| What is the holistic theory? | all parts of the brain were involved in the processing of thought and action |
| What is localisation of function? | different parts of the brain perform different tasks and are involved with different parts of the body |
| How does Phineas Gage support this? | The part of the brain that was damaged in the accident was the area in the frontal cortex associated with planning, reasoning and control - Gage’s personality changed from him being mild-mannered to rude and hostile. |
| What does the right and left side of the brain control? | Left: controls activity on the right hand side of the body. Right: controls activity on the left hand side of the body |
| What is the cerebral cortext? | The cerebral cortex is the outer later of both hemispheres. |
| What is the frontal cortext? | At the back of the frontal lobe (in both hemispheres) is the motor area which controls voluntary movement in the opposite side of the body.
Damage to this area of the brain may result in a loss of control over fine movements. |
| What is the somatosensory area in the parietal lobe? | The somatosensory area is where sensory information from the skin is represented. The amount of somatosensory area devoted to a particular body part denotes its sensitivity, i.e. receptors for our face and hands occupy over half the somatosensory area.
Separated from both parietal lobes by the 'central sulcus' |
| What is the temporal lobe? | The temporal lobes house the auditory area, which analyses speech-based information. |
| What happens when there is damage in the temporal lobe? | Damage may produce partial hearing loss.
Damage to a specific area of the temporal lobe - Wernicke’s area may affect the ability to comprehend language |
| What is the occipital lobe? | Visual area: Each eye sends information from the right visual field to the left visual cortex and from the left visual field to the right visual cortex. |
| Where is the Broca's area and what does it do? | Left frontal lobe
Speech production - damage caues Broca's aphais, charactersied by speech that is slow, laborious, lack fluency |
| Where is the Wernickle area and what does it do ? | Left temporal lobe
Language comprehension - damage = Wernickle's aphasia, speech which is fluent but meaningless, nonsense words part of their content of speech |
| A strength of the localisation theory? | -Support from neurosurgery
-Used to treatmental disorders eg: cingulotomy involves isolating the cingulate gyrus becuase dysfunction in this area may be the cause of OCD
-Dougherty et al studied 44 ppl wiht OCD who had cingulotomy. Follow up, 30% met the criteria for successful resposne and 14% for a partial response
-Success of each producedures strongly suggests that behaviours associted with serious mentla disorders may be localised. |
| A strength of localisation theory? | -There is brain scan evidence to support it
-Perteren et al studied brain scans to show activity in Wernickle's area during listening taks and Broca's area during a reading task.
-Also, study for LTM by Tulving et al revealed semantic and episodic memories are located in different parts of the prefrontal cortex
-Now exists a number of sophisticated and objective methods of measuring activity in the bain, providing sound, scientific evidence of localisation of function |
| A weakness of localisation theory? | -Language localisation model has bene questioning
-Dick and Tremblay found that very few researchers still believe that language is only in the Broca's and Wernickle's area
-Advanced technologies including fMRI have identified regions of the right hemisphere and thalamus
-Suggest that, rather than being confided to a few key areas, language may be organised more holistically which contrast the localisation theory |
| A weakness of localisation theory? | -Some supporting evidence comes from case studies
-Unique cases of neurological damage support localisation theory eg: Phinea Gage who lost some of his brain in an explosion and his personality changed
-However, there is difficulty to make meaningful generlisations based on a single individual and conclusions may depend on the subjective interpretation of the researcher.
-Suggests that some evidnece supporting localisation may lack validity, oversimplyfiying brain process and undermining the theory |
