Be able to define the following: engram; consolidation; working memory; episodic memory; explicit memory; implicit memory; declarative memory; procedural memory; retrograde amnesia; anterograde amnesia (see Chapter 13).
engram: a physical representation of what has been learned (connection between two brain areas is one example)
consolidation: movement of memory from short term to long term memory; permanent storage of otherwise temporary memory
working memory: temporary
Be able to describe what appears to be the basis of changes in memory with normal aging.
prefrontal cortex is likely the site of working memory; those with declining prefrontal cortex as they age show decreased memory
The ability to encode new memories of events or facts and working memory shows decline; episodic memory is especially impaired
Be able to describe the patient E.P.'s memory performance. Which abilities are preserved and which are impaired?
he had
anterograde amnesia
, severely amnesiac: past memories, habit learning preserved, short term, declarative, "new" memories impaired.
lose declarative memory but retain procedural memory
could learn three-word sessions, performed better on consecutiv
Be able to describe the effects of H.M.'s surgery on his memory abilities. What did he have difficulty with and what could he still learn? What does this say about the role of the medial temporal lobe structures in memory?
bilateral medial temporal lobectomy - both sides of hippocampus removed
medial temporal lobe necessary for memory even though hippocampus is traditionally assumed "site of memory"
-intact short-term/working memory
-impaired long-term storage
-intact proce
Be able to describe the delayed nonmatching to sample task.
1. animal sees object
2. after delay, choice between two, one matches the sample
3. animal must remember what the original object was like - thus demonstrating declarative or maybe episodic memory
hippocampal damage severely impairs performance in most ca
Be able to describe which structures, when damaged, impair: object recognition memory; response memory; spatial memory
hippocampal damage: impaired declarative memory, intact procedural
basal ganglia: more important for procedural
however, most tasks use both types
object recognition memory:
response memory:
spatial memory: hippocampus
Be able to describe the performance of rats with hippocampal damage on the radial arm maze task. What error do rats with hippocampal damage typically
not
make? (see Chapter 13).
rat placed in center can find food by exploring each arm once, only once
rats with damage to the hippocampus seldom enter the never-correct arms, but they often enter a correct arm twice.
they forget which arms they have already tried.
Be able to describe the performance of rats with hippocampal damage on the two forms of the water maze task.
1. if rat has not learned location already, becomes disoriented if platform moves, but can slowly learn if it always starts in same place and platform never moves
2. if rat has already learned platform location before hippocampus damage, still acts like h
Be able to describe the basic process of "long-term potentiation". What are the presynaptic and postsynaptic changes associated with memory formation? Be able to describe the roles of AMPA receptors, NMDA receptors, magnesium, and calcium ions.
Hebbian synapse
: a synapse that increases in effectiveness because of simultaneous activity in the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons
"neurons that fire together, wire together"
Long-term potentiation
: one or more axons connected to a dendrite bombard
Be able to describe Diencephalic Amnesia/ Korsakoff's syndome.
Korsakoff's syndrome: brain damage caused by prolonged thiamine deficiency (from alcoholism)
shrinking of neurons throughout the brains
one of the areas most affected is dorsomedial thalamus, main source of input to prefrontal cortex
symptoms: apathy, con
Be able to describe " tangles" and "plaques" and their role in Alzheimer's disease.
-genes controlling early-onset Alzheimer's cause amyloid-B protein to accumulate both inside and outside neurons
-high levels of amyloid damage axons/dendrites, damaged structures cluster into
plaques
, begin to form before behavioral symptoms appear
-as
Be able to describe the various behavioral effects of cutting the corpus callosum as shown in the experiments from the video shown in class.
often severed as severe epilepsy treatment
split-brain people
: normal intelligence, normal motivation, normal walking; can still use hands together on familiar tasks, but struggle with unfamiliar ones
can use hands independently of each other in an abnor
Be able to describe which functions appear to be most often lateralized to the left or right hemispheres.
left: speech production (only up to 80% of left-handers, though)
right: recognizing emotions, comprehending spatial relationships, prosody, humor
speech comprehension is more equally distributed across hemispheres
people with left-hemisphere brain damage
Be able to describe the experiment using Arcimbaldo's paintings. What does this tell us about processing in the two hemispheres?
different aspects of stimulus are processed by different hemispheres;
faces are special
The right hemisphere would be expected to employ a holistic strategy, and the left an analytic strategy.
right-hemisphere damaged people saw the fruit
left-hemisphere
Be able to describe "hierarchical stimuli"? Describe the performance of patients with damage to the left or right hemispheres when attempting to copy hierarchical stimuli. What do the hierarchical stimuli experiments with split-brain patients and normals
big M made of little L's or something like that
The right-hemisphere damaged patients made more errors in remembering the larger forms relative to the smaller forms, whereas the left-hemisphere damaged patients made more errors in remembering the smaller
Be able to describe the "spatial frequency hypothesis" of hemispheric processing.
asymmetries arise in higher-order perceptual processing with the left hemisphere specialized for processing late available, high spatial-frequency information, and the right hemisphere specialized for processing early available, low spatial-frequency info
Be able to describe the different techniques used to determine hemispheric dominance for speech and language.
transcranial magnetic stimulation
- temporarily deactivate parts of brain
wada test
- use anesthesia (sodium amytal) to deactivate one hemisphere
dichotic listening task
- right ear has advantage when streams presented to both ears at once - shows left he
Be able to contrast the effects of damage to Wernicke's area with those of damage to Broca's area.
Broca's aphasia: lesion in Broca's area, left frontal cortex.
nonfluent
aphasia.
These patients have
agrammatism
, slow and awkward with all forms of expression: speaking, writing, gesturing;
seldom use closed-class words
, cannot comprehend complex gramm
Be able to describe the changes that are seen between 7 month old and 11 month old human infants in EEG studies of speech perception abilities.
at 7 months, babies are "citizens of the world", can hear separate phonemes in any language
at 11 months, citizens of a single country, specialists in one country, have become responsive only to phonemes in their own language, do not respond to "reality,
Be able to describe what is meant by the "leftward shift".
13 month old babies listen and understand with both cerebral hemispheres, but by 20 months, language center has shifted to left hemisphere
Be able to describe the differences that have been demonstrated in brain activity between "early" and "late" bilinguals.
early: learn both from the start
late: "sequential bilingualism"
differences: early bilinguals keep both languages in the same brain area, late bilinguals put them in different areas
Be able to describe Williams' syndrome.
mental retardation but with surprisingly intact linguistic capabilities
caused by deletion of genes from chromosome 7: leads to
decreased gray matter, especially in brain areas relating to visual processing
poor number, visuospatial and spatial perception
Be able to describe the typical differences in brain activity between dyslexics and non-dyslexics.
magnocellular hypothesis
: The Magnocellular theory proposes that the magnocellular dysfunction is not only restricted to the visual pathways but also includes auditory and tactile modalities.
mild abnormalities in the structure of many brain areas, inclu
Be able to describe what aspect of speech/language is most difficult for a child with left hemispherectomy.
right hemisphere handles understanding just as well as left
speech production
is dependent on left hemisphere, much more difficult for left hemispherectomees
Be able to describe the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
-positive: hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder
-negative: poverty of speech, flat affect, social withdrawal
-positive symptoms respond to medication, negative symptoms respond poorly
-positive symptoms are acute, negative symptoms are chronic/deve
Be able to describe the evidence for a genetic role in schizophrenia.
several genes have been identified that appear to increase susceptibility to schizophrenia; other genes give rise to traits associated with it, but not the disease itself. multifactorial causation.
nearly 50% concordance rate among identical twins
12% fra
Be able to describe the evidence for a role for abnormalities in prenatal development in schizophrenia.
season-of-birth effect: greater number of people who develop schizophrenia are born in the winter months, possibly due to nutritional deficiencies or increased winter risk of viral infection of pregnant mother
-parasite found in cats, more schizophrenics
Be able to describe the various brain abnormalities that have been observed in schizophrenics.
smaller brains overall - reduced frontal lobe and temporal lobe volume
diminished frontal lobe, auditory and visual processing areas, prefrontal lobe
enlarged ventricles
cell bodies smaller than normal
especially in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
abnor
Be able to describe the role of different dopamine pathways in schizophrenia -- which parthways are overactive in schizophrenia? Which are underactive? Be able to describe the ways in which dopamine and glutamate interact in the various pathways involved
dopamine hypothesis: schizophrenia results from
excess activity at dopamine synapses
in certain brain areas
glutamate hypothesis: problems is in part due to
deficient activity at glutamate synapses
, especially in the prefrontal cortex.
in mesolimbic syst
Which hemisphere is associated with global processing?
right
The "nonfluent" type of aphasia is known as:
Broca's aphasia
Which hemisphere is associated with the ability to speak in most left-handers?
left
Name an area of the brain associated with language comprehension that is located near the auditory cortex:
Wernicke's area
Which hemisphere is dominant for most spatial tasks?
right
Name a condition in which the person has relatively good language abilities in spite of severe cognitive impairments:
Williams' syndrome
What is the name of the largest bundle of axons that connects the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex?
corpus callosum
A specific impairment of reading in someone with adequate vision, adequate motivation, and adequate overall cognitive skills is known as:
dyslexia
Traditional "antipsychotic" medications primarily affect which neurotransmitter?
dopamine
In Schizophrenia, neurotransmitter levels are altered; positive symptoms are associated with increased [1] in the [2] pathway
dopamine, mesolimbic
In Schizophrenia, neurotransmitter levels are altered; negative symptoms are associated with decreased [1] or [2] in the [3] pathway.
dopamine, glutamate, mesocortical
The two classic positive symptoms of schizophrenia are false sensory experiences, known as [1], and unjustifiable beliefs, known as [2]
hallucinations, delusions
A movement disorder associated with "antipsychotic" medications and characterized by tremors and other involuntary movements is known as:
tardive dyskinesia
Similarity between individuals with regard to a trait is known as:
concordance
Motor skills and habits are examples of what kind of memory?
procedural
Tangles" and "plaques" are classic brain signs of which disease?
Alzheimer's
Prior to LTP, the calcium channel of an [1] receptor is blocked by [2] ions.
NMDA, magnesium
A decrease in response to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly and accompanied by no change in other stimuli is known as:
habituation
Loss of memory for events that occurred before brain damage is known as:
retrograde amnesia
When one or more axons connected to a dendrite bombard it with a rapid series of stimuli, some of the synapses become more responsive to new input of the same type for minutes, days, or weeks. This is known as:
long-term potentiation
A distinctive symptom of Korsakoff's syndrome in which patients fill in memory gaps with guesses (often based on outdated information) is known as:
confabulation
Autobiographical memory is a form of what kind of memory?
declarative
A synapse that increases in effectiveness because of simultaneous activity in the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons is known as a:
Hebbian synapse
An H made out of Z's is known as what kind of stimulus?
hierarchical stimulus
The section of the temporal cortex that is larger in the left hemisphere and associate with language is known as the:
planum temporale