Term
| Role of dopamine in disorders |
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Definition
o effects the brain processes that control movement, emotional responses, and the ability to experience pleasure and pain.
o Regulation and Control: Neurons containing dopamine are clustered in the midbrain and in an area called the substantia nigra.
o The transporter that codes Dopamine’s regulation is simply called dopamine transporter. This transporter, if inactivated, may result in individuals developing schizophrenia, Parkinson's and tardive dyskinesia, or drug addiction. |
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Term
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Definition
• There is a deficiency of dopamine in the prefrontal lobes, with sensitivity of DA receptors in the striatal and nucleus accumbens regions resulting in disinhibition of some cortical regions
• Changes in striatal regions produce motor and vocal tics
• Subcortical disinhibition produces the characteristics of “frontal lobe syndrome” (KNOW FRONTAL LOBE SYNDROME)
• Medications that stimulate DA receptors (Ritalin) increase TS symptoms |
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Term
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Definition
A pattern of signs and symptoms associated with damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, typically including general impairment of planning functions, and either boastfulness, lack of inhibition, hypomanic episodes, impulsiveness, and antisocial behavior, or depression, apathy, negligence about personal appearance, and perseveration (aka “dysexecutive syndrome”)
Subcortical disinhibition produces the characteristics of “frontal lobe syndrome” |
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Term
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Definition
• When there is too little dopamine in the prefrontal regions, subcortical regions are disinhibited – this increases hyperactivity and irritability
• Stimulants facilitate prefrontal dopamine, which inhibits subcortical regions and returns activity and behavior back to normal levels
• suggested that frontal lobe syndrome, resulting from imbalance of dopamine in prefrontal lobes, accounts for many of the symptoms of ADHD |
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Term
| Neuropsychological correlates of childhood depression |
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Definition
• Associated with higher frequency of neurological soft signs
• Some evidence of right hemispheric involvement, with antidepressants improving performance on tasks sensitive to frontal and right hemisphere functioning
• EEG studies conflicting regarding relationship between depression and hemispheric abnormality
bilateral reduction of cerebral activity
• Overall intellectual functioning depressed, as well as attention span and memory |
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Term
| Neuropsychological correlates of anxiety disorders, including brain regions |
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Definition
• Possible genetic basis
• Elevated blood pressure and heart rate related to anxiety arousal
• Evidence for increased arousal in limbic system of anxious children
• Neuroimaging has found increased metabolic rates for glucose, especially bilaterally in the left orbital gyrus and caudate nucleus (in OCD patients) |
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Term
| Characteristics of positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia |
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Definition
• Positive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and formal thought disorder
• Negative symptoms refer to absence or decrease of behaviors, such as social withdrawal, loss of drive, poverty of speech, and flattening of affect
• Heritability seems greatest for negative symptoms |
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Term
| Neuroimaging findings in schizophrenia |
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Definition
• Evidence of increased ventricular size and a widening of the cortical sulci in CT studies
• MRIs studies have shown decreased volume of the temporal lobes, reduced brain weight, reduction in volume of medial temporal lobe structures, and bilateral reduction in volume of hippocampus
• Reduced cortical gray matter and hypometabolism of part of frontal lobes and basal ganglia
• Decreased brain activity in schizophrenia subjects
reduced volume of gray matter in brain |
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Term
| Characteristics of damage to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex |
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Definition
o Adopt perspective of others
o Cooperation and trust
o Mood/major depressive disorder
o Risky decision making
o Reaching moral decisions
o Undue perseveration, problem gambling
o Development of schizophremia |
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Term
| Behavioral results of white matter aberrations |
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Definition
children correlated with failure to develop early social skills such as eye gaze cuing and joint attention
• Abnormal myelin formation may alter the timing of neural connectivity |
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Term
| Effects of stress on the brain and role of cortisol |
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Definition
• Children who are abused, neglected or deprived of emotional warmth and a give-and-take exchange from loving caregiver may not develop an appropriate emotional foundation for higher-level social skills via white matter connectivity
• Early stressful experiences can alter brain chemistry through the atypical release of cortisol
• Cortisol is important stress hormone whose release activates body’s “fight or flight” system
elevated cortisol levels can actually destroy brain cells and alter crucial cortico-limbic circuits involved in processing social/ emotional experiences
• Lower levels of cortisol linked to antisocial behavior |
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Definition
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Definition
| threat appraisal, ascribing emotional valence to stimuli |
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Definition
| emotional learning and memory |
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Definition
| positive emotions, anticipation of reward |
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Term
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Definition
| self-regulation of behavior |
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Term
| ventromedial prefrontal cortex |
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Definition
| response inhibition, theory of mind, emotional regulation |
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Term
| dorsolateral prefrontal cortex |
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Definition
| modulates positive emotions (happiness, euphoria) |
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Term
| three components of empathy |
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Definition
o Affective Sharing – the ability to share and fully experience the emotional experiences of another through shared sensory perception.
o Self-Other Awareness - a clear and distinct representation between the thoughts, actions, and feelings of another with the thoughts, actions, and feelings of oneself.
o Mental Flexibility - the ability to adopt the subjective perspective of another (aka: Theory of Mind) by the development of an internal frame of reference. |
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Term
| Potential key brain regions in bipolar disorder |
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Definition
• 1. Amygdala –
• - smaller amygdala size is consistent finding in
• children diagnosed with bipolar disorder
• - amygdala plays role in:
• > perception of threatening information
• > appraisal of social signals that convey a threat
• > acquisition of fear conditioned responses
2. Cingulate Gyrus –
o - anterior portion provides constraint over emotion and cognition
o - does this by decreasing activation associated with a lack of task initiation, apathetic and unmotivated behavior, and anhedonia
o - left anterior cingulate smaller in volume in bipolar patients
3. Basal Ganglia –
o recent study has suggested that bipolar children have enlarged right nucleus accumbens (plays central role in reward circuit of the brain)
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4. Hippocampus –
• - some studies in depressed children have suggested smaller volume; studies of adult bipolar patients show normal volume and size |
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Term
| task analysis of spelling |
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Definition
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Term
Common difficulties in children with slow reading development
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Definition
- Difficulty decoding single words
- Particular difficulty reading nonsense or unfamiliar words
- Inaccurate and labored oral reading
- Slow reading
- Comprehension often superior to isolated decoding skills
- Poor spelling
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Term
Characteristics of different types of spelling problems |
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Definition
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Term
| common sources of difficulty in math |
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Definition
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Term
Clues to dyslexia in school-age children
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Definition
there are many, many, many. here are a few:
- delayed lang
- problems with sounds of words
- expressive lang diff
- diff decoding
- slow reading
- often comp is superior to decoding skills
- relatively poor performance on tests of word retrieval
- slow performance on timed reading tests
- penalized by multiple-choice tests
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Term
Developmental dyslexia characteristics
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Definition
• Phonologic deficit primary
• Reading impairment at the level of single-word decoding
• Other components of language system intact (e.g., syntax, semantics)
• Intelligence not affected and may be in superior or gifted range
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Term
Acquired alexia characteristics
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Definition
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Term
| hyperlexia (not on his sheet but maybe we'll need to know it) |
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Definition
• Word-recognition ability substantially better than reading comprehension
• Early intense interest in words and letters
• Exceptional word-recognition ability, apparent by the age of five years
• Very poor reading comprehension
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Term
| components of a math disability |
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Definition
• Refers to children with markedly poor skills at deploying basic computational processes to solve equations
• Deficits may include:
qPoor language and word retrieval
qWorking memory skills
qExecutive function skills
qFaulty visual-spatial skills
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Term
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Definition
- A condition which affects the ability to acquire arithmetical skills.
- Dyscalculic learners may have difficulty understanding simple number concepts, lack an intuitive grasp of numbers, and have problems learning number facts and procedures
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Term
Verbal dyscalculia characteristics, deficits and preserved skills, but not brain area
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Definition
- Consists of students who have difficulty with counting, rapid number skills, and deficits retrieving or recalling stored math facts of overlearned information
Represents a disorder of verbal representation of numbers
- Such students may have difficulty in reading and spelling as well
- Deficit:
- Counting
- Rapid number identification
- Retrieval of stored facts
- Addition and multiplication facts
- Preserved:
- Numeric qualities
- Comparisons between numbers
- Understanding basic concepts
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Term
Procedural subtype of math disability deficits and preserved skills, but not brain area
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Definition
• Deficit
• Writing numbers from dictation
• Reading numbers aloud
• Math computational procedures
• Syntactical rules of problem solving
• Deficits with division and regrouping procedures in subtraction
• Preserved
• Retrieval of overlearned facts
• Comparison between numbers
• Magnitude comparisons
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Term
Semantic subtype of math disability deficits and preserved skills, but not brain area
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Definition
• Reflects an inability to decipher magnitude representations among numbers
• The semantic comprehension of mathematics becomes extremely useful when monitoring the plausibility of a result
• Horizontal inferior parietal sulcus (HIPS) critical as holds semantic knowledge about quantitative information which allows for estimation skills, making quantity judgments, determining strategy formation, checking plausibility of results
• Deficits
• Magnitude representations
• Transcoding math operations
• High level math proofs
• Conceptual understanding of math
• Estimation skills
• Preserved
• Reading and writing numbers
• Computational procedures
• Retrieval of overlearned facts
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Term
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Definition
- When coal is burned at power plants, it releases mercury into our atmosphere. This mercury falls to earth in rain, running into our lakes, rivers and streams. Bacteria in the water transform this mercury into toxic methyl-mercury.
- When fish consume this bacteria, they become contaminated. Fish that eat other contaminated fish end up with even higher levels of toxic mercury in their flesh. Humans can be contaminated with this methyl-mercury by eating contaminated fish.
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Term
Characteristics of “erethism” from mercury poisoning
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Definition
– avoidant
– irritability
– depression
– fatigue
– lassitude
– overly-sensitive interpersonal behavior
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Term
Behavioral and cognitive changes in carbon monoxide poisoning
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Definition
• Amnesias
• Dementias
• Organic affective personality disorders
• Psychoses
• Rare: ideomotor &constructional apraxias
• Level of consciousness at hospital admission correlates with devel. of gross neuropsy D/O
• Decreased auditory sensitivity & visual acuity
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Term
Neuropsychological effects of pesticide exposure
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Definition
• Weakness
• Blurred vision
• Nausea
• Headaches
• Anxiety
• Numbness & tingling in extremities
• Balance problems
• Optic nerve atrophy
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Term
Minimata Disease – causes and characteristics
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Definition
• - mercuric chloride discharged from industrial plant
• Many severe effects from eating contaminated shellfish:
– ataxia -- constricted visual field
– dysarthria -- D/O of consciousness
– apraxia
– agnosia
by 1990, 2,000 people suffering from Minimata Disease |
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