-Wernicke’s area

-auditory information travels to the temporal lobes from the auditory receptors in the ears
-sounds are processed into auditory images and stored
-then flows through the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area
-then neural instructions are sent to specific muscles in the mouth to produce sounds
-conduction aphasia
-arcuate fibers connecting the two speech areas are cut, this speech deficit occurs
-speech sounds and movements are retained
-speech is impaired, can’t repeat what is heard
-different regions of the brain are interconnected
-alexia=loss of ability to read
-disconnection from Wernicke’s area to brain’s visual area
-apraxia=can’t make sequences of movements
-disconnection of motor areas from sensory areas
-experiments where the cortex of dogs was removed illustrated that the remaining brain stem
could make up for the missing cortex/substitute for it
-the brain’s plasticity can be harnessed to produce functional improvements after brain
injury
-removing the cortex only reduced functions
-hierarchal organization
-refutes functional organization
-information is processed serially and organized as a functional hierarchy
-higher levels control more complex aspects of behavior
-three levels
-spinal cord
-brain stem
-forebrain
-diseases or damage that affects highest levels of brain hierarchy produce dissolution
-reverse of evolution
-functions are represented in the neocortex, brainstem, and spinal cord
-amnesia
-when people have a memorable experience, they encode different parts of it in different
parts of the brain
-area of spatial memories, emotional content,
-binding problem
-how we tie all these different stored information to form one memory
-how to prevent the spread of intractable epileptic seizures from one hemisphere to the other
-cut the corpus callosum and the smaller commissures that connect the hemispheres
-surgery was successful, but the patients are now split brain
-visual form agnosia
-can’t see the shapes of objects or recognize them visually by their shape
-acuity was good but couldn’t differentiate between horizontal and vertical lines
-could draw objects from memory, but didn’t recognize the objects she drew
-could see if she was required to grab or move around objects
-never knew what the objects were though
-lesion in the ventral stream
-from visual cortex to temporal lobe for object identification
-visual (or optic) ataxia
-can describe objects accurately, but can’t reach for them properly
-lesions in the dorsal stream
-from visual cortex to parietal cortex for guiding action relative to objects
-ventral stream
-mediates actions controlled by conscious visual perception
-dorsal stream
-mediates actions controlled by unconscious visual processes
-neurons
-produce our behavior and mediate the brain’s plasticity
-allows us to learn and adapt
-85 billion
-parts of the neuron
-core region: cell body (soma)
-branching extensions: dendrites
-can be several millimeters long
-main “root”: axon
-can extend as long as a meter
-those in motor pathway that go from cortex to spinal cord
-substructure of nervous system findings found white gelatinous glue
-early theorists (Descartes) described nerves as hollow, fluid-containing tubes
-this wa