Frontal Lobe

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Frontal Lobe Language
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Phineas Gage

• Phineas Gage was foreman of a dynamite crew
  working for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad
  in New England when a tapping iron, more than a
  meter in length and weighing 6 kg. shot through
  the left side of his head when a spark ignited
  the dynamite. Recovered in weeks but according to
  friends "Gage was no longer Gage." childlike,
  impulsive, given to profanity and drinking. He
  was fired, worked in a livery stable. then to
  South America to establish a coach line. Returned
  8 years later, dying of epilepsy. He carried the
  tamping iron with him all those years.

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Orbitofrontal cortex

• Orbitofrontal cortex inhibits hypothalamus, the
  area responsible for basic appetitive behaviors
  such as feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating.

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• 1890 - Friederich Golz calms dogs by cutting
  their brains.
• 1935 - Following demonstration by Jacobson and
  Fulton that frontal lobe mutilation produced a
  "calming effect" in monkeys, Antonio Egaz Moniz
  cut the frontal lobes of 20 of his psychiatric
  patients and reported a similar "calming" effect.
• 1936 - Walter Freeman and James Watts introduce a
  surgical technique for frontal lobe lobotomy into
  the U.S.A. Early 'technique' involved drilling
  burrholes, later Freeman developed his famous
  transorbital approach pushing literally an
  icepick into the brain via the eye sockets.
• 1942 - The icepick lobotomy has spread worldwide
  and by now approximately 5000 people are
  lobotomised each year during the 1940's!
• 1949 - Egaz Moniz wins nobel prize for his
  lobotomy techniques.

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Neural Darwinism growth selection (or
exuberance and elimination)
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• Gray matter maturation myelination doesnt
  finish in frontal lobe until 30 y or so
• Adults use frontal lobe to recognize emotions
  teens use amygdala

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• Right DLF mentalizing deception

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Frontal Lobe Functions

• Environmental Control of Behavior
• Difficulties using cues from the environment to
  direct, control, or change personal behavior.
• Impaired ability to inhibit responses, leading to
  perseveration.
• Breaking rules and taking risks (e.g. gambling)
  not following task instructions
• Temporal Memory Impairment 
• Short-term memory impairment
• Judgments about recency
• Impaired Interpersonal Behaviors Social Sexual
  
• Social sexual behavior inappropriate or altered
  from previous forms
• Pseudodepression Pseudopsychopathy

• Motor Function Disturbances
• Loss of fine movement
• Loss of speed and strength in hand limb
  movement
• Poor programming of movements
• Poor voluntary eye gaze
• Broca's aphasia
• Loss of Divergent Thinking
• Frontal lobe damage shows a loss of divergent
  thinking in various forms (multiple correct
  answers).
• Loss of spontaneous behavior, e.g., speaking
  verbal fluency, graphic designs doodling,
  overall behavioral output (lethargy, initiation
  of daily routines
• Impaired strategy formation planning,
  especially in response to novel situations

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• Personality change
• Environmental dependency
• Mood disorders
• OCD

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• Poor organizational strategies
• Poor memory search strategies
• Stimulus-bound behavior/environmental dependency
• Impaired set shifting and maintenance

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Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

• Response inhibition - perseveration failures

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Tower of Hanoi
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NAME INK COLORS

• GLP
• XTPD
• RSLGT
• ZMQ
• WXFG
• HLBG

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NAME INK COLORS

• MAPLE
• BAR
• HORSE
• CHILD
• CLOUD
• FORK

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NAME INK COLORS

• GLP
• XTPD
• RSLGT
• ZMQ
• SPR
• HLBG
• OSLGT
• ZQX
• RTRE
• YYP
• WXFG

ROSLG GWL SLPD RSLGT OMQ FGYT JBB RSLGT XLL LLFG T
LG
WXFG GLP RMS MQL XTPD RSLGT TTG HBG UJU LGT ZQP
XLL ROLG GWL SLPD RGR ZMQ FGYT JUQ ELGT LLFG TLG
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NAME INK COLORS

• RED
• GREEN
• BLUE
• BLUE
• RED
• BROWN
• GREEN
• RED
• GREEN
• BLUE
• BROWN

RED GREEN BLUE GREEN BROWN RED BLUE GREEN RED GREE
N BROWN
BLUE RED RED BLUE BROWN GREEN RED BLUE GREEN RED B
ROWN
RED BLUE GREEN BLUE BROWN RED GREEN BLUE RED GREEN
BROWN
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Stroop Task

• Reading is overlearned, difficult to stop
• Meaning of color word competes with ink name when
  incongruent ink-word correspondence
• Ability to Inhibit Automatic Processes

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Frontal Lobe Functions

• Frontal areas modulate and control motor
  function, emotion, attention and other cognitive
  activity.
• Impairments can be considered specific deficits
  of control.
• Cognitive Impairment
• IQ is unaffected, however subtle cognitive
  impairments remain.

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• Impaired Abstract Reasoning and Hypothesis
  testing
• failure to maintain goal-directed behavior.
• inability to perform abstract reasoning (requires
  complex associations between semantic elements,
  identifying super-ordinate categories
• failure to generalize experiences into rules or
  general principles
• Mental flexibility (set shifting problems) and
  distractibility
• Disturbance of Behavior and Personality
• lack of originality and creativity
• inappropriate emotions and behavior, with little
  awareness of it
• difficulty initiating behavior or stopping when
  started (perseveration).
• Language Impairment
• Low verbal production, little initiation of
  conversation, sometimes to mutism.

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• Impairment of Social Behavior
• deficits in maintaining appropriate social
  responses. (even minor deviations in social
  behavior are noticeable).
• generating appropriate behavioral options in
  social situations and choosing the best
  alternative. Often base behavior on concrete
  simple motivations and cannot comprehend more
  complex or abstract reasons for acting.
• Confabulation and Reduplication Syndrome
• tend to fabricate quick, impulsive answers to
  questions.
• reduplication. Claims current environment (e.g.,
  hospital) is actually another place.
• Impairment of Motor Function
• Problems with highly controlled, volitional
  components of motor control.
• perseveration, incoordination, motor
  impersistence and hypokinesia as well as
  ideomotor apraxia. Worse for opposite
  extremities.
• Impairment of Reflexes
• inhibition of fundamental reflexes such as grasp
  and sucking. Patient will grasp when palm
  stroked. Patient cannot release object even when
  told to attend to the hand. Or patient compelled
  to suck on an object placed in his/her lips.

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Understanding Language

• Speech Origins phylogeny, ontogeny
  (glottogenesis)
• Language Acquisition Failures autism, deaf of
  hearing parents, feral/neglected, phonological
  and syntactical problems
• Language Loss aphasias, hemispherectomy, split
  brain
• Normal development individual differences,
  bilingualism
• Cultural differences
• Its use and creation

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What is Language?

• Unique to humans or not
• Continuity vs discontinuity theories
• Nature of language
• What constitutes language?
• Essential features

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Hocketts Design Features

• Semanticity -- Specific signals can be matched
  with specific meanings.

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Hocketts Design Features

• Arbitrariness -- No necessary connection between
  the form of the signal and the thing being
  referred to. No resemblance of elements.
  (Onomatopoeic words are not entirely arbitrary.)

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Hocketts Design Features

• Discreteness -- Basic units of speech (such as
  sounds) belongs to distinct categories. No
  gradual, continuous shading from one to another
  in the linguistic system. Speakers perceive
  either a p or a b, but not as blend, even if
  waveform falls somewhere between the two.

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Hocketts Design Features

• Displacement -- Speaker can talk about things
  which are not present, spatially or temporally.

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Hocketts Design Features

• Productivity -- Human languages allow speakers to
  create novel, never-before-heard utterances that
  others can understand.

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Hocketts Design Features

• Traditional Transmission -- Individual is not
  born knowing their entire communication system
  (not entirely hard-wired) but must learn much
  about it to use it.

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Hocketts Design Features

• Duality of patterning -- Discrete parts of a
  language can be recombined, reordered to create
  new forms.

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Aphasia

• Loss or impairment of language comprehension or
  production

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Aphasias
Brocasnonfluentcompr okrep poor Wernickesfluentcompr poorrep poor conductionfluentcompr okrep poor
anomicfluentcompr okrep ok transcortical sensorynonfluentcompr poorrep poor transcortical motornonfluentcompr okrep ok
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Spontaneous Speech

• Fluent versus nonfluent
• Paraphasias
• Word finding difficulties
• Articulation
• Effort
• Prosody

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Auditory Comprehension

• Single words
• Phrases
• Whole body commands
• Syntax

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• Repetition
• Single words
• Phrases
• Reading
• Single words
• Phrases
• Token test

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Non-fluent Aphasias

• Brocas aphasia
• Global aphasia
• Transcortical motor aphasia
• Mixed transcortical aphasia

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Fluent Aphasias

• Wernickes aphasia
• Anomic Aphasia
• Conduction aphasia
• Transcortical sensory aphasia

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• Conduction Aphasia
• Fluent speech
• Good comprehension
• Poor repetition
• Poor naming
• Possibly lesion in arcuate fasciculus or its
  connections in inferior parietal lobule

• Wernickes Aphasia
• Fluent speech
• Poor comprehension
• Poor repetition
• Poor naming
• Posterior superior temporal lobe lesion (first
  temporal gyrus)

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• Brocas Aphasia
• Non-fluent speech
• Good comprehension
• Poor repetition
• Poor naming
• Posterior inferior frontal lesion

• Global Aphasia
• Non-fluent speech
• Poor comprehension
• Poor repetition
• Poor naming
• Lesion involves frontal, temporal and parietal
  lobes, Including Brocas and Wernickes area

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• Transcortical Sensory Aphasia
• Fluent speech
• Poor comprehension
• Good repetition
• Poor naming
• Lesion in posterior temporo-parietooccipital
  junction while sparing Wernickes area

• Transcortical Motor Aphasia
• Non-fluent speech
• Good comprehension
• Good repetition
• Poor naming
• Lesion involves frontal lobe but spares Brocas
  area

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• Mixed Transcortical Aphasia
• Non-fluent speech
• Poor comprehension
• Good repetition
• Poor naming
• Anterior and posterior association cortex lesions
  while sparing perisylvian language region

• Anomic Aphasia
• Fluent speech
• Good comprehension
• Good repetition
• Poor naming
• Temporal or temporo-parietal lesion

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The Hierarchy of Language

• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Prosody
• Paralinguistics
• Pragmatics

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Phonology

• Sound pattern of language, including basic
  elements (phonemes) and rules of combination
• Analogous to graphemes p vs /p/
• 45 or so English phonemes
• Infants can identify all 60 human phonemes until
  age 8 months

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Morphology

• Structure of words and rules for building words
  out of elements
• Morpheme smallest unit of meaning
• Free vs bound morphemes
• Lexicon our knowledge of words word formation
  rules

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Syntax

• Structure of sentences and rules for building
  propositions from words
• Role of order in changing meaning

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Semantics

• Meaning at level of words, phrases, sentences

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Prosody

• Alter sounds within phonemic category to change
  meaning of message stress, elongate

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Paralinguistics

• Non-linguistic sounds, movements, gestures that
  augment flow of language (body language, vocal
  qualifiers, intonation)

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Pragmatics

• Rules for how literal meaning is altered by
  social context

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