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 functions in the brain
• Historical way of studying brain function


  Investigating abnormal people and their brains, to infer the function of damaged brain regions
• Famous examples of abnormal brain function


  • Phineas Gage (frontal lobe damage, aggressive personality)
  • Clive Wearing (hippocampus damage, unable to form new memories)
  • Tan (temporal lobe damage, could only say "tan")
• Problems with using abnormal brains to study brain function include small sample sizes and unusual cases
• Modern brain scanning techniques


  • CT scans (use x-rays to show brain structure)
  • PET scans (use radioactive tracers to show brain activity)
  • fMRI scans (use magnetic fields to show brain activity)
• Advantages and disadvantages of brain scanning techniques


  • CT scans: high detail, cheaper, but radiation risk
  • PET scans: show brain activity, but limited scans due to radiation
  • fMRI scans: show brain activity, no radiation, but poor temporal resolution
• Classic PET scan study on long-term memory


  • Tulving injected radioactive tracer, found episodic and semantic memories use different brain regions
• Limitations of Tulving's PET scan study include small sample size, potential researcher bias, and difficulty of the memory tasks
• Neurological damage


  Damage or destruction of brain neurons, leading to loss of function
• Causes of neurological damage


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


  • Paralysis (motor cortex damage)
  • Behaviour changes (frontal lobe, limbic system damage)