Brain Damage, Identity & Neuropsychology

Vocabulary flashcards covering key neurological terms, case studies, disorders, and technologies mentioned in the lecture on how brain changes alter the mind and identity.

Prosopagnosia

A neurological condition commonly called face blindness, marked by an inability to recognize familiar faces.

Capgras Delusion

A disorder in which a person believes a close friend or relative has been replaced by an impostor, often linked to a disconnection between visual recognition areas and emotional centers.

Visual Cortex–Amygdala Pathway

Neural projections that carry visual information to emotional centers, giving familiar faces, places, and objects an unconscious feeling of familiarity.

Medial Temporal Lobes

Brain regions near the hippocampus involved in memory and linked here to disrupted emotional tagging of visual input.

Amygdala

A limbic‐system structure crucial for generating emotional responses to sensory information, especially fear and familiarity.

Tumor-Induced Behavioral Change

Altered behavior (e.g., sudden pedophilic urges) caused by pressure from a brain tumor on specific neural circuits, sometimes reversible after removal.

Viral Encephalitis

A viral infection that inflames brain tissue; in Clive Wearing it destroyed the hippocampus, producing profound amnesia.

Hippocampus

Medial‐temporal brain structure essential for forming new memories; damage causes anterograde amnesia.

Proprioception

The sense of body position and movement; loss of it caused the ‘Disembodied Lady’ to feel detached from her own body.

Wernicke’s Aphasia

Language disorder marked by fluent but nonsensical speech and poor comprehension; featured in ‘The President’s Speech.’

Cupid’s Disease

Oliver Sacks’s term for late‐stage syphilis affecting the brain, causing personality and cognitive changes.

Korsakoff Syndrome

Severe memory disorder from chronic alcoholism and thiamine deficiency, leading to amnesia and confabulation.

Oliver Sacks

Neurologist and author known for vivid case studies such as ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’; himself had prosopagnosia.

Neurodegenerative Diseases

Progressive disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and CTE that gradually damage brain tissue and cognition.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Sacks’s book of clinical tales illustrating how brain damage alters perception, memory, and identity.

An Anthropologist on Mars

Oliver Sacks book exploring unusual neurological conditions and their effects on everyday life.

Musicophilia

Sacks work highlighting music’s powerful effects on brains—including those with severe neurological damage.

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI)

Technology linking neural activity to external devices, enabling control of prosthetic limbs or cursors purely by thought.

Neuralink

Elon Musk–backed company developing implantable BCIs for human use, aiming at brain–machine integration.

Mindflex

Consumer EEG toy that lets users move a foam ball by concentrating, demonstrating basic BCI principles.

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)

Any brain damage occurring after birth (e.g., trauma, stroke, infection) that can disrupt personal identity.

Identity Reconstruction

Psychological process by which ABI survivors rebuild a sense of self during recovery.

Clive Wearing

Musician with profound anterograde and retrograde amnesia after viral encephalitis, remembers only seconds at a time.

Free Will Debate

Philosophical issue referenced when discussing how neural events precede conscious intentions, challenging the idea of free will.

Chemical Modulation of Mind

Using drugs—antidepressants, hallucinogens, etc.—to alter brain processing and thereby change perception, emotion, or identity.