chapter 2 cogpsych
Terms
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- Hindbrain
- contains medulla, pons, cerebellum
- Medulla Oblongata
- Transmits information from spinal cord to brain; Regulates life support functions (respiration, blood pressure, coughing, sneezing, vomiting, heart rate)
- Pons
- Acts as neural relay center (like medulla); Facilitates crossover of information from left lobe and right body (vice versa); Involved in balance, processing visual and auditory information
- Cerebellum
- Coordinates motion, balance; Involved in ability to shift attention between auditory and visual stimuli; Involved in temporal stimuli, like rhythm
- Midbrain
- Relays information between brain regions
- Reticular Formation
- Involved in arousal (fight-or-flight)
- Thalamus
- Relays information, especially to cerebral cortex
- Hypothalamus
- Controls pituitary gland, endocrine system; Controls homoestatic activities like eating, drinking, temperature control, sleeping, sexual behaviors, and emotional reactions (contrast to medulla's life support functions)
- Hippocampus
- Involved in formation of long-term memories
- Faculty psychology
- Proposed by Franz Gall some time around 1800 Believed that processes like reading had distinct localizations in the brain and were independent functions Led to phrenology
- Amygdala
- Modulates strength of emotional memories Involved in emotional learning
- Basal ganglia
- Involved in production of motor behavior (really?)
- Composition of cerebral cortex
- Roughly half-dozen layers of neurons with white matter beneath, which carries information between regions of the cortex or to the thalamus
- Location of the lobes of the cerebral cortex
- Frontal (front), parietal (just behind), temporal (side), occipital (behind) Central sulcus defines the frontal and parietal lobes
- Parietal lobes
- Contains somatosensory cortex (contained in postcentral gyrus), and this structure helps in sensation
- Occipital lobes
- Process visual information, ability to recognize certain visual stimuli (e.g. faces)
- Temporal lobe
- Above memory structures, possibly involved in memory?
- Frontal lobes
- Composed of motor cortex, prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex
- Motor cortex
- Part of frontal lobe In precentral gyrus Directs fine motor movement
- Localization of function
- A philosophy of studying the brain, believing that function can be localied to particular regions
- premotor cortex
- Helps motor cortex plan fine motor activities
- Problems of phrenology
- NOT that different parts of brain control different functions 1 - Size of brain portion corresponded to its processing power 2 - Mental processes are independent
- Broca's contribution to localization
- Realized that damage to Broca's area led to a loss of expressive communication (expressive aphasia)
- Wernicke's contribution to localization
- Realized that damage to Wernicke's area led to a loss of receptive language function (receptive aphasia) Wernicke's area is in the temporal lobe
- Primary somatosensory cortex
- Functions in sensation Size of region specialized to a body part not proportional to size of body part (lots of tongue, little of mid-leg)
- Localization of higher-order cognitive processes
- Higher-order processes do not seem to be localized
- karl Lashley's ablation studies
- Impairment in maze running of rats related to total volume of cortex removed, not to specific region removed, suggesting that higher-order cognitive functions are not localized
- Plasticity
- Brain's ability to redistribute responsibilities when portion of brain lost Younger the individual and milder the injury, the better the odds the individual will regain function
- Lateralization
- Brain lobes differ in function (e.g. in language)
- Language lateralization
- Most individuals specialize for language in left hemisphere Left hemisphere likely to be larger in size
- Bilaterlized individuals
- Do not have one portion of brain specialized in language
- Right hemisphere lateralization
- Larger parietal and temporal areas, suggesting Better ingegrates auditory and visual information e.g. navigating familiar spaces, musical ability, geometric puzzles More synthetic than the right hemisphere (which is more serial)
- Corpus Callosum
- Connects left and right lobes
- Computeried Axial Tomography (CAT)
- Uses x rays Can help identify age of injuries
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
- Offers clearer pictures than CAT and does not involve radiation
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
- Involves injecting radioactive compound, following its circulation throughout the brain to identify which areas are using more blood
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
- Relies on blood's magnetic properties Active brain regions have a noticeably different ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated blood
- Electroencephalography (EEG)
- Helps determine states of consciousness
- Event-related potential (ERP)
- No real explanation given. damn
- Prefrontal cortex
- Controls executive functions