Lecture 11: Temporal Lobes

Question 1

Inferotemporal Cortex

Answer 1

are TE in von Economo’s designation

visual regions of the temporal cortex

Question 2

Insula

Answer 2

tissue in the lateral (Sylvain) fissure

includes gustatory and auditory association cortices

Question 3

Temporal-Parietal Junction (TPJ)

Answer 3

a region where the temporal and parietal lobes meet at the end of the Sylvain fissure

also called the temporoparietal junction

Question 4

Neostriatum

Answer 4

the caudate nucleus plus putamen of the basal ganglia

also called the striatum

Question 5

Cross-Modal Matching

Answer 5

an ability to match sensory characteristics of objects across sensory modalities

for example, the ability to visually recognize an object that was previously perceived by touch

Question 6

Social Cognition

Answer 6

perceptual categorization that enables a person to develop hypotheses about other people’s intentions

also referred to as theory of mind

Question 7

Prosody

Answer 7

tone of voice

variation in stress, pitch, and rhythm of speech that conveys different shades of meaning

Question 8

Heschl’s Gyrus

Answer 8

a gyrus of the human temporal lobe that is roughly equivalent to auditory area I

also known as the transverse temporal gyrus

Question 9

Wernicke Aphasia

Answer 9

an inability to comprehend or to produce meaningful speech even though the production of words remains intact

Question 10

Amusia

Answer 10

tone deafness

inability to produce (motor) or to comprehend (sensory) musical sounds

Question 11

Anterograde Amnesia

Answer 11

inability to acquire new memories subsequent to a disturbance such as head injury, electroconvulsive shock, or certain degenerative diseases

Question 12

Where is the temporal lobe?

Answer 12

the tissue below Sylvian fissure and anterior to occipital lobe

Question 13

What are the subcortical temporal lobe structures?

Answer 13

limbic cortex (inferior portions of the limbic system)

amygdala

hippocampal formation

Question 14

What are the lateral surfaces of the temporal lobe?

Answer 14

auditory areas: A1 tucked into Sylvian fissure

ventral stream of visual information: inferior temporal cortex or TE

Question 15

What is the medial temporal cortex?

Answer 15

includes amygdala and adjacent cortex, hippocampus and surrounding cortex, and fusiform gyrus

Question 16

What is the posterior end of medial temporal lobe?

Answer 16

para-hippocampal cortex

PPA (para-hippocampal place area): landmark and scene recognition

Question 17

What is the multimodal cortex or polymodal cortex?

Answer 17

area under superior temporal sulcus

receives input from auditory, visual, & somatic regions

Question 18

What is the insula?

Answer 18

area under Sylvian fissure

gustatory cortex: primary taste center, link this info to emotion

auditory association cortex: very close to primary auditory cortex

role in conscious urges (cue-indued drug urges)

possible role in nicotine addiction

Question 19

What was the Naqvi et al. (2007) study on the role of the insula in nicotine addiction?

Answer 19

patient that smoke who suffered a stroke; doctor tells them to quit smoking

stroke patients: >5 cig/day, >2 years

1 year follow-up: see how well they were able to stop smoking

disruption to insula: quit 1 day after lesion, no relapse, felt quitting was easy, no urges

with complete dysfunction of the insula, nicotine addiction was wiped out, can’t form causal relationship though

Question 20

What are the afferent projections from the temporal cortex?

Answer 20

sensory systems

Question 21

What are the efferent projections from the temporal cortex?

Answer 21

parietal and frontal association regions, limbic system, and basal ganglia

Question 22

What structures connect the left and right temporal cortex?

Answer 22

corpus callosum
anterior commissure

Question 23

What is the hierarchical sensory pathway?

Answer 23

incoming auditory & visual information

stimulus recognition - ventral pathways for vision and audition

Question 24

What is the dorsal auditory pathway?

Answer 24

from auditory cortex to posterior parietal

detection of spatial location of sounds; movement; sound recognition

Question 25

What is the polymodal pathway?

Answer 25

from auditory and visual areas to polymodal cortex (STS): use both visual and auditory info when someone is speaking stimulus categorization and cross-model matching e.g. McGurk effect: visual will override auditory when thing clash but are close enough

Question 26

What is the medial temporal projection?

Answer 26

from auditory and visual areas to medial temporal lobe, limbic cortex, hippocampal formation, and amygdala perforant pathway - major input to HC long-term potentiation pathway: formation of stronger connection for more efficient communication

Question 27

What is the frontal lobe projection?

Answer 27

auditory and visual cortex to frontal lobe movement control short-term memory affect: contribute emotional impulses

Question 28

What are the three basic sensory functions of the temporal lobe?

Answer 28

processing auditory input visual object recognition long-term storage of information

Question 29

What are the sensory processes in the temporal lobe?

Answer 29

identification and categorization of stimuli cross-model matching

Question 30

What is cross-modal matching?

Answer 30

matching visual and auditory information - ventriloquism effect depends on cortex of superior temporal sulcus

Question 31

What is columnergic organization in the temporal lobe?

Answer 31

neurons in the temporal lobe form cortical columns that respond to categories of shapes stroke can specifically wipe out columns for certain things

Question 32

What are affective responses in the temporal lobe?

Answer 32

emotional responses associated with particular stimuli amygdala in the temporal lobe

Question 33

What is the difference in amygdala activation in adults compared to teenagers?

Answer 33

adults: get emotions right most of the time teenager: report more anger in faces, more amygdala activation, less frontal activation

Question 34

What is spatial navigation in the temporal lobe?

Answer 34

hippocampus - spatial memory placed cells discovered by O'Feefe in 1976 brain builds map of space; more brain is exposed to space it'll develop a firing pattern

Question 35

What is the experimental evidence for hippocampal place cells?

Answer 35

square cage new to the rat, let them explore; majority of response occurs in a specific area, occurs after a lot of time spent in the cage rat has to be in specific positions for the cell to fire; move them to a bigger cage; same area causes activation, but range of activation increases to adjust to a different environment

Question 36

What is the Morris Water Maze Task?

Answer 36

rat is placed in a pool with a platform just below surface of water; there are spatial markers around the room the rat can use to recognize where the platform is can make the water opaque so they have to use spatial cues to find pedestal, also put them in different start spots non lesion rats: always swim to pedestal, use spatial cues hippocampal lesion rats: do clear learning trial, once water is milky, they cannot find pedestal, no memory formation of spatial cues, no spatial map

Question 37

What is the relationship between superior temporal sulcus (STS) and biological motion?

Answer 37

imaging reveals activation in STS during perception of biological motion

Question 38

What is biological motion?

Answer 38

movements relevant to a species allow us to guess others' intentions social cognition or "theory of mind" (mirror neuron system)

Question 39

What is the Perrett et al. (1990) study on STS activation and biological motion?

Answer 39

show different types of stimuli and measure response STS neurons in the observing monkey respond more strongly to an approaching body than to the same body moving in other directions or standing still most firing when they see someone approaching STS cells maximally responsive to particular types of biological motion

Question 40

What is the Hasson et al. (2004) study on the fMRI of patients watching "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"?

Answer 40

free viewing pf the memory: just lying in the fMRI watching a movie, look at what brain areas are active, not asked to do anything else extensive activity in auditory and visual regions in temporal lobe, in STS and cingulate regions (correlated across 5 participants); nothing different happening in auditory or visual systems across all participants selective activation to precise moment-to-moment film content (faces and scenes) regions of parietal and frontal lobes showed no intersubject coherence (i.e. dissociation between sensation and experience) everyone gets the same stimuli, but people interpret that stimuli differently a lot more variety in frontal and parietal lobes during movie viewing; because your personal interpretation of the movie is individualized (interest, humor, etc.)

Question 41

During what scenes of the movie is the FFA most active?

Answer 41

fusiform face area most active during close-ups of faces, consistent across subjects

Question 42

During what scenes of the movie is the PPA most active?

Answer 42

para-hippocampal place area mostly active in wide shots, sweeping scenery consistent across participants

Question 43

What are symptoms of temporal lobe lesions?

Answer 43

auditory disturbance disorders of music perception disturbance of selection of visual and auditory input impaired organization and categorization; difficulty placing words or pictures into categories inability to use contextual information (memory) long-term memory problems altered personality and affective behavior