Function of the Cortex Objective 16 Carlita Owens Fred Pennington Brittany Wallace

Motor Function German physicians Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig discovered they could make different body parts move by mild electrical Stimulation. The arch shaped region that controls movement is the motor cortex

Mapping the Motor Cortex Otfrid Foerster and wilder Penfield mapped the motor cortex by stimulating different cortical areas according to parts they controlled. It was discovered that one side of the brain controlled the other (left side of brain controls right side of body)

Neural Prosthetics Brown University conducted a study to monitor when monkeys would move or think to move the monitor and later predict brain signals using recording electrons With the findings researchers programmed a cursor to move to the monkeys thinking In 2004 a trial for neural prosthetics on paralyzed humans allowed a tester to control a t.v. draw shapes on a computer and play video games.

Sensory Function The sensory cortex (discovered by Penfield) is a cortical area that specializes in getting information from the skin senses and from movement of the body. The more sensitive a body region the larger the sensory cortex Scientist have identified other areas where the cortex receives input other than touch Such as; optical lobes which receives visual information

Association Areas They association various sensory inputs with stored memories- a very important part of thinking.

Figure 2.31 Phineas Gage reconsidered Myers: Psychology, Eighth Edition Copyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers Using measurement of his skull and modern neuroimaging technique, researcher Hanna Damasio and her colleagues have reconstructed the probable path of the rod through Gage’s brain.