Brain Localisation

Cards (9)

  • Corpus callosum - splits the two hemispheres of the brain
    • nerve fibres that join the two halves and communicate between the left and right side
  • Sperry's split brain research
    presented images to each of the visual fields
    sperry found that if participants were asked to point to a matching image, they could perform this regardless of the hemisphere that it was presented to
    but if asked to verbally describe, they could only do this when the image was presented to their left hemisphere
    sperry concluded that language is hemispherically lateralised to the left hemisphere
  • limitations of split brain research
    • may lack generalisability
    • brain abnormalities may be a confounding variable
    • not all findings have been replicated
  • parts of the brain
    A) Broca's area
    B) Motor cortex
    C) somatosensory cortex
    D) visual cortex
    E) wernicke's area
  • Petersen et al
    used brain scans to show how wernicke's area was active during a listening task and how broca's area was active during a reading task
    objective methods
    used to show that functions are localised to different parts of the brain
  • Case study: Phineas Gage
    case studies can lack generalisability
    pole was pushed into his skull, removing most of his left frontal lobe
    he survived but experienced a complete turn in personality
    suggests that the frontal lobe may be responsible for regulating mood
  • a limitation of split brain research comes from danelli
    danelli studied patient EB who had their left hemisphere removed at a young age
    after rehabilitation, EB was able to recover their language skills
    which wouldnt have been possible is language skills were lateralised to the left hemisphere
    danelli conducted the case study through verbal testing and MRI to compare images of their brain with that of people with typical brains
    found that hemispherically lateralised functions can be taken over by the right
  • support for the theory of brain localisation
    post-mortem examination of patient Tan
    showed damage to Broca's area
    Dronkers' further examination showed that perhaps there were other brain regions that were also damaged
  • brain localisation ignores individual differences in brain organisation