Psychology Chapter 2 The Brain and Behaviour

The PROTECTIVE outer layer of the brain covering the two hemispheres (2 - 5mm)

Wrinkled and folded to increase Surface Area
Involved in HIGHER mental processes activities such as -

Perception, language, learning, memory, thinking, problem-solving, planning/control of body movements

Sensory - Located in the Parietal Lobe Receives and processes info from our different senses

Motor - Located in the Frontal Lobe Receives, processes and sends info about voluntary body movement

Association -
compromises of all areas of the cerebral cortex which are not sensory/motor in function

integrates sensory, motor, other information
Involved in complex mental abilities such as - perception, problem-solving

Corpus Callosum - nerve tissue strand located between the left and right hemisphere, acting as the main communication pathway between the left and right hemisphere in exchanging information.

Left hemisphere - Receives/Processes senses/body movement from the right side of the body

verbal, sequential thinking, logic
Right hemisphere - Receives/Processes sense/bodily movement from the left side of the body

spatial/visual thinking, creativity, imagination, recognition of emotions/body language.

Primary motor cortex -
Left frontal lobe controlled voluntary bodily movement of the right side of the body, vice versa.
involved with personality, control and expression of emotions
association - receives information from other lobes to enable us to perform complex mental functions
Personality
Emotion

Located in the LEFT Frontal Lobe
coordinates muscles needed for the production of fluent speech
Also involved with understanding the grammatical structure of sentences

Broca's aphasia - production of speech that is very deliberate, and consists of simple grammar and short sentences. Can be easily confused when structure is changed.

LEFT temporal lobe and connected to the Broca's area.
Involved in grammatical comprehendable speech, and speech interpretation.

involved in the storing of grammatical codes for comprehension of language
Interprets written words
Locates appropriate words from memory to aid speech and writing.

Wernicke's aphasia - impairment of understanding/speaking language.
Patient can generate fluent but ungrammatical and meaningless speech

Damaged right parietal Lobe

patient acts as though the left side of the world does not exist.

Used in the 1940s to minimise/stop seizures in severe cases of epilepsy.
Involved surgically cutting the corpus callosum to sever communication between the left and right hemisphere.

Split brain patients have demonstrated how left and right hemispheres function when they can no longer communicate with each other.

Found that split-brain patients could recognise a picture of an object but could not name it, indicating that one hemisphere is primarily responsible for visual recognition of objects,(right) and the other is for language.(left)
Cutting the neural pathways between the two hemispheres prevented exchange of this information
Patients could not link cerebral information about the image of the object (right hemisphere) and the information about the name of this object (left)

A type of projector that can be used to present visual information to each visual field. Usually involves flashing information onto a screen while a participant focuses on the centre point marked by a dot/cross.

receives and processes sensory information from the body and and other sensory information to the brain. Role - the left parietal lobe receives sensory information from the right side of the body, vice versa.

the amount of cortex devoted to a particular body corresponds to the sensitivity and amount of body part use.

association - integrates information about the body's limb positions and movements with information about vision transmitted from the visual cortex
visual attention
spatial reasoning
determining where objects are located in the environment

Role - auditory perception, left temporal lobe receives/processes sound from the right ear

Features enabling quick identification of sounds - Frequency (pitch) and Amplitude (loudness)
association -
appears to be involved in memory, including linking emotions with memory/determining appropriate emotional responses
Object identification
Facial recognition

Damage to your temporal lobe would have left you with the ability to describe your friend's facial features, sex, and their age; but you would lack the ability to recognise your friend as someone you know.

Involved in vision, damage can result in blindness.

association areas - interact with visual cortex in each occipital lobe to select, organise, integrate visual info.

interprets visual information in a meaningful way - interact with association areas of frontal, parietal, temporal to integrate visual information with memory, language, sounds.

Images formed on the retina are divided into left and right halves; processed in BOTH hemispheres. Information from the left half of the retina of each eyes are processed in the left hemisphere.

Information from the right half of retina of each eye are processed in the right hemisphere.

Information from the left visual field ends up in the primary visual cortex of the right hemisphere, vice versa.

The image formed on the retina of the left eye is divided into left and right halvves, processed in BOTH hemispheres.
Information from the left half of the retina would be processed in the left hemisphere, while information from the right half of the retina would be processed in the right hemisphere.