Biological approach Flashcards
What did Franz Gall want to study?
Cerebral Cortex
What is the cerebral cortex
The part of the brain we can see
The human brain is “wrinkled”, how do we call the mountains and the valleys?
Mountains are the Gyri
Valleys are the sulci
What is the main purpose of a wrinkled cerebral cortex and what did Frank believe it helped humans achieve?
Fit more cerebral cortex in the brain.
Animal brains are more smooth - so wrinkly brain = more processing power. = more complex thoughts
How did Gall start to study phrenology?
His friends in school had better grades, but he felt smarter. So he thought that maybe they had better memories. He noticed those friends had big forehead so he imagines that memory was in the brain
Franz Gall ended up making a map of the brain with each part representing a function/quality. Based on the idea that his friends with good memory had big foreheads, explain his theory.
When someone has a lot of ability in a certain function of the brain, it created a bump on the skull. When someone has less ability in something it creates a hole. This is the idea that you should have your head examined.
With the discovery of actual phrenology, scientists discovered two parts of the left hemisphere related to language. Name both and explain their function.
broca’s Area: Initiates movement needed for speech. If impaired, hard time producing sentences and words.
Wernicke’s area: understanding language. So if impared- a person can produce speech, but it doesn’t make sense.
The brain is divided into ___ lobes, each has an area of ____ ___ - in other words, each is specialized in something.
4
primary cortex
Name the lobe that its primary cortex is the primary visual cortex. name what information is processed.
Occipital lobe
light information
What is the primary cortex of the Temporal lobe?
What information does it process?
Primary auditory cortex
Sound information
What is the primary cortex of the parietal lobe?
What information does it process?
Primary somatosensory cortex.
Information from the skin (pain, temperature, touch)
The parietal lobe has its own “map”. Each part of the body is represented on it. What is the name of this map, and what does a bigger part/smaller part mean on the map?
Homunculus
The bigger the part, the more sensible it is, smaller the less it is.
What is the name of the lobe that is responsible for the primary motor cortex. What information does it process?
Frontal lobe.
movement of the muscles.
The frontal lobe also has a homunculus. Explain what it means when a part is bigger on the map/smaller.
Bigger= more precise movements Smaller= less precise movement.
Explain the Mcgurk effect and what it proves to us when it comes to the interdependence of the lobes.
The Mcgurk effect is when there’s a video with the same sound, but you can hear different things when looking at videos (ba, fa).
It proves to us that lobes work together to process information.
