Chapter 5

Front 1

Attention

Back 1

• Moving around, people confront a flood of information that the nervous system cannot treat equally

• The brain must target or “spotlight” specific material to process & tune out the irrelevant information

• Attention allows orienting to, selecting & maintaining focus on information to make it available for cortical processing

Front 2

Attention can refer to...

Back 2

1) general level of alertness or vigilance
2) general state of arousal
3) orientation v. habituation to stimuli;
4) ability to target processing within a specific sensory area or a measure of capacity

Front 3

Neuropsychological theories of attention processing usually consider

Back 3

1) Reticular Activating System in Cortical Arousal

2)frontal lobes in directing attentional resources.

4) posterior parietal lobe system in focusing conscious attention

5)subcortical and limbic system structures’ (particularly cingulated gyrus) in regulation of information to right hemisphere as attentional processor

Front 4

What have theorists not yet worked out?

Back 4

one-to-one correspondence between levels of attention behavior, & brain structures or networks

Front 5

What typically happens to attnetion in brain disfunction?

Back 5

efficiency of the brain to process information diminishes.

Front 6

How do researchers observe & categorize arousal?

Back 6

through frequency measured by EEG

Front 7

What are the different type of arousal waves?

Back 7

1) alpha
2) beta
3) delta
4) theta

Front 8

Subcortical Structures Influencing Attention

Back 8

• Generally, sensory input “changes” the RAS

• RAS may send a preparatory signal to the cortex to alert it to receive stimuli & then put it in a heightened state of readiness to receive information

• Lesions to RAS can result in lowered alertness or coma

Front 9

Cerebral Cortex & Attention

Back 9

1) Focused Attention
2) Divided Attention
3) Sustained Attention

Front 10

Focused Attention

Back 10

1) the ability respond & pick out important elements or figure of attention form the "ground or background of external & internal stimulation"

2) implies measure of concentration or effortful processing

3) I.E. receptionists who must switch back & forth between answering the phone & talking to customers

4) Must employ alternating attention, while mentally, holding a place to return to other activity

Front 11

divided attention

Back 11

requires partialing attention resources at the same time rather than switching back and forth.

Front 12

sustained attention

Back 12

o Ability to maintain effortful response over time

o People who work as air traffic controllers or on assembly-line jobs must have excellent abilities for sustaining attention

o The role of the frontal cortex in attention relates to aspects of attention planning & shifting of attention set (alternating & dividing attention) & sustaining attention v. becoming distracted

Front 13

What area of the brain is related to patients who complain of being upset or easily distracted ?

Back 13

frontal lobe

Front 14

Which hemisphere has a special role in attentional processing?

Back 14

right

Front 15

Where is vigilance believed to be found in the brain?

Back 15

lower left hemisphere

Front 16

What neurotransmitter is is one of the most important in maintaining alertness & attention?

Back 16

norepinephrine

Front 17

• Fatigue

Back 17

(inability to sustain attention to on activity, frequently appears across a number of more generalized neuropsychological disorders)

Front 18

Attention processes can easily be compromised by...

Back 18

1) neurologic disorders
2) metabolic disorders
3) psychological disorders

Front 19

Executive Functioning

Back 19

• Definition: applied in describing that aspect of cortical functioning that has to do with managing, structuring, & directing behavior

• At the top of hierarchy, perhaps the most high-level function of all is the ability to self-monitor & self-regulate behavior; in other cords, to notice one’s own behavior & modify it as the circumstances dictate

Front 20

Parts of the brain involved in executive functioning

Back 20

• Prefrontal lobes are unique in organization & function among all other areas of the cortex

• Brain is symphony frontal lobe acts as a conductor: Deals with planning, flexible problem solving & at the highest levels, the self-monitoring & self-assessment of behavior

Front 21

Consciousness

Back 21

• difficult to measure & observe because of its highly private nature

• Most people agree that consciousness implies awareness

• What distinguishes the conscious mind from the subconscious mind?

• definition: refers to a certain level of mental alertness and attention

Front 22

Split-brain patients

Back 22

typically report unified conscious experience

• Individuals with an intact corpus callosum, the right hemisphere is accessible to the left hemisphere through verbalizations

• “our conscious mind may be only aware of a percentage of what our brains do & are capable of “

Front 23

mind and brain

Back 23

• brains control & monitor the entire nervous system of our bodies & respond to physiological mechanisms in the body, like those of the endocrine system, to maintain state of brain-body homeostasis

• many are automatic, reflexive, unconscious

• boundaries between concepts of conscious & unconscious are blurring

Front 24

Emotional Processing

Back 24

• Science views emotions as necessary for higher evolutionary adaptation

• Humans live in social context in which self-understanding & social skills are some of the most crucial factors in determining societal success

• Witness surging interest in “emotional intelligence” which stresses understanding mood & emotional in self & others. Understand self & one’s own character & act effectively on this knowledge

Front 25

Joseph LeDoux definition of emotion

Back 25

subjective state of awareness & suggest that only b/c people have a cortex they label emotion & think about it rather than just react like other animals might.

Front 26

physical Responses to fear

Back 26

o Subcortical limbic
o Cortical response

Front 27

Brain Organization of Emotion

Back 27

• No one discrete emotional system is in the brain

Front 28

LeDoux's discovery

Back 28

concluded that the cortex isn’t necessary for fear conditioning, but the amygdala is

projections from the thalamus to amygdala provide “short-cut” allowing amygdala to process information directly, bypassing the cortical loop which allows for immediate automatic, preconscious & conscious emotional response

Front 29

What emotions appear to be culturally universal?

Back 29

1) Fear
2) disgust
3) surprise
4) anger
5) joy

Front 30

primary emotions

Back 30

Automatic, preorganized, arise from sensory experience & are processes through the limbic system before or parallel to the conscious recognition

Front 31

Research regarding primary emotions

Back 31

1) fear is the most researched

2) lesioning the amygdala in certain places interfered with fear conditioning

3) If the central nucleus of the amygdala is destroyed, animals no longer showed autonomic response when presented with tone (previously associated with shock)

• Expected increase in heart rate, respiration & vasodilation didn’t occur

Front 32

Secondary Emotions

Back 32

• Require higher cortical processing & according to Damasio are primarily orchestrated by prefrontal cortical networks

• People acquire secondary emotions, through learning & experience

Front 33

Social Emotions

Back 33

• Social emotions like embarrassment, pride, shame, & anxiety are highly dependent on learning & interact with one’s cognitive perception of the social environment as it pertains to itself

• Don’t necessarily imply separate “feeling” in the body

Front 34

Emotions & the limbic system

Back 34

• Feeling of emotional experience remains linked in the limbic system

• The difference is that secondary emotions are first generated through higher cortical processing & arrive at limbic system over different route from that taken by primary emotions which are generated through sensory experience

• Once in the limbic system, brain processes emotions in similar manner.

Front 35

What controls the spontaneous smile?

Back 35

1) basal ganglia
2) limbic system
3) subcortical structures

Front 36

What type of disorder ususally occurs w/ emotional dysfunction?

Back 36

Neurological disorder usually as a result of brain dysfunction

Front 37

What gland did Descartes believe was the center for consciousness?

Back 37

pineal gland

Front 38

Have researchers located consciousness in the brain?

Back 38

but researchers have found no single location for consciousness

• Because brain science hasn’t yet clearly defined operations & boundaries of consciousness

• Different areas of the brain may play roles in specific aspects of conscious perception & alertness

Front 39

Perceptual awareness is built up through...

Back 39

modality-specific sensory systems

1) vision
2) audition
3) proprioception
4) olfaction
5) taste

Front 40

What is brain science providing interesting clues for?

Back 40

how the brain “binds” separate fragments of into different cortical & subcortical regions into a subjective sense of coherent units

• Researchers are intrigued by the way the brain creates a unitary experience of consciousness at one moment in time. They call this the binding problem.

Front 41

What structure are responsible for arousal?

Back 41

RAS in the midbrain

Front 42

Which structure does NOT have a role in consciousness?

Back 42

cerebellum

Front 43

The more sophisticated the cortex...

Back 43

the greater the ability for subjective experience & self-awareness

Front 44

What structures play a role in consciousness?

Back 44

1) Neo-cortex
2) Thalamus

Front 45

Neo-cortex in consciousness

Back 45

evaluates external/internal experience

Front 46

Thalamus in consciousness

Back 46

plays crucial role in orchestrating higher cortical symphony

• Sensory relay station may be most crucial in synchronizing cortical processes

• Nearly all sensory & motor systems route through the thalamus

• In constant two-way communication with cortex through feedback system of millions of thalamocortical loops

Front 47

The Hard Question

Back 47

Hard question is how a subjective experience arises from brain & its synchronized oscillations

Not how consciousness processes bind together

Western empirical, materialistic tradition of science takes the stance if something can’t be observed & measured it doesn’t exist

There is a possibility that the range of reality extends beyond ordinary sensory-perceptual experience

Front 48

Where has been characterized as the seat of consciousness.

Back 48

the left hemisphere (where consciousness originates) is more specialized for spoken words

Front 49

Memory Systems

Back 49

Memory forms the basis of experience & perceptions of self

It is dynamic and malleable

It allows people to travel back in time

Memory pervades most aspects of human experience

It’s the necessary foundation of social communication

Memory is parceled into subsystems based on ideas of storage & processing

Front 50

what disorders affect memory?

Back 50

1) dementias
2) Alzheimer’s, toxic conditions
3) loss of oxygen
4) head injury

Front 51

• Anterograde Amnesia

Back 51

o loss of the ability to encode & learn new information after a defined event ( such as a head injury, lesion, or disease onset)

Front 52

• Retrograde amnesia

Back 52

o Loss of old memories from before an event or illness

Front 53

3 main divisions of memory

Back 53

1) sensory memory
2) short-term memory
3) long-term memory

Front 54

sensory memory

Back 54

• Fleeting, lasting only milliseconds.
• but its capacity is essentially limitless in what is taken in

Front 55

short-term memory

Back 55

• Limited capacity.
• 7 + 2 bits of information
• Degrades quickly over a matter of seconds information isn’t held via a means like rehearsal, or transferred to long-term memory.

Front 56

long-term memory

Back 56

• Theoretically unlimited & relatively permanent
• Except for models that suggest loss of information through forgetting is possible.
• Neuropsychologists are concerned with long-term memory & its disorders because these are problems most evidenced by patients.

Front 57

• “Where is memory stored in the brain?”

Back 57

• People may lose pieces of remote memory, but their brains are not erased.

• There’s no one memory storage center in the brain

• Neuropsychologists think memories are stored in an area where it’s first processed

• This implies, for example, for auditory association areas & for other functional systems

Front 58

ENCODE

Back 58

specific ability to register information

Front 59

STORAGE

Back 59

organize in a meaningful way

Front 60

RETRIEVAL

Back 60

recall when needed

Front 61

semantic

Back 61

(referring to memory for information & facts that have no specific time tag reference)

Front 62

episodic

Back 62

(referring to individual episodes, usually autobiographical)

Front 63

declarative memory

Back 63

function is to process information in a way to tag or consolidate for storage in the brain

Front 64

What 3 major constellations of brain structures in declarative memory?

Back 64

o Centers around medial temporal lobe
o Around diencephalon
o Basal forebrain

Front 65

Information funnels into hippocampus via what?

Back 65

the cortex

Front 66

Nondeclarative memory
• “habit”, “procedural”, “implicit”

Back 66

• Implicit implies influence by prior experiences without conscious awareness

• Procedural learning concerns learning of procedures, rules, skills manifested through performance rather than verbalization, although conscious awareness may aid procedural learning.

• One area of nondeclarative memory concerns perceptual motor adaptation & skill acquisition

Front 67

Short-term memory

Back 67

• Limited capacity & short time frame of short-term memory doesn’t accommodate more than a few thoughts, ideas, or bits of information at a time.

• As new bits arrive, they may take the place of others or simply degrade

• Short-term memory uses phonological coding, relying on an acoustic code where as long-term memory heavily uses semantic coding or associative meaning values of information to be remembered.

Front 68

3 conceptual components of working memory

Back 68

1) Central Executive
2) Visual Spatial Sketchpad
3) Articulatory Phonological Loop

Front 69

Working memory

Back 69

• Notion of short-term memory as component of long-term memory has gradually given way to ideas that now refer to working memory

Some of the most convincing evidence that short-term memory & long-term memory are anatomically separate.

• Working memory directs temporary storage of reading to math or problem solving.

Front 70

1) Central Executive

Back 70

• Attention controlling system
• Supervises & coordinates
• Proposed deficit in Alzheimer’s

Front 71

2) Visual Spatial Sketchpad

Back 71

• Manipulates visual/spatial images

Front 72

3) Articulatory Phonological Loop

Back 72

• Stores speech-based information & is important in acquisition of vocabulary