AO3 Localisation of Function

• Research support from case studies

  Phineas Gage: personality change after damage to frontal lobe
• Brain plasticity provides an argument against localisation. Evidence of functional recovery through processes like recruitment of homogenous areas. If localisation was the case for each behaviour we carry out, plasticity should not be possible
• Brain scans supports the idea of localisation of function. Psychologists demonstrated how Wernicke’s area was active during a listening task and Broca’s area was active during a reading task
• Lashely removed areas of the cortex in rats that were learning the route through a maze. No area was proven to be more important than any other area in terms of the rats ability to learn the route. Process of learning seemed to require every party of the cortex. Suggests higher cognitive processes like learning are distributed more holistically in the brain
• fMRI scans has suggested that language function is distrusted far more holistically than previously thought. So-called language streams have been identified across the cortex, including in the right hemisphere and sub cortical regions like the thalamus