Understanding Higher Mental Functions

Okay, moving on to section seven, we're going to talk a little bit about higher mental functions. If we're talking about higher mental functions, we're talking about things like language, memory, brainwaves and EEGs, consciousness, and our sleep-wake cycles. So let's start with language. The main areas we kind of touched on before, we talked about Broca's areas. We talked about Broca's areas in relation to probably only being in one of our cerebral hemispheres, not both. It's still kind of up for debate a little bit. But both Broca's and Wernicke's area are involved in language, but they have different components to them. If you've taken psychology, you've probably learned about these before. So Broca's areas is involved in our actual speech production. And then Wernicke's area is involved in understanding spoken and written words. So people with lesions in the Broca's area, they can understand what you're saying, understand words, but they have difficulty speaking. And if we have a patient or somebody with lesions in the Wernicke's area, they can speak, but everything that's coming out of their mouth doesn't really make sense. So we call it like a word salad. So there's two videos here of people who have one, I think the first one is a person with damage to Broca's area and the second one is damage to Warnakee's area. So just they're kind of like fun videos you don't have to watch them in their entirety, but just to give you an idea of what these two areas control as far as language goes. We also have to talk about memory because that is also considered a higher function. And when we're talking about memory, we're talking about the storage and retrieval of information. And memory is essential to life because if not, we wouldn't be able to learn or use our past experiences to develop our behavior or our conscious to begin with. So we have different kinds of memories. Yes, I would make sure that you know this. So if we're talking about declarative memory, we're talking about facts. So things like somebody's name, faces, words, and dates. We have procedural memory. So this is a skill type of memory. So something like playing the piano or another musical instrument. Then we have motor memory. So we're talking about like our skeletal muscle memory. So something like riding a bike. I will say, they say, once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. That's not true from my previous experience. Okay. And the last one is emotional memory. So your pounding heart, for example, when you hear a rattlesnake nearby, that was the example from your textbook. But what we're going to kind of talk about, well, no, we're not. We're just going to talk about what these four different types of memory are. Again, omit everything else that you don't really need to know from your textbook. Okay. Brain waves. So When you do an EEG or an electroencephalogram, this is going to record the electrical activity that's actually going on while you're doing some sort of brain function. So typically what they're reflecting, these brain waves, are activity of higher mental functions. And normal brain functions are continuous and they're really hard to measure. So these are higher ones, something that we're doing, not something that is... hard to measure or continuous component to our body. So if we're talking about an EEG, these can be helpful, especially if you're going into the medical field, because they can be used for like diagnosing epilepsy, if somebody's having, or any sort of sleep disorders, localizes lesions, tumors, infarcts, infections, abscesses. And it's also used in research and also used to determine brain death. So basically an EEG is they take these electrodes and they stick them on your scalp. Normally there can't be any hair there. And measure the electrical potential differences, which we've mentioned before when we talked about membrane potential, between various cortical areas. So I do want you to understand the basic waves and what they represent. So we have alpha waves, beta waves, theta waves, and delta waves. So what I kind of want you to get from this is what are each wave? Not necessarily, you don't need to know the hertz. Like I put that in there just for things. But if we're seeing alpha waves on an EEG, basically that's indicating that we have some sort of idling brain. Not much is going on. We're awake. but we're relaxed. So maybe we're just like watching TV. Beta waves, these represent, these would be seen on an EEG when we're mentally alert. So if we're concentrating on something, if you're trying to study something like, or having some sort of visual stimulus, like watching a movie. Okay. Theta waves, these are more irregular waves. If you look at the image to the right. And they're common in children and uncommon in adults. So these are most common in children. And then our fourth one is delta waves. And these have really high peaks, which means they have a high amplitude of the wave. And these are going to be seen during deep sleep and when the reticular activating system is suppressed. So for example, we talked about RAS can be suppressed by alcohol and drugs in sleep. So if you're under some sort of anesthesia. you would be seeing these delta waves. Or if you have some sort of brain damage, you could also see these waves. Okay, the last thing is sleep-wake cycles. And again, we're not going into huge depth in any of this. I just want to introduce you to these topics. So we pass through first two stages of what we call non-rapid eye movement during the first 30 to 45 minutes of sleep. And then we move into stage three and four, which we collectively refer to as slow wave sleep. At about 90 minutes into our sleep, that fourth stage will end and the REM sleep begins abruptly. So over here, again, now we're talking a little bit about sleep and brainwaves. I kind of want you to understand if we're in... Stage one of non-rapid eye movement sleep, stage two, three, and four, what this corresponds to. So we're going to see alpha waves in stage one. Typically, we see irregular EEG if we're in stage two. And then we see theta and delta waves if we're in stage three. And then we typically only see delta waves if we're in stage four. And that's all I really want you to know from this entire chapter. So everything beyond section 7, we are not going to cover. So sections 8, 9, 10, and 11 will not be on your...

The main areas we kind of touched on before, we talked about Broca's areas. We talked about Broca's areas in relation to probably only being in one of our cerebral hemispheres, not both. It's still kind of up for debate a little bit. But both Broca's and Wernicke's area are involved in language, but they have different components to them. If you've taken psychology, you've probably learned about these before.

So Broca's areas is involved in our actual speech production. And then Wernicke's area is involved in understanding spoken and written words. So people with lesions in the Broca's area, they can understand what you're saying, understand words, but they have difficulty speaking.

And if we have a patient or somebody with lesions in the Wernicke's area, they can speak, but everything that's coming out of their mouth doesn't really make sense. So we call it like a word salad. So there's two videos here of people who have one, I think the first one is a person with damage to Broca's area and the second one is damage to Warnakee's area.

So just they're kind of like fun videos you don't have to watch them in their entirety, but just to give you an idea of what these two areas control as far as language goes. We also have to talk about memory because that is also considered a higher function. And when we're talking about memory, we're talking about the storage and retrieval of information.

And memory is essential to life because if not, we wouldn't be able to learn or use our past experiences to develop our behavior or our conscious to begin with. So we have different kinds of memories. Yes, I would make sure that you know this.

So if we're talking about declarative memory, we're talking about facts. So things like somebody's name, faces, words, and dates. We have procedural memory.

So this is a skill type of memory. So something like playing the piano or another musical instrument. Then we have motor memory.

So we're talking about like our skeletal muscle memory. So something like riding a bike. I will say, they say, once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. That's not true from my previous experience. Okay.

And the last one is emotional memory. So your pounding heart, for example, when you hear a rattlesnake nearby, that was the example from your textbook. But what we're going to kind of talk about, well, no, we're not.

We're just going to talk about what these four different types of memory are. Again, omit everything else that you don't really need to know from your textbook. Okay.

Brain waves. So When you do an EEG or an electroencephalogram, this is going to record the electrical activity that's actually going on while you're doing some sort of brain function. So typically what they're reflecting, these brain waves, are activity of higher mental functions. And normal brain functions are continuous and they're really hard to measure.

So these are higher ones, something that we're doing, not something that is... hard to measure or continuous component to our body. So if we're talking about an EEG, these can be helpful, especially if you're going into the medical field, because they can be used for like diagnosing epilepsy, if somebody's having, or any sort of sleep disorders, localizes lesions, tumors, infarcts, infections, abscesses.

And it's also used in research and also used to determine brain death. So basically an EEG is they take these electrodes and they stick them on your scalp. Normally there can't be any hair there. And measure the electrical potential differences, which we've mentioned before when we talked about membrane potential, between various cortical areas.

So I do want you to understand the basic waves and what they represent. So we have alpha waves, beta waves, theta waves, and delta waves. So what I kind of want you to get from this is what are each wave? Not necessarily, you don't need to know the hertz.

Like I put that in there just for things. But if we're seeing alpha waves on an EEG, basically that's indicating that we have some sort of idling brain. Not much is going on. We're awake. but we're relaxed.

So maybe we're just like watching TV. Beta waves, these represent, these would be seen on an EEG when we're mentally alert. So if we're concentrating on something, if you're trying to study something like, or having some sort of visual stimulus, like watching a movie. Okay. Theta waves, these are more irregular waves.

If you look at the image to the right. And they're common in children and uncommon in adults. So these are most common in children. And then our fourth one is delta waves.

And these have really high peaks, which means they have a high amplitude of the wave. And these are going to be seen during deep sleep and when the reticular activating system is suppressed. So for example, we talked about RAS can be suppressed by alcohol and drugs in sleep. So if you're under some sort of anesthesia.

you would be seeing these delta waves. Or if you have some sort of brain damage, you could also see these waves. Okay, the last thing is sleep-wake cycles. And again, we're not going into huge depth in any of this. I just want to introduce you to these topics.

So we pass through first two stages of what we call non-rapid eye movement during the first 30 to 45 minutes of sleep. And then we move into stage three and four, which we collectively refer to as slow wave sleep. At about 90 minutes into our sleep, that fourth stage will end and the REM sleep begins abruptly. So over here, again, now we're talking a little bit about sleep and brainwaves.

I kind of want you to understand if we're in... Stage one of non-rapid eye movement sleep, stage two, three, and four, what this corresponds to. So we're going to see alpha waves in stage one. Typically, we see irregular EEG if we're in stage two.

And then we see theta and delta waves if we're in stage three. And then we typically only see delta waves if we're in stage four. And that's all I really want you to know from this entire chapter. So everything beyond section 7, we are not going to cover.

So sections 8, 9, 10, and 11 will not be on your...

Transcript for:Understanding Higher Mental Functions

Transcript for:
Understanding Higher Mental Functions