Neural Not-works
This part of the basal ganglia degenerates in Parkinson’s disease.
What is the substantia nigra (pars compacta)?
This sleep stage is associated with fast, desynchronized brain waves and vivid dreaming.
What is REM (rapid eye movement) sleep?
This speech disorder is characterized by slow, laborious, and nonfluent speech.
The activity of this is responsible for monogamy in prairie voles.
What is vasopressin?
What is the endorphin system?
In Alzheimer’s disease, these abnormal protein structures form inside dying neurons.
What are neurofibrillary tangles made of tau protein.
This EEG rhythm (8–12 Hz) appears during relaxed wakefulness and disappears during the transition into N1.
What are alpha waves?
People with Broca’s aphasia have particular difficulty with this type of word, which are small words with grammatical meanings.
What are function words?
What is the ventral pallidum?
Over time, chronic alcohol use causes a compensatory up-regulation of these receptors, causing neurons to become hyperexcitable.
What are NMDA receptors?
Medium spiny neurons release this neurotransmitter to inhibit the GPi and GPe.
What is GABA?
These two characteristic EEG features define Stage 2 sleep.
What are sleep spindles and K-complexes?
This brain area serves as a place for interchanging information between the auditory representation of words and their meanings.
What is the posterior language area?
Ventral pallidum integrates dopamine inputs from the from this midbrain area with modulatory inputs like vasopressin from thalamic (PVT) sources.
What is the VTA?
Chronic alcohol use causes desensitization of this receptor type.
What are GABA-A receptors?
In Parkinson’s disease, weakened direct pathway output leads to less inhibition of this basal ganglia structure, which normally suppresses the thalamus.
What is the internal globus pallidus (GPi)?
This group of subcortical structures—the posterior hypothalamus, intralaminar thalamic nuclei, and nucleus basalis—maintain the desynchronized EEG of wakefulness.
What is the executive network?
This aphasia is characterized by meaningful speech and fluency, but very poor repetition.
What is conduction aphasia?
Female prairie voles with higher oxytocin receptor density in this region display higher levels of maternal behaviors.
What is the nucleus accumbens?
These molecules act as retrograde messengers to inhibit neurotransmitter release by acting on inhibitory presynaptic CB1 receptors.
What are endocannabinoids?
This gene on chromosome 21 codes for the precursor of β-amyloid, explaining why Down Syndrome increases AD risk.
What is the APP or APOE gene (amyloid precursor protein)?
NREM parasomnias occur because the brain is caught between these two physiological states (be specific).
What are slow-wave sleep and wakefulness?
This tract conveys information about the sounds of words, but NOT their meanings.
What is the arcuate fasciculus?
The nucleus accumbens and a key node in this specific dopamine pathway.
What is the mesolimbic pathway?
This type of endocannabinoid receptor is widespread in the immune system.
What are CB2 receptors?