position?

Answer 14

Paul Broca (motor speech specifically located in the posterior, inferior region of the left temporal lobe).

Question 15

The two clinical cases that Paul Broca brought forward to demonstrate the effects of damage to the left posterior frontal lobe demonstrated what, for which they otherwise appeared completely normals?

Answer 15

1. paralyses on right side of body

2. motor speech deficits

Question 16

What did Broca describe as the condition of aphasia?

Answer 16

An inability to talk because the musculature of speech organs do not receive appropriate brain signals.

Question 17

1. A decade after Broca’s discovery, Carl Wernicke accounced that the understanding of speech was located in what places of the brain?
2. Wernicke noted that no ______ accompanied a loss of speech comprehension caused by damage to this area, only the _____ was disrupted.
3. What did this present as in the patient?
4. What did Wernicke call this?

Answer 17

1. the superior, posterior aspects of the temporal lobe
2. motor deficits, ability to understand speech
3. the patient was still able to talk, but his speech made no sense and sounded like some unknown foreign language
4. Fluent aphasia

Question 18

Who was the foremost early advocate of an alternative to localisation theories, and what did he instead believe?

Answer 18

1. Pierre Flourens

2. That the loss of function depends on the extent of the damage, not the location of the lesion

Question 19

What is the equipotentiality position?

Answer 19

That although basic sensorimotor functions may be localised in the brain, higher cortical processes were too complex to confine to any one area.

Question 20

Who was one researcher who supported the equipotentiality position and what did he find?

Answer 20

1. Karl Lashley
2. Impairment in maze running in the rate was directly related to the amount of cortex removed. Specific area removed made little difference

Question 21

From his experiments, Karl Lashley formulated his famous principle of:

Answer 21

mass action: behavioural impairment is directly proportional to the mass of the removed tissue

Question 22

Lashley also emphasised the multipotentiality of brain tissue. What was this?

Answer 22

That each part of the brain participates in more than one function.

Question 23

Hughlings Jackson observed what to develop his integrated theory of brain function

Answer 23

That higher mental functions are not unitary abilities, but consist of more basic and simpler skills.

Question 24

According to Hughlings Jackson, the loss of one function:

Answer 24

Can be traced to the loss of any one of a number of basic abilities or functional systems.

Question 25

Who is widely regarded as the “father of neuropsychology”?

Answer 25

Alexander Luria

Question 26

Alexander Luria conceived each area in the central nervous system as being involved in one of three basic functions, which Luria labelled as units. These are:

Answer 26

1. unit for regulating tone and waking and mental states
2. unit for receiving and analysing and storing information
3. unit for programming, regulation and verification of activity

Question 27

What did Alexander Luria’s principle of pluripotentiality emphasise?

Answer 27

He assigned a specific role to each area of the brain BUT any given area can be involved in relatively few or many behaviours.

Question 28

What are 4 ways in which we can interpret a single study on locaisation, to challenge the theory?

Answer 28

Can be interpreted as:

1. the lesion of a centre
2. a disconnection between two centres
3. partial damage to a network of areas
4. dysfunctional neurotransmitter system