Tag: Neuroscience
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Reacting Quickly – PBL Case
In 1662 René Descartes, the French philosopher, wrote about the question of how it comes that we immediately react to noxious stimuli such as heat so quickly. Since then , our understanding of the nervous system has evolved immensely, yet some of the vocabulary used and the descriptions involved remain strikingly similar. In this PBL…
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Patient H.M. – PBL Case
In 1953 Henry Molaison, who later became known as patient H.M., underwent an experimental type of neurosurgery in Hartford, Connecticut. The reason for this was that he had suffered from seizures since adolescence and these seizures had become more severe now that he was in his late 20s. Henry recovered quite well from the surgery…
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Multitasking – PBL Case
Our own experience from daily life as well as studies from Cognitive Psychology tell us that some tasks can be done simultaneously without a decrease of performance in either of the two. For other tasks this is difficult or impossible to do them simultaneously. For example, the simultaneous production of different motor responses with both…
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Feeling What Is Not There – PBL Case
After an amputation, a large number of patients report that they can still feel their amputated limb as if it was still there. They report regular sensual experiences such as being touched on the missing limb and, especially in the time right after surgery, they sometimes “forget” that the limb is not there anymore. For…
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Brain Lesions – PBL Case
On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage, a railroad construction worker, was involved in a severe work accident when, following an explosion, an iron bar passed through his head, destroying part of his prefrontal lobe. He recovered and lived another 11 years, but contemporary reports suggest that his personality changed abruptly. This turned out to be…