NEUROPSICOLOGIA

COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS: NEUROANATOMICAL SUBSTRATES AND PATHOLOGY

AULA 2: RECEPTIVE FUNCTIONS: SENSORY AND PERCEPTIVE.

VISUAL PROCESSING.
26-02-2024

Raquel Lemos, PhD

(rlemos@ispa.pt)
REVIEW

THE BRAIN

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

REVIEW

➢ The brain is divided into 2 lateral hemispheres that are only

interconnected at the cortical level by a number of commissures (most
important = corpus callosum).

The nervous system, like the body, is symmetrical, with left and right sides.
• Structures that lie on the same side are ipsilateral;
• Structures that lie on opposite sides are contralateral to each other;
• If one lies in each hemisphere—which virtually all do—the structures are bilateral.

• Structures close to one another are proximal;

• Those far from one another are distal.

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

REVIEW

Sensory input, through vision, hearing, or touch, is lateralized to the contralateral

hemisphere: stimuli presented to one side of the body are received at the opposite
side of the brain.

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

BASIC CONCEPTS

Receptive Perception/
Functions Visual
processing

Language Attention

Cognitive
Functions

Executive Learning &

Functions Memory

Motor act
BASIC CONCEPTS
BASIC CONCEPTS

INPUT PRIMARY SENSORY

PRIMARY MOTOR OUTPUT

- Primary sensory cortex is the portal of entry of information from the environment,
- Primary motor cortex is the final common pathway for manipulating the envirnonment.

All mammals have at least one primary cortical area for each sensory system.

Additional areas are referred to as secondary areas because most of the information that reaches
them is relayed through the primary area

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

RECEPTIVE FUNCTIONS – VISION

➢ Input in visual cortex comes from the contralateral visual field.

Sensation Perception Memory

(sensory stimulation) (integration of sensory (Recognition)
impressions into psychologically
meaningful data)
RECEPTIVE FUNCTIONS – AUDITORY

➢ No strict contralateral representation:

(each hemisphere has access to sounds from both ears).

- unilateral lesions do not lead to contralateral deafness.

- complete cortical deafness is unlikely to arise unless there is bilateral damage to both
primary and adjacent auditory association areas.
RECEPTIVE FUNCTIONS – SOMATOSENSORY

HOMUNCULUS

Relative sensitivity of body parts are

represented by size:
MOTOR SYSTEM – MOTOR CORTEX

HOMUNCULUS
HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF CORTICAL FUNCTION

The brain processes information serially, one step at a time:

INPUT Sensory receptors Primary Cortex Secondary Cortex Tertiary Cortex

Tertiary sensory Tertiary motor Seconday motor Primary motor OUTPUT

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

Receptive Perception/
Functions Visual
processing

Language Attention

Cognitive
Functions

Executive Learning &

Functions Memory

Motor act
PERCEPTION – VISUAL PROCESSING

➢ Perceptions are predominantly visual!

➢ The visual information relayed from the retinas is received, integrated, and
processed in the visual cortex.

located in the occipital lobe of the primary cerebral cortex

which is in the most posterior region of the brain

➢ The visual cortex is divided into five different areas (V1 to V5) based on function and structure.

V1 is also known as the primary visual cortex

Damage to the primary visual cortex bilaterally - cortical blindness

(lose the capacity to distinguish forms or patterns while remaining
responsive to light and dark).

➢ Main purpose of the visual cortex is to receive, segment, and integrate visual information.

(adapt. Huff and Tadi, 2019)

PERCEPTION – VISUAL PROCESSING

➢ Each hemisphere has its own visual cortex.

VISUAL PROCESSING - PRIMARY VISUAL CORTEX OCCIPITAL LOBE DISORDERS

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

PERCEPTION – VISUAL PROCESSING

V1
V2

➢ V1 is the first of the cortical regions to receive and process information.

➢ V2 receives integrated information from V1 and subsequently splits up into the dorsal and ventral
streams which specialize in processing different aspects of visual information.
● Ventral stream towards temporal visual association cortex and limbic system.
● Dorsal stream towards parietal (and frontal) cortex.
PERCEPTION – VISUAL PROCESSING

Ungerleider and Mishkin (1982) :

1) an occipito- temporal pathway or “ventral stream” for object recognition.

The ventral stream or “what” system is supposed to perform a fine-grained analysis
of the visual scene, including processing of color and shape.
2) an occipito- parietal pathway or “dorsal stream” for spatial vision and visually
guided actions.
The dorsal stream or “where” system processes spatial characteristics of the visual
scene.

DORSAL STREAM (WHERE)

VENTRAL STREAM (WHAT)

(adapt. Goebel et al., 2004)
VISUAL PROCESSING – VENTRAL VISUAL AREAS

➢ V4 (V8):
- involved in both color and form processing.
Lesions: achromatopsia (acquired central color blindness).

(adapt. Goebel et al., 2004)

VISUAL PROCESSING – VENTRAL VISUAL AREAS

➢ Lateral occipital cortex (LOC):

- stronger activation for a variety of objects (cars, flowers,
hands, butterflies, and letters).
Lesion: visual agnosia (object recognition deficits).

VISUAL AGNOSIA

- loss of knowledge (gnosis) about visual information;

- visual recognition is defective in persons who can see (patient is not blind)
and who are normally knowledgeable about information coming through
other perceptual channels.

(adapt. Goebel et al., 2004)

VISUAL PROCESSING – VENTRAL VISUAL AREAS

➢ Fusiform face area (FFA):

- strongly activated by face stimuli (e.g., cartoon faces, upside-
down faces, …).
- does not show a differential response to familiar versus novel
faces.

Lesion: prosopagnosia (face recognition deficits).

PROSOPAGNOSIA

= face agnosia
- Inability to recognize faces (face name).
- Patients with prosopagnosia typically can no longer recognize
familiar faces and are also unable to learn new faces.
- Patients can identify familiar persons from hearing their voices.

(adapt. Goebel et al., 2004)

VISUAL PROCESSING – DORSAL VISUAL AREAS

➢ V5 (hMT+):
- processing of motion information (direction, speed, depth).
Inactivation causes cortical akinetopsia (deficiencies in
motion direction discrimination).

➢ Occipito-(Parietal) regions:
- sensorimotor mapping/navigational behaviors,
- vision for guiding movements,
- spatial visual attention.

Visuospatial disorientation syndromes:

- Spatial localization disorders,
- Sensorimotor coordination problems (dressing apraxia – inability to align body axis
with garment),
- Simultanagnosia (inability to integrate visual details into a coherent whole),
- Optic ataxia (deficits of reaching toward visual targets), BALINT’S
SYNDROME
- Oculomotor apraxia (oculomotor exploration deficits).

(adapt. Mesulam., 2000)

VISUAL PROCESSING – DORSAL VISUAL AREAS OCCIPITAL LOBE DISORDERS

SIMULTANEOUS AGNOSIA

(or simultanagnosia) – a componente of Balint’s syndrome.

- inability to perceive more than one object or point in space at a time (“simultaneous”).
- impairs patients’ ability to move around: they get lost easily; even reaching for something in their
field of vision becomes difficult.
- damage to the bilateral occipito-parietal region.
POSTERIOR PARIETAL LOBE – DISORDERS BILATERAL

➢ BALINT’S SYNDROME (RARE)

• Oculomotor apraxia – oculomotor exploration deficits:

eyes move but cannot fixate on specific visual stimuli;

• Simultanagnosia – inability to integrate visual details into a coherent whole: the field
of attention is limited to one object at a time;

• Optic ataxia – deficits of reaching toward visual targets: cannot make visually guided
movements.

(adapt. Kolb and Whishaw, 2015)

PERCEPTION – VISUAL PROCESSING OCCIPITAL LOBE DISORDERS

• Optic ataxia
BALINT’S SYNDROME • Oculomotor apraxia
• Simultanagnosia

https://youtu.be/4odhSq46vtU