| Question | Answer |
| Corpus Callosum | communication/connection point of the hemispheres made up of nerve fibers |
| Longitudinal Fissure | deep groove that divides L & R hemispheres |
| Left Half of Brain | - language
- logic |
| Right Half of Brain | - perception
- spatial
- intuition
- holistic/synthesis
- cognitive language |
| Frontal Lobe | - precentral gyrus (voluntary movement)
- premotor and supplementary motor areas (receive info to integrate, refine, plan & program)
- executive functioning |
| Broca's Area | - motor speech programming
- non-fluent aphasia |
| Parietal Lobe | - post central gyrus (sensory strip)
- R hemisphere associated with decision making, emotion, and feelings with emphasis on social & personal domain
- Supramarginal gyrus (written language) & reading comprehension |
| Temporal Lobe | Herschl's gyrus (primary auditory cortex aka meaning of sound)
Wernicke's area (auditory association & comprehension) |
| Occipital Lobe | - primary visual cortex and visual association areas
- visual perception area and possible reading comprehension deficits |
| Limbic Lobe | - motivationally driven behaviours
- emotional behaviours
- memory
- homeostatic responses
- sexual behaviour
- flight or fight |
| Subcortical Structures | - basal ganglia
- cerebellum
- brainstem |
| Basal Ganglia | - controls and stabilizes motor functioning
- interprets sensory info to guide motor functions |
| Cerebellum | - R & L hemisphere connected by vermis
- speech control via muscle activity |
| Brainstem | - medulla & pons contain nuclei for CN for speech production |
| Midbrain | - waystation for auditory and visual nervous system
- produces dopamine (aids in muscle control and muscle tone) |
| Thalamus | - relay station for sensory info |
| Hypothalamus | - emotional behaviour, regulation of body temp, hunger, sexual & sleeping behaviour |
| Angiography | - evaluate the blood flow and integrity of the blood vessels |
| CT | - measures transmission through tissue
- quick and inexpensive
- view of gross brain structures
- reflects density through tissue |
| MRI | - detailed image of soft tissue, ligaments, organs
- no radiation
- best for ischemic strokes |
| Components of Blood Supply | - plasma (liquid)
- solids: red corpuscles, white corpuscles, platelets |
| External Carotids | - supply face |
| Internal Carotids | - divide into anterior and middle cerebral arteries |
| Anterior Cerebral Artery (ACA) | - supplies the superior and anterior frontal lobes, corpus callosum, medial surfaces of the hemispheres, and portions of the subcortical areas |
| Middle Cerebral Artery (MCA) | - most of the lateral surfaces of the hemispheres and portions of the subcortical areas |
| Basilar Artery | - created by the 2 vertebral arteries joining
- divides into 2 posterior cerebral arteries
- branches supply the spinal cord, medulla, pons, midbrain, cerebellum |
| Posterior Cerebral Arteries | - supplies the inferior lateral surface of the temporal lobe
- lateral and medial surfaces of the occipital lobe |
| 2 Essential Nutrients Transported in Blood | - glucose
- oxygen |
| Anastomosis | - protective feature allowing collateral circulation of blood in case one channel of blood flow becomes blocked |
| Blockage of Flow to the R & L Anterior Cerebral Arteries | - affects functioning of prefrontal cortex
- executive functioning
- decision-making
- planning
- self-monitoring
- social appropriateness
- contralateral motor control and strength of lower body |
| Blockage of Flow to the L & R Middle Cerebral Arteries | - affect speech-language functions
- reading and writing
- contralateral deficits in motor control and strength of the upper body
- spatial relations difficulties and vision issues |
| Blockage of Flow to the L & R Posterior Cerebral Arteries | - visual acuity and visual attention problems
- reading problems
- sensory integration deficit (visual recognition and interpretation) |
| Hemispheric Specialization | - the notion that each side of the brain houses specialized abilities in most people |
| Intrahemispheric Specialization | - the notion that specific structures within each hemisphere are associated with specific abilities |
| Neuroplasticity | - the ability of the nervous system to change and adapt to internal or external influences |
| Spontaneous Recovery | - the natural pattern of improvement in functioning after a brain injury |
| Chronological Age | an index of how long a person has lived since birth |
| Biological Age | an index of the functioning of one's bodily organs over time |
| Cognitive Age | an index of how one's intelligence, memory, and learning abilities change over time |
| Psychological age | an index of how one's personality changes over time |
| Social age | an index of aging according to one's social roles and according to changes in one's environment over time |
| Biopsychosocial Models of Aging | - emphasize the complex interactions among biological, psychological, and sociological factors that influence how people age
- sense of identity
- accepted by WHO models of disability and health |
| Post-formal Operational Stage | reasoning becomes more flexible and meaningfully connected to life experiences |
| Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development | - adults highly individualized abilities to choose, adapt to, and pursue life changes and opportunities
- self-regulatory skills
- motivation to address concerns (ie. compensating for challenges or dismissing as normal aging) |
| Healthy/Aging Well | - function
- resilience
- engagement
- dignity
- autonomy
- minimizing disease
- a life full of meaning, engagement with others, learning and resiliences through hardships |
| Aging Population Rising | - increased life expectancy
- decreased fertility
- improved longevity
- decreased infant mortality |
| Stereotypical Aspects of Dysfunction with Aging | cognitive, linguistic, and motor abilities |
| REAL Aspects of Dysfunction with Aging | - genetic predisposition
- poor nutrition
- glucose fluctuation
- lack of exercise
- low social engagement
- illness
- stress
- environmental contamination |
| Cognitive-Communicative Challenges | - neuronal shrinkage & reduced dendritic branching (decreased brain volume)
- atrophy (frontal lobes and hippocampus
- reduction in neurotransmitters
- decreased white matter (frontal lobes)
- accumulation of amyloid beta or amyloid plaques |
| Reserve Capacity | supports ability to perform in ways that are typically not tested or demonstrated |
| Positive Aspects of Aging | - ongoing storage of semantic, episodic, and procedural memories
- ability to integrate & reflect on thematic elements of stored long-term memories
- clearer balance of basic drives
- synapse specialization (wisdom) |
| Procedural Memory | how to accomplish a specific task |
| Autobiographical Memory | important aspects about one's life |
| Episodic Memory | personal experiences |
| Source Memory | how and where one acquired knowledge or where/when it took place |
| Short-Term Memory | recent events |
| Age-Related Threat | implicit/explicit belief that one will fail because they are old |
| Preservation of Language | - overall general health and wellbeing
- SES
- higher education level |
| Elderspeak | adaptation of language because of a persons age
- includes prosody, lexical choice, and pragmatic aspects |
| Word Finding (Age) | - tip-of-tongue experiences
- slower confrontational naming
- less accurate
- reduced verbal fluency
- challenges at the phonological level |
| Syntactic Processing (Age) | - challenges with understanding long & complex sentences increases with age (attributed to decline in working memory) |
| Reading and Writing (Age) | - mirror skills of listening and speaking
- changes in sensory and motor deficits could impact |
| Pragmatics (Age) | - is not directly impacted by age
- priorities and interests evolve across life stages |
| Guidelines for Determining Typical VS Atypical Aging | - great variability in "normal"
- based on prior history |
| Primary Aging | normal |
| Secondary Aging | impairment-based |
| 3 Aspects of Discourse | - emotional regulation
- personal discourse goals
- nature of specific discourse tasks
- disfluencies with speech |
| Discourse Coherence | - the ability to tie together elements of a story and maintain thematic content
- declines with age
- considers previous abilities, education, level, vocab, interest, degree of motivation |
| Resource Capacity Theories | attribute cognitive and linguistic deficits to a reduction in overall cognitive abilities |
| Working Memory Theories | aging implications are based on evidence that working memory capacity declines with age, especially in older age |
| Context-Processing Deficiency Theory | as we get older, we have increasing difficulty judging and taking into account the context of cognitive or linguistic tasks and thus adjusting to context |
| Signal Degradation Theories | impacted by the decline in processing of visual and auditory information |
| Transmission Deficit Theories | declines are due to reduced efficiency of neuronal transmission |
| Speed-of-Processing Theories/General Slowing Hypothesis | the notion that our cognitive processing at all levels slows as we age
- especially relevant to the processing of auditory linguistic input, which is intricately time-bound |
| Inhibition Theories/Inhibitory Deficit Theories | based on the rationale that older people have greater challenges than younger people with inhibiting irrelevant information and focusing attention to a particular task in the face of multiple competing stimuli or task requirements |
| PET Scan | - can detect metabolic changes associated with progression of neurodegenerative diseases
- displays differences in regions of the brain activated during specific types of tasks |
| Angiography | helps determine the extent of vascular problems within the cerebral blood vessels
- identifies aneurysms, arteriovenous malformation, and tumours within the vascular system |
| EEG/Electroencephalography | study of electrical potential differences between two or more points of the skull |
| Eye Tracking | entails monitoring of the location and duration of eye fixations as people look at real world-scenes, objects, or computer-projected still images and videos |
| Pupillometry | the measurement of pupillary diameter |
| Sensorimotor Tracking | entails having a person engage in a sensorimotor task wile engaging in a cognitive or linguistic task |
| Perisylvian Region | structural components of the brain are clustered around this area in the language-dominant hemisphere |
| Achromatopsia/Dyschromatopsia | problems with colour perception |
| Visual Attention Deficits | problems with being aware of information that is actually registered in the brain (not sensory deficits) |
| Visual Integration Deficits | problems making sense of visual information that is physically seen and attended to |
| Ocular Motor Deficits | problems adjusting the shape of the lens, problems with pupillary dilation, problems with achieving visual reflexes, and problems moving the eye within the socket |
| Binocular | both eyes jointly |
| Monocular | one eye |
| Calcarine Fissure | a prominent sulcus seen on the medial surface of each hemisphere of the brain |
| Cataracts | the accumulation of fibrous proteins on the lens |
| Hypermetropia | reduced near visual activity |
| Myopia | far visual acuity |
| Scotoma | a lesion within a specific set of fibers within the optic nerve on one side
- blindness within the visual field for only that eye |
| Hemianopsia | half of the visual field is affected |
| Homonymous Hemianopsia | a lesion of the optic tract (after the fibers have passed through the optic chasm) on the left side of the brain |
| Lesion on the Optic Nerve | may result in partial or complete blindness in one eye |
| Apperceptive Agnosia | the inability to recognize an object |
| Associative Agnosia | failure to associate meaning to what is seen |
| Prosopagnosia | an impairment in the ability to recognize faces |
| Optic Aphasia | an impairment in naming an object presented visually, despite being able to describe the object |
| Visuoconstructive Deficits | problems with being able to process two-or three- dimensional relationships in space |
| Auditory Agnosia | a challenge with recognizing or interpreting sounds |
| Retina | the inside layer of the eyeball |
| Rod | - photorecepter
- important for low-light and peripheral vision |
| Cone | - photoreceptor
- important for bright light and responsible for central discriminative vision and color detection |
| Sclera | - the outer coating of the eye ball |
| Optic Nerve | - cranial never II |
| Optic Chiasm | the x-shaped structure housing the optic nerve fibers at the base of the brain |
| Visual Field | refers to the entire space from which we take in visual information as we look forward |
