Joshua Riley-Graham Hurt Brains

Don’t Think Good

N E U R O L O G I C A L D I S O R D E R S A N D W H A T T H E Y T E L L U S A B O U T O U R S E L V E S !

HURT BRAINS DON’T THINK GOOD

PHRENOLOGY

•  Wrong, but not stupid!

•  “Le bon Dieu est dans le detail”!

THE NEW PHRENOLOGY

•  Brains = modular !

•  Dedicated bits for particular tasks!

SPECIFIC DAMAGE, SPECIFIC PROBLEMS

•  Can be very specific about where damage is in sensorimotor system!

TWO SIDES

•  Split brain patients !

•  Hemispheres are isolated!

TWO SIDES

•  Each hemisphere only sees !one picture !

•  “You shovel s**t with it” !

VISION

•  Seems like we just get a gestalt… !

VISION

•  Each one of those parts can fail individually and show the seams in the system!

•  Fun test of this – adapt just one eye to darkness at a time !

AKINETOPSIA

•  Also called “motion blindness” !

•  V5 area of visual cortex is damaged!

•  Movement no longer exists !

BLINDSIGHT

•  Two pathways for vision!

•  Patient has no conscious perception of sight, insists they are blind… !

•  …but can guess where objects are and reach for them way, way above chance !

VISUAL AGNOSIA

•  Fine visual acuity, no recognition!

VISUAL AGNOSIA

•  Can be for living things, !non-living things, faces, !numbers… !

•  Can be ridiculously specific! !

NOT JUST A VISION THING

•  Pure word-deafness !

•  Hearing in general is fine !

•  Reading, writing, speaking fine !

•  No comprehension of speech whatsoever!

HEMISPHERIC NEGLECT

•  Half the world ceases to exist!

HEMISPHERIC NEGLECT

•  Bilateral Extinction!

•  1 + 1 = 1!

ALIEN HAND SYNDROME

• Dr. Strangelove = not entirely fictional!

•  Loss of conscious awareness and control over a limb, so it gets a “mind of its own” !

KORSAKOFF’S SYNDROME

•  Thiamine deficiency leads to memory problems leads to wild confabulation!

•  “You wouldn’t believe how much that cost to have installed” !

CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP

•  Parkinson’s Disease = perseveration!

•  Wisconsin Card Sort Task!

•  PD patients can’t learn new rule !

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

•  Parkinson’s Disease = not enough dopamine being produced!

•  Solution? Dopamine-producing drugs! !

•  Problem? Compulsive gambling! !

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Joshua Riley-Graham

Thank You!