Pinel Chapters 9–11 Exam 2 Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, anatomical distinctions, neurodevelopmental processes, and clinical disorders from Pinel Chapters 9–11.

Apoptosis

Active, programmed self-destruction where cellular debris is packaged without provoking inflammation; slow, orderly, and accounts for most developmental cell death.

Necrosis

Uncontrolled cell death resulting from injury or disease; typically rapid, causing cells to swell and rupture, provoking inflammation in surrounding tissue.

Anterograde amnesia

Difficulty or inability to form new long-term memories after an injury, while older memories may remain intact.

Retrograde amnesia

Inability to retrieve memories established prior to the causative event or injury.

Explicit memory

Consciously retrieved and reportable memory, evaluated directly through recall or recognition tasks, and comprising episodic and semantic memory.

Implicit memory

Memory expressed without conscious recollection, evaluated indirectly through skills, habits, conditioning, or priming.

Episodic memory

A form of explicit memory dedicated to personal events tied to a particular time and place.

Semantic memory

A form of explicit memory containing general knowledge and facts, stripped of the context of where or when it was learned.

Amyloid plaques

Extracellular protein aggregates found outside neurons, composed of beta-amyloid cleaved from amyloid precursor protein (APP).

Neurofibrillary tangles

Intracellular aggregates found inside neurons, formed from abnormal tau protein, which normally functions to stabilize microtubules and support intracellular transport.

Schwann cells

Glial cells of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) that myelinate peripheral axons and support axonal regeneration by providing a growth-supportive pathway.

Oligodendrocytes

Glial cells of the central nervous system (CNS) that release factors that actively block axonal regrowth.

Regeneration

Neural repair where the damaged axon itself regrows toward its original target.

Collateral sprouting

Neural reorganization where an undamaged neighboring axon extends new branches to reconnect with targets that lost their original input.

Medial temporal lobes (MTL)

Brain structures, including the hippocampal memory system, essential for forming and consolidating new explicit long-term memories, though not responsible for permanent diffuse storage.

Delayed nonmatching-to-sample task

A behavioral test where an animal views a sample object, experiences a delay, and must choose the novel object; performance degrades in medial temporal lobe-lesioned animals as the delay increases.

Growth cone

The motile tip of a growing axon that senses chemical and physical environmental cues to direct axonal pathfinding.

Filopodia

Thin, finger-like sensory extensions projecting from the growth cone of a growing axon.

Lamellipodia

Broad, sheet-like extensions projecting from the growth cone of an extending axon.

Fasciculation

The tendency of growing axons to follow and adhere to an existing axon bundle.

Neurotrophins

Signaling molecules released by target tissues and other cells that promote neuron survival and prevent pruning of active, useful connections.

Place field

The specific physical location in the environment that causes a given hippocampal place cell to fire.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

A persistent increase in synaptic strength resulting from coincident presynaptic glutamate release and postsynaptic depolarization that triggers calcium influx via NMDA receptors.

Neural crest

An embryonic structure that gives rise to much of the peripheral nervous system (PNS).

Inside-out migration

The pattern of cortical development where later-born neurons migrate past earlier-born neurons to settle in progressively more superficial cortical layers.

Ischemia

A cascade caused by blocked blood flow where oxygen and glucose loss depletes ATP, failing ion pumps, depolarizing neurons, and causing excessive glutamate release and excitotoxic calcium entry that damages cells.

Concussion

A mild traumatic brain injury resulting from a blow to the head in the absence of obvious structural brain damage.

Cognitive reserve

The deployment of more efficient or flexible neural networks that compensates for damage and delays symptom onset in highly educated individuals.

Parkinson's disease

A progressive degenerative disorder caused by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra, depleting dopamine input to the striatum (caudate and putamen).

Huntington's disease

An autosomal-dominant degenerative disorder characterized by very high, near-complete lifetime penetrance among individuals carrying the gene expansion.

Williams syndrome

A developmental disorder marked by relatively spared language and social approach capabilities despite widespread intellectual and visuospatial impairments.

Korsakoff's syndrome

A memory disorder typically caused by thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency related to chronic alcohol misuse, in which concurrent confusion makes anterograde and retrograde amnesia hard to distinguish.