PSYC 2800 Chapter 6: Chapter 6 summary.docx

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2800
• Professor: Amanda Helleman

Document Summary

Originally studied the brain through dissection of the brain in dead people or animals with brain injuries. Then began to study brains physiological processes and electrical activity (eeg). New technologies are allowing us to image the brain"s activity of awake subjects in non-invasive ways. One such approach to look at brain development in infants is called the near-infrared spectroscopy (nirs), which gathers light transmitted through cortical tissue to image blood-oxygen consumption. Allows us to measure oxygen consumption in select regions of cortex, even in 3 month olds. Infants wear a cap with nirs apparatus and watch videos of mobile objects or fixed checkerboard. Both videos stimulate regions in occipital and temporal lobes but only mobile stimulates specific region in temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex. So occipital probably involved in all visual processing (stationary or mobile) and infants as young as 3 months can distinguish between different types of stimuli. Previously thought that prefrontal cortex wasn"t active until 6 months.