Physiological bases of mental and physical work

1. Physiological bases of mental and physical work

2. The first signaling system • The analysis and synthesis of the direct stimuli from surroundings first signal system performs. This includes impressions, sensations. • This functional mechanism is common in human and animals. In the course of his social development and labor activity second signal system, which based on using verbal signals, develop. This system includes perception of words, reading and speech.

3. The second signaling system • The development of the second signaling system was incredibly broadened and changed by quality of higher nervous activity of cerebral hemispheres. Words are signals of other signals. Man uses verbal signals for everything he perceives through the receptors. Words are abstraction of reality and allow generalization, processing of surrounding primary information. This gives the first general human empiricism and finally science, the instrument of man's higher orientation in the environment and its own self. • So, second signaling system is socially determined. Outside the society, without association with other people second signaling system is not developed.

5. Wernicke's area is a part of auditory associative cortex, that makes possible to the person to interpret the meanings of words. This Wernicke's area is located in dominant hemisphere, which is usually the left. • The process of speech includes two principle stages of mentation: formation of thoughts to be expressed and motor control of vocalization.

6. Motor control of speech function • The skilled motor patterns for control of the larynx, lips, mouth, respiratory system and other accessory muscles of speech are all initiated from this area. Articulation means movements of mouth, tongue, larynx, vocal cords, and so forth that are responsible for the intonations, timing, and rapid changes in intensities of the sequential sounds. The facial and laryngeal regions of the motor cortex activate these muscles, and the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and sensory cortex all help control the sequences and intensities of muscle contractions. • Transmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin and certain neuropeptides transmit their signals by what is referred to as slow synaptic transmission. The resulting change in the function of the nerve cell may last from seconds to hours. This type of signal transmission is responsible for a number of basal functions in the nervous system and is of importance for e.g. alertness and mood. Slow synaptic transmission can also control fast synaptic transmission, which in turn enables e.g. speech, movements and sensory perception.

10. Nerve substrate of speech • There are two aspects of communication: sensory, involving reading, hearing of speech, and second, the motor aspect, involving vocalization and its control. • The formation of thoughts is the function of associative areas in the brain. Wernicke's area in the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus is most important for this ability. Broca's speech area lies in prefrontal and premotor facial region in the left hemisphere. • The skilled motor patterns for control of the larynx, lips, mouth, respiratory system and other accessory muscles of speech are all initiated from this area.

12. Development of signaling systems in children • The ability of a full-term baby to develop temporary connections of the first signaling system arises in a few days after the birth. In the first six months of life speech sounds mean little to a child. They are simply stimuli to the auditory analyzer like any other sounds. • The first signs of development of the second signaling system appear during the second half of the first year of life. If a person or an object is named and shown to a child many times, reaction to this name develops. • Later after leaning a few words, a child begins to name objects itself. Finally, at a later time he uses a stock of words to communicate with other people.

13. Language development • The process by which children acquire their firstlanguage in early childhood. • Human infants are acutely attuned to the humanvoice, and prefer it above all other sounds. In fact, theyprefer the higher pitch ranges characteristic of femalevoices. They are also attentive to the human face, particularlythe eyes, which they stare at even more if the faceis talking. • These preferences are present at birth, andsome research indicates that babies even listen to theirmother’s voice during the last few months of pregnancy. • Babies who were read to by their mothers while in thewomb showed the ability to pick out her voice fromamong other female voices.

15. Functions of speech • Main functions of speech are communicative, regulatory, programming and gives general notion about surroundings. Communicative function permits exchange of information between people. Such a function is also present in animals, which use for this aim vocalization of different intensity to warn about danger or express positive and negative emotions. People use verbal signals for everything he perceives through the receptors. Words are abstraction of reality and allow generalization, processing of surrounding primary information. • Verbal instructions may direct human activity, give suggestion about proper mode of behavior. This is programming function of speech. Programming function of speech involves emotional component also, which may influence to emotional status of a person. • As limbic system, which controls emotions, has direct connection with autonomic nervous system,so speech through emotions may influence to functions of visceral organs. Physician may use this effect for psychotherapy. It is necessary remember about jatrogenic disorders also.

16. Attention as psychical function • Attention is selectiveness of psychical processes or any kind of mental activity, which helps in getting and processing the information. There are sensory, motor, intellectual and emotional forms of attention, depending to kind of activity of a person. • There are voluntary and involuntary levels of attention. Involuntary attention is present from the birth of man. Voluntary attention develops in life course, due to mental activity, formation of speech function and studying languages.

17. Physiological mechanisms of attention • Involuntary attention is controlled by lower portion of brain stem and midbrain, where centers of roof reflexes are locates. Voluntary attention appears as a result of higher cortical activity in visual, auditory, motor areas and so on. • Lesion of these cortical areas leads to such disturbances in processing special sensory information as ignore of stimuli of different modality. Intellectual attention appears because of function of prefrontal associative cortical area. The limbic system of the brain is responsible for emotional attention.

18. Thinking process as psychical function • The prefrontal association area is essential to carrying out thought processes in the mind. This presumably results from some of the same capabilities of the prefrontal cortex that allow it to plan motor activities. • The prefrontal association area is frequently described as important for elaboration of thoughts to store on a short-term basis “working memories” that are used to analyze each new thought while it is entering the braine. The somatic, visual, and auditory association areas all meet one another in the posterior part of the superior temporal lobe. This area is especially highly developed in the dominant side of the brain – the left side in almost all right-handed people. • It plays the greatest single role of any part of cerebral cortex in the higher comprehensive levels of brain function that we call intelligence. This zone is also called general interpretative area, the gnostic area, the knowing area, tertiary association area. It is best known as Wernike’s area in honor of the neurologist who first describes it.

19. Brain activity recorded with PET in examenee, watching the rotating letters

20. FORGETTING • Ineffective initial encoding, usually occurs because of ineffective attention in the acquisition phase • DECAY:  forgetting occurs because memory fades with time. • INTERFERENCE: forgetting occurs because of competition from other information • Retroactive Interference: new information interferes with what has already been learned • Proactive Interference: old information interferes with what is being learned • RETRIEVAL FAILURE: sometimes we can not remember something which at another time we can remember it; perhaps this is because of the context cues or retrieval cues present at the time • motivated forgetting:  we may tend to forget things that we do not wish to remember (Freud) (Repressed Memories ) • BRAIN INJURY: • ANTEROGRADE AMNESIA (injury prevents new memories from occurring): • RETROGRADE AMNESIA: (injury prevents old memories from occurring)

21. Thinking an Reasoning • Thinking includes a wide range of mental activities. It is the language of our mind, and it can be presented in different ways or modes. These include: Propositional Thought, Imaginal thought, and the Motoric thought. • (I) PROPOSITIONAL THINKING: • 1) Three important aspects of proposition thinking can be studied: its Content, its Organization, and its way of Communication. • 2)Content : refers to how we form or build blocks of thought and how we use them to classify objects. • -This is done through the development of CONCEPT FORMATION. • -A concept is a set of properties that we associate with classes of objects. It is the basis of categorizing items to their shared properties, e.g. classes of antibiotics, or antipsychotic. It also helps us to predict information that is not accessible to us, e.g. a cat, a lion etc.

22. PROPOSITIONAL THINKING • 3) Organizationof thought refers to the ways and types of reasoning we use. In reasoning our sequence of thoughts often take the form of an argument, in which one proposition correspond to a Conclusion, and the remaining correspond to the premises. • - There is two type of reasoning: Deductive, and inductive reasoning. • - Deductive reasoning are the strongest types of logical reasoning. It means that it is impossible for the conclusion of an argument to be false if its premises are true. Here we go from the general to the specific; we deduce a particular consequence from set of general rules, we Infer the conclusion from the premises. • - Inductive reasoning represents the reversed process of reasoning; here we try to induce a general rule from particular premises. Here it is improbable that the conclusion is false if the premises are true.

23. 4)Communicatingour Thoughts is achieved through language. Languages are organized as a hierarchy of structures. The highest level is SENTENCE UNITS, including phrases that can be related to units of proposition. The phrases of a sentence are built of words, or parts of words that have meaning, Next level is that of WORDS and parts of words that carries meanings a MORPHEME. Morphemes are words, suffix or prefix that are added to words. The lowest level contains SPEECH SOUNDS. A phoneme is a category of speech sounds. Every language has its own set of phonemes and rules that combining them into words. Communicating our Thoughts

24. Understanding and Expressing LANGUAGE • A language also has syntactic rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences. • Producing language is a process of translating propositional thoughts into the phrases and morphemes of the sentence, and then translating this into phonemes. • PHRASES-------- MORPHEMES------- PHONEMES • Understandinga sentence requires not only analyzing phonemes, morphemes, and phrases, but also using the context and understanding the intention of the speaker. In understanding language the process is reversed. That is, we use phonemes to construct morphemes, and then phrases • TYPES OF APHASIA

25. IMAGINAL THOUGHTS: 1) Not all types of our thoughts are presented in proposition. Some are presented in visual images. Such images contains the kinds of details found in visual perception 2) Imagery can be like perception because it is mediated by the same part of the brain. Thus, brain damage that results in certain perceptual problems, e.g., visual neglect, also results in comparable problems in imagery. THOUGHTINACTION:PROBLEMSOLVING: 1) Problem solving involves decomposing a goal into subgoals that are easier to obtain. 2) We use different strategies to solve daily problems That why experts are superior to novice in problem solving. The IDEAL problem solver refer to effective strategy and planning for problem solving. OTHER TYPES OF THINKING

26. Aphasia Aphasia means loss of speech . There are several types of aphasia : • 1) Broca's Aphasia • 2) Wernik's Aphasia • 3) Anomic Aphasia • 4) Conducting Aphasia • 5) Global Aphasia • 6) Transcortical Sensory Aphasia • 7) Transcortical Motor Aphasia

27. Broca's Aphasia • Broca's area is usually found in the Frontal Lobe • In 90% of the people , it is found in the Lt hemisphere • It is the most common type of Aphasia • The patient understands what he hears but he can NOT speak ! • He speaks very few words , very difficult

28. Broca's Aphasia (NON-FLUENT Aphasia ) • The patient is minimizing the adverbs & adjectives • It is really difficult to produce the words in such patients • He is laboring to produce only few words ! • The patient doesn't talk much , he is almost silent • He will omit a lot of syntaxes .. The grammar is simplified • The language is meaningful but it is hard to generate the words • The words are produced very slow & with a lot of effort • If you ask him a question he will answer you , He will follow your comments because he can understand what you say

29. Wernik's Aphasia (FLUENT Aphasia) • Wernik's area is usually found in the Temporal Lobe • In 90% of the people , it is found in the Lt hemisphere • The patient speaks a lot but his sentences has NO meaning • If you listen to him , He speaks very fluent sentences , he speaks all the time .. • His sound is normal , He uses correct grammar roles but if you concentrate on what he is saying you would found meaningless speech.. • Ex : The door is too salty , The book is extremely fast ! • The patients are very confident , very elated & euphoric , they think that they are fine ! • If you ask him to follow your comments , he will not be able to do it because he can NOT understand what you say ( Lack of comprehension)

30. Anomic Aphasia (Angular Gyrus Lesion) • Anomic person can Not supply the proper word or the name of an object or any thing he talks about • Anomic person can Not find the proper word or the name of an object he talks about so he keeps on describing that object without mentioning its name • Ex : If you give him a picture of a computer for example he would say : • Yes I have this , I have it on my office , above my disc , I use it every day , it is like this & that … • Yet , he can NOT say that this is a computer !! • Anomic person is Alixic ! • Anomic person can understand & read !

31. Conduction Aphasia(Arcuate Fasiculus Lesion) • Damage of the connection fibers between the Werniks area & Broca's area .. • These patients will have problem in repetition .. They can Not repeat after you although they understand what you say ( bcz Werniks area is Normal ) .. • They can follow your comments .. • Thy have problem in conjugation of the words .. • Ex : If you give him a picture of a chair for example he would say : • Tair … Flair … Sair … • He can Not say the proper word or the name of the object he sees ..