Those, on theother hand, which need to be flexible and solve problems develop the “uncommittedcortex” needed to support the necessary higher functions. It istherefore commonly accepted that the best indicator of brain power is forebraindevelopment in general, and frontal lobe development in particular. Primates,for example, have been large-brained throughout their known history (Jerison,1987), and the highest grade of encephalisation is shared by humans andcetaceans (dolphins). Figure 2 shows some of the steps on the evolutionaryladder leading ultimately to H. From early thinkers like Aristotle to modern neuroscientists, the idea that our brain’s size could be directly related to intelligence has been both an intriguing and controversial one.
A 1 cm burr-hole was then drilledthrough the skull, and the dura mater cut through and folded back. Finally, aneedle was pushed down through the exposed cortex and rocked to and fro throughthe underlying white matter. In the bilateral rostral operation, theneedle is angled more obliquely forwards. The standard procedure thus isolatesAreas 9, 10, 11, 46, 47, and possibly part of Area 45, whilst the rostralprocedure isolates only Areas 9 and 10 – the prefrontal cortex proper – andleaves the orbital cerebrumiq cortex relatively intact compare the two top arrows onFigure 4. However, with deteriorating press and the discovery ofchlorpromazine antidepressant drugs in 1952, the numbers started to fall. Bythe 1950s, psychosurgery had whipped up a storm of objections on a variety ofgrounds, not least the difficulty in obtaining genuinely informed medicalconsent in such circumstances see Restak (op cit) for details.
A patient in their 60s taking an antipsychotic is found to have a…
Atthe same time, clinicians need to guard against doing too much of theirpatient’s thinking for them. For example, Ylvisaker and Feeney (draft2004 online) have reviewed the literature on paediatric frontalrehabilitation and identify the fundamental problem as one of measuringpatients’ “self-determination” in a clinician-patient encounter wherethe clinician is likely to be doing all the determining. They adopt Wehmeyer,Agran, and Hughes’ (1998) analysis of self-determination into four components…..
This means the view that it is a ‘self-stimulation behaviour’ is not correct, and for this reason the term ‘stimming’ is not widely used. It is an observation of repetitive body movements, that is all we really know at present, although there are many theories. In CVI we have seen repetitive body movements, including head turning from side to side, sometimes when a person is excited about something visual.
- Profound Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD)PMLD is another term to separate the most severely learning delayed from others with learning delays, so that support can be matched.
- What’s more, we now know far more about the extent to which these changes are influenced by the world around us, and even by the choices we make in our day to day lives.
- Anything that means learning is severely affected can be included in this group.
- Otherauthors, meanwhile, were still trying to get to the bottom of the frontallobes’ role in cognition.
Visual cortex
If CVI is diagnosed, then, in terms of labels, the person arguably no longer has ADHD. They have CVI leading to ADHD like reactive behaviours.Further reading UKs NHS Pages on ADHD. Anothernot uncommon cluster of frontal lobe lesions arises following haemorrhage of the anteriorcommunicating artery (ACoA), that part of thecircle of Willis which connects the two anterior cerebral arteries justanterior to the optic chiasm. According to Parkin and Leng (1993), the ACoA iscuriously prone to the development of aneurisms, and when such aneurismsrupture they reduce the supply to the basal forebrain, the septal area, and theanterior portions of the cingulate gyrus, fornix, hypothalamus, and corpuscallosum. As to the resulting clinical picture, Parkin and Leng (1993)summarise a number of separate case reports and report a severe confusionalstate, attention problems, severe retrograde amnesia, and misorientation to anearlier time period.
This,of course, was classic encephalisation restated, but Bianchi was then moreprecise in 1922, when he summarised the animal studies as showing five areasof frontal deficit, as follows ….. Genetically-modified animals are produced by injecting the gene for the protein (which will act as the drug) into the nucleus of a fertilised animal egg cell. This is then implanted into an adult animal and as the animal develops, every cell will contain the drug-producing gene.
- “She flashed her phone and showed me a score that was barely above average. She started going off about how her IQ is everything and that we’d be dumb not to hire her. When I told her we have an actual hiring process, she screamed that her IQ alone should be enough.”
- The term multiple disabilities may be mistakenly understood to mean multiple medical conditions, which may be the case, but the term is typically used to describe a person with a combination of medical and learning / developmental challenges.
- For instance, an elephant has a brain that weighs about 5 kilograms, but in relation to its massive body, this is actually a small brain.