neuro final

I'm typing away on my Dell laptop, somewhere on the NYU campus--a secret location thus far for security reasons--awaiting my neuroscience final exam. It's 2:11pm, the final is scheduled for 4:00pm. Instead of reviewing like a good future OT, I'm blogging. But so I don't waste all of my time, I'll let you in on the little particulars swimming in my cerebrum.

Let's start with cerebellar diseases, these diseases result in motor dysfunction on the ipsilateral (fancy word for "same") side of the body:

1) damage to the flocculonodular lobe of the cerebellum results in overall difficulty of balance and gait, and causes nystagmus (eye drift)

2) damage to the vermis of the cerebellum causes problems with the trunk muscles, presenting postural issues

3) damage to the intermediate region of the cerebellum causes problems with the limbs only


Deficits Involve:
1) COORDINATION
a. dysmetria - errors in force and direction in movement
b. dysdiadochokinesia - difficulty with repeated pronations and supinations of the arms
c. decomposition - movement accomplished in a series discrete steps instead of one fluid motion


2) EQUILIBRIUM
a. balance difficulties
b. tendency to fall forward on affected side
c. speech may be slurred or slowed


3) MUSCLE TONE DISORDERS
a. hypotonia - low tone

Now, let's talk language! When speaking, I often fumble my words, stop myself short before completing a thought, sounding like a speech-language pathological candidate. What ho! Miss Neuroscience brought a little of that into her last lecture. Let's see now:

1) Wernicke's Area (pronounced "VER ni kee") is located within the LEFT temporal-parietal junction (the neurophiles will know what I'm talking about) and involves the comprehension of spoken language. Oh what joy it was to discover the existance of Wernicke's Area; it so explains the annoying tendencies of certain people who truly do not understand what the hell I am saying, even though I speak comprehensible English. So for those of you who cannot understand plain English, I will henceforth assume you have a Wernicke's Area problem resulting in receptive aphasia (you can hear spoken language but you cannot understand it). Wernicke's Area is also associated with the speaker's content selection. In this case, I feel most people have a problem with Wernicke's Area, especially the jackasses on Jackass.

2) Broca's Area is located in the LEFT frontal lobe and involves grammatical refinement. So, what is grammatical refinement. Apparently, it's what I lack, not to this extent though. So, for instance, if you want to say something like: the surface of the table is slippery. You may end up saying something like this: surface table slidey.

Let's put this all together and see how speech production occurs!

First, content is selected in Wernicke's Area
Second, grammar is refined in Broca's Area
Third, movement of the mouth happens through the motor cortex.

That means, when telling people to "shut up" we're really asking them to master various aspects of the brain. I say, wear earphones!