Case Studies
This railroad worker survived a tamping iron through his skull, becoming a classic case of personality change due to frontal lobe damage.
Who is Phineas Gage?
This outer layer of the brain is involved in higher-order thinking, sensory processing, and voluntary movement.
What is the cortex?
This syndrome is caused by thiamine deficiency and is associated with chronic alcoholism and memory loss.
What is Korsakoff’s Syndrome?
This is the number one cause of wrongful convictions.
What is mistaken identity?
Introduction of harmful material to the environment.
What is Pollution?
This patient lost the ability to form new memories after surgery for epilepsy removed his amygdala, hippocampus, and some parts of his cortex.
Who is Henry Molaison?
Repetitive hits to the head sustained over a period of years can lead to this.
What is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)?
These are the three major stages of memory.
What are encoding, storage, and retrieval?
These are factors in a criminal case that law enforcement can control, such as lineup procedures.
What are system variables?
In this U.S. city, water contamination led to widespread lead exposure.
What is Flint, Michigan?
She is known for her inability to experience fear due to bilateral amygdala damage.
Who is Patient S.M.?
These are the 4 lobes of the brain.
What are Frontal, Parietal, Temporal, and Occipital?
This refers to personal memory used in testimony, which is often vulnerable to error.
What is eyewitness memory?
These are uncontrollable factors like lighting, stress, or distance in eyewitness memory.
What are estimator variables?
This is the largest environmental source of neurological inflammation.
What is Air Pollution?
This British conductor suffers from severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia after viral encephalitis.
Who is Clive Wearing?
Damage to this brain region often results in difficulty recognizing faces, leading to this condition.
What is the fusiform gyrus and prosopagnosia?
This brain structure is essential for forming new explicit memories.
What is the hippocampus?
This is the legal determination of whether a defendant understands the proceedings and can assist in their defense.
What is competency to stand trial?
Lead exposure has been associated with higher rates of this behavioral outcome in children and teens.
What is aggression or criminal behavior?
This man was wrongfully imprisoned for 45 years and later exonerated, highlighting memory and justice system errors.
Who is Richard Phillips?
These are the 3 sectional planes of the brain.
What are Horizontal, Sagittal, and Coronal?
Being more likely to use a word you heard recently is an example of this.
What is Priming?
Most judges believe genetic predisposition is a __, while the general public tends to view it as a __.
What are mitigating and aggravating factors?
This study linked higher childhood lead levels with lower IQ and increased behavioral issues.
What is the Needleman et al. (1979) study?