Lecture Notes

Disease and the Brain

Why are we interested in the brain?  Why is there a whole major on this?

Diseases List 'Off the top of My Head'

• Diseases of NT Systems
  1. Schizophrenia
  2. Depression
• Diseases of Neural Degeneration
  1. Alzheimer's
     • Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type
     • Diagnosed as memory loss with inability to complete activities of daily living
     • A "discovered" disease due to an aging population
     • Macroanatomy:  Degeneration of higher cortices
     • Microanatomy: Amyloid plaques and tangles
     • About 50% of those with early AD have been found to have mutations in the amyloid precursor protein
  2. Lou Gehrig/ALS
• Diseases of the Basal Ganglia
  1. Huntington's
  2. Parkinson's

Plasticity and Disease

• Diseases of Deafferentation
  1. Multiple Sclerosis
  2. Phantom pain/central pain
• Diseases of Vasculature
  1. Stroke
  2. High blood pressure? (Something to think about)
  3. Migraine
• Diseases and Neural Dynamics
  1. Language Specific Learning Deficit
  2. Epilepsy-Dostoyevsky to Neil Young; Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus; hyper-excitability leading to spreading waves of excitation in the brain.

Association of Structure and Function

• "Cerebellar Patient"
• Motor
  1. Stumbling gate
• Psychiatric disorders
• Pitch discrimination
• Language ability
• Tactile perception

Deficits are not Trivially Localizationist

Deficits of NT systems (depression, schizophrenia)

Phantom Limb

Alzheimer's