The Brain
- Created by: meghampton
- Created on: 31-05-16 11:47
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- The Brain
- the Cerebrum
- split into 4 lobes
- frontal lobe - located at the front, responsible for decision making, personality and memory
- occipital lobe - located at the back, responsible for visual processing
- parietal lobe - at the top behind the frontal lobe, responsible for controlling movement and our senses
- temporal lobe - low on the each side of the brain, responsible for memory formation and hearing
- Hypothalamus
- controls the release of hormones and regulates drives important for survival e.g. thirst/sleep
- links the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland
- Neuron
- neurons are cells that send and receive electro-chemical signals to and from the brain an nervous system
- consists of a cell body (or soma) with branching dendrites and a projection called an axon.
- at the other end of the axon, axon terminals transmit the signal across a synapse
- cell body - main part, has all the necessary components such as the nucleus
- axon - long, cable-like projection of the cell, carries the electro-chemical message along the length of the cell
- dendrites - small, branch-like projections, make connections to other cells + allow the neuron to talk with other cells
- synapse - the gap between two nerve endings
- pituitary gland
- releases hormones that control the body's response to stress, growth and the changes that take place in puberty
- Henry Molaison (HM)
- underwent an operation to remove his hippocampi to reduce his epliepsy
- lost all of his memory, up until then it was not known that the hippocampi were involved in memory
- became unable to make new memories, learn new words, forgot who he was talking to when he turned away, didn't know how old he was
- for 55 years HM participated in numerous experiments - taught us much of what we know about memory
- after his death, his brain was dissected into 2000 slices + digitized as a three dimensional brain map
- Phineas Gage
- 1848, involved in an accident at work, a metal rod pierced through his skull, destroying most of his frontal lobe
- he survived but the accident changed him
- before - he was a hard-working pleasant man, after - became aggressive + unable to keep a job
- had a big influence on early neurology - led to theories on the localization of brain function
- we now have a better understanding of the frontal cortex and its functions, including that it is involved in personality
- Techniques for looking at the brain
- ERPs - event related potentials
- pick up the patterns of brain activity by using electrodes on the head
- valuable for recording changes in electrical activity in the brain
- useful - give more detailed information than other processes about the time course
- don't indicate which regions of the brain are most involved with processing
- not useful for studying complex tasks like problem solving
- PET - positron emission tomography
- inject a radioactive marker to build up an image of the active brain
- produce a 3-dimensional colour image
- based on studying positrons - atomic particles emitted by some radioactive substances
- can identify the brain areas involved in a wide range of different cognitive activities
- do not reveal rapid changes in brain activity that's involved in most thought processes
- inject a radioactive marker to build up an image of the active brain
- MRI - magnetic resonance imaging
- use magnets to build up a strong magnetic field that provides an image of the active brain
- three dimensional image is produced
- provides spatial information and can show changes in the brain over time
- only tells us about the structures of the brain and not about the time course
- ERPs - event related potentials
- the Cerebrum
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