Question

Herbie is a typical high school student. He enjoys school, friend, sports and his motorcycle. Unfortunately he was not wearing his helmet and had a serious accident which resulted in a brain injury. Describe specifically how his injuries would affect his ability to perform certain behaviors. For example, if his cerebellum was damaged, he might have problems with his coordination for sports. a) occipital lobe b) hippocampus c) hypothalamus d) amygdala e) Broca s area f) Wernicke s area

Answer 1

A) Since the occipital lobe processes visual information, if he injured his lobe, he would not be able to see correctly.

b) Since the hippocampus is responsible for processing emotion and short term memory to long term memory, if he injured this section, he would not be able to remember things past his short term memory capacity.

c) Since the hypothalamus is in charge of maintaining homeostasis within the body, if he injured this section, the conditions of his body would not be stable. For example, if his blood sugar level was too high, his hypothalamus would not send information to the pancreas to synthesize insulin to lower blood sugar levels, so he would have to inject insulin manually.

d) Since his amygdala is responsible for the response and memory of emotions (esp. fear), if he injured this structure, he would not be scared of situations as often/at all.

e) Broca's area is responsible for generating articulate speech, so if he injured this structure, he would have trouble speaking easily or easily thinking of the words he is thinking of.

f) Wernicke's area is responsible for comprehension of speech, so if he injured this structure, he would have trouble making sense or understand speech.