Brain Damage, Neurodegeneration and Dementia, Oh My!

Week 8?/Chapter 8 (plus Dementia Max PowerPoint slides)

Non-cortical (sub-cortical?) conditions:
A lot of these are predominantly movement/motor disorders with or without cognitive impairment. ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease) is exclusively motor and is not discussed here.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) - demyelinating disease (auto-immune disorder?)

• wide ranges of symptoms depending on central (including cortex) or peripheral
• relapsing-remitting or chronic progressive form; even CP form can begin as RR
• variable signs & symptoms as well as clinical course
• limb weakness, ataxia, sensory loss, etc.

Parkinson's Disease:
Parkinson (1817) described the syndome, also known as "paralysis agitans". Destruction of substantia nigra of the basal ganglia and presence of Lewy bodies; subcortical/nonvoluntary motor control, smoothing. Parkisonism is similar signs & symptoms but from another cause.

• Parkinson's shuffle - stooped, small steps, straight-lines, etc.
• slow, including speech (and hyphonic)
  
• rigid, cogwheeling, TREMO at rest
  
• cognition? depends, at the very least, it is also slowed
• responds to dopamine therapy (l-dopa)
  

Huntington's Disease/Chorea:
writhing, genetic. More rare. Basal ganglia also, but striatum. Personality and cognitive changes.

Profound brain injury, coma, locked in syndrome.

DEMENTIA?

Language

Week 6, Chapter 7: Language

Catscan image credit, John norseen, George Washington University. Reveals differential patterns of functional brain activation. Shown are neural activation patterns associated with four different operations within the realm of verbal processing. Shown is the left hemisphere and most people are left hemisphere dominant for language processing.

Hearing words show temporal cortex activation (location of auditory cortex); seeing words shows occipital cortex activation (visual cortex); speaking words shows frontal (motor cortex); and generating words shows prefrontal cortex activation (uhhhh.... executive functions, coming up with new ideas, response flexibility, following rules).

Conceptual reminder/review:

LOCALIZATION of Function: specific regions (locations) of the brain have specific functions. Damage to that region leads to impairment or loss of specific functions. In the absence of damage, individuals with varying degrees of efficiency and/or interconnnectivity in that region may show varying degrees of proficiency in it's specific function. Taken to an extreme, this concept suggests MODULARITY wherein independent modules of the mind-brain perform specific and unique processing on particular forms of information.

DISTRIBUTION of Function: any function or process of the mind-brain will involve multiple regions (either nuclei or pathways) distributed throughout the nervous system. Therefore, the location is not as important as the overall mass action of the brain. Taken a bit to an extreme suggests the concept of EQUIPOTENTIALITY wherein any brain region can be organized or re-organized to perform any task.

Varieties of APHASIA (language disorder):
1. Broca's aphasia - motor, nonfluent, expressive
2. Wernicke's aphasia - sensory, receptive
3. Conduction aphasia - central
4. Anomic aphasia - anomia, naming items
5. Transcortical motor aphasia
6. Transcortical sensory aphasia

Anatomy; p. 139
Congnitive processes; p. 147

Parietal and Occipital Lobes

Week 5: Parietal Lobes (Chap 5) and Occipital Lobes (Chap 6)

Parietal Lobes (Chap 5)

Anatomical items: anterior and posterior regions

1. anterior region - foreward most/anterior border is the posterior central sulcus/gyrus

• primary somatosensory cortex (sensory strip)
  
• secondary somatosensory cortex
• tactile perception
• body sense

2. posterior region - no clear/hard borders

• ALL tertiary cortex
  
• spatial orientation/spatial neglect
• some cases of visual agnosia
• APRAXIA; disorder of practical/purposeful/intentional motor behavior
• cross-modal integration/language (PTO, remember?)
  

Occipital Lobes (Chap 6) - the visual perception lobes

• primary - basic visual functions
• secondary - visual perceptual functions
• tertiary - higher order perception and inter-sensory integration (PTO, remember?)
  

Temporal Lobes

Week 4/Chapter 4: The Temporal Lobes (and memory)

Anatomical considerations:

Temporal lobe is like a peninsula, or the thumb in the hand brain

Lateral portion - outer surface; neocortex = new cortex (thumb nail side)

Mesial portion - inner or middle surface; paleocortex = old cortex (thumb pad side)

Medial temporal lobe - deep structures, not actually 'sub'cortical, because it is like a cortical roll up. Basically, the hippocampus.

7 Functions of the temporal lobes? (see p. 92 for list, and chapter for details)

Heavily involved in memory and perceptual processes.

1. Audition; primary, secondary and tertiary auditory cortical zones in temporal lobe

2. Vision (chap 6 also, Occipital Lobes)

3. Language (chap 7 also)

4. Attention

5. Cross-modal integration

6. Memory - see Memory Max powerpoint at Bb

7. Personality

Cases studies in amnestic disorders involving temporal lobes. The "Hollywood Amnesia" syndrome is usually unrealistic.

Frontal Lobes

Week 3/Chapter 3: terms and topics for the frontal lobes

Executive functions?
Personality? Humanness?
Intelligence? Methodological issues: comparing lesions; quantitative (IQ, Category Test) versus qualitative changes (abstract and concrete thought).

Specific functions and the FOUR divisions of the frontal lobe

1. Motor and premotor cortex
2. Prefrontal cortex
3. Broca's area
4. Orbital cortex or orbital-frontal region

Structure of the Nervous System

Week 2/Chapter 2: Structure of the Nervous System
The hot-linked text below will take you to the relevant section of the GetBodySmart tutorial.

The nervous system is made of TWO types of cells (NOT discussed in the textbook)

• neurons - actively communicate by synaptic connections (electro-chemical process)
• glial cells - support cells, protect and increase speed of communication (myelin sheath)
• 110,000,000,000 neurons and about 50x that number of neuroglia
  

Traditional 3 parts of the Nervous System:

CNS = central nervous system

• brain - the central processing unit
  
• spinal cord - pathways going up and down, as well as reflexes ('u-turns', 2 neuron reflex)
  

PNS = peripheral n.s.; mostly enters or exits holes in the spinal cord or vertebrae

• carries information from receptors in the body to the spinal and then UP to brain
• carries information coming DOWN spinal cord to effectors in the body (muscles, glands)
• specialized cranial nerves (12 total) enter or exit holes in the cranium, not the spinal cord
  

ANS = autonomic n.s.; made up portions of both CNS & PNS, 'automated' control of body:

• Sympathetic branch: activation/arousal, flight or flight response, emotion
  
• Parasympathetic branch: recuperation, relaxation, rejuvination

Divisions of the Brain

Major Divisions of the adult brain - tutorial goes top-down...
Each division is made up of a number of specific neuroanatomical structures.
Beumont presents the divisions bottom-up... lower functions first.

• brainstem - basic body functions (medulla oblonglata, pons, midbrain)
  
• cerebellum - motor coordination & motor learning, posture
• diencephalon - subcortical forebrain - emotion, motivation, awareness (thalamus, etc.)
• telencephalon - 'forebrain' - cerebrum - cerebral cortex - outer layer, newest, cognition
• CORTEX will be described in greater detail as we address the lobes in the coming weeks

Organizational Features of the Cerebrum

• Right and left hemispheres of the cerebrum/telencephalon
  
• Four lobes and their boundaries
  
• White matter and gray matter
• Primary or secondary cortex
• "Decussation", contra-lateral representation, or cross-over
  
• Primary
  

Introduction and Overview to 3101

"Week 1" for HDEV 3101
Outline below includes relevant (i.e., 'quizable', or important for building upon later) terms may come from lecture and/or Chapter 1 of Intro to Neuropsychology (Beaumont)

A psychological perspective on physical and cognitive development across the life span.

Definition of psychology?

Definition(s) of 'human development'? (my favorites; 1) a process, 2) a field of study, a certain perspective or academic approach, 3) and academic department housed in CLASS at CSUEB).

What are humans? Animals - sub-species (homo sapiens sapiens); each human is an organism, made of organ systems/organs/tissues/cells.

What conceptual categories of change can we observe:
growth
development
maturation
(transformation)

QuickTime brain growth

What is neuropsychology? Chapter 1, pp 3- 20, but emphasis is on pp. 3-11.

Basic functions of the brain/nervous system?
Branches of neuropsychology - main distinction is EXPERIMENTAL vs. CLINICAL

Two major conceptual issues arise:
- An inference is almost always required when correlating behavior with brain
-The mind-body question/problem (monism, dualism and lots of sub-types)
Emergent materialism; in particular, we a complex system, a 'biosystem', similar to an ecosystem.

Five features of the historical background of neuropsychology:
1. Ancient record, archeological evidence
2. Classical Greece, philosophical but also medical foundation
3. Phrenology (1830), reading the bumps
4. Localization theory - Broca's area (1860).
Versus equipotentiality
5. Interactionist theory (Jackson) - sort of how we ended up with a 'biosystem' concept

Related - COGNITIVE SCIENCE and information processing theory - views the mind-brian as a machine, specifically a computing device. Will end up suing this information processing perspective often during the quarter. But keep in mind, you are NOT a machine! you are an animal!