Neuropsychology // Neuropsychologie (Vrije Universiteit) - Year 2, Period 1
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Course
Neuropsychology (P_BNEUROP)
Institution
Vrije Universiteit
Book
Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology
Hi! Need help with your upcoming neuropsychology exam? No problem!
These notes include plenty of visuals and definitions to help you internalize ALL of the concepts discussed by Dr. Erik Scherder. I also added the bold definitions from the book so you wouldn't have to.
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Test Bank for Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology 8th Edition By Bryan Kolb, Ian Whishaw All Chapter | Complete Guide | Grade A+.
Test Bank for Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology 8th Edition By Bryan Kolb, Ian Whishaw All Chapter | Complete Guide | Grade A+.
Test Bank for Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology 8th Edition By Bryan Kolb, Ian Whishaw All Chapter | Complete A+ Guide
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Neuropsychology (P_BNEUROP)
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❀ Attention and Consciousness ❀
Attention
Attention: narrowing or focusing awareness selectively to a part of the sensory environment
or to a class of stimuli
- I.e., mental spotlight
Single feature detectionis easy and automatic
- The visual system finds is very easy to detect an object that
deviates on a single feature (color or orientation)
- Attention is mainly driven by the s timulus/input (bottom-up)
Conjunction search : search for a combination (or conjunction
) of two or more features in the
same stimulus (vertical + red)
- Harder (more attention needed)
- Takes longer due to more distractors
- Directing top-down attentionto the objects in order to find the right
combination
Inattention
Inattentional blindness : when a person fails to notice an event that occurs as they are
performing another task
- E.g., a failure to notice a dot flashed on a computer monitor during performance of a
visual task
Change blindness : when a person fails to detect changes in the presence, identity, or
location of objects in scenes
- Most likely to occur when people do not expect changes
Attentional blink: when a person fails to detect a second visual target
presented within 500 milliseconds of the first one
- Attention to the first target prevents awareness of the second one
Sensory neglect : a condition in which a person does not respond to sensory
stimulation
- Parietal lobe lesions
- Damage to the temporoparietal junction → the left side of the
surrounding spaces ceases to exist
- Normally, the right parietal region is engaged when attended stimuli
are in the right or left visual field
- However, the left parietal region is engaged only for stimuli in
the right visual field
- Damage to the right parietal region → no backup; left side of
space excluded from conscious awareness
- Both copying and spontaneous drawing impaired
- Patients with neglect identify the two houses as identical (yet prefer the
right house; meaning is processed)
Consciousness
Consciousness
: responsiveness of the mind to impressions made by the senses
1
, - Automatic processesare unconscious
- Occur without intention, involuntarily, without awareness, and without
interfering with ongoing activities
- Bottom-up
- Conscious operationsrequire focused attention
- Top-down
Prerequisites of consciousness:
1. Arousal : waking the brain up via nonspecific neuromodulatory systems
2. Perception : detection and binding of sensory features
3. Attention : selection of a restricted sample of available information
4. Working memory : short-term storage of ongoing events
2
, ❀ Brain Development and Plasticity ❀
Development of the Human Brain
Enriched environments contribute to a person’s cognitive reserve
- Higher brain reserve (stronger synapses, more complex connections) → cognitive
reserve
- Each time the brain is challenged (e.g., you take up a music class), it adds to
the cognitive reserve
- Studying also challenges the brain
- Early in life
- The higher the cognitive, the higher the quality of life
- Protected against neurodegenerative diseases (postpone not prevent)
Growth spurts : sudden growth in development that lasts for a
relatively short time
- 3-10 months until 1.5 years
- Increase in brain weight by 30%
- 2-4, 6-8, 10-12, 14-16
- During these spurts, the brain weight increases by
5%-10%
- The brain can recover more
Brain growth coincides with cognitive development
- The white matter connections keep increasing until 25-30
years of age
- Gray matter volume begins declining at 6 to 7 years of age (neuron and
synaptic pruning)
- White matter is ‘looking’ for new connections
The development of the (pre)frontal lobe (control of impulses, reasoning,
reflection, etc.)
- Matures last (compared to other brain regions)
- Particularly the white matter
- The volume of the gray matter decreases (pruning )
- Brain regions (grey matter) become smaller and more specialized →
needs less volume to perform at the highest level
- More space available for white matter (more contacts and synapses)
- Growth spurt at 3-4 years of age
- Another growth spurt at 8 years of age
- Maturation continues to 25-30 years of age
- Hence, young people struggle with impulse and behavioral control (e.g., they
do not abide by the corona rules)
- Most vulnerable to aging
- ‘Last in - first out’
- Executive functions related to the prefrontal cortex (e.g., planning, structuring
daily life, self-reflection, impulse control) are all affected by aging
1
, - Cognitive reserve postpones age-related decline in cognitive functions
Environmental Influences on Brain Development
Brain plasticity
: the nervous system’s potential for physical or chemical change that
enhances its adaptability to environmental change and its ability to compensate for injury.
Environmental deprivation longer than 6 months has serious consequences for brain
development
- E.g., abnormal brain connectivity (i.e., white matter)
- Amblyopia : deficits of vision without obvious impairment of the eye
- Restricted visual experience as a baby/child → atypical functioning after the
period of deprivation
- Visual experience is necessary to validate functional connections in the brain
- Absence → loss of synapses (‘use it or lose it’)
- The earlier the deprivation takes place, the shorter the length of deprivation required
to produce effects and the more severe the effects
- If the environment is so arranged that the visual system is exposed to stimuli of one
type (e.g., vertical stripes), the cells in the system develop a preference for those
stimuli
- Preference for vertical stripes → no activity in response to horizontal stripes
Exposure to complex (rather than impoverished) environments:
- Increases brain size (most notably the neocortex)
- Greatest increase in the occipital lobe, which is very sensitive to complex
environments
- 70% of your brain is involved in visual processing
- Increases in density of glial cells, length of dendrites, density of s pines(the
location of most excitatory synapses), and size of synapses
- Young and adult brains respond differently to the same experience
- In young and old animals, the length of the dendrites increases
- As a result of an enriched environment
- However, the spine density (location of excitatory synapses in
particular)...
- Decreases in young animals
- Increases in old animals
- Can occur prenatally
- Mother placed in a complex environment → larger brain of
offspring → higher cognitive performance
-
2
, According to Kennard’s principle, the impact of brain damage depends on:
- Function that is affected
- E.g., language may recover well in children
- Some areas recover better than others, even if the age at which the injury was
incurred is identical between patients
- Extent and location of the lesion
- Age at which the brain damage occurs (think of growth spurts). 3 critical ages:
- Before 1st year of life: brain damage has more impact compared to brain
damage at an older age
- 30% of growth spurts occur at this age
- Between 1st and 5th year of life: reorganization of functions is possible
- Largest chance of repair
- Older than 5 years of age: none of little sparing of function
Various factors can influence recovery from early cortical injury, including experience,
hormones, stress, drugs, and n eurotrophic factors1
- Functional recovery after early injury may result from modification of remaining
circuits, generation of new (abnormal circuits), or generation of neurons and glia
Language remains unaffected after LH-lesion at an early age
- This preservation is due to language capacities of the RH
- I.e., the RH will take over
- At the expense of visuospatial functions (crowdinge ffect
)
- Consequences of early RH-lesions remain present later in life and are comparable to
the consequences of lesions later in life
- I.e., the intact LH does not take over
- Whether the transfer of language is bilateral (both LH and RH contribute) or
complete (fully RH) depends on the area of the lesion to the LH
- Speech has a strong affinity for the LH and will not abandon it unless an entire
center is destroyed; even then, it might shift only partly to the other
hemisphere
- Plasticity depends on at least one intact hemisphere
- E.g., both LH and RH injured → no reorganization of language
1
lass of nourishing compounds that support growth and differentiation in developing neurons and may act to keep certain
C
neurons alive in adulthood
3
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