Week 2 - Physical review Flashcards
The brain increases in weight by 350% in what time period?
First 2 years of life.
This is a rapid period of myelination.
First 2 years
Massive growth in neural network development, esp. speech and motor areas occurs in….
The first 2 years.
Name 6 reflexes exhibited by new babies:
- Babinski (toes fan out and upwards when side of foot stroked heel to toe - disappear 12 month)
- Babkin (Pressure applied to palms while baby on its back open mouth, eyes close, head straight ahead - disappears about 3 months)
- Palmar (Grasp) - (closed fingers over object pressed into palm. Dis. about 12 months)
- Moro (startle reflex) - (sudden loud noise -
arms out, hands open then return to midline -
disappears around 6 months) - Rooting (stroke cheek - orient towards that and open mouth - until ~ 4 months)
- Sucking (rhythmic sucking on object inserted into mouth - dis. 2 months)
Retained reflexs
- Gag reflex
2. Knee jerk reflex
Interactive opportunities: of Palmar reflex
Opportunity for connection, physical exploration
Interactive opportunities: Rooting reflex
foundational to social smile
Interactive opportunities: Sucking reflex (& feeding noises)
Development and coordination of muscles later used in speech
A fetus will respond to auditory stimulus as early as….
26 weeks
Babies in 3rd trimester can distinguish speech sounds and prosody. True or false.
True. Study on Mum’s reading ‘The Cat in the Hat’ to babies in utero - babies recognise the story (sucking reflex)
Adult-like visual focus achieved by…?
4 months
Babies can track moving objects using just eyes by…?
3 months
Newborn focus is at what distance?
20cm - distance to mothers face
Attachment
The close, nurturing, long-term relationship that develops between the caregiver and the infant (McLaughlin 2006, p. 82)
Recognition as a promoter of attachment - what do babies recognise about their primary caregiver and vice versa
Infants can recognise mothers smell (strong promoter of attachment), voice (almost immediately after birth), face (clear preference for mothers face within days after birth).
Mothers recognise infants smell, face and cry
Motherese (Infant directed speech) - features
Caregivers adjust speaking rate, utterance length and complexity, prosody, they augment facial expression in order to engage their infant.
Joint attention
Attending to the same object / activity
Eye contact
Mothers seek to engage infant through eye gaze, babies are responsive to eyes. By second month infants can make eye contact for longer periods. Develops into social smiles and joint attention.
Turn-taking (infant)`
Infants learn to participate in exchanges (vocalising, imitation) Caregavers initiate, infants learn to participate (proto-conversations)
Imitating
Imitating facial expressions is an early skill (hours after birth), later can imitate vowel sounds
Caveat
Different cultures have different approaches - above approaches more specific to Western context.
CNS four major functions:
- Sensory (collection from outside world)
- Motor
- Integration (several systems make sense of incoming information and feedback about our movements)
- Regulation (several systems automatically regulate our temperature, metabolism, respiration, heart rate and other body systems)
Which organ requires ~1/5 blood pumped from the heart?
The Brain
Which organ consumes about 1/4 of all of the oxygen used in the human body?
The brain
Wernicke’s area is responsible for…?
- Plays a principal role in recognising and interpreting incoming spoken language.
- Primarily involved in formulating and monitoring our own speech and language
Broca’s area is responsible for…?
*Primary role in programming the motor movements for speech production. (It is strategically located just anterior to the portion of the motor cortex that controls the tongue and lips, in the dominant hemisphere)
Associate fibres
Areas of the brain within a hemisphere can share information through association fibres.
Name an important association fibre pathway for speech and language:
the Arcuate fasciculus (Arches from Wernicke’s area forward to Broca’s area).
Commissural fibres
Information can be transmitted between two hemispheres via commissural fibres.
Name the largest collection of commissural fibres.
The Corpus Callosum
Fibres that allow sensory and motor impulses to travel up and down, to and from the brain are called…?
Projection fibres
What is the pyramidal tract?
The projection fibes for motor movement.
The caudate nucleus and lenticular nucleus are part of what…?
The basal ganglia
Why is the medulla oblongata important for speech?
It contains several nuclei for cranial nerves that relay neural messages for moving articulators and controlling the voice.
The sense of body position and orientation.
Proprioception
Which 7 cranial nerves are particularly important to speech and hearing?
V Trigeminal VII Facial VIII Vestibulocochlear IX Glossopharyngeal X Vagus XI Accessory XII Hypoglossal
Speech mechanism
the anatomical structures for the production of speech sounds: Lungs and associated structures for airstream generation, larynx and vocal folds, oral and nasal cavities, articulators
The structures of the speech mechanism are primarily intended for basic life-support functions. True or false?
True!!! But structures are also used in speech - dual function.
The primary purpose of the larynx and vocal folds is what?
To protect the airway below, specifically the trachea and lungs. Keeps foreign objects out.
What are the spaces and structures above the larynx referred to as?
The vocal tract
What resonates and modifies the sound of the basic vocal tone, and produces the unique qualities that enable us to distinguish one speaker from another?
The individual physical contours of their vocal tracts (their shape and size) - the cavities of the pharynx and oral and nasal cavities.
What resonates and modifies the sound of the basic vocal tone, and produces the unique qualities that enable us to distinguish one speaker from another?
The individual physical contours (their shape and size etc) of their vocal tracts- the cavities of the pharynx and oral and nasal cavities.
This is a resonant quality present to the extent that the vocal tone resonates through the nasal cavities. It is present to various degrees in different people’s speech.
Nasality
Hypernasality
Where a speaker exhibits nasal resonance on sounds where it is not expected, particularly on vowels.
The embryonic period
The interval from conception to the end of the eighth week of gestation
during which week does the mother’s blood begin to circulate between the placenta and the embryo?
3rd week
Gestation is divided into three 12-week periods called…?
Trimesters
The majority of important organs and organ systems (CNS, circulatory system, eyes, ears and limbs) develop during which time?
Third to the eighth week
From the end of the eighth week until birth, the developing baby is called a..?
Fetus
Animal brains have a higher density of neurons than human brains. What makes human brains more powerful processors?
The density and complexity of the dendritic interconnections between neurons.
Significant neuronal maturation (expansion of dendrites and axons that form a dense network of neuronal interconnections) occurs during which period?
First 2 years after birth.
Dendrites in speech and oral motor areas of the L hemisphere (in comparison w/ RHS) increase in number around __ ____ of age and in length around __ ____ of age.
- 6 months
- 12 months
- (Simonds and Scheibel, 1989, in McLaughlin, 2006, p. 68)
Is developing speech driven by the changing neural structures in the relevant brain areas?
Partly. And brains structural development likely influenced by infant’s own responses to its own activities and the environment. Structure drives function and function drives structure. (McLaughlin, 2006. pg 68)
Name areas of the brain in the order they become myelinated:
- precentral gyrus
- somatosensory area of the postcentral gyrus
- Primary visual cortex (in occipital lobe)
- Primary auditory cortex (temporal lobe)
[last area is the mesial surfaces between the two hemispheres]
Reflexes
Involuntary motor patterns that are automatically regulated in the lower divisions of the CNS (esp. brainstem or spinal cord)
Purpose of reflexes
Protective: help us to react quickly to survive ie cause us to instinctively withdraw our hand from pain, blink to avoid things approaching eyes, cough or sneeze to expel irritants or obstructions - all without having to think about it.
What is (largely) responsible for the achievement of smoother, more voluntary control over motor activity that an infant achieves over the first several years?
Myelination
What happens to make the newborn reflexes disappear, or become modified?
With myelination, the more effective control exerted by the higher cortical levels of the brain inhibits the lower level reflexive centres in the brain stem or spinal cord.
Some ways of looking at infant language development:
- Social interaction - certain behaviours, whether random or intentional, function as tools for infants or their caregivers to engage the other as a social partner.
*Cognitive development - As infants experience the world, it becomes apparent in their behaviour that they recall and relate certain aspects of these experiences. - Evolution of increasingly efficient Behavioural Repertoire - As infants interact within their own social marketplace, the accumulated outcomes of their transactions alter both the likelihood and form of future interactions.
(McLaughlin, 2006. p. 80)
