Question

1. To gain further understanding of some functionality of the brain, complete the following: outlining what functionality could be affected if an individual suffered damage to the cerebral cortex. Be sure to explain about what you learned about cerebral cortex, what would happen if it were damaged, and why you believe knowledge of this information is important to psychologist?
2. Explain the roles of each following plays in sending a message through a neuron: dendrites, axon, myelin sheath

Answer 1

Ans:-) cerebral cortex is superficial layer (outer covering) of gray matter over the cerebral hemispheres. The cerebral cortex is made up of 4 lobes which play a great role in performing many functions.

Functions of cerebral cortex :-It play role in many voluntary activities, language, speech, and also other brain function such as thinking and memory. Cerebral cortex contains nerve bodies and in addition to this it also contains endings of neurons that reach from one part of brain to other part of brain and also have a rich network of blood vessels.

If cerebral cortex is damaged due to any reason then:- patient may loss control in portions of their body or we can say that patient may suffer from involuntary movents.

Other effects of injury of cerebral cortex are linked to depressive disorders, poor decision making, memory problems, a complete lack of impulse control, attention problem etc.

This knowledge i. e effect of damage of cerebral cortex is important for a psychologist. If he know the reason behind disorder then he can easily cure this. For eg if someone lost his memory due to damage in cerebral cortex then if psychologist knew that this is due to cerebral cortex damage then he first cure the cerebral cortex.

Now comes to 2nd part of question.....

Neuron is a cell that carries information between brain and other parts of body.

Neuron consists of mainly 3 parts:-

i) Dendrites (ii) cell body (iii) axon

  

This is a neuron diagram.

Now if a stimulus comes then it is received by dendrites. This stimulus is converted in form of electrical signal. Dendrites pass this information to cell body from where it is passed to axon.

Axon are covered by a protective covering called myelin sheath. This sheath protect the axon from any kind of damage and help in efficient transfer of signal through the axon.

Axon pass this signal to synaptic knob and from there this signal is converted to chemical signal in gap called synapse. This chemical signal is now received by Dendrites of other neuron and converted in electric signal and whole process occur similary. In this way a message is transferred.