Week 8

SAQ: localization of the brain

November 4, 2015

08.01 Writing Papers in Psychology

pp. 381-384 from Section 11: Writing Papers in Psychology: SAQs and Essays of the
Course Companion eText

https://voicethread.com/myvoice/#thread/2594394

actually answer the question

meet demand of command term
support with knowledge and understanding of research
250-275 words
2 sentence intro, 2 body paragraphs, conclusion (return to topic of SAQ and shows focus
on demands)

http://screencast.com/t/OBZDzkGHT

dont need intro and conclusion in SAQ

1 sentence intro and 1 sentence conclusion in SAQ for the course, but not for the test

08.02 Case Study Approach and the BLOA

to discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the biological level of
analysis
You will answer two questions about a case study and present your answers to at least
two of your classmates.
review pp. 6-7 of the Pamoja Supplementary eText on the BLOA.
Case Studies

research focusing on correlations between brain structure and/or activity and

behaviour

Laboratory experiments

identifying a cause and effect relationship between two variables (physiological

processes and human behaviour)

Controlling the extraneous variables in a laboratory setting means

that an experiment should be able to be easily replicated, which
increases its reliability

Name: Natalie Cassello

November 2015
Teacher: Helen Loughran

10
IB Psychology

Learning Outcomes
Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the
BLOA.
Explain one study of localization of function of the brain.
Activity

Review pp. 35-36 from Section 1.4 Non-experimental methods: qualitative from
the Course Companion eText OR review pp. 6-7 of the Pamoja Supplementary
eText on the BLOA.
Read the following and visit the linked sites:

The physician and professor of neurology Oliver Sacks (1992) wrote a case study of Greg F.
who has lost his memory due to a huge brain tumour. Brain imaging showed a benign tumour the
size of a large orange which had destroyed the pituitary gland, the optic nerves and extended on
both sides into the frontal lobes and temporal lobes. Although the brain tumour was removed in
1975, it had by that time, destroyed a large part of his limbic system (the seat of emotions,
desires and a large part of memory), as well as some other areas of his brain.
Sacks first met Greg in 1977 when he was brought to his clinic by his parents. He interviewed the
parents and Greg, and examined Greg for symptoms of his neurological damage, which included
weight gain, loss of body hair, severe anterograde and partial retrograde amnesia, blindness,
weakness in all his limbs, especially his legs, and a complete indifference to the past or the
future, a true living in the present. Greg was subsequently admitted as a long-term patient to a
hospital for the chronically ill, though he remained unaware that he was ill. This is called frontal
lobe unawareness and is seen in many patients with serious damage to the frontal lobes.

As a result of this brain tumour, Greg had not been able to retain any new memories since the
1970s. But if encouraged to talk about or play his favourite Grateful Dead songs, his amnesia was
bypassed. He became vividly animated and could reminisce about the bands early concerts.
Greg retained his semantic and procedural memory he could apply geometric proofs, and most
importantly to him, he could still play his guitar, and could even learn new techniques.
Sacks refers to Greg in his biographical short story as the last hippie, as it was the music of the
1960s that could most stir him from his apathy. However the extent of his brain damage and loss
of memory is made clear by this event: Greg leaves a 1991 Grateful Dead concert to which Sacks
has taken him, saying That was fantastic. I will always remember it. I had the time of my life!
(Sacks, 1994, p150). The next morning he had forgotten the concert entirely, or even that he had
attended it.
Methodology: Sacks used semi-structured interviews with Greg and his parents and kept
copious notes of these interviews and other all interactions. He also observed Greg and
interacted regularly with him over a period of fifteen years before publishing his first article on
Greg (Sacks, 1992). Gregs brain activity was monitored using an EEG, and Sacks notes that the
brain waves that were slow and incoherent most of the time became calm and rhythmical with
music. This was a longitudinal case study with and individual and had little transferability the
results could not be generalised but gave great insight into the lived reality of Gregs world and
the correlation in his case between biology and behaviour.
References
Sacks, O. (March 1992). The Last Hippie. The New York Review of Books, pp. 53-62
Sacks, O. (1994). The Last Hippie in An Anthropologist on Mars, pp. 88-151, New York: Picador

Answer the questions below and include the information

in your BBB live presentation:

Question
To what extent is this case
study useful?

Your Answer/notes
This case study is useful for scientists
because it shows that different parts of
the brain are associated with more than
one behaviour and that behaviour

What are the ethical issues

that Sacks should have
considered in publishing this
case study?

correlates with more than one part of

the brain. For example, because Gregs
pituitary gland, optic nerves, and on
both sides of his frontal lobes and
temporal lobes were destroyed, he
always lived in the present because he
was unable to remember the past or
the future. However, he did remember
music and could learn new songs on
the guitar.
Oliver Sacks should have considered
Gregs confidentiality when publishing
this case study. He tells his name and
shares quotes, which probably should
have stayed between them. He may
have also used deception on him, but
that was merely a result of his brain
tumour. His parents came for help,
which shows informed consent and
ability to withdraw from the case study.

08.03 Summative SAQ: Localization of Brain Function

You are to describe (give a detailed account of) the Maguire study you wrote about in Week 7.
You will be answering the following question:

Describe one study of localization of function in the brain.

Maguires Study of Localization of the Brain (London 2000)

this study demonstrates plasticity of the hippocampus in response to the

environment

He had a MRI for 16 healthy right-handed male taxi drivers between the ages of 32 and
62 and compared those to the MRI of 50 right-handed healthy men who were not taxi
drivers.

posterior hippocampi of the taxi drivers were much larger than those of the control
participants. Also, the volume of the hippocampal correlated to the length of time that the
taxi driver had been licensed

Data collection used structural magnetic resonance imaging in order to create pictures of
the brain that could be converted into a 3D image. Gray matter of the hippocampus was
calculated with voxel-based morphemetry (VBM) and pixel counting

directly relating spatial memory, from being a taxi driver, to the size of the hippocampus

direct correspondence of the job and brain plasticity, or the brains ability to remake itself
as it adapts to the environment, is evidently shown through Maguires study of 2000

Maguire's natural experiment was a study of localization of function in the brain which
demonstrates the plasticity of the hippocampus in response to the environment.
In London in the year 2000, Maguire had an MRI for 16 right-handed healthy taxi drivers as
well as 50 right-handed healthy non-taxi drivers. All participants were male, between the
ages of 32 and 62, and passed as healthy in a routine exam check up. All the taxi drivers
had been trained for two years and licensed for at least one and a half years. The limits of
this study include the participants being specific ages, only being male rather than females,
and all being right-handed. The results of the MRI were used to created a 3D images, which
then used VBM calculations and pixel counting to measure the gray matter in the
hippocampus. The sizes of the hippocampus and amount of gray matter were compared
between taxi drivers and non-taxi drivers as well as just between drivers.
It was found that the right posterior hippocampus of the taxi drivers were significantly larger
than the normal, non-taxi drivers, however, the right anterior hippocampus of the drivers
were all much smaller than the normal men's. It was also concluded that the taxi drivers who
had been licensed the longest tended to have more gray matter than the more recently
licensed London taxi drivers. These results go to show that spatial memory is localized in the
hippocampus of the brain, specifically in the posterior rather than anterior and in the right
rather than left because they were all right-handed drivers.
This is a detailed response which describes Maguire's study of localization of function in the
brain using the spatial memory in correlation to the hippocampus of taxi drivers in London.
(editted afterwards- 20 minutes)

Describe is to "give a detailed account". To be successful, you

should describe the theory of localization of function as well
provide details of Maguire's study in the context of how it
illustrates the theory

08.04 What Is Critical Thinking and Evaluation?

http://blogs.pamojaeducation.com/psychology/2014/06/08/thinking-critically-in-psychology/

crucial follow-up question: So what?

ethical transgressions were justified?

Critical thinking must constantly question the premises of the arguments

being evaluated, and the arguments one is constructing.

philosophical, methodological, and ethical.

asking of the right questions is more important than the correct answers.

Name: Natalie Cassello

November 2015
Teacher: Helen Loughran

10

IB Psychology
Critical Thinking

Activity

The first step in this activity is to read this post in the Pamoja
Psychology Blog.
Then read carefully the edited article below. (The complete
article is here if you are interested.)
After reading, write a short summary of the main points in
the argument. (A guide to writing summaries is available here.)
Write this summary below the article.
After completing your summary, use it to answer the following
questions:
o Can you identify two examples of analysis and
conceptualization?
o Can you identify one example of synthesis?
o Do you think the authors conclusions are valid? Why or
why not?
Once you have finished all the tasks email your teacher who will
send you a self-assessment guide.

Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?

Colin McGinn
March 24, 2011 Issue
The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientists Quest for What Makes Us Human
by V.S. Ramachandran
Is studying the brain a good way to understand the mind? Does psychology stand to
brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body,
physiological functionswalking, breathing, digesting, reproducing, and so onare
closely mapped onto discrete bodily organs, and it would be misguided to study such

functions independently of the bodily anatomy that implements them. If you want to
understand what walking is, you should take a look at the legs, since walking is what
legs do. Is it likewise true that if you want to understand thinking you should look at
the parts of the brain responsible for thinking?
Is thinking what the brain does in the way that walking is what the body does? V.S.
Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of
California, San Diego, thinks the answer is definitely yes.
But there is a prima facie (at first sight) hitch with this approach: the relationship
between mental function and brain anatomy is nowhere near as transparent as in the
case of the bodywe cant just look and see what does what.
The consensus today is that there is a good deal of specialization in the brain, even
down to very fine-grained capacities, such as our ability to detect color, shape, and
motionthough there is also a degree of plasticity. The way a neurologist like
Ramachandran investigates the anatomypsychology connection is mainly to
consider abnormal cases: patients with brain damage due to stroke, trauma, genetic
abnormality, etc. If damage to area A leads to disruption of function F, then A is (or is
likely to be) the anatomical basis of F.
This is not the usual way that biologists investigate function and structure, but it is
certainly one wayif damage to the lungs hinders breathing, then the lungs are very
likely the organ for breathing. The method, then, is to understand the normal mind by
investigating the abnormal brain. Brain pathology is the key to understanding the
healthy mind. It is as if we set out to understand political systems by investigating
corruption and incompetencea skewed vision, perhaps, but not an impossible
venture. We should judge the method by the results it achieves.
Ramachandran discusses an enormous range of syndromes and topics in The Tell-Tale
Brain. This is the best book of its kind that I have come across for scientific rigor,
general interest, and claritythough some of it will be a hard slog for the uninitiated.
In what follows I can only provide a glimpse of the full range of material covered.
In a chapter boldly entitled The Neurons That Shaped Civilization, Ramachandran
invests the famous mirror neurons (discovered in the 1990s) with remarkable
generative powers. The mirror neurons that have been identified in the brain serve as
the mechanism of imitation, he suggests, in virtue of their ability to react or fire
sympathetically, and thus affect consciousness, when you are watching someone
else do something: some of the same neurons fire both when you observe the
performance of an action and when you actually perform that action. This is held to
show that the brain automatically produces a representation of someone elses point
of viewit runs by means of mirroring neurons an internal simulation of the others
intended action.
Observing that we are a species much talented in the art of imitation, Ramachandran
suggests that mirror neurons enable us to absorb the culture of previous generations:
Culture consists of massive collections of complex skills and knowledge which are
transferred from person to person through two core mediums, language and
imitation. We would be nothing without our savant-like ability to imitate others.
What can the structure of the brain tell us about language? In this view, words
began by way of abstract similarities between visually perceived objects and
intentionally produced soundswe call things by sounds that are like what they
name, abstractly speaking. Ramachandran introduces the word synkinesia to refer
to abstract likenesses between types of movementas, for example, between cutting
with scissors and clenching the jaws. The suggestion, then, is that speech exploits
not merely sight-sound similarities but also similarities between movements of the
mouth and other bodily movements: the come hither hand gesture of curling the
fingers toward you with palm up is said to be mirrored by the movements of the
tongue as the word hither is uttered. This is not claimed to be the sole engine of
language development, but it is said to provide an initial vital stagehow vocabulary
began.

Finally, we have an even more speculative chapter on the brain and selfconsciousness. Again, we read of many strange syndromes: telephone syndrome,
in which a man can only recognize his father when talking to him on the phone;
Cotards syndrome, in which a person thinks that he or she is dead; obsessed
individuals who want to have a healthy limb amputated (apotemnophilia); Fregoli
syndrome, in which everyone looks like a single person; alien-hand syndrome, in
which a persons hand acts against his will. These curious cases are supposed to shed
light on the unity of the self and self-awareness, even on consciousness itself.
Ramachandran asserts that alien-hand syndrome underscores the important role of
the anterior cingulate in free will, transforming a philosophical problem into a
neurological one. The anterior cingulate, he observes, is a C-shaped ring of cortical
tissue that lights up in manyalmost too manybrain input studies.
What should we make of all this? It is undoubtedly fascinating to read of these bizarre
cases and learn about the intricate neural machinery that underlies our normal
experience. It is also, in my opinion, perfectly acceptable to propose bold
speculations about what might be going on, even if the speculation seems unfounded
or far-fetched; as Ramachandran frequently remarks, science thrives on risky
conjecture. But there are times when the impression of theoretical overreaching is
unmistakable, and the relentless neural reductionism becomes earsplitting. This is
progressively the case as the book becomes more ambitious in scope.
For instance, mirror neurons are clearly an interesting discovery, but are they really
the explanation of empathy and imitation? Isnt much more involved? Does an
expert impersonator simply have more (or more active) mirror neurons than the
average human? What about the ability to analyze an observed action, not merely
repeat it? Where does flexibility in deepness of imitation come from (it cannot be
those reflexive mirror neurons)? Imitation, moreover, comes in many forms, of
different degrees of sophistication, and we cannot assimilate the trained mime to the
babys reflex of poking out her tongue at the sight of her mother doing the same.
Ramachandran acknowledges no limit to neural reductionism, but there is a very big
issue here that he slides over: the mindbody problem. His suggestion that by
identifying the part of the brain involved in voluntary decision we turn a philosophical
problem into a neurological one could only be made by someone who does not know
what philosophical problem is in questionto put it briefly, whether or not
determinism conceptually rules out freedom of the will. That question cannot be
answered by pointing to one case of brain damage or another. Learning about the
parts of the brain responsible for free choice will not tell us how to analyze the
concept of freedom or whether it is possible to be free in a deterministic world. These
are conceptual questions, not questions about the form of the neural machinery that
underlies choice. His book has all the charm of an enthusiasts tractalong with the
inevitable omissions, distortions, and exaggerations.
Neurology is gripping in proportion as it is foreign. It has all the fascination of a horror
storythe Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain. All those exotic
Latin names for the brains parts echo the strangeness of our predicament as brainbased conscious beings: the language of the brain is not the language of the mind,
and only a shaky translation manual links the two. There is something uncanny and
creepy about the way the brain intrudes on the mind, as if the mind has been
infiltrated by an alien life form. We are thus perpetually startled by our evident fusion
with the brain; as a result, neurology is never boring. And this is true in spite of the
fact that the science of the brain has not progressed much beyond the most
elementary descriptive stages.

Write your summary here:

V.S. Ramachandran argues that the specialization of the brain is

researched to better understand the anatomy-psychology connection
in the brain to explain the thinking of humans. In order to conduct
these investigations of function correlation with structure in the normal
brain, scientists must study abnormal cases. He discusses the function
of mirror neurons and the major ideas of language and imitation in the
development of culture, as well as self-consciousness. Risky theories
can be created from bizarre cases, which help scientists to better
understand neural processes. However, various cases must be studied
because many factors may contribute to a single action. In conclusion,
neurology is a very broad subject and requires much more study in
order to grasp the exact function of the different structures of the
brain.
Question
Identify two examples
of analysis and
conceptualization?

Your answer
Example 1:
It has been found that the same mirror
neurons are produced in the brain when
watching someone else do an action and
actually performing the action yourself, which
supports the theory of imitation.
Example 2:
The term synkinesia is used to relate the
movement of two similar things. People relate
sights and sounds as well as sights and
movements together, which is the basis of
language.

Identify one example

of synthesis?

Example:
Mirror neurons can explain part of empathy
and imitation, but there are many other
factors. Plasticity and ability to analyse actions
before imitating contribute to the difference of
peoples brains. Every mind has limitations of
imitation.

Do you think the

authors conclusions
are valid? Why or why
not?

My opinion:
I do believe the authors conclusions are valid
because scientists must study many different
factors in order to make a correlation between
the anatomy and psychology of the brain. All
ideas must come from somewhere, even if
they are farfetched theories. Over time, more
studies and information will be collected in

order to associate and generalize concepts to

a larger audience of people. However, there
are many different elements, other the
anatomy of the brain, which influence the
function of the mind.

Term Grade 1 - Student Self Reflection Report

Engagement: Have you spent enough time in the course and on the set work
to be successful?

Learning: Tell us about what you have learned in your subject? What has
been the most useful and interesting part of the course for you so far?

Essential Skills: How are you enjoying online learning in this subject?
(Please consider your self-management, communication and interaction).

I believe Ive spent efficient time working on my psychology Pamoja course and have
been successful in completing all set work before the deadlines. However, I do have the
capability to be more engaged online and spend more time reviewing.
Ive learned a lot about the brain and behavior, including multiple in depth case studies,
relating to psychology. Im more interested than I originally thought in this subject. The
most useful parts of the course are being able to manage my time, go at my own pace,
as well as being a part of a helpful 24-hour community.
Im very much enjoying online learning because it allows me to have a lot of freedom
and organization. Im self-motivated and independent, which encourages me to step out
of my comfort zone a bit when communicating and interacting with other students.