BRAIN MAP

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BRAIN MAP

Frontal Lobe
	Where is it? The frontal lobe is located at the front of the brain just behind the forehead. What does it do? - Provides executive control over much of the brain’s higher functions. - Consciousness. - Self-awareness. - Judgment. - Initiation / Motivation. - Control over emotional responses. - Planning / Sequencing. - Word formation. - Prospective memoryremembering to do something. What happens when it is injured? - Inability to synthesize signals from the environment. - Inability to assign priorities. - Inability to make decisions. - Inability to initiate actions. - Inability to control emotions. - Inability to behave and interact socially and make plans. - Changes in personality. - Inflexible, simplistic, and/or concrete thinking. - Poor judgment. - Inability to plan a sequence of complex movements needed to complete multistepped tasks. - Inability to behave appropriately in social situations.
Parietal Lobe
	Where is it? The parietal lobe is located on both sides of the head neat the top and to the back. What does it do? - Responsible for perceiving, analyzing, and assembling touch information from the body. - Integrates visual, auditory, and touch information in order to formulate complete impression of the world. Left parietal lobe Area where letters come together to form words and where words are put together in thoughts. Right parietal lobe Responsible for understanding the spatial aspects of the world including recognizing shapes, being aware of one’s body in space and deficits What happens when it is injured? - Difficulties with hand and eye coordination. Left parietal lobe - Inability to recognize or locate touch sensations from the right side of the body. - Inability to know the meaning of words. - Anomia - Inability to name objects. - Dyscalculia - Inability to do mathematic calculations. - Agraphia - Inability to locate the words for writing. Right parietal lobe - Inability to recognize or locate touch sensations from the left side of the body. - Perceptual Agnosia - “not knowing” (e.g., not able to recognize familiar objects touched by the hands.) - Difficulty with drawing objects. - Lack of awareness of certain body parts and/or surrounding space.
Temporal Lobe
	Where is it? The temporal lobe is a large thumb-shaped extension of the cerebral hemispheres located near the temples on either side of the head. What does it do? A small section at the top of each temporal lobe, known as the auditory cortex, is responsible for hearing. The temporal lobes are also involved in memory acquisition, perception, and categorization of objects. - Involved in processing auditory information (e.g., sound discrimination, comprehension of language, listening, reading; music.) - Important for memory acquisition, storage. - important for sense of smell. - Involved in complex visual analysis. Left temporal lobe - Specialized for the comprehension of language such as listening and reading. Right temporal lobe - Specialized for the comprehension of music. What happens when it is injured? - Disturbance with selective attention to what is seen and heard. - Memory problems. - Categorization problems. Left temporal lobe - Wernicke’s Aphesia - An inability to read and comprehend what someone is saying (e.g., can form word associations but they are not language based). - Persistent talking. Right temporal lobe - Inability to recognize and appreciated music. - Prosopagnosia - Difficulty in recognizing faces. - Difficulty understanding spoken language (i.e., some types of aphasia). - Specific memory impairments (e.g., Prosopagnosia / inability to recognize faces.) - Impaired detection of smell.
Occipital Lobe
	Where is it? The occipital lobe is located in the extreme rear of the cerebral hemisphere at the back of the brain. What does it do? This lobe is dedicated entirely to vision in terms of detection, identification, and interpretation of objects. What happens when it is injured? - Visual Agnosia - not consciously knowing that one has seen an object. - Difficulty locating objects in the environment. - Colour Agnosia - difficulty with identifying colours. - Word Blindness - difficulty in recognizing words. - Inability to track the movement of objects.
Brain Stem
	Where is it? The brainstem is located at the base of the brain and extends down to become the spinal cord. Three main parts make up the brainstem, including the medulla, the pons and the midbrain. What does it do? The medulla controls basic involuntary life functions such as respiration, blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature control. In the pons and extending up through the midbrain is a structure called the reticular activating system. This system affects sleep onset and a person’s level of alertness. What happens when it is injured? - A disturbance in breathing, heart rate, or other vital bodily functions. - Decreased levels of alertness and arousal. - Dysphagia - difficulty swallowing food and water. - Sleep difficulties (e.g., insomnia, sleep apnea). - Disturbance in sleep/wake cycles.

All information on this page is copied from Educating Educators About ABI Resource Book
Produced by: Brock University & the Ontario Brain Injury Association
Funded by: Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation