PSY BEH 11A Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Commissurotomy, Parallel Computing, Clonazepam
28 Sep 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Uses chemicals & electricity to do computation. Epileptic focus = exact point of malfunction. Brain has 2 hemispheres (left & right) 2 hemispheres communicate through connecting cable called corpus callosum. Corpus callosum is band of about 225 million axons. Hemispheres of women are slightly more connected than in men. Surgery called commissurotomy & involved cutting the corpus callosum. In 1962 (some earlier) performed serious surgery. Suppose epileptic focus is on one side of the brain -> electrical activity cannot get to other hemisphere of the brain if corpus callosum cut. Could lessen the severity of the seizures. Prevent the electrical storm from taking over the entire brain. Wanted to confine the storm to one hemisphere of the brain. In some cases patients had no seizures for rest of their lives or if they did have them they were less severe. Parts of the brain malfunction, sending random electrical activity through brain. Those signals get sent throughout entire network of brain.
