Localisation of the Brain

    Cards (12)

    • 'Localisation of function' is the theory that specific and different areas of the brain are responsible for various behaviours, processes or activities.
    • What is the role of the frontal lobe?
      The frontal love is involved in attention and thought, voluntary movement, decision making, emotional response, impulse control and language.
    • Broca's area is only located in the left hemisphere of the brain and specifically in the frontal lobe. It is responsible for speech production.
    • What is the role of the motor cortex?
      This is the primary motor area, it controls voluntary movement in the opposite side of the body.
    • What is the role of the somatosensory cortex?
      This is where all sensory information from the skin is processed.
    • What is the role of the occipital lobe?
      This is the visual area, it’s responsible for vision, integrating and processing visual information (shape, colour, distance).
    • What is the role of the temporal lobe?
      This is the auditory area, it analyses speech based information.
    • Wernicke's area is located in the left hemisphere of the brain and specifically in the temporal lobe. It is responsible for language comprehension.
    • Through the use of post-mortems two 'language areas' were identified: Broca's area and Wernicke's area.
    • If you experience damage to either Broca's or Wernicke's area this results in the condition called aphasia. Aphasia is a disorder that affects how you communicate; effecting speech, how you write and understand spoken/written language.
    • What are the three main speech production problems in Broca's aphasia?
      • Anomia - a difficulty finding the right words.
      • Agrammatism - problems with grammar.
      • Articulation problems - mispronouncing words.
    • What are the three main speech production problems in Wernicke's aphasia?
      • Pure word deafness - spoken words are difficult to recognise (fluent speech but it makes no sense)
      • Word comprehension - the semantics of words is severely impaired.
      • Thought expression - meaningful speech relating to the persons thoughts is compromised.