345: Human Neuropsychology

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345 Human Neuropsychology

• Professor Patricia Reuter-Lorenz
• GSIs
• David Fencsik
• Joseph Mikels

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• BASIC GOALs
• How does brain mediate cognition?
• Develop models of cognition
• Relate structures to functions

Behavior/Cognition
Computation
Neuroscience
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Cognitive Neuroscience

• BASIC GOALs
• How does brain mediate cognition?
• Develop models of cognition
• Relate structures to functions

Behavior/Cognition

• cognitive models

• Neuropsychology
• Electrophysiology
• Brain Imaging
• Animal Electrophys.

Computation
Neuroscience

• neural system models

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Why Study the Brain to Understand Normal
Cognition?

• Learn about mental life (cognition) by studying
  its seat
• The mind is what the brain does!
• Learn about how a thing works by studying
• how its built
• how it functions
• how it breaks down
• Constraints
• disprove theories of cognition
• guide new ones

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Cognitive Neuroscience and Converging Methods

• Traditional Neuropsychology
• Studies of focal brain damage or degenerative
  disease
• Behavioral studies of neurologically intact
  humans (e.g., visual and auditory laterality
  studies )
• Human Electrophysiology
• Electroencephalography
• Event Related Potentials
• Neuroimaging
• Positron Emission Tomography
• Functional MRI

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Historical Roots in 19th Century Phrenology

• Brain is the organ of mind
• composite of parts, with specific faculties
• Area size indicates strength of faculty
• Size evident in skull (bumps, prominences,
  depressions)
• Gall and Spurzheim

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Traits include

• love for one's offspring
• cleverness, know-how
• vanity, love of glory
• memory for people
• memory of things facts
• sense of color, pictorial talent
• Love of God and religion

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• Opposition to Phrenology
• Anti-localizationists brain functions as an
  indivisible unit (e.g. Flourens)
• Anti-materialists mental/spiritual faculties are
  not of organic matter
• Important Issues Underscored
• How to define a faculty?
• What is localized?
• Which anatomical map?

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Mid-late 19th century

• Paul Brocas Tan (1861)
• speech loss not due to paralysis
• "loss of memory of movements needed to pronounce
  words"
• 3rd frontal convolution in LEFT Hemisphere
• Carl Wernicke (1874)
• cases of lost speech comprehension
• localized to temporal lobe of Left Hemisphere.

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Implications of Broca's and Wernicke's discoveries

• Localization of higher mental functions
• Shift towards "physiologically" real functions
  (motor vs. sensory)
• Notion of Cerebral dominance

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• In any well-made machine one is ignorant of the
  working of most of the parts -- the better they
  work the less we are conscious of them... it is
  only a fault which draws our attention to the
  existence of a mechanism at all.
• Kenneth Craik, The Nature of Explanation (1943)

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Mental Life is Seamless...

• Analysis of Cognitive Deficit is like a PRISM
• revealing the components of mental life that
  would be otherwise invisible
• just as a prism reveals the spectrum of
  wavelengths comprising white light

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Aims of Experimental Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Explain patterns of impaired and intact
  performance in terms of normal cognitive
  psychology
• Use cognitive theories to explain dysfunction
• Use cognitive/experimental methods to analyze
  effects of damage
• Understand normal cognition by studying the
  effects of brain damage
• Identify the subsystems and special purpose
  modules that control normal cognition

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Cognitive neuropsychology methods link mental
processes to brain structures

• Step 1 Identify structural dysfunction
• Diffuse disease/degeneration (Alzheimers
  Disease Parkinsons)
• - Identify spared vs. impaired neural systems
• Focal lesion analysis in humans
• - Structural imaging (CT or MRI scans) localize
  damage

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Cognitive neuropsychology methods link mental
processes to brain structures

• Step 2 Identify impaired vs. spared functions
• Use cognitive/experimental methods to analyze
  cognitive consequences of damage
• Use cognitive theories to explain patterns of
  impaired and intact performance
• Identify the subsystems and special purpose
  modules that control normal cognition

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Aims of Clinical Neuropsychology

• diagnosis of deficit
• acute treatment and rehabilitation
• long-term management

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Discussion Sections Meet this week

• NOTE ROOMS!!
• 002 W DIS W 4-6PM B247E H
• 003 W DIS W 4-6PM B242 E H
• 004 W DIS F 10-12 B247 E H
• 005 W DIS F 10-12 B261 E H

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Syllabus highlights

• http//www.umich.edu/psycours/345
• Requirements and Grading
• One 2-hour lecture and one 2-hour discussion
  period per week.
• Exams 72 of grade is based on 2 quizzes and 2
  exams.
• Quizzes, in-class, worth 12 each.
• midterm final exam each worth 24 covering the
  material from the preceding half of the course.
• Discussion Sections Participation in discussion
  sections and performance on discussion section
  assignments contributes 28 of your final grade.
  
• Missed Exams Feedback
• Texts
• Cognitive Neuroscience The Biology of the Mind
  by M.S, Gazzaniga, R.B. Ivry, G.R. Mangun
  (Norton, 1998).
• Fractured Minds by Jenni A. Ogden (Oxford, 1996)

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Lecture Topics and Readings

• WEEK /DATE Topic Reading (Cognitive
  Neuroscience)
• 1 1/5 Overview /History of Neuropsychology
  Ch. 1
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• 2 1/12 Human Neuroanatomy Methods for
  Localizing Ch. 2 3
• Cognitive Functions
• 3 1/19 Maps in the Brain Ch. 3 4
• 4 1/26 Disorders of Perception Ch. 4
• 5 2/2 Quiz 1
• Object processing and its dysfunction I Ch.
  5
• 6 2/9 Object processing and its dysfunction
  II Ch. 5
• 7 2/16 Visual Attention and its deficits I Ch.
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• 8 2/23 Visual Attention and its deficits II Ch.
  6
• MIDTERM EXAM W 2/23 800- 1000 PM Location
  TBA
• SPRING BREAK Feb26-MAR. 5

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• 9 3/8 The Split-Brain Syndrome Ch. 9
• 10 3/15 Hemispheric Asymmetry in the Normal
  Brain Ch. 9
• 11 3/22 The Neurological Basis of Language
  Ch. 8
• 12 3/29 Quiz 2
• Functions of the Frontal Lobes I Ch. 11
• 13 4/5 Functions of the Frontal Lobes II Ch.
  11
• 14 4/12 Memory and its dysfunction Ch. 7
• FINAL EXAM W 4/19 TBA PM Location
  TBA