localisation of function in the brain

• label the lobes freya!!! xx

  A) frontal lobe

  B) parietal lobe

  C) occipital lobe

  D) cerebellum

  E) temporal lobe

  
• frontal lobes


  speech, thought and learning
• parietal lobes


  touch, temperature and pain
• temporal lobes


  hearing and memory
• occipital lobes


  visual information
• motor cortex 


  at the back of the frontal lobe

  generates voluntary motor movements

  both left and right hemispheres

  one side of brain controls the opposite side of body

  damage in area - loss of control over fine motor movements
• somatosensory cortex


  front of parietal lobes

  uses sensory information from skin - touch, heat, pain

  the amount of somatosensory area in a body party = its sensitivity

  in both left and right hemisphere

  one side of the brain receiving sensory information from the opposite side of body
• visual cortex


  back of occipital lobe

  begins at the retina and transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve

  process different types of visual information - colour, shape or movement

  both left and right hemisphere
• auditory cortex 


  in temporal lobe

  hearing

  auditory pathway starts in inner ear and sound waves are converted to nerve impulses, travel via auditory nerve to auditory cortex

  causes appropriate response to the speech based information

  damage causes partial hearing loss

  in both left and right hemispheres
• Broca's area


  only in the left hemisphere

  frontal lobe

  speech production

  damage = Broca aphasia , slow speech, lacks fluency

  Paul Broca - surgeon who identified the area of brain, case study = tan, able to understand speech but couldn't produce it in speech or writing, only syllable he could express was Tan
• Wernicke's area 


  only left hemisphere

  temporal lobe

  language comprehension

  damage = Wernicke aphasia , no problem producing language but its meaningless because of lack of understanding
• strength - Petersen et al, brain scans

  supporting evidence - used brain scans to demonstrate how Wernicke's area was active during listening tasks and Broca's area was active in a reading task

  -suggests these areas of the brain do have different functions
• weakness - Lashley , rat training 


  suggests that higher cognitive functions - learning - aren't localised , distributed in a more holistic way

  Lashley trained rats to complete a maze, removed areas of the brain to see if he could erase the memory of maze

  rats still able to find way through maze - regardless of size and location removed

  suggests its too complex to be localised , uses many parts of brain - reductionist
• strength - Lashley rat study 


  study uses animals

  cant generalise the results to human learning

  humans have much higher cognitive function - more developed cortex

  -localisation could be different in humans and animals
• weakness - individual differences 


  research found individual differences in the language areas of brain - pattern of activation varies from person to person

  more studies found significant gender differences in the size of brain areas to do with language

  Harasty et al - women have larger Broca's and Wernicke's areas than men
• weakness - plasticity 


  when brain becomes damaged and a particular function has been lost, rest of brain is able to recognise itself attempting to recover the lost function

  doesn't happen every time but are several cases of stroke victims who did this

  -function can change , suggesting issue with idea of localisation