AQA A level Psychology Biopsychology Summary notes/ Essay plans
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Course
Biopsychology
Institution
AQA
These are A/A* summary notes/essay plans for AQA A level Psychology, the topic Biopsychology. They can be used for 6 mark, 16 mark or 12 mark questions. I wrote them textbooks as well as revision guides. The essay plans clearly show A01 and A03. The essay plans are colour coded, blue represents ke...
Localisation of function of the brain:
A01: • Localisation vs holistic theory: Broca and Wernicke discovered that specific areas of the
brain are associated with particular physical and psychological functions. Before this scien-
tists generally supported the holistic theory of the brain- all parts are involved in the pro-
cessing of thought and action. Broca and Wernicke argued for localisation of function. This
is the idea that different parts of the brain perform different tasks and are involved with
different parts of the body. If a certain area of the brain becomes damaged through illness
or injury, the function associated with that area will also be affected.
• Hemispheres of the brain: The main part of the brain, the cerebrum is divided into 2
halves called the left and right hemisphere. Some of our physical and psychological func-
tions are controlled or dominated by a particular hemisphere, this is called lateralisation.
Activity on the left side of the body is controlled by the right hemisphere and activity on the
right hand side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere.
• The motor, somatosensory, visual and auditory centres: The cerebral cortex is the
outer layer of both hemispheres. The cortex of both hemispheres is subdivided into 4 cen-
tres called lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal lobes.
• At the back of the frontal lobe is the motor area which controls voluntary movement in the
opposite side of the body. Damage may result in loss of control over fine movements
• At the front of the parietal lobe is the somatosensory area, separated from the motor area
by a valley called the central sulcus. Responsible for sensory info from the skin such as heat
and pressure.
• In the occipital lobe is the visual area. Damage to this can cause blindness.
• The temporal lobe houses the auditory area, which analyses speech-based info. Damage
may produce partial hearing loss.
• The language centres of the brain: Language is restricted to the left side of the brain in
most people. Broca identified a small area in the left frontal lobe responsible for speech
production. Damage to Broca’s area causes Broca’s aphasia, which is characterised by:
speech that is slow and lacks fluency and difficulties with prepositions and conjunctions.
Broca’s famous patient was Tan because that was the only word he could say.
• Wernicke identified people who had no problem producing language but severe difficulties
understanding it. The speech they produced was fluent but meaningless. He identified a re-
gion, called Wernicke’s area in the left temporal lobe as being responsible for language un-
derstanding. This results in Wernicke’s aphasia when damaged. People with this often pro-
duce nonsense words (neologisms) as part of the content of their speech.
• Phineas Gage case study: working in railroad in 1848, Gage was caught in an explosion
which resulted in a metre length pole being hurled through his head and tearing out most
of his frontal lobe.He survived the accident but the damage to his brain left a mark on his
personality. By accounts he had turned form someone who was calm and reserved to some-
one who was quick tempered, rude and ‘no longer Gage’. Suggesting the frontal lobe may
be responsible for regulating mood.
A03: • STRENGTH: One strength of the localisation theory is that damage to areas of the
brain have been linked to mental disorders. For example, cingulotomy involves
isolating a region called the cingulate gyrus which has been implicated in OCD.
Dougherty reported on 44 people with OCD who had undergone cingulotomy. At
post surgical follow up after 32 weeks, about 30% had met criteria for successful
response to surgery and 14% partial response. The success of these procedures
suggests that behaviours associated with serious mental disorders may be lo-
calised.
• STRENGTH- Evidence from brain scans that supports the idea that many every-
day brain functions are localised. For example Petersen used brain scans to
demonstrate how Wernicke’s area was active during a listening task and Broca’s
area was active during a reading task. Also a study of LTM by Tulving revealed
that semantic and episodic memories reside in different parts of the prefrontal
cortex. These studies confirm localised areas for everyday behaviours. Therefore
objective methods of measuring the brain activity have provided scientific evi-
dence that brain functions are localised.
• LIMITATION: A challenge to the localisation theory comes from the work of Lash-
ley. Lasley removed areas of the cortex in rats that were learning the route
through a maze. No area was proven to be more important than any other area in
terms of rats ability to learn the route. The process of learning seemed to require
every part of the cortex rather than being confined to a particular area. This sug-
gests that higher cognitive processes, such as learning are not localised but dis-
tributed in a more holistic way in the brain.
• LIMITATION: Language may not be localised to just Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.
A recent review by Dick and Tremblay found that only 2% of modern researchers
think that language in the brain is completely controlled by Broca’s and Wer-
nicke’s areas. Advances in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI mean that neu-
ral processes in the brain can be studied with more clarity than before. It seems
language is distributed far more holistically in the brain than first thought. So
called language streams have been identified across the cortex, including brain
regions in the right hemisphere as well as subcortical regions such as the thala-
, mus. This suggests that rather than being confined to a couple of key areas, lan-
guage may be organised more holistically in the brain, which contradicts the lo-
calisation theory.
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