Chapter 21: Planning and Attention

1. Chapter 21: Planning and Attention By: Brittney Bergeron

2. The Case of Phineas Gage • Tamping rod entered his left cheek • No perceived damage initially • He could see, hear, smell, and his memory, speech, and comprehension were unaffected • Dr. Harlow realized Phineas was blind in his left eye and his personality had changed drastically

3. Phineas’ Brain Damage • Front part of his left frontal lobe was damaged • Caused dramatic changes to his personality • Also damage to his right frontal lobe • It’s clear from this study that damage to the front part of the left frontal lobe was accompanied by damage to the right prefrontal cortex

4. Other Cases Similar to Phineas’ • A stockbroker had a tumor that pressed down on his frontal lobes • After surgery: • His senses, movements, speech, and memory were unaffected • His personality changed drastically • There was damage to his prefrontal cortex on left and right side

5. The Prefrontal Cortex • Anterior part of the frontal lobe • Damage leads to faults in the formation and execution of plans and to unsatisfactory social behavior • A correlation exists between the area damaged and the effect on behavior • The loss of the ability to make and execute plans is associated with damage to the prefrontal cortex

6. Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex • Patients with damage to the region on the underside of the brain are: • Impulsive, have poor social judgement, easily distracted, euphoric • Patients with damage to the upper and lateral surface of the cortex are: • Apathetic, have difficulty suppressing wrong responses, lack insight, have difficulty imagining alternative scenarios, have problems recalling the order of recent events

7. Attention • Involves selection • We pay attention to what’s important for determining our behavior • The switching of attention can be: • Stimulus driven • Centrally driven

8. Neglect • Neglect is when we ignore useful information involuntarily • One-sided neglect is when patients with brain damage particularly in the parietal lobes (usually the right) neglect stimuli on the opposite side of the body • Two types of one-sided neglect: • Left-sided neglect • Right-sided neglect

9. Left-Sided Neglect • Left-sided Neglect is when patients are asked to copy something, they only copy the right-hand half, and if the drawing contains several separate things, they may copy the right-hand half of each thing. • EdoardoBisiach and Claudio Luzzatti conducted an experiment on two people with left-sided neglect • A patient with Left-Sided Neglect and a right parietal lesion might read the word “train” as “rain” and “willow” as “pillow”.

10. Left-Sided Neglect • An example of someone with left-sided neglect:

11. Right-Sided Neglect • Right-sided neglect is when patients are asked to copy something and they only copy the left-hand half. • Alfonso Caramazza and Argye Hills described a woman with a left-sided brain lesion and right-sided neglect: • Difficulty with the ends of words • When words were in mirror-reversed form, she still had difficulty with the ends of words • Had difficulty with ends of words when letters were arranged vertically

12. Is There A Cure for Neglect? • There is no cure, but patients with left-sided neglect improve while either cold water is trickled through the left ear or warm water is trickled through the right ear.

13. Attention at the Cellular Level • Paying attention to a small part of the visual field is accompanied by significant changes in the behavior of nerve cells in the parietal lobes and secondary visual areas, and these changes may be useful in noticing things and in localizing them within the visual field. • Shows that parietal lobes and secondary visual areas are the centers for attention in the brain. • Damage to these areas would affect attention

14. The Binding Problem • How can we tell when several edges, or features of other kinds (textures, colors, patterns of movement) correspond to the same object or part of the object? • There are two hypotheses concerning the binding problem: • Focus attention • Synchronized firing

15. Focused Attention • Binding is achieved by scanning the scene with a spotlight of attention and features under the spotlight are features of the same object. • Weaknesses: • Does not fit well with the impression that we are immediately aware of the conjunction of features that correspond to an object. • Leaves the mechanism of attention and control of its direction unexplained

16. Example of the Failure of Binding: Focused Attention • Anne Treisman observed a patient, RM, who had failed in binding different visual features. • This shows that an impairment of visual attention can interfere with spatial localization to prevent binding.

17. Synchronized Firing • Nerve cells that respond to different features of the same object fire synchronously, and that synchrony indicates that the features are those of the same object. • Weakness of synchronized firing: • Even if it is true that synchronized firing of cells indicates that their activity is the result of stimulation by the same object or part of the object, it is not clear how the synchronization is established.

18. Example of Synchronization that Reflects Binding • Charles Gray recorded from nerve cells in two places in a cat’s primary visual cortex. • The images of the bars were aligned in three ways and the results were: • With the two bars moving in opposite directions, there was no synchronization • With the two bars moving in the same direction, there was slight synchronization • With the one long moving bar, there was strong synchronization • This shows that synchronization reflects binding

19. Binocular Rivalry • When two dissimilar patterns are presented to your eyes, as if from the same place, and you see alternates between the two patterns which change every few seconds. • Nikos Logothetis and Jeffrey Schall did an experiment with binocular rivalry on monkeys in which they trained the monkeys to report the direction of movement when two gratings drifted in the same direction(no rivalry) and then exposed them to gratings drifting in opposite directions.

20. Binocular Rivalry (Continued) • There are also experiments of binocular rivalry that deal with stationary patterns. • David Leopold and Nikos Logothetis conducted an experiment similar to this kind on monkeys.