The brain and memory

Ria's notes from Eric Kandel's lecture. 

Eric Kandel - Mapping Memory In the Brain 2/

The Systems problem of memory –

Where in the brain is memory stored?

The Molecular problem of memory –

What are the mechanisms whereby storage occurs at each side?

Can any mental process be localized to the brain?

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) –

All mental functions are biological and arise from the brain. Different mental functions can be localized to different regions of the cerebral cortex.

The brain is bilaterally symmetrical (Left hemisphere,Infoldings: Sulci, Crests: Gyri) The cortex is convoluted.

The brains has four lobes – Frontal, Parental, temporal and occipital

How to localize mental functions? He has to localize more than 40 different functions. How? Take people and see where is the lesion?

He did it a different way, studied people very closely, he didn’t want to study and diseased brain. There would be 40 different functions. Identify them in different regions in the following way, Intellectual, comparison and thinking at the front of the brain. Romantic functions, like love, parental love etc at the back of the brain and Sentiments, like hope and happiness in the middle of the brain.

Careful observer, look at the shape of people skulls… different shape skulls, have different character structures and different personalities.  Looking at bumps in the skull he could look at how they function as intellectual and social human beings.

Head shapes, (Prominent forehead) for thinking and for making comparisons,

Profound thicker – Good at comparison, Shallow thinker – Poor at comparison

If you use the function, eg comparison it would bulk up like a muscle over exercise, and cause the skull to bulge out.

Got his class to check others heads? Skulls?

Pieree-Paul Broca (1824-1880)

1861 – Thinks that all mental functions come from the brain, is very likely that mental functions can be localized in different regions.

Argues that you had to get inside the brain

“I had thought that if there were a phrenologicalscience… it would be phrenology of convolutions in the cortex and not the phrenology of bumps on the head” (Pierre paul broca, 1861)

Mental functions can be localized to a specific region of the brain through clinical-pathological correlations.

Aphasia (Order of language) He came across a Patient Leborgne – He could understand language perfectly well, but could not express language.

Could whistle, hum, could not express language in writing, even though he understood language very well.

Leborgne’s aphasia: a defect in language production – A lesion on the front on the left side of the brain. Naming the area involved with speech production. He named it after himself, calling it Broca’s area (Naming area involved with speech production.

He found that we speak with the left hemisphere.