Week 2.6 & 2.7 - Organisation of Brains (Anatomy) & Lab Visit Flashcards
What is the main function of the brainstem?
Basic functions needed for survival: breathing, heart rate, sleep, and eating. It is also involved in the conduction of information to and from the cerebrum and cerebellum.
What is the main function of the cerebellum?
Motor control and motor learning. It coordinates the appropriate contraction of skeletal muscles to produce smooth movements.
What is the main function of the thalamus?
“A relay station”, a processing center for sensory input
What is the main function of the hypothalamus?
Maintaining homeostasis
Integration of somatic and visceral responses
What is the main function of the posterior pituitary?
Release of neurohormones like vasopressin, oxytocin, FSH
Attention
What is the main function of the cerebrum?
The cerebrum can be divided into distinct structures that are responsible for different functions. It is involved in memory, attention, perception, cognitive control…
What is the main function of the corpus callosum?
Corpus callosum is white matter that connects the two hemispheres
What is the main function of the frontal lobe?
Executive control of behavior, complex learning. The primary motor cortex (precentral gyrus) is also located in the frontal lobe.
What is the main function of the parietal lobe?
Integrating sensory information. Involved in spatial perception (the “where pathway” projecting from the visual cortex) - processing the object’s spatial location relative to the viewer.
Also involved in language acquisition.
What is the main function of the occipital lobe?
Processing visual information
What is the main function of the temporal lobe?
Processing emotions, language comprehension (Wernicke’s area). It is also involved in object recognition (the “what” pathway).
Prosencephalon develops into ____
telencephalon and diencephalon
(image source: https://www.wikiwand.com/nl/Prosencephalon)
The mesencephalon develops into ____
mesencephalon (the mesencephalon stays the mesencephalon)
(Image source: https://www.wikiwand.com/nl/Prosencephalon)
The rhombencephalon develops into ____
metencephalon and myelencephalon
(Image source: https://www.wikiwand.com/nl/Prosencephalon)
Name the 3 meninges
dura mater, arachnoid mater, pia mater
Image source: https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-meninges
How does a Functional CT scan (a.k.a. PET) work?
A radioactive glucose-tracer is introduced to the body to measure the metabolic activity of the tissue.
This can be used to detect cancer and strokes.
Which signal is read by fMRI?
The BOLD signal (Blood oxygenation levels) is used to track the oxygenated blood flow in the brain.
How do delay conditioning and trace conditioning differ?
In delay conditioning, the sound is continuously presented for a certain duration (delay) until the unconditioned stimulus.
In trace conditioning, the sound presentation is short, and thereafter there is an interval until the conditioned stimulus appears.
They require different neural tracks. In delay conditioning, the conditioned stimulus will be presented before and during the presentation of the unconditioned stimulus.
For example: in the Eye-blink conditioning experiment, delay conditioning means that the light turns on before the air puff and stays on until the puff is delivered. In trace conditioning, the conditioned stimulus begins and ends before the unconditioned stimulus is presented. The memory of the stimulus is involved in trace conditioning, whereas in delay conditioning we talk about measuring an interval.
What is a presynaptic neuron?
A presynaptic neuron sends a signal (neurotransmitters) to a postsynaptic neuron.
What is a postsynaptic neuron?
The postsynaptic neuron is the neuron that receives a signal from a presynaptic neuron.
What is the type of neuron depicted in this picture?
(image source: Walter, Röhrbein, & Knoll, 2015)
A pyramidal cell.
What is electrophysiology?
Electrophysiology is a branch of the discipline of physiology (the study of organisms) concerned with electrical activity (ion currents) in living tissues.
What is physiology?
It is a discipline that studies the functions and mechanisms governing living organisms.
What is spike sorting?
Spike sorting is a technique used in the analysis of electrophysiological data.
Spike sorting takes in a signal measured by an electrode (usually noisy) and attempts to find spikes and attribute them to particular sources.
To get an intuition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSydfDvsewY
Which is this brain region?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
Corpus Callosum
Which brain region is indicated by the arrow?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
Putamen of the basal ganglia
Which brain region is the arrow pointing at?
Amygdala
Which part of the brain is the arrow pointing at?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
Thalamus
Which brain region is the arrow pointing at?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
Hippocampus
What do you see in the picture?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
4th ventricle
Which brain region is the arrow pointing at?
(image source: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca)
Thalamus
If we study a neuron (population) on a physiological level what are the two sub-levels we have to consider?
(1) Systems-level - the functioning of the neuron within the context of the entire awake brain;
(2) Specific pathway - ex. activate the collateral which projects from the motor cortex into the cerebellar nuclei. This way you look at more specific properties of the neuron (population): what are the types of synapses, what types of cells the neuron innervates;
Give an example of the type of data you would get from a functional level of analysis of a neuron?
Time of spiking in relation to behavior - correlation
What is the main type of data that one can acquire from extracellular recordings?
Spikes, time of spiking
What is the name of this method of graphical representation?
(image source: https://www.imsbio.co.jp)
Raster plot
What are the names of the graphical representations of data from the top panel down?
Raw trace
Raster plot
Peristimulus time histogram
What are some of the problems we encounter with dimensionality reduction methods such as PCA and LDA?
(1) These statistical techniques operate under certain assumptions that are often not met in real-world data
(2) Loss of dimensions
(3) They don’t deal well with outliers
Which of the following methods would you choose in order to study the resting-state activity of the brain?
(a) Electrophysiology
(b) Calcuim imaging
(c) Functional ultrasound
(c) Functional ultrasound - this method allows us to observe full sections of the brain
What is the advantage of calcium imaging over electrophysiology?
Higher ecological validity - the mouse can move freely with the fluorescent microscope (calcium imaging) unlike electrophysiology, where the mouse is head-fixed.
Name four important devices one would need to have on an acute brain slicing station.
(1) ACSF (artificial cerebrospinal fluid) bath
(2) Glass pipette electrode
(3) Microscope
(4) Amplifier
What differentiates an immature neuron from a mature one?
(1) An immature neuron has a higher firing threshold (stronger input is needed for it to fire)
(2) It produces shorter action potentials
Define what is meant by tetanizing an input.
Producing a high frequency, prolonged input
If we tetanize an input, the neuron will learn to preferentially respond to that input.
What is this phenomenon an example of?
Plasticity
(more specifically, Long-term potentiation)
What are the benefits of using neuron cultures in research?
(1) High level of control
(2) Ability to guide cell development
How would you compare the complexity of two types of neurons?
Culture them and perform Sholl analysis (placing circles around the soma of a neuron and tracking the number of intersections the neuron makes with the circles).
Finally, you can compare the plots of complexity for the two neurons.
