Learning, Memory, Amnesia, Cerebral Lateralization, Language, Split Brain, Emotion, Stress, and Health

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes provided on Learning, Memory, Amnesia, Cerebral Lateralization, Language, Split Brain, Emotion, Stress, and Health.

Medial temporal lobectomy

Mild retrograde amnesia and severe anterograde amnesia due to removal of portions of the medial temporal lobes.

Frontal Lobe

Responsible for control over many abilities, including the way you think, how you move and how you remember things.

Olfactory Bulbs

Receive information about smells from the nose and send it to the brain by way of the olfactory tracts.

Temporal Lobe

Managing your emotions, processing information from your senses, storing and retrieving memories, and understanding language.

Optic Chiasm

Allows for the crossing of fibers from the nasal retina to the optic tract on the other side.

Mammillary Bodies

Primarily associated with recollective memory.

Retrograde Amnesia

Unable to remember the past.

Anterograde Amnesia

Unable to form new memories.

Implicit Memory

Allows you to perform actions without needing to consciously recall how to do them.

Explicit Memory

Allows you to bring information into conscious awareness.

Semantic Memory

General information.

Episodic Memory

Events that one has experienced.

Amnesia of Korsakoff’s Syndrome

Characterized by amnesia, confusion, personality changes, and physical problems most commonly seen in severe alcoholics.

Amnesia of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)

Begins with slight loss of memory and progresses to dementia.

Post-Traumatic Amnesia

Concussions may cause retrograde amnesia for the period before the blow and some anterograde amnesia after.

Reconsolidation

Each time a memory is retrieved from LTM, it is temporarily held in STM where it's susceptible to post-traumatic amnesia until it is reconsolidated.

Rhinal Cortex

Plays an important role in object recognition.

Hippocampus

Plays a key role in memory for spatial location.

Grid Cells

Also found in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex and plays a key role in memory.

Inferotemporal Cortex

Visual perception of objects; changes in activity seen with visual recall.

Amygdala

Emotional learning; lesions of the amygdalae disrupt fear learning.

Prefrontal Cortex

Temporal order of events and working memory.

Cerebellum

Stores memories of sensorimotor skills.

Striatum

Coordinates multiple aspects of cognition, including both motor and action planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception.

Hebb

Changes in synaptic efficiency are the basis of LTM.

Long Term Potentiation (LTP)

Is a persistent increase in synaptic strength following high-frequency stimulation of a chemical synapse.

Long Term Depression (LTD)

Is a persistent decrease in synaptic strength following high-frequency stimulation of a chemical synapse.

Smart drugs

Substances thought to improve memory.

Cerebral lateralization

Refers to the functional specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain, where certain cognitive processes are thought to occur predominantly in either the left or right hemisphere.

Aphasia

A language disorder caused by damage to parts of the brain that control speech and understanding of language.

Broca’s area

Region of the brain that contains neurons involved in speech function; Left inferior prefrontal cortex, damage leads to expressive aphasia.

Apraxia

A neurological condition that makes it difficult or impossible to make certain movements.

Sodium Amytal Test

Anesthetize one hemisphere and check for language function.

Dichotic Listening

Report more digits heard by the dominant half.

Dextrals

Latin word that means right-handers.

Sinistrals

Latin word that means left-handers

Helping-hand phenomenon

Presented with two different visual stimuli,the hand that “knows” may correct the other.

Dual foci of attention

Split-brain hemispheres can search for the target item in an array faster than intact controls.

Frontal operculum (Broca’s area)

Near face area of primary motor cortex and responsible for language production.

Planum temporale (Wernicke’s area)

Temporal lobe, posterior lateral fissure and responsible for language comprehension.

Primary auditory cortex (Heschl’s gyrus)

Responsible for processing auditory stimuli such as sound frequency, duration, and intensity.

Analytic-synthetic theory

The left hemisphere is analytic – it looks at details and solves problems step by step, while the right hemisphere is synthetic – it sees the big picture and understands things all at once.

Motor theory of speech perception

Posits that there is overlap between speech comprehension and motor regions involved in speech production.

Arcuate Fasciculus

Connects Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas; damage causes conduction aphasia (inability to repeat words just heard).

Left Angular Gyrus

Posterior to Wernicke’s area; damage causes alexia (inability to read) and agraphia (inability to write).

Global Aphasia

Is the loss of most of your language abilities.

Damasio’s PET (Positron Emission Tomography) study of naming

Different parts of the brain are active when naming different things.

Lexical

Relating to the words or vocabulary of a language, using stored information about words.

Phonetic

Sounding out.

Surface Dyslexia

Lexical procedure lost, can’t recognize words loss of visual recognition of words (cannot “look and say”).

Deep (or “Phonological”) Dyslexia

Phonetic procedure lost, can’t sound out unfamiliar words

Emotion

A state of arousal involving facial and bodily changes, brain activation, cognitive appraisals, subjective feelings, and tendencies toward action.

Nonverbal Communication

Includes all other mechanisms used in communication rather than speaking and writing.

Amygdala

Responsible for assessing threat and plays a key role in emotion, especially anger and fear.

Cerebral Cortex

Can override the amygdala’s initial appraisal and is responsible for evaluating sensory information, determining its emotional importance, and making the initial decision to approach or withdraw from a person or situation.

Left Prefrontal Cortex

Are specialized for the motivation to approach others (as in happiness, a positive emotion, and anger, a negative one).

Right Prefrontal Cortex

Are specialized for the impulse to withdraw or escape (as in disgust and fear).

Mirror Neurons

Brain cells that fire when a person or animals observe another carrying out an action and are involved in empathy, language comprehension, imitation, reading emotions, and mood contagion.

Mood contagion

The spreading of emotion from one person to another.

Appraisals

A person’s perceptions, beliefs attributions, and goals, which determine which emotion he or she will feel in a given circumstance; they are a central component of emotion and the emotional experience.

Display rules

Social and cultural rules that regulate when, how, and where a person may express (or suppress) emotions.

Body language

The nonverbal signals of body movement, posture, and gaze.

Emotion work

Expression of an emotion, often because of a role requirement, that a person does not really feel.

Clinical depression

Is linked to at least a double risk of later heart attack and cardiovascular disease.

Emotions-focused coping

Concentrating on the emotions the problem has caused.

Problem-focused coping

Taking steps to solve the problem.