Outline

1. Bits of the brain revisited 2. Three types of patient (again) 3. The emotional brain 4. The intelligent brain

Last week: I showed you how patients with brain damage can reveal amazingly specific types of disorders. Often those disorders follow damage to very specific brain bits.

Lets review three examples

Prosopagnosia difficulties in recognising familiar faces

follows damage to occipito-temporal cortex (including the fusiform face area)

Recent evidence that this malfunctions in many individuals with autism.

Neglect failure to attend to the contralateral side of space

typically follows damage to the parietal lobe, especially the parietal lobe on the right

Clive Wearings dense anterograde amnesia

Wilson, B.A., Baddeley, A.D., & Kapur, N. (1995). Dense amnesia in a professional musician following herpes simplex virus encephalitis. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 17, 668-681.

normal

Clives brain

Amnesia follows damage to medial temporal lobes

The limbic system: plays roles in learning, memory and emotion. Closely tied with bits of the frontal lobes, including olfactory cortex (and therefore with smell!)

So these examples show how the ability to recognise faces, remember new things and attend to all sides of the world depend on particular brain regions

We also mentioned deficits in planning after lesions to the frontal lobes

Is planning a good example of the sort of things we human beings are very good at?

Is planning an example of how we are very smart or intelligent?

Where does intelligence live?

What is the most likely brain region that contains intelligence? 1. The occipital lobes (we are very visual)

2. The temporal lobes (consciousness and memory?)

3. The frontal lobes (planning, staying organised?) 4. Unlikely that intelligence can be localised to one single brain region

In the mid 20th century, surgeons starting cutting off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain to control behaviour in some difficult patients with psychiatric problems.

From Watts and Freeman (1944). Intelligence following prefrontal lobotomy in obsessive tension states. Journal of Neurosurgery, 1, 291296.

The received wisdom at that time was that frontal lobotomy didnt have any effects on how patients performed on tests of intelligenceindicating it is probably not the frontal lobes (at least not by themselves)

Ref.: A. K. Barbey et al., An integrative architecture for general intelligence and executive function revealed by lesion mapping, Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 2012
Yellow = Executive Red = General intelligence Orange = common areas In brain-damaged patients

We found that general intelligence depends on a remarkably circumscribed neural system, Areas are primarily Left prefrontal cortex, L parietal cortex and L temporal cortex and the tracts that connect them.

Intelligence relies not on one brain area, but involves specific areas working together in a co-ordinated fashion
In fact the particular regions and connections we found indicates that intelligence depends on the ability of the brain to integrate information from verbal, visual, spatial and executive processes Barbey 2012

Lateralization of brain function?? Left side Logical Language Speech Science Writing Right side Creative Visual Artistic Music Imagination

Much less considered now. Neuroplasticity suggests much less fixed.

What do we mean by intelligence?

Whom of these four do you consider the most intelligent? a. Einstein b. Sherlock Holmes

c.

Marie Curie

d. Katie Price (a.k.a. Jordan)

General intelligence usually divided into: Crystallised intelligence skills, knowledge and experience that you have acquired e.g. through schooling.

Think of the stuff that would help you do well on University Challenge or in Trivial Pursuit!

What kind of equation is this?

How many US states can you name?

Who wrote a Midsummers Nights Dream?

Fluid intelligence---the kind of cognitive skills that dont depend on overlearned knowledge, e.g. Problem solving in new situations, flexibility, creativity

Fluid Intelligence is the ability to reason quickly and to think abstractly. Interestingly, evidence that it is enhanced by physical activity in children.

People tend to differ in crystallised intelligence for all kinds of reasons, including schooling, diet, nationality etc.

Some evidence that fluid intelligence might be at least partially inherited.

Without question as a species we have loads of fluid intelligence: we have so much of it we even generate fluid intelligence tests!

One of our biggest challenges is being BORN!

Human beings have big heads

Those big heads contain big brains

Big brains must be related to INTELLIGENCE?

Language, perception etc. depend on different regions of your brain

We seem to have quite large brains, even compared with our closest relatives, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutangs

(In fact, if we keep on evolving)

Is the human brain really special??

Certainly very different from early mammals

The structure of our brain is not all that different from other mammals

Bottlenosed dolphin
And it isnt the biggest either ..human brain ~ 1300 g elephant ~ 5,000 g

sperm whale ~ 8,500 g

Adult human

Are our brains that big?

One bit of the brain, the frontal cortex, has been associated with high level executive functions like planning, task switching, and behavioral control.

Do we have more frontal cortex than other species?

Maybe 12% more, if you compare humans with other great apes Semendeferi et al. (2002)

Passingham (2002)

Similar story for prefrontal cortex (the very front part) and prefrontal white matter Holloway (2002); Sherwood et al. (2005). White matter important because indicates greater connectivity.

Einsteins brain

1. Was it bigger? (The Lancet, 1999) NO. 2. In fact his cerebral cortex was a bit thin Maybe he had more neurons in his thin cortex

Einsteins brain
No...but he had more glial cells! Er no, he didnt have more glial cells But the arms of the glial cells were longer

than a sample of 4 people

Inside Einsteins brain

Of course it was bigger than yours. But now we can show it was a different shape, too
It was, without doubt, one of the finest minds of all time. Now scientists have proved that Albert Einstein's brain was not only unique in its ability to process concepts: it was also physically different. New research comparing the characteristics of Einstein's brain with that of four men of similar age has found remarkable structural differences. Parts of his brain were found to be larger than those of the others, and he also appeared to have had more brain cells, scientists have found previously. The brain of the great mathematician and physicist, who died at the age of 76 in 1955, has long fascinated researchers, not least because while Einstein's body was cremated, his brain was saved for scientific study. The brain has now been found to possess a greater number of glial cells for each neurone, suggesting that Einstein's brain needed and used more energy. As a result it may have generated more processing ability. The job of glial cells is to provide support and protection for neurones. The density of neurones in Einstein's brain is greater, too, and the cerebral cortex is thinner than the brains to which it was compared. Einstein's brain also has an unusual pattern of grooves in an area thought to be involved in mathematical skills. It was 15 per cent wider than the other brains, suggesting that the combined effect of the differences may be better connections between nerve cells involved in mathematical abilities. The latest research, due to be published this week, was conducted by scientists in the United States and Argentina. "Einstein's astrocytic processes showed larger sizes and higher numbers of interlaminar terminal masses," say the researchers. Exactly what effects these differences could have is not clear, and the researchers caution that what they found could simply be a sign of ageing. The researchers also suggest that the structure of Einstein's brain may not have been unique, and that other people may have something similar, but never get the chance to use it. Perhaps individuals with 'special' brains and minds are more frequent than suspected. They just may go unnoticed due to socio-cul-tural conditions or their early potential being cancelled following exposure to unwanted health or childrearing hazards during gestation and early childhood, or lack of an adequate childraising environment," say the researchers. And there's hope us all. The researchers say that the brain structure shouldn't be seen as a marker of intelligence in isolation. "In a species with a heavily socially moulded brain and mind, such as humans, the full expression of an individual special aptitude depends on multiple genetic and environmental factors."