Week 4: Attention Flashcards
What kind of attention is determined by the current goals of the observer?
Top-down (referring to internal guidance of attention based on prior knowledge, willful plans, and current goals)
What kind of attention is determined by the physical characteristics of the scene?
Bottom-up (referring to attentional guidance purely by externally driven factors to stimuli that are salient because of their inherent properties relative to the background)
What kind of phenomena can’t be explained by either top-down or bottom-up?
Selection history and reward history
Name the three distinct categories of selection bias
- Current goals
- Selection history
- Physical salience (people’s attention is drawn to the thing that is the most relevant to them at that moment)
What are some symptoms of ADHD (4)?
- Difficulty in attending to relevant cues
- Difficulty maintaining attention for prolonged period of time
- Fidgety and restless
- Overtly agressive
Name three biological factors for ADHD
- Dysfunctional neurotransmitter system (results in lower catecholomine levels
- Reduced blood flow to the PFC
- Heredity
What is an ischemic infarct?
Obstruction of an artery (it happens when the brain’s blood vessels become narrowed or blocked, causing severely reduced blood flow)
What is an embolic infarct and what are the complications?
Infarct in major cerebral artery (occurs when a blood clot forms in one part of the body and then travels through the blood to the brain, where it blocks adequate oxygen and blood flow)
Often destroys grey matter causing motor, perceptual and cognitive deficits
What is a cerebral heamorrhage?
Bursting of an artery in the brain which causes localized bleeding in the surrounding tissues
This bleeding kills brain cells
What is a subarachnoidal heamorrhage?
Burst of a blood vessel in the protective layers surrounding the brain
Infarct in the temporal, parietal and frontal lobes can affect which functions (3)?
- Language
- Memory
- Attention
A patient with … does not acknowledge any stimulation from the side contralateral to the damaged hemisphere
Neglect (can be space-based or object-based)
Patients can ignore the right side of the visual field or of a specific object
What is a form of visual neglect in which a previously visible stimulus in one half of the visual field is not consciously in the other half of the visual field?
Extinction
What syndrome is characterised by difficulty in fixating eyes, executing controlled movements and processing visual scenes?
Balint’s syndrome
Difficulty with fixating on a certain position in space is called?
Ocular apraxia
Disorder in visually guiding motor behaviour is called?
Optic ataxia
Inhability to simultaneously perceive different aspects of an object is called?
Simultanagnosia
Bruising of the brain that has been in contact with the inside surface of the skull is called?
Coup effect (a coup injury occurs at the site of impact, where the force of the impact is directly transmitted to the brain tissue)
Contrecoup injury occurs on the opposite side of the brain from the site of impact
Coup-contrecoup means that the blow was strong enough to bruise the brain in several places
What is primary damage?
Bruising of the brain
Lacerated blood vessels that leads to interacerebal haemorrhage or swelling is called?
Secondary damage
What may occur when the head is swung forward and backward, resulting in hyperflexion (bending forward) and hyperextension (bending backwards) of the neck?
Whiplash
A … can cause deficits in divided attention, concentration and high sensability to interference
Whiplash
Neurological patients often complain about (5)?
- Low arousal
- Poor concentration
- Deficits in divided attention
- Deficits in sustained attention
- Deficits in cognitive control
… refers to an overall decline in mental functioning and involved developmental of multiple cognitive and behaviour deficits, including memory impairment
Dementia
What is the main form of cortical dementia (damage to parts of the brain in the cerebral cortex)?
Alzheimer’s disease
How does Alzheimer’s expresses itself (3)?
- Enlarged ventricles
- Cortical atrophy
- Brain abnormalities
What are the most prominent subcortical dementias (type of vascular dementia that begins in the region of the brain called the subcortex)?
Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease
What is the primary cause of Parkinson’s disease?
Degeneration of nerve cells in the substantia nigra, which controls movement
Damage to the substantia nigra in Parkinson’s disease leads to?
Decrease of the neurotransmitter dopamine
Cognitive deficits of Parkinson’s include (2)?
- Memory and selective attention dysfunction
- Decrease in mental flexibility
What is the primary cause of Huntington’s disease? (after gene mutation)
Degeneration of the caudate nucleus
(“C”-shaped subcortical structure which lies deep inside the brain near the thalamus. It plays a critical role in planning the execution of movement, learning, memory, reward, motivation, emotion, and romantic interaction)
What cognitive symptoms do patients of Huntington’s suffer from? (2)
- Reduction in mental speed
- Deficit in the retrieval of information
What causes are involved in schizophrenia?
Genetic and environmental factors (exact cause unknown)
Which cognitive areas are impaired in depression (3)?
- Concentration
- Memory
- Somatic system (controls all voluntary muscular systems within the body)
What kind of attention is impaired in depression and what kind of attentions remains unimpaired?
Impaired: selective and sustained attention
Unimpaired: attention span and devided attention
What is the Stroop test?
Requires individuals to view a list of words that are printed in a different colour than the meaning of the word (measures reaction time)
What is the Posner flanker task?
The subject looks only at a fixation point in the center of the screen. Directional cues such as an arrow draw attention to the left or right flank (side) of the fixation point, but no eye movements are allowed (assesses visual attention)
The ANT task is a generalised version of the flanker task. Which three seperate aspects of attention are tested?
- Alerting before an expected signal
- Orienting to a specific location in space
- Executive attention
Which brain areas are involved in alertness?
- Right frontal and parietal regions
- Waking state (which depends on the brainstem, thalamus and cortex)
Which brain areas are involved in orienting (2)?
- Right temporoparietal junction (TPJ)
- Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)
Itti and Koch developed a model that shows a simplified concept of the visual system. The visual map shows three things, what are those (3)?
- Orientation
- Intensity
- Colour (salience)
Which attention network is involved in top-down attention?
Dorsal (top of the brain) attention system
Which attention network is involved in bottom-up attention?
Ventral (bottom of the brain) attention system
What is hemianopia?
Loss of vision or blindness in half the visual field (either right or left side)
Occurs after stroke, brain injury, or a brain tumour
What is a water-shed infarct and what are the complications?
A sharp drop in blood pressure resulting in no blood flow to far places
Complications are motor weakness and language problems
What is a lacunar infarct?
Occurs when an artery that supplies blood to the deeper portions of the brain becomes blocked
