PSYCH 2NF3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Neurodegeneration, Frontal Lobe, Face Perception
13 Jan 2020
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Lecture 19
The Hippocampus — Cont’d
Alzheimer’s disease — brain has less brain tissue (neurodegenerative disease)
irreversible + destroys brain cells
deteriorates the persons ability to think clearly
not a normal part of aging (in natural aging)
Canada has an increasing population of aging so it’s a concern
symptoms (vary from person to person)
decline in behaviour’s (that has anything to do with memory)
eg. visual/spatial, impaired judgement, impaired reasoning
early stages of Alzheimers
mild Alzheimers — disease progresses
greater memory loss + other cognitive difficulties
give patients a logic based scenario (test)
problems include wandering/getting lost in an area that was once familiar
to you
trouble handling money/paying bills (logic)
repeating questions
taking longer to complete normal daily task
personality/behaviour changes
most people diagnosed in this stage
moderate Alzheimer’s disease
memory loss + confusion gets worse
problems recognizing family + friends
unable to learn new things, carry out multistep tasks such as getting
dressed
people may have hallucinations + delusions + paranoia + behave
impulsively
delusions + paranoia usually have to do with the frontal lobe
severe Alzheimer’s disease
plaques + tangles spreads throughout the brain (basically like a scab of
jumbled up tissue)
brain tissue shrinks significantly
patient’s cannot communicate properly and completely dependent on
others
near the end, the patient may be in bed all the time as the body shuts
down
brain decreases in volume, this has an impact on the rest of the body
diagnosing Alzheimer’s
age is a risk factor
medication today is effective, it can slow down the progression of the disease
the brain imaging is usually used when patients have severe Alzheimers
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Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS)
gives us information regarding biological motion
relevant to a species, helps us distinguish between species
allows us to guess other’s intentions for example social cognition/theory of
mind
activated in most species that have to do with any form of social interactions
animals have some type of STS
data suggests that cells in the STS are maximally sensitive to primate bodies
that are moving in a particular direction
