| FRONTAL LOBE |
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Where is it?:
The frontal lobe is located at the front of the brain just behind the forehead.
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What does it do?
- Provides executive control
over much of the brain’s higher
functions.
- Consciousness.
- Self-awareness.
- Judgment.
- Initiation / Motivation.
- Control over emotional
responses.
- Planning / Sequencing.
- Word formation.
- Prospective memoryremembering
to do something.
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What happens when
it is injured?
- Inability to synthesize signals from the
environment.
- Inability to assign priorities.
- Inability to make decisions.
- Inability to initiate actions.
- Inability to control emotions.
- Inability to behave and interact socially
and make plans.
- Changes in personality.
- Inflexible, simplistic, and/or concrete
thinking.
- Poor judgment.
- Inability to plan a sequence of complex
movements needed to complete multistepped
tasks.
- Inability to behave appropriately in
social situations.
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| PARIETAL LOBE |
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Where is it?
The parietal lobe is located on both sides of the head neat the top and to the back.
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What does it do?
- Responsible for perceiving,
analyzing, and assembling
touch information from the
body.
- Integrates visual, auditory,
and touch information in order
to formulate complete
impression of the world.
Left parietal lobe
Area where letters come
together to form words and
where words are put together in
thoughts.
Right parietal lobe
Responsible for understanding
the spatial aspects of the world
including recognizing shapes,
being aware of one’s body in
space and deficits.
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What happens when
it is injured?
- Difficulties with hand and eye
coordination.
Left parietal lobe
- Inability to recognize or locate touch
sensations from the right side of the
body.
- Inability to know the meaning of words.
- Anomia – Inability to name objects.
- Dyscalculia – Inability to do
mathematic calculations.
- Agraphia – Inability to locate the words
for writing.
Right parietal lobe
- Inability to recognize or locate touch
sensations from the left side of the body.
- Perceptual Agnosia – “not
knowing” (e.g., not able to recognize
familiar objects touched by the hands.)
- Difficulty with drawing objects.
- Lack of awareness of certain body parts and/or surrounding space.
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| TEMPORAL LOBE |
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Where is it?
The temporal lobe is a large thumb-shaped extension of the cerebral hemispheres located near the temples on either side of the head.
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What does it do?
A small section at the top of
each temporal lobe, known as
the auditory cortex, is
responsible for hearing.
The temporal lobes are also
involved in memory
acquisition, perception, and
categorization of objects.
- Involved in processing
auditory information (e.g.,
sound discrimination,
comprehension of language,
listening, reading; music.)
- Important for memory
acquisition, storage.
- important for sense of smell.
- Involved in complex visual
analysis.
Left temporal lobe
- Specialized for the
comprehension of language
such as listening and reading.
Right temporal lobe
- Specialized for the
comprehension of music.
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What happens when
it is injured?
- Disturbance with selective attention to
what is seen and heard.
- Memory problems.
- Categorization problems.
Left temporal lobe
- Wernicke’s Aphesia – An inability to
read and comprehend what someone is
saying (e.g., can form word associations
but they are not language based).
- Persistent talking.
Right temporal lobe
- Inability to recognize and appreciated
music.
- Prosopagnosia – Difficulty in
recognizing faces.
- Difficulty understanding spoken
language (i.e., some types of aphasia).
- Specific memory impairments (e.g.,
Prosopagnosia / inability to recognize
faces.)
- Impaired detection of smell.
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| OCCIPITAL LOBE |
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Where is it?
The occipital lobe is located in the extreme rear of the cerebral hemisphere at the back of the brain.
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What does it do?
This lobe is dedicated entirely
to vision in terms of detection,
identification, and
interpretation of objects.
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What happens when
it is injured?
- Visual Agnosia – not consciously
knowing that one has seen an object.
- Difficulty locating objects in the
environment.
- Colour Agnosia – difficulty with
identifying colours.
- Word Blindness – difficulty in
recognizing words.
- Inability to track the movement of
objects.
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| BRAIN STEM |
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Where is it?
The brainstem is located at the base of the brain and extends down to become the spinal cord. Three main parts make up the brainstem, including the medulla, the pons and the midbrain. |
What does it do?
The medulla controls basic
involuntary life functions such
as respiration, blood pressure,
heart rate, and body
temperature control.
In the pons and extending up
through the midbrain is a
structure called the reticular
activating system. This system
affects sleep onset and a
person’s level of alertness.
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What happens when
it is injured?
- A disturbance in breathing, heart rate,
or other vital bodily functions.
- Decreased levels of alertness and
arousal.
- Dysphagia – difficulty swallowing food
and water.
- Sleep difficulties (e.g., insomnia, sleep
apnea).
- Disturbance in sleep/wake cycles.
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