AOS2 psych olivia

• Hindbrain:

  .A collective of brain structures: pons, medulla, cerebellum

  .Responsible for functions that occur subconsciously

  .autonomic survival functions: heart rate, breathing, sleep

  .coordination of voluntarily muscle movement: balance, posture, reflexes, coughing, swallowing and vomiting
• Pons:

  .transfers neural messages between parts of the brain and spinal cord

  .involved with sleep, arousal, waking, breathing and coordination of muscle movement

  Damage:

  .sleep disturbance

  .sensory problems

  .coma

  .difficulty swallowing

  .difficulty walking
• Medulla:

  .regulates involuntary bodily functions: swallowing, digestion, breathing, heart-rate

  
  

  Damage:

  .physiological dysfunction

  .could cause death as it controls vital organs
• Cerebellum:

  .coordinates voluntary movement, balance and posture

  .plays a roll in motor learning

  Damage:

  .reduced motor control

  .imbalance

   
• Midbrain:

  .plays role in processing info related to: hearing, vision, movement, pain, sleep and arousal

  .keeps you alert and attentive
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  Reticular Formation:

  .helps screen incoming sensory info so the brain isn't overloaded

  .alerts higher brain centre important info

  .helps maintain consciousness

  .regulates arousal and muscle tension

  
  

  Damage:

  .can disrupt sleep-wake cycle

  .can cause loss of attention

  .can cause problems with pain management and balance
• Forebrain:

  .largest part of brain

  .regulates complex cognitive processes: thinking, learning, memory, perception and emotion

  .a collective of: hypothalamus, thalamus, cerebrum
• Hypothalamus:

  .homeostasis- maintains body's ph. levels, body temp etc

  .controls body clock, regulates thirst, hunger and body temp

  
  

  Damage:

  .disruption in body temp

  .growth

  .eating habits and weight control

  .emotion

  .sexual behaviour

  .motivation

  .sleep
• Thalamus:

  .relays sensory and motor signals to cerebral cortex

  .regulates consciousness, sleep and alertness

  
  

  Damage:

  .deafness

  .blindness

  .loss of taste and other senses (except smell)

  .sensory issues and sensitivity
• Cerebrum:

  .responsible for conscious actions

  .includes cerebral-cortex

  .controls voluntary movement, emotions and personality

   
• Cerebral cortex:

  • Processes incoming sensory information
  • Involved in planning and control of voluntary bodily movements
  • Involved in complex mental abilities: perception, learning and memory, language, thinking and problem solving
  • Prone to damage as it lies directly beneath the skull
  • Effects of damage depend on the location: problems with cognition, sensation, movement, and behavior
• Frontal Lobe:

  • Largest of all 4 lobes
  • Main areas: prefrontal cortex, primary motor cortex, Broca's area
  • Cortical area: integrates info from other brain areas, then determines appropriate response
  • Damage can lead to difficulty with decision making, planning, organisation, attentional control, memory loss, inability to understand social cues and regulate emotions, loss of motor skills, dramatic personality change, and speech production difficulties
• cerebral cortex Association areas:

  • Main role is to process information from senses and link it to existing memories, ideas, and concepts
  • Involved in perception, language, and thought
• Prefrontal Cortex:

  • Responsible for advanced cognitive and executive functions like decision making, planning, analysing, motivation, attention, goal-oriented behaviour, and organisation
  • Functions associated with memory, abstract thinking, planning, and impulse control
  • Contributes to personality, intelligence, and social skills
  • Predicts possible consequences for our actions
  • Works with amygdala and hippocampus to generate and regulate emotions
• Facts about the cerebral cortex:

  • 3mm thick outer layer covering most of the brain's surface
  • Contains 70% of the neurons from the nervous system
  • Makes up approximately half the weight of brain mass
  • Wrinkled layer with bulges and furrows
  • Increased surface area leads to an increase in the number of neurons and neural connections
• Primary Motor Cortex:

  • Controls voluntary bodily movements
  • Left side controls right sides bodily movements vice-versa
  • Designated areas along motor cortex are for specific body parts, more area is given depending on the number of muscles involved in moving that body part
• Broca's Area:

  • Located in the left frontal lobe
  • Responsible for speech production, movement of mouth muscles, articulation of words, and meaningful speech
  • Damage can cause Broca's aphasia, characterized by deliberate and abbreviated speech, simple grammatical structure, difficulty producing speech, and potential struggles with written language
• Parietal Lobe:

  • Responsible for registering sensations in the brain & coordinating sensations and movement
  • Right side is for perceiving 3D shapes and design
  • Left side is for reading and writing
  • Damage can lead to loss of sensation in the body and special neglect, neglecting one whole side of the world internally and externally
  • Right side damage can cause difficulty navigating spaces, clumsy movement, difficulties with special skills, and confusion between left and right
• Somatosensory Cortex:

  • Receives and processes sensory information like touch, pressure, and pain
  • The amount of area given depends on the sensitivity of the body part
• Parietal lobe Association area:

  • Located behind the somatosensory cortex
  • Controls fine sensations like judgement of texture, weight, size, and shape
• Occipital lobe:

  • Involved with processing visual information
  • Allows us to form visual perceptions, think visually, and remember visual images
  • Specialised neurons in association areas send visual info to other brain lobes, allowing interpretation of visual info from areas of the cerebral cortex
• Damage to the occipital lobe:

  • If you have experienced a tumor, you may have blind spots in vision
  • Visual impairments can result
• Primary Visual Cortex:

  .receives and processes info from eyes

  .interacts with other lobes to connect visual info with memorised language and sound

  .visual info arrives in 'pieces', it turns this info into image or patter that is then given meaning
• Temporal Lobe:

  • Located on both sides of the brain near the ears
  • Registers sounds involved with: hearing, language skills, social understanding, perception of other people's eyes and faces
  • Damage can lead to loss of memory, difficulty recognizing faces, and disturbances in auditory sensation and perception

  Left only damage: Loss of memory verbal material (facts, skills)

  Right only damage: Loss of memory non-verbal material (music, drawing)
• Primary auditory cortex:

  • Receives auditory info from ears and integrates it with info from other senses
  • Left side processes verbal sounds like words
  • Right side processes non-verbal sounds like music
• Wernicke's Area:

  • Responsible for speech comprehension
  • Located in the left temporal lobe
  • Identifies sounds as words so their meaning can be understood
  • Uses stored words in memory to comprehend speech
  • Damage can lead to Wernicke's aphasia: a speech disorder where people have difficulty understanding written and spoken language even though they can speak fluently
• Association areas temporal lobe:

  Involved with:

  .ability to recognise faces

  .memories

  .deciding what we perceive and remember
• Brain vs Heart:

  .Philosophers argued whether it was the heart or brain that controlled the body.

  .Ancient Egyptians, when mummifying bodies, would remove and discard the brain because they believed it was not important – but they left the heart

  .Aristotle (through animal anatomy) concluded that the heart was the most important organ

  .When it died, so did the ‘mind’
• Body vs Mind:

  .Plato introduced the idea of the mind (soul) being a separate entity from the body

  .Aelius Galen – through experimentation consolidated the importance of the brain in understanding behaviour

  .Believed that the mind and body were the same, and that he brain (not the heart) controls all muscle movement

  .Rene Descartes – believed that the body and mind are separate

  .Mind controls the body, therefore controls behaviour – dualism
• Phrenology:

  .Developed by German physician, Franz Joseph Gall

  .Based on the concepts that the brain is the organ of the mind

  .One of the earliest techniques that attempted to predict human behaviour by looking at bumps on skull
• Ablation:

  .Pioneered by Pierre Flourens (1794 – 1867)

  .Purpose was to provide scientific explanation to phrenology

  .Surgically removed, or electrically stimulated parts of the animal brain to study behavioural effects – experimental ablation
• Ablation + Brain Lesioning:

  Stimulated the brains of some human patients during surgery and found:

  .Specific brain regions were responsible for specific functions

  .Cerebellum – regulates and integrates movement

  .Cerebral hemispheres were responsible for all behaviour

  .Brain stem controls vital functions

  Ablation now:

  Modern brain ablation (or brain lesioning) treats various neurological or psychological disorders

  Used to remove brain tumours, or change dysfunctional brain circuits

   
• Lobotomy:

  .It involved severing the nerves connecting the frontal lobe and inner parts of the brain that controlled emotion

  .Tested on patients with schizophrenia and found them to be much calmer after

  Walter Freeman (19030s)

  Performed close to 4000 lobotomies

  Close to 500 patients died because of his treatment

  Not a very well respected medical professional due to his lack of care, both towards patients and his practice

  •  
• Split brain:

  Left: language, analysis, maths/science skills, helps with speech, logic/reasoning, right eye vision

  Right: imagination, music, art appreciation, spacial BD form, emotional expressions, facial recognition, left eye vision

  Corpus callosum: a large band of nerve fibres that allows the two hemispheres to communicate

  Left controls right, vice versa
• Visual field:

  Information flashed to the RIGHT visual field


  Information sent to the LEFT hemisphere

  Can verbalise what they saw

  Can select the correct object with their RIGHT hand

  Can draw the object with their RIGHT hand
• Visual field:

  Information flashed to the LEFT visual field;

  Information sent to the RIGHT hemisphere

  Unable to say what the object was

  Can select the correct object with their LEFT hand

  Can draw the object with their LEFT hand
• Neuroimaging:

  .shows brain structure and brain function
• Brain function:

  .PET and FMRI

  .what the brain does and how it works

   
•  

  Brain structure:

  .CT and MRI

  .what it looks like
• Neuroimaging Techniques:

  Structural:

  .static neuroimaging

  .techniques that produce images or 'scans'

  .shows brain structure and anatomy CT and MRI

   

  Functional:

  .dynamic neuroimaging

  .provides views of aspects of brain function

  .shows the brain (at work)

  .provides some info about structure

  .PET and FMRI