Brain regions/functions - Cerebral cortex

Broca’s area

major language area, left frontal lobe. damage here produces expressive/nonfluent aphasia. repetition impaired and anomia. comprehension intact

prefrontal cortex

implicated in executive functions. planning, decision making, working memory, prospective memory, social judgment, self-monitoring. regulation of emotions and motivation.

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

most executive functions. damage causes impairments in goal-directed behavior, concrete thinking, impaired judgment and insight, deficits in working memory, perseverative responses, disinterest, apathy. plays a role in MDD, GAD, OCD, and schizophrenia

ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

goal-directed behavior, decision making, memory, motor inhibition, emotion regulation. damage causes impairments in decision-making and behavioral and emotional self-control. implicated in social anxiety and GAD.

ventromedial prefrontal cortex

decision making, social cognition, memory, and emotion regulation. damage results in impaired decision-making and impaired moral judgment, lack of insight, confabulation, deficits in social cognition, and blunted emotional responses. implicated in MDD, OCD, GAD, PTSD, and schizophrenia

orbitofrontal cortex

emotional regulation, response inhibition, and social behaviors. damage causes impulsivity, social inappropriateness, lack of empathy, aggressive/abusive behaviors, and emotion dysregulation. psychiatric disorders include MDD, bipolar, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia, and substance abuse

primary motor cortex

initiation of purposeful movements, actives when watching others perform as well. damage can cause weakness, paralysis, contralateraly

temporal lobe

contains auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area. damage can cause auditory agnosia, auditory hallucinations, or cortical deafness. w

Wernicke’s area

major language area in left hemisphere. damage causes receptive aphasia/fluent aphasia. impaired comprehension of written and spoken language, impaired repetition, and anomia.

parietal lobe

contains somatosensory cortex. damage can cause somatosensory agnosia, such as tactile, asomatognosia, and anosognosia. damage can also produce apraxia, contralateral neglect, and Gerstmann’s syndrome. limb-kinetic apraxia, ideomotor apraxia, and ideational apraxia caused by damage to left lobe.

occipital lobe

visual cortex. damage causes visual agnosia, visual hallucinations, achromatopsia, color anomia, color agnosia, cortical blindness, or prosopagnosia

color anomia

inability to name visually presented colors despite being able to perceive and recognize colors and despite adequate langauge skills. disconnection between language areas of brain and left occipital lobe

color agnosia

inability to identify colors despite having normal color perception and adequate language skills. caused by damage to certain areas in occipital and temporal lobes.

insular cortex (insula)

within lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). traditionally part of paralimbic or limbic system. roles:

a. sensorimotor region invovled in interoception, somatosensation, pain, and motion

b. central olfacto-gustatory region

c. social-emotional

d. language, attention, memory

brain lateralization

95% of right-handed people and 50-70% of left-handed people localize written and spoken language, logical and analytical thinking, and positive emotions to left hemisphere; holistic thinking, intuition, understanding spatial relationships, creativity, adn negative emotions are right hemisphere

Sperry 1968 split-brain experiements

after procedure for epilepsy. HEART presented on a screen; HE infront of left visual field, ART to right visual field only. could only say they saw ART, I.e., information that made it to langauge-dominant lobe