WEEK4 DISCUSSION
Response 1
Retrograde Amnesia
Retrograde Amnesia refers to the inability to remember events that happened before the brain damage occurred (2017). This disease is debilitating and often can result in complete memory loss. A functional imaging study by Smith and Squire ( 2009 (Links to an external site.) ) found evidence that supports the differential role of the hippocampal formation in recent memories and older ones. Many doctors will test this by asking the patient questions regarding a short time span regarding their injury and see if they acknowledge any recovered memories. "The hippocampal formation receives information from other regions of the brain, processes this information, and then, through its efferent connections with these regions, modifies the memories that are being consolidated there, linking them together in ways that will permit us to remember the relationships among the elements of the memories. The hippocampal formation transfers memories into permanent storage in other areas of the brain." (LO 13.11). Learning new things will keep the brain flourishing as long as it is gaining knowledge, especially daily will help the retention of memories significantly. Gould et al., ( 1999 (Links to an external site.) ) trained rats on two versions of the Morris water maze: one requiring relational learning and one requiring only stimulus-response learning. The rat with the ability to run on the wheel more often will have a greater chance of not losing neurons in the brain. "The number of new neurons produced in the hippocampus decreases with age, and these age-related decreases are reduced in rodents in an enriched environment" ( Clemenson et al., 2015 (Links to an external site.) ). Strokes, traumatic injuries to the brain, falls, and brain lesions and tumors can cause retrograde amnesia to inhibit the brain and cause many developmental changes. This is why routine and repetition are so important to the way the brain and neurons work together.
References
Carlson, N. R., & Birkett, M. A. (2017). Physiology of behavior (12th ed.) [Custom edition]. Retrieved from https://content.uagc.edu (Links to an external site.)
Clemenson, G. D., Deng, W., and Gage, F. H. Environmental enrichment and neurogenesis: From mice to humans. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2015, 4, 56–62.
Gould, E., Beylin, A., Tanapat, P., Reeves, A., et al. Learning enhances adult neurogenesis in the hippocampal formation. Nature Neuroscience, 1999, 2, 260–265.
Smith, C. N., and Squire, L. R. Medial temporal lobe activity during retrieval of semantic memory is related to the age of the memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 2009. 29, 930–938.
Response 2
Conduction Aphasia is a rare form of aphasia being that the expression and comprehension stay intact but the patient's ability to repeat simple phrases becomes impaired (Acharya & Maani, 2021). This disorder comes from damage to the inferior parietal lobe on the left side of the brain that damages the arcuate fasciculus (Carlson & Birkett, 2017). Conduction Aphasia is the less effective type of aphasia but still will affect a person's daily lifestyle by limiting their ability to communicate (Acharya & Maani, 2021). To figure out if someone has this disorder clinicians will conduct neuro-imaging by way of a CT scan or an MRI to search for strokes, tumors, or infections within the brain (Acharya & Maani, 2021). A person struggling with this disorder may be asked to repeat a word or sentence and they are able to repeat it using a different word but the word still might have the same meaning. This is the result of the auditory comprehension and the verbal output becoming disconnected making it difficult for the patient to repeat words fluently. Aphasia can also be a connection to dementia because it affects the language dominant side of the brain which is normally located on the left side and affects the everyday life of the person. There is no cure for conduction aphasia but the patient can use speech therapy to try and assist them with this disorder by repeating words back to the therapist to try and improve their communication. I have just read an article stating that the iconic actor Bruce Willis has just been diagnosed with aphasia they did not disclose the type of aphasia that he has but he will have to retire from acting due to this disorder. It would be extremely difficult for him to repeat the scripts that he has to perform if he cannot fluently repeat the words that are given to him. There are some people who are able to completely recover from aphasia without the need for treatment (Acharya & Maani, 2021) but this does not apply to all people.
Acharya, A. B., and Maani, C. V. (2021). Conduction aphasia. NCBI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537006/ (Links to an external site.) .
Carlson, N. R., & Birkett, M. A. (2017). Physiology of behavior (12th ed.) [Custom edition]. Retrieved from https://content.uagc.edu.