Psychology - Neuropsychology

• Cognitive neuroscience

  Field that combines cognitive psychology and neuroscience, investigating the relationship between brain structure/function and behaviour/cognition
• Cognitive neuroscientists

  • Explain how the structure and function of the brain is related to our behaviour and cognition
  • Identify the location of specific functions in the brain
• Historical method of brain research

  Investigating abnormal people and their brains to infer brain-function relationships
• Famous examples of brain-function relationships

  • Phineas Gage (frontal lobe damage, aggressive personality)
  • Clive Wearing (hippocampus damage, unable to form new long-term memories)
  • Tan (temporal lobe damage, could only say "tan")
• Problems with using abnormal brains

  • Small sample size, individuals may be unusual
  • Interested in how healthy brains function
• CT scanner

  Uses x-rays to produce detailed structural images of the brain
• Advantages of CT scanners

  • High level of detail, cheaper than PET/fMRI
• Disadvantages of CT scanners

  • Radiation risk, don't show brain activity
• PET scanner

  Detects gamma rays from radioactive tracers to show brain activity
• Advantages of PET scanners

  • Show brain activity
• Disadvantages of PET scanners

  • Radioactive tracers, limited number of scans
• fMRI scanner

  Measures differences in oxygenated/deoxygenated blood to show brain activity
• Advantages of fMRI scanners

  • Show brain activity, no radiation
• Disadvantages of fMRI scanners

  • Poor temporal resolution, delayed images
• Tulving's PET scanner study

  1. Injected radioactive tracer

  2. Participants recalled episodic/semantic memories

  3. Detected differences in brain activity between memory types
• Tulving's study provided strong evidence for separate brain regions for episodic and semantic memory
• Limitations of Tulving's study include small sample size, potential participant bias, and validity of memory tasks
• Neurological damage


  Destruction or disruption of brain neurons, leading to loss of associated functions
• Causes of neurological damage

  • Strokes (blood vessel burst/clot)
  • Physical trauma (impact, disease)
• Effects of neurological damage

  Depend on the area of the brain affected, e.g. motor, behavioural, emotional
• The brain is contralateral, so damage to one side affects the opposite side of the body