psychological functions of the cortex

Question 1

Main functional components of the cortex

Answer 1

Frontal lobe - problem solving, thinking and reasoning

• Frontal association area
• Speech
• Motor cotex

Parietal lobe 
somatosensory cortex
somatosensory association area 
- Speech 
- taste 
- reading 

Occipital lobe

• processes visual information
• ‘blind sight’

Temporal lobe
- auditary processing
-facial recognition
structures critical to memory function

Question 2

Wilder penfeild

Answer 2

While performing surgery would map out areas of the brain-
stimulate regions and record results

(primary cortical reigions)

Findings
Stimulation of primary motor = movement of eyelid, or finger
somatosensory cortex = Patients report feeling sensations of touch

This lead to the motor and somatosensory humunculous
= map out cortical regions activated when stimulated

Question 3

Stimulation of association areas

Answer 3

Lead to more complicated phenomena.
Stimulate PRIMARY auditory cortex = hear a note or a tone
ASSOCIATION cortex = hearing ariana grande saying UH

This lead to the belief that the role of primary cortex are to literally receive input from outside world whereas association cortex performs some complex interpretation and places in psychological contex

Question 4

Damage to association areas

Answer 4

= very strange behavior
Oliver sacks - “the man who mistook his wife for a hat”
- obsessive forms of behavior

Question 5

damage to frontal lobe

Answer 5

Phineas gage : Rod shot through head
Prior to injury: socialble
after, took to drink and womanizing - demeanor change

Question 6

Dementia: Pick’s disease

Answer 6

-primarily effects frontal lobe: impairments of short term memory, reasoning ability, lack of inhibition, aggression

Question 7

Frontal lobotomy

Answer 7

Used to treat hysteria (walter freeman)

• severing the thalamocortical fibers = disconnecting emotional centers from the seat of intellect
• reduced problem behaviors as dampens emotional reactivity

Question 8

Testing frontal lobe function

Answer 8

Stroop test - testing executive function: the ability to use top down processing to control otherwise dominant behavior.

Must inhibit reading response- this inhibition is controlled by the frontal lobe

Question 9

Study on damage to different parts of the frontal lobe effecting performance on the stroop test

Answer 9

Anterior cingulate gyrus found to mediate inhibition response

Question 10

Wisconsin card sort task

Answer 10

participant must sort cards and receive feedback in order to discover the rule in the head of the researcher

It was found that in people with damage to the frontal cortex (closed head injuries) they would continue to follow the old rule and struggle to quire and adapt to the new one for much longer than controls (3 x 4 x)

(lead to issues adhering to social rules)

Question 11

Frontal lobe function

Answer 11

Motor and pre-motor cortex
Verbal fluency

Pre-Frontal

• motor control
• adaptability of response patterns
• response inhibition
• problem solving/ executive function
• voluntary eye movements
• perceptual judgement
• attention
• memory

orbital cortex

• personality
• emotion

Broca’s area:
- expressive speech (expressive aphasia)

Question 12

Temporal lobe function

Answer 12

Auditory - primary and association 
Olfactory - primary and association 
Visual association - colour recognition 
memory 
emotional and social 
Link past and present sensory emotional experience into conscious self 

Ventral stream (part of association cortex into occipital lobe 
Contains info about visual perceptions facial recognition

Question 13

Visual association area

Dorsal visual pathway:

Answer 13

this pathway extends from the primary visual cortex (V1) in the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe.
- contains information about facial recognition
temporal (what )
parietal (where)

Question 14

Damage to the dorsal visual association area

Answer 14

Capgras syndrome : thinking someone who is familiar is infact an imposter
Damage to the “what” regions in the temporal lobe which communicate with the amybdala. this responds to the emotional content of what you’re looking at.
“emotional reaction to familiar stimuli” and “person identity senter damaged” centers damaged.
Prosopagnosia: cannot recognize faces which are familiar
Ventral route relates to the retrieval of memory- emotional and contextual information about the face

Fregoli delusion: a stanger is a familiar person in disguise

Question 15

Parietal lobe

Answer 15

Posterior cortical atrophy: Bensons syndrome
Issues with language,depth perception, visual agnosia

Stroke 
Parietal lobe damage can cause :
Agraphism
wernickes receptive dysphasia (speech comprehension)
apraxia
spatial visual neglect 
alexia - cant perceive written word