lecture 31

Question 1

What else does our big brain do?

Answer 1

much of our conscious mental activity relates to abstraction

• analysis - how things work
• calculation and estimation
• planning

Question 2

How can we break prefrontal cortex down anatomically?

Answer 2

• dorsolateral region
• orbital
• medial
• medial and orbital more associated with social cognition

Question 3

What is the function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex?

Answer 3

working memory:

• remembering a phone number
• remembering and applying rules (count backwards from 100 in steps of 7)

memory of the future

• delayed gratification, plans, goals
• temporal structuring of behaviour
• dorsolateral pfc damage: distractability, impulsiveness, perseverative errors

Question 4

Is language controlled by prefrontal cortex?

Answer 4

• no
• language is the servant of intellect
• auditory cortex
• motor cortex
• wernicke’s area
• angular gyrus
• broca’s area

all of these are not prefrontal

Question 5

What is the border between prefrontal and complex motor association areas?

Answer 5

• kind of frontal eye fields

Question 6

What do we attend to mostly when looking at faces?

Answer 6

• sharp angles of eyes and mouth

- this is where we get a lot of nonverbal communication from

Question 7

What does prefrontal cortex examine?

Answer 7

• what’s important immediately and in the future

- salience of our environment

Question 8

What are higher order inferences?

Answer 8

• categorisation, multiple regression, principle components (huge numbers of variables, what’s actually going on?)
• the meaning of proverbs
• word similiarity, word meaning (definition)
• estimates
• list words beginning with…
• females tend to be better at this sort of thing
• males tend to be better and spatial recognition - are these two shapes the same?

Question 9

What is the standard stroop task?

Answer 9

• read words - colours, but they are coloured differently
• blue written in green
• red written in brown wtc
• task: ‘name the ink colour as fast as possible’

stard result
- incongruent slows compared with congruent condition (because word meaning interferes with colour naming on incongruent trials)

emotional stroop task

• emotion condition vs neutral condition
• anxious participants: emotion condition slowed cf neutral condition
• non-axious participants: no difference
• not necessarily prefrontal test

Question 10

What is the wisconsin card sort?

Answer 10

• measures the ability to change categorisation strategy
• not told what the rule is - have to figure it out over time
• categorisation rule is changed without telling you
• tests ability of prefrontal cortex to restrategise when the strategy you’ve been using hasn’t been working
• need flexibility to solve problems

Question 11

What is the Tower of London/Hanoi task?

Answer 11

• first becomes possible between 3 and 6
• BA 10 is strongly activated during this type of task
• this region is most conspicuously enlarged in humans compared to apes
• as is our ability to plan into the future

Question 12

Has the evolution of advanced social competencies - such as conceptualising the motivations of others - given rise to uniquely human functions?

Answer 12

• no compelling evidence of “theory of mind”
• the capicity of us to know what someone else knows
• not yet seen in other species

Question 13

How do we think?

Answer 13

• what do we think about - getting what we want, understanding the way things work
• predicition and control
• curiosity is a defining characterstic of complex animals, seen to an extraordinary degree in humans

Question 14

Why do we think so much? why do we explore? why not just “stay home”?

Answer 14

• control
• often we go beyond what’s required
• drive to explore and to explain

Question 15

What drives exploration and innoviation?

Answer 15

• is it the need to find an advantage in the grim struggle for survival, or is it the bounty of excess?
• in contrast to the commonly held assumption that competition drives innovation, the reverse may be trueL competition produces stasis. Only complacency drives change.
  “relaxed selection” prof. terrance deacon
• the metabolically regulated enzyme sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) modulates monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) levels to link mood and behavoir to energy consumption
• variability in the SIRT1 gene contributes to human susceptibility to anxiety disorders

Question 16

What is SIRT1?

Answer 16

• the metabolically regulated enzyme sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) modulates monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) levels to link mood and behavoir to energy consumption
• variability in the SIRT1 gene contributes to human susceptibility to anxiety disorders
• Sirt1 improves healthy ageing and protects from metabolic syndrome-associated cancer: nature 2010
• Sirt1 activates MAO-A in the brain to mediate anxiety and exploratory drive: cell 2011
• A novel pathway regulates memory and plasticifty via SIRT1 and miR-134: nature 2010
• “hungry, heaviy preyed-on animals would be best served by being anxious, vigilant, and carefuk, whereas well-fed mice should carelessly radiate and procreate”

Question 17

What is the purpose and mechanism of thinking?

Answer 17

• understanding, problem solving
• our most influential way of thinking is Science
• science, succeeds in part by humanistic rejection of arbitrary authority, advocacy of personal liberty, and the “rigourous application of common sense”

Question 18

How do we think?

Answer 18

• empirical methods
• deductive methods
• strategies, re-strategising - in the minds eye
• modelling