Characteristics of the brain

Adult brain weighs on average 1.5kg

Encased in a hard skull Consistency of firm jelly

Small gap between the brain and the skull which

contains fluid the fluid protects the brain from damage Made up of billions of neurons

Characteristics of the cerebral cortex

Convoluted outer covering of the cerebral hemispheres
Surface area approximately 0.25m2 2-4mm thick 2 broad categories - Sensory cortex areas (receives & processes info about senses) - Motor cortex areas (receives, processes & sends info about voluntarily

body movements) - Association cortex areas integrate sensory, motor & other info
Divided into cortical lobes Size of cerebral cortex is linked to intellectual ability

Structure and function: different parts of the brain control different functions.

The frontal Lobe

The frontal Lobe

Primary motor cortex movement Brocas area speech production

Complex mental functions such as planning &

problem solving (association areas) Attention Expression of characteristics associated with personality and emotional behaviour

Primary motor cortex

Responsible for voluntary muscle movement
The greatest area on the cortex is devoted to the most

sensitive areas (tongue, jaw lips)

Motor and Sensory Cortex organisation

Brocas area
Only in the left hemisphere
Production of articulate speech

Coordinates movements of muscles required for

speech Understanding of grammatical structure in order to extract meaning that depends on that grammatical structure

The frontal Lobe as a car?

Brocas aphasia
Occurs when theres damage to Brocas area

- Most commonly caused by stroke

Results in: - non-fluent speech (short sentences, typically 3-4 words, mainly verbs &

nouns) - Comprehension of speech can be impaired if meaning cannot be inferred from individual word meaning E.g. The boy hugged the girl (understood) The girl was hugged by the boy (not understood)
People with Brocas aphasia are usually aware and have an

understanding of their condition Deaf people with damage to Brocas area have difficulty producing sign language

Phineas gage frontal lobe damage

September 13, 1848, 25-year-old Railway foreman
Packing gun powder into a hole with a steel pole to

blow up rock Sparks from the pole ignite the gun powder and send the pole under gages cheek and out the top of his head
Before the accident he was well liked, organised, calm

and polite

Phineas gage frontal lobe damage

After the accident Phineas suffered severe personality changes Became impulsive, aggressive, disorganised Could not continue his work as foreman Appeared for a time at Barnum's American Museum in New York February 1860, Gage had the first in a series of increasingly severe convulsions died in or near San Francisco on May 21 just under twelve years after his accident
Gages case along with others suggest the frontal lobes important

role in emotion and personality, planning and initiative

The Parietal lobe

The Parietal lobe

Primary Somatosensory cortex

- At the front of the temporal lobe next to the primary motor cortex which is at the back of the frontal lobe - Receives info from senses - Greatest area of the cortex devoted to the most sensitive areas (face muscles etc)
Other functions: - Spatial reasoning (primarily in the right hemisphere - Enables us to sense the position of our body in space

(primarily in the right hemisphere)

Motor and Sensory Cortex organisation

The homunculus man

Spatial Neglect
Attentional disorder where individuals fail to notice

anything either on their left or right side

Most common in stroke or accident victims with

damage to the rear parietal love of the right hemisphere (Can sometimes occur with similar damage to the left hemisphere, but its less common)

Spatial neglect
Different types mostly experienced with visual sense but can

occur with hearing, touch, movement claim it came from the other side involve memory impairment

If they acknowledge a stimulus on their neglected side they will Can affect recall of images from memory; however it does not Can show a gradual recovery in some cases Thought to be caused by failure of cortical arousal associated

with the activities of the thalamus & reticular activating system

The temporal Lobe

The temporal Lobe

Primary auditory cortex

- receives & processes sound from both ears

Wernickes area speech comprehension

Other functions: - memory including linking emotions with memory - Object identification - Facial recognition
(Temporal sounds like tempo, the tempo of the music)

Wernickes area
Only in the left hemisphere

Functions: - Interprets the sounds of human speech - Locates appropriate words from memory to express meaning

Wernickes aphasia
Difficulty comprehending speech
Difficulty speaking in a meaningful way Speech is fluent but nonsense Have little or no awareness or understanding of their

condition Most commonly caused by stroke

The temporal Lobe as a drummer?

Deep within the temporal lobe- the amygdala

Deep within the Temporal lobe the hippocampus

Memory formation not memory storage

Damage leaves patient unable to form new long term

memories

Deep within the temporal lobe- the amygdala

Mediation of fear
Seizures involving the amygdala involve intense fear Damage leaves a person unable to learn a fear response

through classical conditioning

event

Involved in remembering the emotional significance of an Damage leaves us unable to judge emotional component of

facial expressions in others i.e. angry person perceived as calm or even happy

The Occipital Lobe

The Occipital Lobe

Primary visual cortex (at the bottom of the lobe)
- Receives information from photoreceptors - Left half of each eye receives info from the right visual field - Right half of each eye receives info from left visual field - Left half of each eye send to the left hemisphere - Right half of each eye sends to the right hemisphere Other areas visual association areas identifying objects

etc.

The Occipital Lobe as an eye?

THE EYES IN THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD!