Broca’s Aphaesia, Essay Example

When a person born without a corpus callosum moves the fingers of one hand, he is likely to move the fingers of the other hand involuntarily. Whet possible explanation can you suggest?

Due to the fact that the corpus callosum is a flat bundle of fibers located just beneath the cortex of the brain and functions as a connective bridge between the left and right cerebral hemispheres, its absence usually creates commotion on how the communication between the right and the left hemisphere occurs. Notably, with such structure of the brain, a person who does not have corpus callosum would not be able to control the action of some parts of his left sections with that of the right region. Hence, the movements made by each other are usually guided through impulse and involuntary distinction of reaction between the opposite sections [such as the fingers from the left hand with that of the fingers in the right hand].

Most peopke with Broca’s Aphaesia suffer from partial paralysis on the right side of the body. Most people with Wernicke’s Aphasua do not. Why?

The reason for the right-side paralysis on sufferers of Broca’s Aphasia is that of the fact that the Broca’s area of the brain takes a region in the frontal lobe that is usually located in the left hemisphere which controls the right section of the body. Its dysfunction then leads to the paralysis of the side it controls. On the other hand, Wernicke’s area of the brain is the part of the brain that controls speech. Located in the posterior section of the temporal gyrus, the sufferers of Wernicke’s Aphasia usually lose the capacity to speak or read as normal individuals do.

In a syndrome called word blindness, a person loses the ability to read, although the person can still see and speak. What is a possible neurological explanation? That is, can you imagine a pattern of brain damage that might produce these results?

Word blindness is considered to be a neurological condition due to the fact that when lesions are present in the brain [where the problems are present at the left part of the brain], the capacity of one to visually recognize words is stagnated. Because there is a chain of reaction that occurs when one cannot read, a person with such condition might also not be able to write as well nor communicate in a coherent pattern.

Could a computer be conscious? What evidence, if any, would convince you that it was conscious?

Technically, taking into account the definition of the word ‘conscious’, a computer cannot be conscious unless it has been programmed to respond to particular commands that make it specifically responsive to particular automatic stimulus. This could only happen when pre=programmed actions and commands have already been placed [encoded] within the computer’s CPU system.

The operational definition of consciousness applies only to people willing and able to report that they are conscious of some events and not others. Research using this definition has determined certain brain correlates of consciousness. Could we now use brain correlates to infer consciousness or its application on new born infants, brain-damaged people or neo-human animals?

One’s state of being aware of himself and the things he does is considered as consciousness. Based on scientific studies, such state is acquired through neural correlates wherein the subjective mental state becomes connected to the brain state. Once one is conscious, the chemical reactions in his body create responses to the situations that he is involved in thus suggesting that he is conscious. Infants, people with damaged brains or neo-human animals lack the capacity to control such chemical reactions in balance with the function of their brain. Due to such inexistence of correlation between the neural connections of the body of the said individuals, they could not be considered fully conscious at all.