Psychology - Biopsychology

• What components make up the Central Nervous system

  The brain and spinal cord
• What is the function of the brain?

  The brain is the centre of awareness. It is divided into two hemispheres. The cerebral cortex is more developed in humans than in all other animals.
• divisions of the nervous system

  
• brain labelled

  
• What is the function of the spinal cord?

  The spinal cord is an extension of the brain. It transports messages to and from the brain (two-way communication) to the peripheral nervous system. It is also responsible for reflexes.
• What is the function of the peripheral nervous system?

  Consists of sensory and motor neurons and all of the nerves connecting them to each other and the CNS.
• The peripheral nervous system has two divisions, what are they?

  Autonomic nervous system and Somatic Nervous system
• What is the role of the autonomic nervous system?


  - An involuntary control system that control organ functions

  - Regulates functions that are NOT under conscious control such as heartbeat, digestion, blood pressure, breathing.

  - It inputs from internal receptors and outputs to external organs, blood vessels and glands.

  - Example: sweating-receptors detect your body getting too warm, impulses sent to skin, skin responds by releasing sweat- response is automatic, you have no control
• What is the role of the somatic nervous systems?

  - Voluntary body movement and sensing external stimuli

  - It inputs from sense organs (5 senses) and outputs to muscles, skin and joints by receiving a signal to respond to the changes detected.

  
  

  Example: catching a ball-your eyes detect the ball moving towards you, brain assesses info, then instructs the muscles of your arm to reach out and catch the ball.
• Which division of the Peripheral Nervous System contains the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions?

  Autonomic
• what is localisation of function?

  different parts of the brain are responsible for different things. Therefore, if brain damage occurs to just one area, only the functions linked to this area will be affected.
• what theory does localisation of function contrast?

  holistic - different areas of the brain work together.
• What is the case of Phineas Gage?

  1) pole through left cheek passing behind his eye and exiting his skull exiting the top of his head taking most of left frontal lobe

  2) survived but the damage to brain had a mark on his personality - turned from calm to quick tempered and rude.
• what does the case of Phineas gage suggest

  the frontal lobe may be responsible for regulating mood.
• what is in the brain?

  frontal lobe (including Broca's area and the motor cortex)

  
  

  parietal lobe (somatosensory cortex)

  
  

  occipital lobe (visual cortex - inside)

  
  

  temporal lobe (Wernicke's area, auditory cortex - inside)
• what is the frontal lobe?


  located at the front of the brain

  associated with reasoning, motor skills, cognition, and expressive language
• what is the parietal lobe?


  located in the middle section of the brain

  processing pressure, touch and pain.
• what is the occipital lobe?

  located at the back portion of the brain

  interpreting visual stimuli and information
• what two parts are only located in the left hemisphere in the brain?

  Wernicke's area

  Broca's area
• what is broca's area?


  discovered by paul broca who looked into the lesions in a patients brain who could only say the word 'tan'. Lesions found in left frontal lobe

  showed area associated with language production.

  underactivity leads to stuttering

  broca's aphasia
• what is broca's aphasia?

  difficulty "finding words"

  miss out words e.g. "the" etc that add sense

  speak in short meaningful sentences

  no difficulty comprehending language
• what is wernicke's area?

  same time as Broca, Carl Wernicke studied language deficits

  found damage to an area located on temporal lobe

  further study - area associated with speech comprehension .
• what is Wernicke's aphasia?


  aka fluent aphasia

  struggles to understand language

  produces long fluent sentences easily - sentences have little to no meaning.
• what is the motor cortex?

  - Responsible for voluntary motor movements

  - Located in frontal lobe

  - Both hemispheres have motor cortex, with each one controlling the muscles on the opposite side of the body
• what is the somatosensory cortex?

  area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations.

  along the postcentral gyrus (area of cortex dedicates to processing sensory info rel to touch, pressure, pain, temp)

  somatosensory cortex on each side of brain receives sensory info from opposite side of body
• what is the visual cortex?

  back of the brain in the occipital lobe.

  contains dif area each processing different types of visual info e.g. colour, shape etc.
• how does the visual cortex receive information?

  visual processing begins in retina where light enters and strikes the photoreceptors (rods and cones)

  2) nerve impulses from retina are transmitted to brain via optic nerve

  3) some nerve impulses from retina travel to areas of brain involved in circadian rhythms, but majority terminate in the thalamus in brain, which acts as a relay station, passing this info to the visual cortex.
• what is the auditory cortex?


  - concerned with hearing

  lies w/i temporal lobes on both sides of brain
• how does the auditory cortex receive information in the brain?

  1) auditory pathways begin in cochlea in the inner ear, where sound waves are converted to nerve impulses, that travel via auditory nerve to auditory cortex in brain.

  2) on journey from cochlea to brain, 1st stop is brain stem. w/i this a decoding takes place (e.g. duration of a sound)

  3) next stop is thalamus, acts as a relay station and carries out further processing of auditory stimulus

  4) final stop is auditory cortex. sounds largely decoded by now but here it is recognised and result in appropriate response.
• what are the strengths of localisation of function?

  - support for the role of Broca's and Wernicke's area come from different patients with different types of aphasia. can be applied to rest of brain and that dif areas have dif specialist functions

  - supporting scientific evidence from brain scans to support role of Broca's and Wernicke's area. Petersen et al (1988) brains scans demonstrate how wernicke area active during listening task, broca's active during reading task.

  - there are applications of localisation theory in terms of treatments for OCD and depression. Dougherty et al (2002). reported 44 people w. OCD undergone cingulotomy (procedure involves lesioning of cingulate gyrus) at follow up after surgery at 32 weeks, 1/3 had met criteria for successful response to surgery, 14% for partial response. Shows symptoms and behaviours associated with serious mental disorders are localised.
• what are the limitations of localisation of function?

  - considering language localised by Broca's may be simplistic following research from Dronkers et al (2007) - re-examined preserved brains of two Broca's patients to identify extent of lesions using MRI. revealed other areas also contributed to patients reduced speech abilities. Suggest lang and cognition are more complex than thought and involve networks of brain regions.

  - Lashley's equipotentiality theory challenges localisation - simple functions are localised yet more complex functions e.g. learning involve whole cortex working together
• what is lateralisation?


  two halves of the brain are functionally different and certain processes or behaviours a re controlled by one hemisphere rather than the other

  - R hemisphere processes info from L side of body e.g. visual information from left VF

  - L hemisphere processes info from R side of body e.g. visual information from right VF
• what is contra lateral functioning?

  the cross over from the hemisphere of the brain and the side of the body
• Who are split-brain patients?

  had a commissurotomy - where the corpus callous is severed so that the two hemispheres are separated and don't communicate with each other

  this was done to control frequent and severe epileptic fits

  
• What is the Sperry 1968 study?


  studied split brain patients and compared them to patients with no hemisphere separation

  PROCEDURE:

  - a word/picture is projected into the left or right visual field which is then dealt with by the opposite hemisphere of the brain and the information isn't shared between the two hemispheres
• what was the findings (sperry study) on describing what they see?

  when a picture of an object was shown to a patients RVF, they could easily describe what was seen

  
  

  when a picture of an object was shown to the LVF they could not describe it (often say nothing was there)
• what was the findings (sperry study) on recognition by touch?

  - if patients shown an object in their LVF and asked to select this object from a selection with their LH, they would be able to select the object because it was seen by R hemisphere and the LH is also controlled by the right hemisphere.

  couldn't verbalise what they were selecting

  - LH able to select an object most closely associated with the object presented to the LVF
• what was the findings (sperry study) on recognition by touch if two different objects were placed in each hand and then hidden in a pile?

  each hand searches for it sown object but if the LH picks up the object which the RH is looking for, the object is rejected but the other hand continues to search
• what was the findings (sperry study) on drawing?

  drawings are consistently better when drawn by LH (controlled by R hemisphere)

  this was despite patients being actually RH

  suggests that the R hemisphere and therefore LH was superiority at drawing ability.
• what was the findings on facial recognition? Fem = L, Male = R


  if they had to name they would say man as man side processed by L hemisphere which deals with language

  if they were asked to pick photo of what they have seen, select a woman as the woman side is processed by the R hemisphere