John
Ratey; User's Guide to the Brain |
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Book |
Page |
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Topic |
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Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
10 |
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Trajectory of Evolution
(diagram) |
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14 |
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Development |
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4 |
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48 |
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Perception |
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34 |
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54 |
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Network synapses that frequently participate in neural activity end up
as strong, permanent members of the neural network, whereas rarely used synapses
wither away and die. |
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6 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
54 |
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Brain's network structure aligns itself with the information that it receives, so
how it perceives that information determines its future functionality. |
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0 |
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54 |
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"Use it, or lose it" -- use
the senses and their neurons or lose them forever to premature death or to be recruited for another
function. |
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54 |
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Brain is constantly receiving information about
its current state,
both from the senses,
concerning events in the environment, and from internal messages about the position of the body, its level of arousal, the activities of various organs, and the chemical and nutritive state of the blood. |
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0 |
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54 |
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Brain seeks to maintain a
condition of internal constancy (homeostasis). |
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63 |
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Smell
accounts for much of what we taste. |
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9 |
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63 |
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Tastebuds
on our tongues detect
the presence of sugars, salts acids, and bases (sweet, salty, sour, and
bitter). |
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0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
63 |
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Hearing, a
small part of vision, touch, and taste all enter through the brainstem and are passed up to the thalamus. |
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0 |
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63 |
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From the thalamus, millions of neural networks transfer signals to regions of
the cortex
specialized for each sense. |
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63 |
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From the thalamocortical
circuits, signals are sent on for further processing to the limbic system. |
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63 |
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Limbic system
often adds an emotional tag; it calls up memories and may initiate a bodily
response. |
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d |
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63 |
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Given the complexity of visual and auditory information, the brain tries to make sense of fine
details before making decisions. |
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0 |
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63 |
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Olfactory nerves project
directly into the amygdala and olfactory cortex without mediation through the thalamus. |
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63 |
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Olfactory nerves have a hotline to the emotional brain, and only then is the information sent to the orbitofrontal
cortex for more associating, and further processing. |
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64 |
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Sensing molecules in the air begins high within each nostril in the olfactory epithelium which contains
olfactory receptors. |
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1 |
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64 |
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Olfactory system recognizes certain smells from
birth, notably ones that signal danger, such as
those of rotting foods. |
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64 |
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Humans are
capable of recognizing and differentiating as many is 10,000 odors. |
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64 |
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Olfactory system is similar to the immune system in that it is capable of recognizing a virtually unlimited
range of molecular signals. |
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65 |
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Limbic system
contains the brain's pleasure
centers, many of which can be activated by the scents of food and sex. |
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1 |
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65 |
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Brain's reward
center is central to learning and provides a motivation for doing something or the sense of feeling satisfied. |
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65 |
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Olfactory apparatus is wired directly to the brain's pleasure centers that determines pleasure and disgust. It is a powerful trigger that can motivate us very quickly and directly,
without the associations or abstract thinking necessary to respond to vision
or hearing. It is simple, direct, and powerful. |
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0 |
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65 |
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Many species use pheromone signals to direct
essential behaviors such as mating, feeding, flight, combat, and nurturing
the young. |
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65 |
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Pheromones
can be detected in extremely small quantities over long distances. |
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65 |
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Humans emit pheromones in all body fluids. |
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66 |
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Over sensitivity of the amygdala has been implicated in anxiety,
panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). |
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1 |
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66 |
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Olfactory projections also found in the hypothalamus, the brain's hormonal center, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight
response. |
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0 |
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67 |
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Somatosensory System (diagram) |
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1 |
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68 |
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Epilepsy
that starts in the limbic
area is notorious for overwhelming the sufferer
with strange or overtly
foul odors and tastes during a seizure. |
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1 |
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68 |
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Very few individuals are capable
of "imagining" smells very well. |
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Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
89 |
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Much of the processing by the auditory system -- much more than for the other
senses -- is accomplished long before we are conscious of it. |
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21 |
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89 |
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In the waystations
along the path from the ear to the point when we become aware of them, the sound signals are adjusted and refined. |
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92 |
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Auditory System (diagram) |
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3 |
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93 |
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Once the ear processes incoming sound, the auditory information is sent to
the brainstem through
the auditory nerve,
which has only about 25,000 nerve fibers -- very few compared with the billions
of neurons involved in touch or vision. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
93 |
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Auditory information must be assessed
in the ear before it
is sent to the cortex. |
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93 |
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In the brainstem, sounds are sorted according to tone and Into units defined by timbre, or the quality of the sound. |
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100 |
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Vision System
(diagram) |
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7 |
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110 |
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Attention and Consciousness |
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10 |
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112 |
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Rudolfo Llinás, Chief of Physiology and Neuroscience, New York University
School of Medicine. |
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2 |
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112 |
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Brain is a
powerful prediction machine, continuously making elaborate
mental maps of the world that are reliable enough
for us to predict what lies ahead, both in space and in time. |
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0 |
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112 |
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All animals
that move most have
some predictive power. |
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113 |
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For an animal to move and interact with its
surroundings, it must coordinate
its muscles with what it sees, hears, and feels.
In primates the
command center for this activity is in the ventral
premotor cortex. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
113 |
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Brain constructs
maps of its surroundings; subsets of neurons interact in the background to maintain
those maps. When new data comes in, the neurons reconfigure the maps. |
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Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
114 |
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Reaction to stimuli, ongoing interaction between
neurons, and predictive
maps of the world all work together to create consciousness. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
114 |
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Before we can be conscious of something, we have to pay attention. |
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Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
115 |
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Scientists have identified four distinct components within the attention system: (1) arousal, (2) motor orientation, (3) novelty detection
and reward, (4) executive organization. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
115 |
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At the lowest level of
monitoring, the brainstem
maintains our vigilance
-- our general degree of arousal. |
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115 |
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Brain's motor
centers allows us to physically
reorient bodies so
that we can immediately redirect our senses to possible new threats or reward sources. |
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0 |
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115 |
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Limbic system accomplishes both novelty
detection and reward. |
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115 |
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Cortex --
especially the frontal lobes -- commands action and reaction and integrates our attention with short- and long-term goals. |
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115 |
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Arousal is
the ability to suddenly
increase alertness. |
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115 |
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Fear is
still a good arouser. |
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0 |
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115 |
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As humans learn to think with greater abstraction,
the novelty from
within the forum of internal thoughts also excites arousal. |
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115 |
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Arousal is
controlled by the reticular activating system, which connects the frontal lobes,
limbic system, brainstem, and sense organs. |
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115 |
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Incoming information from the senses, or thoughts, can arouse us, and depending on its startle
value, it alerts the rest of the arousal circuit. |
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0 |
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115 |
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Hippocampus
-- a key player in memory -- also communicates with the reticular activating system. |
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0 |
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115 |
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In actions
of survival, the second step after startling is to orient the body -- and
specifically the body's sense organs -- toward the novel object in question. |
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0 |
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115 |
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Like the arousal system, motor orientation is basically involuntary. |
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0 |
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115 |
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We do not need to think before
we perk up our ears or turn our heads. |
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0 |
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116 |
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Mesolimbic pathway (a group of dopamine containing neurons), which is a
key driver of the limbic system. |
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1 |
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116 |
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Limbic system
is integral not only to attention but to many other brain functions, notably emotion and social brain. |
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0 |
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116 |
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Detecting novelty and seeking reward are two primary forces that direct the selection of where to focus our attention. |
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0 |
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116 |
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Reward system
produces sensations of pleasure, assigning an emotional value to a stimulus, which also marks it for memory. |
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0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
119 |
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Attention System and its Dysfunctions (diagram) |
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3 |
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125 |
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Addiction Pathway (diagram) |
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6 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
130 |
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Most humans can easily
manipulate their own focus of attention. |
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5 |
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130 |
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Objects outside the periphery
lose their distinguishing features, falling out of our consciousness. |
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0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
130 |
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Attention, memory, and consciousness build upon one another to give us higher-order
cognition. |
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130 |
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Many ADHD patients describe their conscious experience as a blur, or as filled with static. |
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130 |
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Some researchers say that our attention spotlight is driven by the relationship between working memory and long-term memory. |
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130 |
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Working memory is a significant part of the executive
function of the prefrontal
cortex. |
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0 |
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130 |
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Systems that handle working memory are located in the frontal lobe, right in front of the
areas concerned with motion and process. |
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0 |
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130 |
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Systems that handle working memory rely on the long-term memory system to encode the information via the hippocampus and other parts of the
cortex |
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0 |
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131 |
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Working memory holds small amounts of information for only a few seconds at a time. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
131 |
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Working memory allows us to remember a telephone
number long enough to dial the phone. |
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0 |
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131 |
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Without mental
rehearsal of the information, we lose the contents of working memory
within a few seconds. |
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0 |
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131 |
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Information in long-term memory remains reliable over extended periods. |
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0 |
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131 |
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We use working
memory to conceptualize
immediately occurring events and long-term memory to direct the present and plan for the future. |
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0 |
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131 |
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Working memory is brain's
RAM or rapid access memory. |
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0 |
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131 |
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Working memory is a space where many things can
be held together and manipulated, so we can
process them, evaluate them, rehearse them, make decisions about them. |
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0 |
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131 |
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Both working
memory and long-term
memory are necessary for [human-type] consciousness. |
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0 |
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132 |
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Working memory and long-term memory allow us to prioritize certain
stimuli over others by keeping the less important issues circulating
in the background, though at the ready to be called upon. |
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1 |
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132 |
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Importance of memory
systems to consciousness. |
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0 |
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133 |
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Difficult to distinguish clearly
between attention and consciousness. We can know and
remember things even when we are not paying
attention to them, or are not even
"conscious" of them. |
|
1 |
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133 |
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Two different brain states each
day -- waking and sleeping. |
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0 |
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133 |
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Attention, memory, and
consciousness collaborate to create different states. |
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0 |
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133 |
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During both waking and sleeping, there is an ongoing den in the cortex. Neurons are constantly interacting with each
other, even if they are not
currently being called upon to perform a specific duty. |
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0 |
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133 |
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Rudolfo Llinás at New York University has discovered that all areas of the cortex emit a
steady level of noise, or oscillation, at a frequency of about 40 Hz. |
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0 |
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133 |
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Some areas of the cortex,
humming along at 40 Hz, are phase locked, meaning there oscillations are in unison; they
keep the same beat. |
|
0 |
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134 |
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Llinás and other researchers
have suggested that the neurons perform in synchrony because they follow a
kind of conductor in the brain. The prime candidate for the conductor's
function is the many intralamina nuclei, located deep within the thalamus. |
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1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
134 |
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Intralamina nuclei of the thalamus receive and project long axons to many
areas of the brain. |
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0 |
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134 |
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Information flowing back and
forth between the intralamina
nuclei of the thalamus and the rest of the brain modulates itself,
setting up a regular loop of electrical activity oscillating to a synchronized beat of ~40 Hz. |
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0 |
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134 |
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During waking there are large burst of electrical activity in every brain region, in addition to
the steady 40 Hz oscillation. |
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0 |
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134 |
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During non-dreaming
sleep, the intralaminar nuclei are inactive;
there is no 40 Hz oscillation. |
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0 |
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134 |
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During dream
sleep (REM sleep), the 40
Hz background oscillation returns, and is again
accompanied by heavy regional activity, similar to that which occurs during
waking. |
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0 |
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134 |
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In dreaming, the cortex
activates itself purely from within. |
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0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
134 |
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Internal inputs such as thoughts come from everywhere and the
brain. |
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0 |
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134 |
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Where in the brain does sensory
input go to become conscious experience? The answer is, nowhere
and everywhere, but the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus
are a crucial part of the system. |
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135 |
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Consciousness (diagram) |
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1 |
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135 |
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One of the most appealing
explanations for consciousness
is the proposal that the recurrent network set up between the thalamus and the cortex is the neurology of consciousness. |
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0 |
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135 |
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The thalamus is connected to the cortex by
the intralamina nuclei,
which project long axons to all areas of the cerebral hemispheres. These areas in turn
send backprojections
to the same intralamina nuclei, and when the circuit is humming with a steady oscillation, consciousness may result. |
|
0 |
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135 |
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It is only when the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus
can synchronize the brain's neural networks that we become conscious. |
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0 |
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135 |
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When the intralaminar
nuclei of the thalamus recruit enough neuronal assemblies (gestalts),
the oscillations become ordered. They
then spread their influence, co-opting more
networks to join them, and consciousness arises and widens. |
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0 |
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136 |
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During sleep, the 40 Hz
oscillation is gone. The intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus are
"idle." |
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1 |
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136 |
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If we are knocked
unconscious, it disturbs
the electrical synchrony of the feedback loops
that maintained brain's neural circuits.
Until the intralaminar nuclei can recover and get the 40 Hz feedback going
again, the brain cannot regain consciousness. |
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0 |
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136 |
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Consciousness
is the sustained, synchronized ~40 Hz electrical
oscillation among the brain circuits. |
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0 |
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136 |
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Research has shown that it the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus
are damaged, the
person enters a deep and irreversible coma. |
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0 |
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136 |
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If the damage to the intralaminar nuclei of the
thalamus occurs in only
one hemisphere, the individual does not become
comatose, but does lose the power of awareness of
half his body. |
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136 |
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Although one entire side of the
body may be paralyzed, a patient dramatically fails to perceive this and
often rigorously denies that he is disabled in any way. |
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0 |
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142 |
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Through everyday life, certain
neuronal groups are selected to thrive while
others die owing to lack of use. |
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6 |
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142 |
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Infants
show selective attention
and preferences from birth. |
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0 |
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142 |
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Values are
the basic biases and tendencies that allow an individual to give meaning to
experiences. |
|
0 |
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142 |
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Each newborn
must create its own particular understanding of
the world. |
|
0 |
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142 |
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Each individual throughout life
continually reinforces, adds to, and sometimes changes his view of the world. |
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0 |
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142 |
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Basic unit of
the selective process is not the individual
neurons but the neuronal
group. |
|
0 |
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142 |
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There are perhaps 100 million neuronal groups in the
brain, and they range in size from 50 to 10,000
neurons. |
|
0 |
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142 |
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Neurons are
only effective in groups, working toward a single goal, such as discriminating
color or producing emotion. |
|
0 |
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By virtue of their size, neuronal groups can compensate for individual cell deaths. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Edelman's
most important concept is that of reentrant signaling. |
|
1 |
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143 |
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Reentrant signaling is the communication between maps that allows us to construct
complex perceptual concepts such as "chair." |
|
0 |
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Reentrant signaling is necessary
because, although we were born with rudimentary abilities such as detecting
color and movement, our perception of objects must be actively created. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Our ability to recognize an
object according to its value, labeled name, and meaning is not innate. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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The different
pieces of a concept
are transported back
and forth between regions
in the brain, until they resonate with each other -- sustained at the 40 Hz
oscillation -- and
lock in the idea of the concept such as "chair." |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Many maps that are created are inventoried by the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and hippocampus. These three areas
keep track of maps everywhere else in the brain. Together, they form a kind of supermap which contains multiple local maps. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Cerebellum, basal ganglia, and hippocampus create a system of interconnections for whole categories of
information, as well as patterns
of motor activity. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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End result of the complex value
system of loop-within-a-loop layers of maps is the infinite variety of each
person's thoughts and behaviors. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Your concept that
"chair-hood" in the brain is a global rather than a localized
affair. |
|
0 |
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143 |
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Each region of the brain contributes to the recognition of
a 'chair,' which explains why recognition can be
triggered by a number of different sensory elements. |
|
0 |
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144 |
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Ability to make
the leap from these different
sensory elements to the global
concept is what Cubist
painters depend on in their fractioned images. |
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1 |
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144 |
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Edelman's biological theory of consciousness seems to succeed where past models have failed. |
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0 |
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144 |
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Develop our self conceptions
through experience over time. |
|
0 |
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144 |
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Attention
is the formal director of consciousness. |
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0 |
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147 |
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Movement |
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3 |
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152 |
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In obsessive
compulsive disorder (OCD), there is a "locking" of the neural circuits from the basal ganglia up through the anterior cingulate
gyrus and the orbitofrontal
cortex. |
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5 |
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152 |
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Anterior cingulate tells the orbitofrontal cortex what it should pay attention to, while the orbitofrontal cortex itself identifies what seems to be an error in
behavior. |
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0 |
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152 |
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Typical OCDer
is a perfectionist who is interminably searching for
error. All
of these concerns have roots in the motor system of the frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the basal ganglia. |
|
0 |
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152 |
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In Tourette's
syndrome, there is a combination of obsession and
compulsions, with tics and rituals. |
|
0 |
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152 |
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Neuroscientists now think that a
key area involved with a troubling tic it is the caudate nucleus, part of the striatum, which acts like a gear shift for the attention system. |
|
0 |
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Bizarre involuntary muscle
movements of chorea. |
|
1 |
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153 |
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Tourette's disease and OCD
are related disorders. |
|
0 |
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154 |
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Brain uses
the same machinery
for many overlapping functions. |
|
1 |
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156 |
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Only an
organism that moves
from place to place requires a brain. |
|
2 |
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157 |
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While the sensory cortex, located just behind the primary motor area,
provides a significant source of input to the motor cortex, a great deal of
information about our thoughts, past experiences,
emotions, and stored
memories also floods into the motor areas, contributing meaning, depth, and complexity to our movements and actions. |
|
1 |
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158 |
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Parallel handling of motor
and cognitive functions
helps when we have trouble mastering one or the other. |
|
1 |
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158 |
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Sometimes you may have been unable to solve a problem until you
take a walk or go for a drive -- distinct motor acts governed by largely automatic
programs. |
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0 |
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158 |
|
Often times it helps to talk out loud when they come
across a complex or foreign word we don't recognize. |
|
0 |
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|
Movement Brain (diagram) |
|
1 |
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|
Motor system allows
us to shift back and forth between deliberate and automatic movements and deliberate and automatic cognition. |
|
1 |
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|
The ability to shift back and forth between deliberate and automatic movements allows us to perform
many different tasks at the same time. |
|
0 |
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|
Hierarchical organization of the motor system. |
|
0 |
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160 |
|
Shifting back and forth between deliberate and automatic functions. |
|
0 |
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160 |
|
Brain stem and spinal cord have the hardwired neuronal networks
responsible for internal
fixed actions, such as maintaining
heartbeat and reflexes. |
|
0 |
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|
Basal ganglia
and cerebellum are intermediate between the brainstem and the higher cortical areas. |
|
0 |
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160 |
|
Motor cortex
and premotor
cortex receive large amounts of information from other brain areas and send out
instructions to the musculoskeletal
system and organs. |
|
0 |
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|
Command center in the prefrontal cortex deliberates, makes choices, and sends out the signals that inhibit or excite the lower levels. |
|
0 |
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161 |
|
Flow of communications between the levels
from brainstem
to prefrontal cortex is constant and reflective, feeding back on itself as each moment
advances, so decisions and actions are as
appropriate as they can be. |
|
1 |
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|
Several brain centers work in concert to orchestrate a particular function. |
|
0 |
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|
Vision is
processed in the occipital lobe. |
|
0 |
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161 |
|
Speech is
processed in the temporal lobe. |
|
0 |
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161 |
|
Areas of the brain heavily associated with executing
particular functions are actually places where inputs converge from other brain areas, especially emotion,
cognition, memory, and
perception, before the brain
determines which actions and behaviors it will
order. |
|
0 |
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|
Coordinated sets of muscles produce a common component of many movements, such as reaching, while others would be added to provide the fine tuning necessary to make movement unique, e.g. grasping to pick up a paper clip. |
|
|
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|
Motor Homunculus (diagram) |
|
2 |
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163 |
|
Cerebellum
is Latin "little
brain." |
|
0 |
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|
Information
about body movement and position enters the cerebellum. |
|
0 |
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163 |
|
Spatial orientation and posture. The only reason you remain upright and don't fall
down because of gravity is constant monitoring by the cerebellum. |
|
0 |
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|
Cerebellum adjusts postural responses at the brain
stem,
which sends messages down the spinal cord that control muscles. |
|
0 |
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|
Cerebellum control is being accomplished all the time, without our being aware of it. |
|
0 |
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|
Motor and premotor cortex control such things as specialized
movements of the face
and limbs, particularly manipulative movements involving
the arm, hand, and fingers. |
|
0 |
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164 |
|
When we are happy we smile, and when we smile we feel happier. |
|
1 |
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164 |
|
One of the major
emerging principles in the neurology of the 1990s is the notion that the feedback between the layers or levels of the brain is bidirectional; if you activate
a lower level, you will be priming an upper level, and if you activate
a higher level, you will be priming a lower level. |
|
0 |
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|
The well-connected
motor cortex guides complex
actions
that require the coordination of several muscles. |
|
0 |
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|
Professional violin player's
brain. Playing a stringed instrument involves
considerable manual dexterity and sensory
stimulation of the fingers of the left-hand.
MRIs reveal that the neuronal region representing the digits of the left-hand of string players is substantially larger than that in other people. |
|
1 |
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165 |
|
Anterior cingulate gyrus appears to play a crucial role in
initiation, motivation and goal-directed behaviors. |
|
0 |
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|
Anterior cingulate gyrus is well connected with the amygdala and other structures of the limbic system that regulate our emotions, the fight-or-flight mechanism, and conditioned emotional
learning. |
|
0 |
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165 |
|
Anterior cingulate gyrus assesses how important something is, determines an appropriate
response,
and decides how quickly the
response will be executed. |
|
0 |
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165 |
|
New actions
are planned using
knowledge of sensory information and past experiences. |
|
0 |
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168 |
|
In Parkinson's
disease, the substantia
nigra at the base of the brain stops producing dopamine. |
|
3 |
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|
Parkinson's disease can often be checked with the drug
L-dopa. |
|
0 |
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171 |
|
Motor function takes place under the influence of attention and emotion, which have evolved to rapidly size up and respond to eminent danger. |
|
3 |
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|
Attention
and emotion are the
primary processes that our bodies and brains use in the combined effort to thrive and survive in the face of continual challenge. |
|
0 |
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171 |
|
Brains use attention to constantly survey our internal
and external
environments to determine what is important and what is not. |
|
0 |
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171 |
|
Emotion
provides a quick, general assessment of the situation that draws on powerful
internal needs and values. |
|
0 |
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171 |
|
The most fundamental attention system involves the fight-or-flight response. |
|
0 |
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171 |
|
Autonomic nervous system oversees the body's vital functions through subconscious signals that originate in the anterior cingulate and are relayed to the hypothalamus and the
spinal cord. |
|
0 |
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|
Autonomic nervous system has two
reciprocal and complementary branches: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.
These have neurons that regulate the
internal organs, such as the heart, lungs, stomach, and genitals. |
|
0 |
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172 |
|
Autonomic nervous system frees up the cortex to pursue the conscious services of sight, speech, hearing, thinking, emotion, and voluntary movement. |
|
1 |
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|
The instant
after the amygdala shouts emergency, the parasympathetic nervous system ever so briefly suppresses the heart rate, breathing, and other internal functions. It quiets all
systems so that you can
fully take in information and focus on perceiving and evaluating, and creates a bodily delay so the cortex can efficiently
access the situation. |
|
0 |
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172 |
|
Sympathetic nervous system drives up your blood pressure, pulse, and breathing,
and produces adrenaline so your muscles can spin you around and prepare you for fight or flight. |
|
0 |
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|
Hypothalamus
directs the pituitary gland, the body's master gland, which secretes hormones affecting every major gland of the body.
These systems activate the amygdala and the brainstem, triggering the sympathetic nervous system to put
the body into overdrive. |
|
0 |
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173 |
|
Some people who are prone to high anxiety and yet must do
things such as gives
speeches get help on drugs
called beta-blockers. |
|
1 |
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173 |
|
Beta-blockers
block adrenaline from pumping up in the large muscles and also acts to lower
blood pressure and
pulse. |
|
0 |
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173 |
|
Many actors say they welcome a touch of stage fright because it "puts them own
edge"
and gives their performances more passion
and energy. |
|
0 |
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174 |
|
Most incoming
sensory information is sent first to the thalamus, which then relays it to
the sensory and frontal lobes for detailed analysis and response. |
|
1 |
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|
When emotionally
charged information comes in, the thalamus sends it on a more rapid pathway to the amygdala, bypassing the upper brain's input since
there is no time to think about how to respond. |
|
0 |
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174 |
|
Amygdala
uses primitive,
general categorizations -- primary emotions -- to activate an immediate aggressive or
defensive response. |
|
0 |
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174 |
|
Specialized cortical networks in the right hemisphere and frontal lobes are responsible for secondary emotions and for modulating the more primal
emotional responses of the amygdala and the limbic system. |
|
0 |
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174 |
|
Humans and
members of other species communicate emotions primarily through facial gestures. |
|
0 |
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174 |
|
Expressions of emotion such as crying and laughing are controlled by the amygdala and brainstem. |
|
0 |
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175 |
|
When a stroke
patient is asked to smile, the person cannot move a side of the mouth. However when
told a joke, the person can laugh spontaneously. Muscles can respond to the automatic and implicitly
learned responses in the basal ganglia. |
|
1 |
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|
Brain's motor function affects so much more than just
physical motion.
It is crucial to all of the brain functions -- perception, attention,
emotion -- and so affects the highest cognitive
processes of memory,
thinking, and learning. |
|
0 |
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|
Motor activity takes place in three stages.
First we analyze the incoming external and internal data. Next we formulate and monitor a response
plan. Then we execute the plan. |
|
1 |
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|
Ability to link information from
motor, sensory, and memory association areas is crucial for thought
processing and the ability to contemplate and plan future actions. |
|
0 |
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176 |
|
Cerebellum
is very much involved with the integration of
information and the timeliness with which the information gets processed -- all crucial to thinking, learning, and memory. |
|
0 |
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176 |
|
Gauging the
oncoming traffic to
judge when you can cross the street safely. |
|
0 |
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176 |
|
Motor programs continually reorganize into sequences of motor movements that
reflect what we learn each time, to lead to a well-thought-out and successful
performance. We are always modifying and learning through movement. |
|
0 |
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176 |
|
Basal ganglia
are heavily involved in Parkinson's
disease and Huntington's
disease and are now being shown to have
significant influence on thought and memory. |
|
0 |
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176 |
|
Basal ganglia
are believed to be the gatekeepers, or controllers, of sensory
influences on cognition as well as motor control. |
|
0 |
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|
When they are not
working properly, structures of the basal ganglia fail to
appropriately shut down certain movements and
thoughts, which leads to irregular movements, tics, and obsessive-compulsive behavior. |
|
0 |
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|
Precise burning of a small spot in one of the basal ganglia, the globus pallidus, can provide relief
from some of the tremors and muscle rigidity associated with Parkinson's
disease. |
|
1 |
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177 |
|
Sequencing
is a motor activity that involves manipulating
and organizing the serial
order of information and integrating
this information with previously
learned data. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Motor function affects the highest order of
mental function:
self-awareness. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Self-awareness level of thinking is the ability
of the human cognitive process to monitor itself and reflect not only immediate
responses but on past and future potentials as well. |
|
0 |
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|
Self-awareness requires mental rehearsal,
imagery, thinking, decision-making, and voluntary actions. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Humans have
the ability to monitor and evaluate the self in a variety of mental settings based on prior experiences and the ability
to project future outcomes. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Neural basis
for self-awareness
includes cognitive action -- the human capacity for forming and manipulating imagined constructs. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Movement, memory, and learning are so closely interrelated that it is difficult to talk about one
without referring to the other. |
|
0 |
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177 |
|
Learning, like thinking, requires the ability
to sequence and manipulate information and memories in order to perform a
new task. |
|
0 |
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178 |
|
Learning, memory, and thought require the manipulation of knowledge about previously acquired knowledge. |
|
1 |
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|
Within the
first 5 or 6 hours of practicing a
new motor skill, the brain
shifts the new
instructions
from short-term memory to the area responsible for permanent
motor skills. |
|
0 |
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|
When people initially
learn a task,
the prefrontal cortex -- involved in short-term memory and many kinds of learning -- is relatively active. |
|
1 |
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179 |
|
After 5 or
6 hours,
the neural links
that form the brain's internal model of a task shift from the prefrontal region to the motor
control region. |
|
0 |
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|
Even without
intervening practice, after 5 or 6
hours the brain's
formula for a procedural
task is
virtually hardwired
into the brain. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Research studies suggest that a newly learned skill can be impaired, confused, or even lost if a person tries to learn a different motor
task
during the critical 5 to 6 hour period, when the brain is
trying to stabilize the neural representation and
retention of
the original task. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Motor development in infants, especially at the crawling stage, has been found to be crucial in the development of learning readiness. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Motor development in infants greatly impacts reading and writing skills. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Movement
provides practice handling objects and interaction that is needed for visual
development. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Studies suggest that feedback is necessary to maximize learning. The brain is exquisitely designed to operate
on feedback, both internal and external. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
Substantia nigra is critically involved in the feedback process of learning. |
|
0 |
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179 |
|
During the feedback
process, the brain is self-referencing, which allows our interactions to provide constant feedback, crucial to our ability to learn. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Extensive linkages between movement and learning. |
|
1 |
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180 |
|
Gesturing
and pantomime speed up the process of learning to talk. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Babies make
certain gestures
before they can say the corresponding words. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Relationship
between signing and vocal development. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Children who signed were found
to be significantly ahead of those who didn't in acquisition of vocabulary as
well as in cognitive and IQ test. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Signers showed high motivation
to communicate and talked earlier than non-signers. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Walking
impacts human development as it facilitates cognition,
spatial relations, communication, and social ability. |
|
0 |
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180 |
|
Normal babies begin walking between the ages of nine and seventeen months. |
|
0 |
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181 |
|
Highly intelligent social species such as wolves, bears, and dogs continue to play as adults as a way of cementing social
bonds. |
|
1 |
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182 |
|
Memory |
|
1 |
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185 |
|
We can know ourselves only
because we can remember. |
|
3 |
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185 |
|
Memory is a
central functionality
that brings together learning, understanding, and consciousness. |
|
0 |
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186 |
|
A memory is only made when it is called upon.
In its quiescent state, memory is not detectable. We cannot
separate the act of
retrieving and the memory
itself. |
|
1 |
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186 |
|
Bits and pieces of a single
memory are stored in different
networks of neurons all around the brain. |
|
0 |
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186 |
|
Formation and recall of each
memory are influenced by mood, surroundings, and gestalt at the time the memory is
formed or retrieved. |
|
0 |
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186 |
|
Memory changes
as we change over time. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
186 |
|
Each memory arises from a vast network of interconnecting pieces. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
186 |
|
A memory is a tiny bit different each time we remember it. |
|
0 |
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186 |
|
Frontal cortex is the part of the brain that organizes the bits and pieces of a memory into a temporal, logical, and
"meaningful" story. However, it must be
set in motion by the amygdala, which provides an emotional tag to a memory, a "meaning"
that helps cement the pieces. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
187 |
|
Antonio Damasio proposes "convergence
zones" that
oversee the collection of the names of objects and
animals and other zones that unite sensory information about
people, perception, and emotion. |
|
1 |
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187 |
|
Convergence zones enable us to automatically
conceive of objects, ideas, or interactions as a whole, if the pieces have been put together
enough times. |
|
0 |
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|
Damasio
also proposes that there is a hierarchy of convergence zones. Lower convergence zones link to cues that
allow us to understand the general concept of a
"face" while higher convergence zones
allow us to recognize specific faces. Linking the two are intermediate convergence zones that
differentiate details in individual faces -- nose
line, pallor, eye shape. |
|
0 |
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188 |
|
Hippocampus does not store
memories. It has been likened to an
intelligent collating machine, which filters new associations, decides what
is important and what to ignore or compress, sorts the results, and sends various
packets of information of of other parts of the brain. It is a way station that hands out the
pieces. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
188 |
|
Sleep,
associated with dreaming,
is important to human memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
189 |
|
When the brain forms concepts,
it constructs neuronal maps of its own activities. The neuronal maps categorize, discriminate,
and recombine the various brain activities needed to form ideas and emotion. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
190 |
|
We need and use certain types of
memory more than others; our brains can extend the regions response for
specific functions, even recruit new regions to help. By exercising our
brains we can strengthen our memory. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
Memory research with sea slug Aplysia that Eric Kandel of Columbia University made famous. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
Each and every new experience
causes the neuronal firing across some synapses to strengthen and others to
weaken. The pattern of change
represents an initial memory of the experience. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
Long-term potentiation (LTP) is
the cellular mechanism that causes synapses to strengthen their connections
to one another, coding an event, stimulus, or idea as a pattern of
connections. |
|
0 |
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191 |
|
LTP blazes a new trail along a
pattern of neurons, making it easier for subsequent messages to fire along
the same pattern The more the pattern
is refined, the more permanent the message -- the new learning -- becomes. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
As neurons in the chain
strengthened their bonds with one another, they began to recruit neighboring
neurons to join the effort. Each time
the activity is repeated, the bonds become a little stronger so that eventually
an entire network develops that remembers the skill, the word, the episode,
or the color. At this stage, the
subject becomes encoded as memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
Motivation can affect how
encoded a memory becomes. When there is a reward, the pieces of memory are
more strongly bonded. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
191 |
|
Adding a reward leads to having
many more neurons encode the memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
192 |
|
Once memory connections become
firmly bonded, they tend to last, but over many years they can fade. If a memory is not occasionally reused or
reinforced, the connection may weaken, disband, or die. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
192 |
|
Allan Hobson,
psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, shows that brain wave activity in the hippocampus during dreaming actually rehearses memory
patterns, either to harden
newer experiences into long-term
memories or to keep
fading connections alive. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
192 |
|
PET scans show that during REM
sleep there is communication between the amygdala, the anterior cingulate
gyrus, and the occipital lobes, structures that have long been linked to
attaching emotional significance to memories and dreams. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
193 |
|
Human brains are capable of
constantly recognizing and reorganizing relationships in everyday experience
while simultaneously comparing current flows of experience to past memories. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
193 |
|
Juxtaposition of the past and
the present is an important aspect of LTP, for although it is rapidly
induced, it is also easily disrupted by new stimuli, shifts in attention,
high brain temperature owing to illness, and neuronal electrical disturbances
such as seizures and electroconvulsive shock. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
193 |
|
Another implication of LTP is that the act of learning "exercises" the brain, giving it the stimulation it craves. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
193 |
|
A well-toned
brain often has more blood
capillaries and glial
cells, which, together, cater to the furious metabolic and nutritional needs of the brain's
neurons. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
As we all know, there is a big
difference between short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory lasts for minutes or
hours, while long-term memory lasts longer than a day. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
For certain memories, the time
in between the short-term and
long-term memories is
used to consolidate
them from less stable
to more permanent forms. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
Short term memory is also referred to as "working
memory." |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
Working memory gives continuity to what we are aware of from one moment to
the next. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
A computer is far too simplistic a device to compare to the dynamic
living organ inside one's head. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
Initial consolidation of a short-term memory occurs in only a few hours, but conversion to a long-term memory does not happen
until the information has been sent by the cortex to the hippocampus. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
194 |
|
Research suggests there is a special window of time during which
the transition from short-term to long-term memory is possible. This window is essentially the time needed
for neurons to synthesize the necessary proteins for LTP. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
Role of REM
sleep as a process for reliving
new and old
experiences so that they become more permanently etched as long-term memories. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
Remembering something in the short term uses proteins that are already present in synapses. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
To shift memory into the
long-term, new proteins that reconfigure synapses are needed. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
Synthesis of new proteins in synapses is controlled by a protein known is CREB, which is thought to act like a switch that triggers the production of new proteins. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
CREB Is
involved in developing
a tolerance to drugs, from medically prescribed
antidepressants to
illegal substances. CREB probably works with other proteins in the processes of learning. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
195 |
|
Because there is such a
staggering number of neuronal connections in the brain, the amount of parallel processing occurring at any instant is awesome. |
|
0 |
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|
Working memory
is the mental function that holds multiple connections
together as we think a
thought or perform an
act from beginning to end. |
|
1 |
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|
Working memory
is what makes us human. |
|
0 |
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|
Working memory allows us to
consider our actions now in relation to what we are going to be like in the
future, which gives us the uniquely human ability to make judgments,
anticipate consequences, and take or shirk responsibility. |
|
0 |
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|
Working memory is part of the executive function of the prefrontal cortex. |
|
0 |
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196 |
|
Inhibition
is a crucial part of learning because it prevents noise from distracting our focus on what matters. |
|
0 |
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196 |
|
Although forgetting can be frustrating, it is a
necessity -- otherwise
trivial memories would clog
our minds. |
|
0 |
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197 |
|
Memory System (diagram) |
|
1 |
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|
Problems with working
memory are crucial to many of the symptoms of ADHD. |
|
0 |
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|
Working memory can transfer information to long-term memory within 60 seconds of encoding. The memory is
quickly re-organized to minimize dependence along the fleeting
short-term memory function, and it is the subjective, interpreted
information that is later
retrieved for use. |
|
1 |
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|
We can never
describe in exact detail what was actually
presented to us. For as soon as we experience something, we immediately interpret it and
rewire it. |
|
1 |
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|
Explicit
versus Implicit
memory. |
|
0 |
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199 |
|
Human memory is distributed throughout the brain. |
|
0 |
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|
Procedural memory or skill learning is the first
memory function to
develop in the infant
brain's early stages of growth. |
|
1 |
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|
Episodic memory, which allows conscious recall of past experiences. |
|
0 |
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200 |
|
Hierarchy
and layering of memory system allows for many complex memory
functions. |
|
0 |
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200 |
|
The last
stage of the brain's
development creates the specialization of the hemispheres. |
|
0 |
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200 |
|
Explicit memory encodes factual
knowledge -- names, faces, events, things. It depends on an
initial dialogue between the hippocampus and the temporal lobe. |
|
0 |
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|
Implicit memory is responsible for the laying down of skills and
habits that, once learned, do not have to be consciously thought about, such as eating, talking, walking,
riding a bike, and the
way to go about making friends. |
|
0 |
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|
Implicit memory provides stereotyped but extremely reliable movements, and
involves the basal ganglia and cerebellum. |
|
0 |
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200 |
|
Explicit
procedural memory can become
implicit when we are able to complete a task without
referring to how we have done in the past. |
|
0 |
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|
PET scan
research has shown that the location of memory in the brain changes when explicit memory becomes implicit. |
|
1 |
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|
One important example of implicit memory is metamemory -- the ability to have knowledge of one's own memory capability. Metamemory operates
when a word is on the tip of our tongue and we know that we know it, but can't bring it to the front of our mind. |
|
0 |
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201 |
|
People who have lost significant
parts of their frontal cortex
do not have the notion of what they have forgotten. |
|
0 |
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201 |
|
Episodic memory is the capacity to place facts and events in time
and refer to them freely. |
|
0 |
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201 |
|
Episodic memory also constitutes storytelling. |
|
0 |
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202 |
|
Semantic memory is detached from personal
experience. It is cognitive rather than autobiographical. |
|
1 |
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202 |
|
Semantic facts differ from episodic facts only in that they are removed from a specific moment and place. |
|
0 |
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202 |
|
Episodic memory is by necessity far more plastic that semantic memory, but it also far less reliable and can be
distorted by all sorts of distractions, including fear, anxiety, and stress. |
|
0 |
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|
Semantic memories are often acquired by rote. |
|
0 |
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202 |
|
Language
depends largely on semantic memory. |
|
0 |
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202 |
|
In order to have a universal
system of symbolic representation, we need a system of recall for personal
knowledge -- knowledge such as the meaning of words, grammar rules and syntax. |
|
0 |
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202 |
|
Research studies suggest that
the hippocampus is critical
only for episodic
memory. People with severe amnesia due to damage to
the hippocampus can still have surprisingly good semantic memory. |
|
0 |
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203 |
|
Basic types of memory -- sensory, motor, visuospatial, and language. |
|
1 |
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|
Memories can be recalled from
any number of sensory cues. |
|
0 |
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204 |
|
Movement is a fundamental basis
of learning. |
|
1 |
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204 |
|
Without the fine motor control
we have over our vocal cords, speech would be impossible. |
|
0 |
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204 |
|
Cerebellum plays a leading role
in motor memory. |
|
0 |
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204 |
|
Patients with the lesions in the
cerebellum have difficulty judging the velocity of an object, tapping a foot
with a regular beat, and distinguishing different time intervals. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
In learning to play the piano, the main motor areas are brain regions that
control the eyes for
reading music, the ears
for listening to sounds, and the fingers for manipulating the keys. |
|
1 |
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205 |
|
For motor memories, prefrontal
cortex plans and organizes events while the basal ganglia and hippocampus act
together to store the memories for the long-term. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
Motor memory
and skill-learning are
intimately interrelated. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
People who learn to sing or play a musical instrument
benefit from greater communication between the
hemispheres. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
Playing the piano exercise is the entire brain. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
Playing the piano has a significant impact on a person's mental acuity, because the communication between the hemispheres
becomes better than that of the average person. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
Creative and artistic
individuals do indeed possess
higher levels of interhemispheric communication. |
|
0 |
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205 |
|
The creative
meanderings and patternings of the right hemisphere are not enough
for creativity; they must be joined with action or
language (motor functions) coordinated by the left hemisphere. |
|
0 |
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206 |
|
A beautiful
sonnet or painting in someone's
head must be expressed
through an understandable medium, which requires fine-motor movements. |
|
1 |
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206 |
|
Research studies have showed that training in the arts, which is in
large part rehearsal of movements, extended to good learning in
other areas. |
|
0 |
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206 |
|
Albert Einstein played the violin regularly. |
|
0 |
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206 |
|
People who hum or whistle a tune or take
a walk while they are contemplating something are using motor programs in the brain to
help them wander along in thought in search
of neuronal connections. |
|
0 |
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206 |
|
One reason motor
function and memory are so closely
linked, is that they are both coordinated by the frontal
lobe. |
|
0 |
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207 |
|
Our visuospatial
brains constantly compensate for a lack of information, mostly by making up what is needed to fill in the gaps. [Gestalts] |
|
1 |
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207 |
|
Imagery and perception have a unique interrelationship. Lesions in the left hemisphere impair the perception of small details; lesions in the right hemisphere impair global representation. |
|
0 |
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207 |
|
Language is
fundamental to the
development of sophisticated memories. |
|
0 |
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207 |
|
In the evolution
of language, our capacity for naming became possible only when the brain developed connections between the higher order motor and sensory areas
such as the Broca and Wernicke areas. |
|
0 |
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208 |
|
Confabulations -- false statements made without
any intent to deceive, and with no root in any underlying psychopathology. |
|
1 |
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208 |
|
Many people with brain damage to the frontal lobes often confabulate. Statements can be complex, ranging from subtle falsehoods to elaborately bizarre tales. |
|
0 |
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208 |
|
Stroke patients confabulate because their damaged right hemispheres can no longer detect anomalies in their lives, the most obvious
being their left arm paralysis. |
|
0 |
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209 |
|
Triggered rapid eye movement can evoke the retrieval of remote
memories, as sometimes happens during dreaming. In REM sleep, people often discover disturbing
facts about themselves. |
|
1 |
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209 |
|
In general, events that cause us
great joy or pain
are easier to recall
that of other memories. |
|
0 |
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209 |
|
Memories of dramatic or other highly emotional events remain unusually stable over time. This is
remarkable given how easily other memories
deteriorate. |
|
0 |
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210 |
|
Sensory elements of normal,
everyday experiences are easily integrated into an ongoing personal
narrative. |
|
1 |
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210 |
|
Traumatic experiences are exceptional because the individual is often unable to formulate a unified conception of the harrowing experience, yet continues to be haunted by the powerful
emotions of the
experience. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
210 |
|
When attempting to relate a
traumatic experience, the amygdala over reacts while Broca's area, crucial
for language and speech, shuts down.
As a result, the person is "struck
dumb" with each attempt to recall the
traumatic episode and is unable to express the experience in words. |
|
0 |
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211 |
|
Once the amygdala attaches emotional significance to sensory information, it's emotional evaluation is passed on
to the hippocampus, which organizes the information and integrates
it with previous
memories of similar sensory details. |
|
1 |
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211 |
|
The greater the emotional significance assigned by the amygdala, the more intently the memory is permanently recorded by the hippocampus. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
211 |
|
A traumatic
experience,
a painful memory, or a high
incidence of stress, causes the level of cortisol in the brain to rise. Cortisol, the stress hormone, works by binding to receptor sites in the hippocampus. |
|
0 |
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211 |
|
A traumatic
experience is recorded as separate and dissociated
from other life experiences. |
|
0 |
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212 |
|
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) |
|
1 |
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212 |
|
Child abuse
is a major problem in our society. |
|
0 |
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213 |
|
The repeatedly
abused child
becomes more adept at using repression to dissociate the experience from his or her conscious
awareness. |
|
1 |
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214 |
|
Flashbacks
of war veterans. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
214 |
|
Content of flashback may say more about what a person believes or fears about the past than about what actually happened. |
|
0 |
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214 |
|
Multiple personalities. Each personality came forward to deal with the external
world at a different moment in the patient's life. |
|
0 |
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217 |
|
Forgetting
in old age |
|
3 |
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217 |
|
"senior moment" |
|
0 |
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218 |
|
Almost everyone experiences some
memory loss with aging. |
|
1 |
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218 |
|
Long-term memory seems to suffer little with the aging, while working memory is very much affected. |
|
0 |
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218 |
|
What marks
Alzheimer's disease is a sudden decline in cognition. |
|
0 |
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218 |
|
Consequences of Alzheimer's disease can be severe, and include the deterioration of memory, language, and perceptual abilities. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
219 |
|
When Donald
Hebb reached 74, he noticed further changes in cognition. His vision was poorer, his balance
was less steady, and
his forgetfulness had
increased. |
|
1 |
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219 |
|
Recent developments in brain scanning techniques show that
age-related neuronal
loss is insignificant. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
219 |
|
Parts of the hippocampus atrophy as we age, and this
correlates closely with problems with explicit
memory (facts and figures, faces, and things). |
|
0 |
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219 |
|
While few
neurons are lost overall in the brain with aging, the basal forebrain, which provides the hippocampus with acetylcholine, suffers markedly. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
219 |
|
Both the young and the elderly
have an increase in hippocampal
blood flow when they recollect
a recently studied word,
but use a region of the prefrontal cortex when trying to retrieve the word later. |
|
0 |
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219 |
|
For effective
memory, the frontal lobes must work just as
well as the hippocampus. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
219 |
|
Frontal lobes
are also strongly affected by aging. Changes there include neuron atrophy as well as a
reduction in blood flow and
glucose metabolism. As the frontal lobes are the center of executive function, which
logically sequences memory organization, poor frontal
lobe functioning leads to a breakdown of temporal order and recall. |
|
0 |
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219 |
|
Aging people
often have difficulty remembering the order
and timing of events. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
219 |
|
Weakening
of synaptic connections,
sometimes referred to is long-term depression. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
Dopamine,
which acts as a chemical reward, keeps receptors on neurons open and
receptive. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
A decline in
dopamine might lead
to the degradation of synapses
and memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
As we age, our general
worldly knowledge and verbal ability do not
change at all, but the speed at which we store new information slows,
mainly after the age of 65. |
|
0 |
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220 |
|
A study of people ages 70 to 79 found that those with more education had more efficient memory function and
experienced less memory change with the passage of time. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
Years of schooling
trains people to learn
the best ways to encode
and recall memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
Mental exercising keeps memory strong by reinforcing synaptic
connections in the brain. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
220 |
|
Subliminal messages |
|
0 |
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221 |
|
In 1957 owners of a New Jersey drive-in
movie were told that they could influence movie patrons to
purchase more popcorn and Coca-Cola by flashing
short commands extremely rapidly on the movie screen. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
221 |
|
Messages
that can be registered
and incorporated into implicit memory can only be extremely simplistic. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
221 |
|
Subliminal messages have an effect because they are priming the brain to pursue a memory. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
221 |
|
Arouse the
brain's smell and taste functions. These turn on the amygdala and hypothalamus. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
222 |
|
Emotion |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
224 |
|
Information about an emotional stimulus enters the brain through the thalamus and from there follows two pathways: (1) to the cerebral cortex, where the cognitive assessment is made, or
(2) to the amygdala and hypothalamus, which direct body reactions. |
|
2 |
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225 |
|
Amygdala as
an emotional center. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
225 |
|
James Papez who
proposed in 1937 that
the thalamus divides information into two
streams -- one that
provides cognitive assessment and the other that creates physiological arousal and
physical reaction to a stimulus. |
|
0 |
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225 |
|
In the 1950s,
Paul McLean at the National
Institute of Mental Health named this visceral
brain the limbic system,
and it is still generally assumed to be the network in the brain that senses and generates emotions. |
|
0 |
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226 |
|
Most researchers agree that
there are four basic emotions -- fear, anger, sadness, and joy -- and that the other emotions are created from combinations of these four. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
226 |
|
Worry, anxiety, and stress all derived mostly from fear, with a little anger or sadness thrown in. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
226 |
|
Some researchers claim that surprise, disgust, and guilt are their own unique emotions. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
226 |
|
Research with brain
surgery patients has shown that stimulation to certain brain areas results
in complicated feelings
such as that experience when having made a social
faux pas at a cocktail party. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
226 |
|
One theory posits an inborn
"set point" for mood, which is subject to the ups and downs of life
but will inevitably return to some kind of baseline. |
|
0 |
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227 |
|
In some people, "set
points" for mood decline with age. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
227 |
|
It is important to realize that emotion is a way of communicating our most important internal states and needs. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
227 |
|
Emotional information goes directly to the amygdala and the insula, which then send directions to act to our motor systems in the brain. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
227 |
|
The limbic
system comprises the
amygdala, hippocampus, medial thalamus, nucleus accumbens, and basal forebrain, all of which connect to the anterior cingulate gyrus, which is the major gateway to the frontal cortex. |
|
0 |
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227 |
|
Limbic system
is the launching point of emotions and the emotional connector to the cognitive prefrontal cortex. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
227 |
|
All of the
limbic system is wrapped
around the system for movement. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
227 |
|
Emotions
are played out physically in the body through internal motor activity, such as a
more rapid heartbeat, and externally in such movements as a smile or a frown or a change in body posture, whether jumping for joy or sitting slumped in sadness. |
|
0 |
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228 |
|
All of the outward
behavior that results
from emotion is composed of movement. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
228 |
|
Bodily expressions, especially of the face, are the first means of emotional
communication between a baby and its mother. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
228 |
|
Social relationships depend greatly on proper body
language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
228 |
|
Facial expressions of emotion and other behaviors such as crying and laughing are implemented by neural circuits
in the brain. These responses are hard-wired into the brain. They are present or appear soon after birth without any training. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
228 |
|
From an evolutionary
perspective, emotion is the
result of behavior that has been repeated over and over through the
generations, such as escaping from danger,
finding food, and
mating. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
228 |
|
Primitive movement such as goosebumps, snarling, erection of body hair, flashing of feathers, and
biting are all intimately connected with emotion. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
229 |
|
Basic functions such as happiness and sadness are separate functions, and
they represent opposite patterns of activity in the hemispheres of the brain. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
229 |
|
Increased activity on the right
side of the brain
often signals depression, while activity on the left side often indicates happiness, euphoria, and even mania. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
230 |
|
People with more general activity in the left hemisphere have a more positive mood, while people with more activity in the right hemisphere have a more negative one. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
230 |
|
Research has shown that infants are born within an innate predisposition toward a more active left or right
brain, meaning a happier or sadder
temperament. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
230 |
|
Neural processes that underlie "worry" may reside in the right hemisphere. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
232 |
|
Fear is a universal emotion. |
|
2 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
232 |
|
Amygdala
serves to alert the animal to dangerous, novel, and interesting situations and to direct its response. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
232 |
|
Regularly overresponding to life's minor troubles can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, migraines, and ulcers. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
232 |
|
Malfunctions
of the fear system are
shown in disorders such as panic and phobias. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
232 |
|
Once we
learn to be afraid of something, our brains become programmed to remember that stimulus, so it's hard to get rid of our conditioned fears. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
A loud,
sudden noise will elicit a startle response from most people,
since this type of noise is often associated with
danger. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
When a stimulus like a loud noise is repeatedly paired with a dangerous situation, some people will develop an overactive
startle response. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
War veterans and victims of abuse startle easily and often. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
People who startle
easily suffer from physical
ailments more frequently than the general
population and have an increased incidence of cancer, which is associated with lowered immune response and raised levels of cortisol. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
A victim of early child abuse was afraid of everything, from new
situations to her own shadow. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
The most poignant example of PTSD is seen in women who have been raped and cannot allow themselves to enjoy sex again. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
A. woman
who has been raped is often indelibly programmed to be vigilant and fearful. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
Amygdala is
the area of the brain most involved in fear. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
Stimuli have a
direct pathway through the sensory filter of the thalamus to the amygdala, which can then mobilize the body to its brainstem connections. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
Amygdala is
immediately triggered
and you react before recognizing the threat. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
233 |
|
A slower
pathway for fear, where the information about a
fearful stimulus goes from the thalamus to the frontal cortex and then to the amygdala. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
234 |
|
Two pathways of
stimuli to the amygdala can be seen as a low road and a high road of responses to
danger. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
234 |
|
Path straight through the thalamic
projection to the amygdala (the low road) is rough and crude but fast. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
234 |
|
Pathway
using the cortex (the
high road) gives a
more accurate assessment
and can be expected to lead to a more considered
response, but it takes longer. |
|
0 |
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Context is
a collection of many stimuli and is dependent on accurate memory
of situations. |
|
0 |
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|
Hippocampus
is the brain area responsible for assessing the context
of situations. |
|
1 |
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|
Hippocampus
receives processed information from the cortex that has already been associated
with the context of
the situation and the fearful stimulus, bringing
the whole picture into perspective. |
|
0 |
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|
Contextual conditioning can be used in reverse to treat panic disorders and phobias such as fear of snakes, dogs, heights. |
|
0 |
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|
Panic disorders and phobias can be treated with a technique called "flooding,"
a step-by-step process of gradually experiencing
more and more of the fearful stimulus so that the
patient can learn that snakes or dogs or heights are not invariably
dangerous. |
|
0 |
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|
Emotions
are sustained by varied systems throughout the body. |
|
0 |
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|
Person fearful
of heights stops swaying at the sight of the ground far below. The off-balance feeling subsides. |
|
0 |
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|
"Flooding" treatment for panic
disorders and phobias is straight cognitive behavioral training. |
|
0 |
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|
Lesser cousins of fear are worry
and anxiety. |
|
1 |
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|
Anxiety disorders plague a significant portion of the population and reflect
some of our most human concerns. |
|
0 |
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|
Serotonin
is the brain's brake and policemen; it prevents the brain from getting out of
control from fear and worry. |
|
0 |
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|
Serotonin
has a calming effect
that helps us to assure ourselves that we are going
to survive and to elevate
our mood and self-esteem. |
|
0 |
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|
Anxiety is not all bad. A little healthy
anxiety leads to a greater ability to survive in
our constantly changing world. |
|
0 |
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236 |
|
The second universal emotion is anger. |
|
0 |
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236 |
|
One out of five people
experience attacks of rage
that they report they cannot control. |
|
0 |
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236 |
|
Aggression
is an important part of the natural world.
Violent combat between
males before mating. Mothers also engage in aggression to protect
their children from predators. |
|
0 |
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|
Human anger
is closely connected to the fierce defense of territory, mate, and self that many
animals display. |
|
0 |
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|
All social
animals must control their anger and aggression. |
|
0 |
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237 |
|
The most important thing to
learn about anger is when and how to use it and control it. |
|
1 |
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238 |
|
Verbalizing aggressive thoughts
and feelings is the best antidote
to violence. |
|
1 |
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238 |
|
Very low or very high levels of serotonin in the brain can contribute to aggression. |
|
0 |
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|
Some clinicians have of
successfully treated anger and aggression with SSRIs (selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors) such
as Prozac that make more serotonin available in the
brains of people whose natural levels are low. |
|
0 |
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|
Some research had shown that high levels of testosterone and increase aggression. |
|
0 |
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239 |
|
Although sadness may appear to be a much more subdued primary emotion than
fear or anger, it ranges just as widely, from mild melancholy to uncontrollable crying. |
|
1 |
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|
Sadness
seems to be related to an increase in activity in the left amygdala and the right frontal cortex, together with a decrease in
activity in the right
amygdala and the left
frontal cortex. |
|
0 |
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239 |
|
Prolonged sadness can result in sustained
overactivity in the amygdala and frontal lobe. |
|
0 |
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239 |
|
Sadness can
slip into depression,
which is characterized by emotional numbness rather than an intense feeling. |
|
0 |
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239 |
|
Depression
that is accompanied by anxiety can cause a person to become feverishly
active, even suicidal. |
|
0 |
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239 |
|
Classical depression, typified by a person sitting
motionless in a chair with no intention of getting out. |
|
0 |
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241 |
|
Depression
may be characterized by feelings of despair,
guilt, helplessness, and
hopelessness. |
|
2 |
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241 |
|
Depression
affects 3 to 5% of the
population at any given time, and about 20% of people will experience major
depression and their lifetimes. |
|
0 |
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241 |
|
Depression
is less genetically based than any other mental illness, and is the one most dependent on environmental factors. |
|
0 |
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241 |
|
PET scans
of the brains of clinically depressed individuals can open up new treatment options by identifying subtypes of
depression and differences
in responses to medication. |
|
0 |
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241 |
|
PET scans
have shown that people with below normal glucose
metabolism in the front
tip of the cingulate gyrus do not react
positively to antidepressant drug therapy. |
|
0 |
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241 |
|
Traditional approach to treating depression -- talk therapy. |
|
0 |
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242 |
|
Last resort
for people who did not respond to talk therapy or antidepressant drugs has been electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT) -- shock treatments. |
|
1 |
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242 |
|
In ECT, electrodes are placed on the scalp and a strong electric current is sent
through the scalp to the brain. To be
effective, the current must be strong enough to trigger a seizure. |
|
0 |
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242 |
|
Because ECT succeeds in a majority of cases, some 50,000 people a year turn to it. |
|
0 |
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242 |
|
Typical ECT regimen is three shocks a week for several
weeks. To prevent pain and injury during
each seizure, patients are put under general anesthesia. |
|
0 |
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242 |
|
At the end
of the ECT cycle, patients can suffer confusion and memory loss, some of which may be irreversible, and their mood may improve for only three to
six months. |
|
0 |
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242 |
|
A new technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS), appears to have many
of the advantages of ECT without nasty side
effects. A coil of magnets placed against the patient's scalp sets up a magnetic field inside
the brain.
This technique can target a specific region of the brain, notably the left prefrontal
cortex,where activity
is often lower than normal and depressed people. |
|
0 |
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243 |
|
Neurotransmitters and endorphins play an important role in the perception
of pleasure. |
|
1 |
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243 |
|
Dopamine is
a key factor in pleasure -- each of the pleasure centers uses dopamine as a transmitter. |
|
0 |
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243 |
|
Pleasure is
often muted in people
who are taking conventional antipsychotic drugs, which block the dopamine receptors. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
243 |
|
Antipsychotic drugs are used to stop hallucinations and delusions,
but often produce a state of joylessness and a lack of motivation and drive. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
243 |
|
Drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines work in the brain by
increasing dopamine levels. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
243 |
|
A lack of internal rewards leads a person
to self medicate with
substances or with behavior that is rewarding. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
243 |
|
Different neurotransmitters systems cascade upon one another in the reward mechanism of the human brain; perhaps the
most important interaction is that of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, a group
of neurons that have a special relationship to
reward and motivation. |
|
|
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244 |
|
Nucleus accumbens is located just beneath the front
of the striatum, a
part of the basal ganglia which is involved in movement and
cognition. |
|
|
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244 |
|
In a study of the addictive effect of nicotine, rats were injected with
nicotine directly into the brain, resulting in increases
of dopamine and
activity in the nucleus accumbens. |
|
|
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244 |
|
Nucleus accumbens of the brain behaves similarly
when cocaine, amphetamine, or morphine is administered. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
244 |
|
Difference between the actions
in the outer shell of the nucleus accumbens and its inner core. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
244 |
|
Outer shell
of the nucleus accumbens seems to be most involved in emotion,
motivation, and
addiction. |
|
|
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244 |
|
Outer shell
of the nucleus accumbens has direct connections to the limbic
system and is part of
the extended amygdala,
which serves as a link between the midbrain and the forebrain. |
|
|
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244 |
|
Nucleus accumbens is important for learning, in part because it tags
information with a signal
of intensity that tells the rest of the brain to pay attention. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
244 |
|
Understanding
dopamine receptor subtypes could improve treatment for disorders ranging
from alcoholism and drug abuse to gambling and sex and food
addictions. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
244 |
|
One of the most intriguing
emotions is love. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
244 |
|
One researcher distinguishes three distinctly different physiological and emotional
categories of love -- lust,
attraction, and
attachment. |
|
|
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245 |
|
Lust
evolved to get you out looking. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Attraction
evolved to make focus and expend your energy on one specific individual. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Attachment
evolved so you would stay with one individual and raise your offspring once mating was accomplished. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Lust is
associated primarily with estrogen and androgens. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Attraction
is associated with elation and a craving for emotional union, which may be linked to the monoamines such as serotonin. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Long-term attachment behavior is evidenced by close body contact, separation
anxiety, and a sense
of calm, security, and peace with a partner. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Emotion is
not one system in the brain but multiple systems that tie together workings of the brain and the body. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Physical sensations of emotional love are linked to increased quantities of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain's pleasure centers, as well
as other chemicals such as oxytocin, endorphins, and phenylethylamine (PEA), known as the "love
drug." |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Brain chemicals associated with emotional love are the ones long associated with various states of euphoria and in particular with the
ecstasy caused by
drugs such as cocaine
and amphetamines, as
well as the high that long-distance runners report experiencing. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Chemical compounds in chocolate act like nicotine, causing the release of dopamine in the pleasure centers. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
Pleasure stimuli elicit a small squirt of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in the pleasure centers. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
245 |
|
One of the most
joyous of emotions is
laughter. |
|
|
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245 |
|
Sometimes we laugh just because someone else is laughing. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
246 |
|
Laughter is "contagious." |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
247 |
|
Motivation
is a process that ties emotion to action. |
|
|
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247 |
|
Motivation
is the pressure to act. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
247 |
|
Because motivation is at the heart of all goal
directed behavior, many levels of the brain are
involved. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Ability to emotionally
label certain stimuli
or situations is the center of motivation. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Cingulate gyrus is the main
link between motivation and emotion. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Cingulate gyrus has the appropriate sensory inputs to receive processed visual, auditory, and olfactory information and also receives inputs that reflect the internal states of the body. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Cingulate gyrus has outputs to the basal ganglia for motor reaction and to the brainstem for physiological arousal. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Cingulate gyrus also has connections to the hippocampus, important for memory. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
With all of its connections, cingulate gyrus is able to assess motivational aspects of the
environment and compare
them with memory in
order to give the incoming stimuli different motivational priorities. |
|
|
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248 |
|
Cingulate gyrus and its connections provides a person with the ability to judge what is worth pursuing. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
Several subcircuits are also
involved in motivation. Structures of the limbic system, thalamus, and basal ganglia interact to perform different parts of the whole task of perceiving, assessing, and communicating motivational influences in the environment. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
248 |
|
The several circuits and
subcircuits of cingulate gyrus, limbic system, thalamus,
basal ganglia, and perhaps others, hold various motivations in working memory and compare conflicting goals. Ultimately, this leads to choice, inhibition, and the seeking of reward. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
249 |
|
One disorder of the motivation system is apathy. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
250 |
|
High doses of dopamine are usually needed to help patients suffering from apathy. |
|
|
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
252 |
|
Language |
|
|
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253 |
|
Ability to use
language not just to communicate but to plan and direct future action is
at the core of humanity. |
|
1 |
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253 |
|
Language
improves and refines our thoughts, allowing us to
remove ourselves from the present, to symbolically hold objects in
our minds and manipulate them into different
potential sequences before taking action. |
|
0 |
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253 |
|
Language is
acquired with so little effort. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
253 |
|
44 distinct basic sounds
(phonemes) that can be arranged into an infinite number
of combinations. |
|
0 |
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253 |
|
Language functions are distributed throughout the
brain, and the locations can vary significantly from one person to the next. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
254 |
|
Silent articulation of speech -- our conversations and instructions to ourselves -- is what
links thought, language, and action. |
|
1 |
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254 |
|
Executive function of the prefrontal cortex is where we consider and plan. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
257 |
|
Chimps communicate with each other in the wild using approximately 36 sounds. Each of these sounds has one
meaning and is not
combined or linked
with others to create a new message. It is the same
36 messages over and over again. |
|
3 |
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257 |
|
Homo sapiens
use phonemes linked
together in different combinations to form words. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
257 |
|
By the time we graduate from high school we know 45,000 to 60,000 words, and all
are combined and recombined into phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
257 |
|
Specific combinations of sounds build words, phrases, and sentences. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
257 |
|
It is the set
of rules that we use to link the meaningless phoneme sounds -- our grammar and syntax -- that allows us to expressed and understand
new ideas. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
258 |
|
Prosody,
the distinctly human ability to modulate the voice, adding emphasis and emotional
tones that help convey
meaning. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
258 |
|
Humans did
not simply evolve a larger brain, an expanded memory, a lexicon, or special
speech apparatus; we evolve new systems for representing reality. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
258 |
|
Three million years ago the anatomy of our animal
ancestor's voice tracts started
to assume the modern form that gives us the motor movements necessary to form
the sounds in our speech. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
258 |
|
Earliest homo
sapiens appeared 100,000
to 200,000 years ago, and there is a general
consensus that the fast-paced
symbolic language we use in our speech today has only been in
continual use for some 50,000 years. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
258 |
|
Universality of language in all human cultures and its consistency in structure and acquisition timeline in childhood. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
259 |
|
Regions of the brain that control sequenced hand
movement and speech
rely on the same mechanisms. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
260 |
|
Important to devise ways to warn
about danger, share knowledge and desires, and formalized rules to ensure
peaceful coexistence. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
260 |
|
With the advent of writing and reading 5000 to 6000 years ago, thoughts and memories became much easier to share, preserve,
and build upon, which greatly increased the collective power of humans. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
260 |
|
Modern culture is tied to memory devices such as books and television. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
261 |
|
Extensive memory is required for success in using symbolic
communication. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
261 |
|
In 1959, linguist Noam Chomsky at MIT revolutionized the study of language by providing evidence
that language
acquisition is a biological process, not a
learnable body of external knowledge. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
261 |
|
Children
raised under all sorts of conditions by all sorts of parents master complex rules of grammar at a very young age. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
261 |
|
Chomsky
concluded that infants
are born with a built-in propensity for handling the basic rules of
language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
"Universal grammar" embedded in each child's brain,
which specializes for the particular language by which the child is raised. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
Chomsky's theory has dominated
research over the last four decades. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
Chomsky proposes that the "language
acquisition device" is present at birth -- a
genetic ability of the brain distinct from other cognitive
functions -- and that environmental
input is necessary to
trigger it so that we can subsequently learn the
words and grammar of a specific
language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
Strong evidence for genetic language ability comes
from the observation that children who are not
exposed to any speech will invent their own language, which
is complex in syntax and meaning. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
Deaf children
who are not exposed to sign language manage to
communicate complex thoughts by inventing their own system of signaling. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
262 |
|
Critical period for language acquisition. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Genetic underpinning for language acquisition. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Eight-month-old babies can
recognize whether they have heard specific phonemes linked together in a
particular order |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Eight-month-old babies can detect clear patterns in the sounds of language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Babies are
able to use the statistical information in word
sounds to learn where
one word ends and another
begins. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Babies also
use other cues to tell
what is a word and what isn't, including pauses and changes in pitch, stress, and rhythm. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
263 |
|
Babies can pick out words by thinking like little statisticians,
speedily detecting clear patterns in the sounds of language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Very young humans learn so much about their world so quickly. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Months before infants begin to produce words, they can very rapidly learn which sounds are likely to go together to form words. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Whether our brains are prewired for language or not, the timeline of language
development in children is incredibly consistent across
cultures. This is the strongest evidence we have
that there is some sort of language acquisition device, or innate capacity to learn language,
present in every human brain at birth. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
The language
development process actually starts before birth when neural
connections are made from the speech a fetus hears while in the womb. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Newborns prefer listening to speech in their own
language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Babies are responsive to mom's voice; almost immediately after birth, they orient toward it as opposed to
other voices. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
264 |
|
Humans may
have evolved to ensure
a child's learning of language, as well as emotional bonding between parent and child. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Earliest communications may be purely emotional with no
literal meaning -- right
hemisphere, which develops
first, is stronger at interpreting the melodic tones of baby talk that mothers and fathers use when holding newborns. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Music is recognized by brain circuits that
are similar to those
that recognize language. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Music centers,
like language centers,
are distributed throughout the brain. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Left hemisphere usually contains most of the specialized language areas. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Most of the specialized
music areas are in
the right hemisphere. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Much of what determines whether incoming sound is considered to be music relates to the emotional content of the sound. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
Babbling
helps babies tune up their brains, directing them
to produce the sounds
that they need for speech and to learn how to move
the muscles, tongue, and voice apparatus
effortlessly to make the sounds appropriately. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
265 |
|
By the time infants are six
months old they group phonemes in all
sorts of combinations, and about ten months they group phonemes to form syllables that only correspond to the language
of their environment. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
266 |
|
At a year to a year-and-a-half, babies begin using words and again to form short phrases. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
266 |
|
Third-year children progressively increase sentence
length and complexity
of syntax by adding word
endings that represent past,
present, future, singular and plural. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
266 |
|
English kids learn the irregular verbs of their language quickly and effortlessly, while
German and French kids who learn English later struggle. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
266 |
|
German and French kids
almost never have trouble with the constant switching of gender for nouns,
while late learners of
these languages always find it confusing. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
267 |
|
Broca's area
in the frontal lobe of the hemispheres houses language
production. |
|
1 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
267 |
|
Wernicke's area in the left posterior temporal
lobe houses language
comprehension. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
267 |
|
A bundle of
connecting fibers integrate Broca's area and Wernicke's area. |
|
0 |
Ratey; User's Guide to Brain |
267 |
|
Speech production and comprehension are not independent systems. |
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"Mirror neurons" -- same neurons are used to speak and hear
the same words.
Neurons that fire when we throw a ball as well as when we catch it. |
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Researchers have pinpointed sites in the cortex that control aspects of language as narrow as the naming of living things. |
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Different centers of the cortex for regular and irregular verbs. |
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Specialized
cortical areas are not
the same in all persons. |
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Parallel activation of many small areas throughout the cortex. |
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Thinking
the word "cat" (silent naming) activates the motor speech areas. |
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Combination of brain
regions used to process language. |
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Brain region map is generally consistent among
people, yet can vary. |
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Constant interaction of movements and emotions in everyday
conversation, since the patterns of our muscle movements
help us encode certain words. |
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We often used hand gestures when explaining ideas. |
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We mouth
words to ourselves when learning
to read or when we come
across a particularly difficult passage of text. |
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Physical movement helps cement the learning. |
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Gesturing and speech are closely bound. They are acquired together in childhood and break down together in aphasia. |
|
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Supplementary motor area, a region of the frontal cortex, is responsible for initiating and
planning complex movements and is crucial to language. |
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Complex sequences of movements of the face, tongue, and larynx require fine motor selection. |
|
0 |
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Left frontal speech
area that is part of
the supplementary motor area. |
|
0 |
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|
Supplementary motor area is activated when we need to recall
a word without an external cue of an object
or a picture. |
|
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|
When we recall
months of the year, motor areas become active. |
|
0 |
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|
Studies have linked language production with complex motor skills, indicating that the two functions
share neural networks. |
|
1 |
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|
Aphasia is
often accompanied by difficulties in complex
movement sequencing (apraxia). |
|
0 |
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Insula, an
area beneath the frontal and temporal lobes, could be the common sequencing site that binds together language and movement. |
|
0 |
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|
Facilitation by music at the phonemic ("sounding out") stage of
learning to read. |
|
1 |
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|
Brain's emotional circuits may help language too. |
|
0 |
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|
Human language lets us understand and convey not only the literal meanings of words but rich emotion, from a bitter report to a gleeful exclamation. |
|
0 |
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|
Emotional language seems to be an independent system outside the Sylvian region. |
|
0 |
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|
Some researchers have
linked emotion in
language to distinct
brain areas in the cingulate gyrus of the limbic system, right above the corpus callosum. |
|
0 |
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|
Many victims of strokes in the left Sylvian region lose almost all language
abilities, yet retain emotional
speech. They may not
be able to talk at all, but can shout swear words. |
|
0 |
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|
Older emotional
structures of the cingulate
gyrus may be our main connection to primate vocalizations. |
|
0 |
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|
Our crying,
laughing, and
shouting use the same
brain structure, the cingulate, as a monkey's warning call when it spots a predator. |
|
0 |
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|
Emotional part of language, or emotional prosody provides the melody of speech, variations in emphasis, pitch, and timing, as well as cues to the beginnings
and endings of phrases. |
|
0 |
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|
Ability to comprehend the emotional aspects of language or speak with feeling can be impaired without affecting
the comprehension of
the literal meaning of words. |
|
0 |
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|
Only humans have brains in which there are two hemispheres that differ significantly in function and structure, and language is our most lateralized function. |
|
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|
Language
resides predominantly in the left hemisphere in 90%
of the population. About 5% have their made language areas in the right
hemisphere, and another 5% split language fairly evenly between hemispheres. |
|
0 |
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|
There must be a genetic inclination for left hemisphere dominance, but the right hemisphere also has the neural mechanisms necessary to
support normal language. |
|
0 |
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|
After strokes that damage the right hemisphere, language usually remains
intact, but strokes to the left hemisphere often cause language difficulties
or loss.
This is true for all forms of language, from sign
language to oriental
pictographs. |
|
0 |
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|
Try this lateralization
test. Repeat a passage of poetry while
you simultaneously tap a finger on a table. It is significantly more
difficult to tap the finger of your right hand then your left. Movement of the right
finger is controlled by the left hemisphere and competes with neurons for the language areas. |
|
0 |
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|
Linguistically ambidextrous. |
|
0 |
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|
Despite the asymmetry
of language, more connections
between the hemispheres via the corpus callosum may result in better language functions. |
|
0 |
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|
Women have more connections between the
hemispheres via the corpus
callosum than men and have higher verbal IQs. |
|
0 |
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|
After a left
hemisphere stroke, women are less
likely to suffer a severe impairment in language skills. |
|
1 |
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|
Language disabilities such as stuttering are more common in the minority of
people whose language areas are more equally split between
hemispheres, perhaps indicating difficulties in coordination. |
|
0 |
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275 |
|
Only about
20% of left-handers show right-brain dominance. |
|
0 |
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|
Right hemisphere determines the emotional state of speakers from
their tone, and also
is responsible for allowing us to understand metaphor
and humor. |
|
0 |
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|
Right hemisphere appreciates the whole picture and can thus see when you switch
sense of meaning, which is the basis for most humor. |
|
0 |
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|
After a
right hemisphere stroke, patients can still communicate quite well, but they often lose prosody and can only interpret language literally. |
|
0 |
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|
After a right
hemisphere stroke, patients have difficulty using
and understanding figures of speech, tones of
voice, humor, and
expressions of feeling. |
|
0 |
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|
Right hemisphere activates not just in prosody, but also when a sentence is complex in structure,
indicating that it may provide extra support in demanding situations. |
|
0 |
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275 |
|
Comprehension of sign language
increases activity in parts of both the left and right hemispheres. |
|
0 |
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|
Regions within the left half of
the brain control facial expressions according to linguistic content. |
|
0 |
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276 |
|
Brain can coordinate the action
of its many processing circuits to produce an integrated response to stimuli. |
|
1 |
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276 |
|
Sign language
gives us greater insight into how languages organize in the brain. |
|
0 |
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276 |
|
Left hemisphere is dominant both sign language. |
|
0 |
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276 |
|
PET studies on deaf signers show
that inner speech or self-talk occurs in the left anterior cortex, just as in
hearing individuals. |
|
0 |
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276 |
|
Left hemisphere houses language, including sign language. |
|
0 |
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|
In most
people there is a genetic
basis that pre-wires the language function in the left hemisphere but the right hemisphere makes a
good substitute if the brain is altered at an early age. |
|
1 |
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|
Limited language impact of
removing the left hemisphere of the brain in young children. |
|
0 |
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277 |
|
Brain's plasticity allows neural connections to rewire after damage and provide
for some recovery of function. |
|
0 |
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277 |
|
Great variability among individuals in the location
of language functions. |
|
0 |
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277 |
|
By six
months in the womb the fetus is already beginning
to group together sounds in terms of phonemes it
hears in its mother's
speech. |
|
0 |
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277 |
|
As early as six months after
birth, the brain loses its sensitivity to phonemes that are not part of the
language the infant hears every day. |
|
0 |
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277 |
|
If brain
damage occurs before
the age of two, the brain
can reorganize extensively, creating
language areas in different regions. |
|
0 |
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278 |
|
We lose
flexibility in forming new
language connections by age
7 or so. |
|
1 |
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278 |
|
People who grow up bilingual from birth store their native and second languages in the same area. |
|
0 |
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|
Neurosurgeons
navigate carefully around the brain's language sensitive areas to avoid
impairing a patient's ability to speak. |
|
0 |
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278 |
|
Before six months of age,
infants of all nationalities can distinguish among the sounds used in all the
languages of the world. |
|
0 |
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|
As phoneme
categories are formed,
infant's brains select for the ones that they
hear, and those that are not heard are lost forever. |
|
0 |
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278 |
|
Infants can hear subtle
differences between sounds that adults perceived as identical. |
|
0 |
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278 |
|
Humans
learn to deal with
variations in how speakers pronounce sounds. |
|
0 |
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278 |
|
Environmental input will have less and less effect on reshaping language connections after a child's age of six or so. |
|
0 |
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|
Social Brain |
|
12 |
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315 |
|
Social Brain (diagram) |
|
25 |
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336 |
|
Four Theaters |
|
21 |
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341 |
|
Four Theaters of the Brain |
|
5 |
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356 |
|
Care and Feeding |
|
15 |
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|
Cerebellum
has connections to many parts of the brain involved in
attention and is
intimately involved with the higher functions, setting the timing and rhythm and other aspects of language, memory, and emotion. |
|
|
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|
In addition to its role in motor control and balance, research
has shown that the cerebellum is important as a mediator in
cognition. |
|
|
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305 |
|
Coordinating associations and
attention is essential to entering into a relationship with another human
being. |
|
|
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305 |
|
Graceful social interaction depends on being able to pay
attention to another person and to one's own
internal states. |
|
|
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305 |
|
Stroke victims with cerebellum damage struggle for the rest of their lives with simple physical
maneuvers like walking up and down stairs. |
|
|
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305 |
|
Instead of being able to automatically put their feet down
in the right place on a stairstep, stroke victims with cerebellar
damage have to consciously think about where to put their feet. |
|
|
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305 |
|
Autistic patients and cerebellum stroke victims find it harder to shift their attention quickly from
one thing to another. |
|
|
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306 |
|
People with autism and those with cerebellum damage are slower to pick up on and react to new
stimuli in the environment, making it harder for
them to manage social interactions, which are characterized by constantly changing stimuli. |
|
|
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|
Like putting our feet where we
want them without having to think about it, our ability to put our attention
where we want it without having to think about it is coordinated by the
cerebellum. |
|
|
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|
Autopsies on autistic
persons show that almost all had cerebellum malformations and that
there was significant loss of Purkinje neurons, which provide the only pathway for information leaving the
cerebellum. |
|
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