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FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
PART I: BACKGROUND
CHAPTER 1: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
Neuropsychology is the scientific study of the relationships between brain
function and behaviour. Neuropsychology is strongly influenced by two
theories of brain function: the Brain Theory, which states that the brain is
the source of behaviour; and the Neuron Theory, the idea that the unit of
brain structure and function is the neuron, or nerve cell.
1.1 The Brain Theory
What is the Brain?
The brain’s almost symmetrical halves are called hemispheres. The brain’s
basic plan is that of a tube of tissue called the neural tube, filled with salty
fluid known as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). CSF cushions the brain and assists
in removing metabolic waste. The neocortex (cortex - bark) is the crinkled
tissue that covers the rest of the brain. The
folds in the cortex are called gyri and the
creases between them are called sulci.
Some large sulci are called fissures.
Pathways called commisures connect the
brain’s hemispheres. The cortex of each
hemisphere forms four lobes; the Temporal
Lobe, the Frontal Lobe, the Parietal Lobe
and the Occipital Lobe. The three-part brain consisting of the forebrain
(cerebral cortex), the brainstem and the spinal cord, is conceptually useful
evolutionarily, anatomically, and functional for describing how the brain
works.
How Does the Brain Relate to the Rest of the Nervous System?
Together, the brain and spinal cord are called the central nervous system
(CNS). The CNS is connected to the rest of the body through nerve fibers.
These nerve fibers constitute the peripheral nervous system (PNS). PNS
tissue regrows after damage, the CNS does not regenerate lost tissue. The
peripheral nervous system is divided into two parts, the somatic nervous
system (SNS), which senses and responds to our external world, and the
autonomic nervous system (ANS), which senses and responds to the body’s
organs, or our internal world. Both the SNS and the ANS have a sensory
and a motor division. Nerve fibers of the sensory division connect the
sensory receptors, enabling the brain to sense the world in different ways.
The nerve fibers of the motor division connect to our muscles and allow us
to respond to sensory information. The sensory division of the SNS is
organized into sensory pathways, collections of fibers that carry messages
,from our different senses. Sensory pathways carry information to the cortex
in the opposite hemisphere. The motor division of the somatic system
consists of motor pathways that produce our various movements. The ANS
contains sensory and motor pathways that influence the muscles of our
internal organs. The sensory and motor pathways of the ANS have fewer
connections with the CNS, which is why we are less aware and have less
control over the function of our body’s organs.
1.2 Perspectives on the Brain and Behaviour
Aristotle: Mentalism
Aristotle proposed that a nonmaterial psyche is responsible for human
thoughts, perceptions, and emotions and for such processes as imagination,
opinion, etc. Aristotle viewed the psyche as working through the heart to
produce action. This view has been adopted by Christianity in its concept of
the soul. The philosophical position that a person’s mind is responsible for
behaviour is called mentalism (of the mind). We use the term mind to
describe our perceptions of ourselves as having unitary consciousness
despite the fact that the brain is composed of many parts and has many
separate functions.
Descartes: Dualism
Descartes accepted the concept of mind but also gave the physical brain a
prominent role in behaviour. According to Descartes, the body is material
and responds mechanically and reflexively to events that impinge on it. The
body operated on principles similar to those of a machine, but the mind
decided what movements the machine should make. For Descartes, the
cortex functioned covering for the pineal body, in which the mind was
located and which controlled valves that allowed CSF to flow from the
ventricles through nerves to muscles, filling them and making them move.
Descartes’s position that mind and body are separate but can interact is
called dualism, to indicate that behaviour is caused by two things. The
mind-body-problem arises; how can a nonmaterial mind produce movements
in a material body? Descartes proposed that the key indications of the
presence of a mind are the use of language and reason.
Darwin: Materialism
The idea of materialism is that rational behaviour can be fully explained by
the workings of the nervous system. According to Wallace and Darwin, the
nervous system is an evolutionary trait passed from parents to their
offspring. Mendel discovered that the unequal ability of individual
organisms to survive and reproduce is related to the different genes they
inherit from their parents and pass on to their offspring. Epigenetics explain
how the environment influences behaviour. Adaptation and learning are
enabled by the brain’s ability to form new connections. The theory of
neuroplasticity, that the brain can physically and chemically change, directs
research on the nervous system’s potential for changing to enhance its
,adaptability to the environment. It also explains how the brain compensates
for injury.
Contemporary Perspectives
Today, when neuroscientists use terms such as mind, and consciousness,
most are not referring to a nonmaterial entity but are using them as
shorthand for the collective functions of the brain.
1.3 Brain Function: Insights from Brain Injury
Localization of function
Gall and Spurzheim proposed in the early 1800s that the cortex sends
instructions to the spinal cord to command muscles to move. Gall developed
his hypothesis, called localization of function, that a different, specific brain
area controls each kind of behaviour. Gall and Spurzheim assigned each
trait to a particular part of the skull and the underlying brain part
(phrenology). Cranioscopy measures the skull and correlates the measures
with the phrenological map to determine the person’s likely behavioural
traits. As a science, phrenology was a flop, but it did lay the conceptual
foundation for modern views of functional localization.
Lateralization of function
The discovery that language is localized and laterized in the brain, led to
the principle of lateralization of function, that one cerebral hemisphere can
perform a function not shared by the other. By demonstrating that speech is
located only in one hemisphere, Broca discovered the brain property of
functional lateralization. Because speech is thought to be central to human
consciousness, the left hemisphere is referred to as the dominant
hemisphere to recognize its special role in language. The anterior speech
region of the brain is called Broca’s area, and the syndrome that results
from its damage is called Broca aphasia.
Wernicke suspected a relationship between hearing and speech functioning,
because the auditory cortex is located in the temporal lobe behind Broca’s
area. Patients with Wernicke aphasia display no opposite-side paralysis and
can speak fluently, but what they say makes little sense. The distinguishing
features of the conditions in relation to language is that Broca aphasia
patients have a movement problem, whereas Wernicke
aphasia patients have a problem of understanding. In
Wernicke’s area, sounds are processed into auditory images
or ideas of objects and stored. Damage to Broca’s area
produces a loss of speech movements without the loss of
sound images, and therefore Broca aphasia is not
accompanied by a loss of understanding. Wernicke predicted
conduction aphasia, a condition in which speech sounds and movements are
retained, but speech is impaired because it cannot be conducted from one
region to the other. The patient is unable to repeat what is heard. This
proves that brain regions are interdependent; to work, they must interact.
, The loss of reading in Alexia (word blindness) results from a disconnection
between the brain’s visual area and the Wenicke’s area. The inability to
make sequences of movements, Apraxia, results from the disconnection of
motor areas from sensory areas.
Distributed Function
Flourens and Goltz also challenged the idea that brain functions are
localized. Flourents found that small parts of the cortex can recover. Goltz
removed almost the entire cortex and a good deal of underlying brain tissue
from a dog, and although impaired, its recovered abilities clearly suggested
that the remaining brainstem could substitute for the cortex. These
experiments demonstrate that many functions depend on many brain
regions. The brain’s plasticity can be harnessed to produce significant
functional improvements.
Hierarchical Organization
Removing the cortex did not appear to eliminate any function completely,
though it seemed to reduce all functions somewhat. Hughlings-Jackson
proposed the idea of Hierarchical Organization, in which information is
processed serially and organized as a functional hierarchy. He suggested
that disease or damage that affects the highest levels of the brain hierarchy
would produce dissolution, the reverse of evolution. Hughlings-Jackson’s
theory gave rise to the idea that functions are not simply represented in one
location in the brain but are re-represented in the neocortex, in the
brainstem and in the spinal cord.
Epilepsy is a condition characterized by recurrent seizures associated with
disturbance of consciousness. Amnesia is partial of total loss of memory.
Although the brain analyses sensory events through multiple parallel
channels that do not converge on a single brain region, we perceive a
unified experience, such as a memory. This memory is a composite of many
separate memories, each stored in a different region of the brain. Not only
are our ‘unitary’ perceptions of our abilities the product of multiple
specialized systems, they are also the product of our ‘two brains’, each of
which has somewhat different representations of these multiple systems.
Someone with visual-form agnosia has normal visual acuity, but cannot
distinguish vertical lines from horizontal lines. Patients with visual ataxia
make errors in reaching for objects while still being able to describe the
objects accurately. Brain lesions in agnosia patients occur in the ventral
stream, from the visual cortex to the temporal lobe for object identification.
Brain lesions in patients with optic ataxia are in the dorsal stream from the
visual cortex to the parietal cortex to guide action relative to objects.
1.4 The Neuron Theory
Nervous System Cells
Neurons produce our behaviour and mediate the brain’s plasticity. Glia help
out the neurons, holding them together and providing other support
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