Lesion Studies

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Lesion Studies are the study of the effects and relationship between physiological and psychological processes within certain areas of the brain and central nervous system which have been damaged or rendered none-operational due to some form of accidental damage or because of experimentation. Therefore a Lesion is an area of brain tissue that has been damaged by an accident, disease or infection, or placed in a state of none-function by an experimental trial. Within Biological Psychology they are an important area of study: they provide information about loss of function in the brain area effected by the Lesion, but this can be complicated by the fact the in brain studies there can be a primary or complementary role of function where the brain lesion occurs.
There are a variety of Brain Lesions, which cause the brain to dysfunction. Abscesses: where the brain tissue is contaminated, and therefore corrupted by disease. Various forms of Dementia, for example Alzheimer’s disease: where lesions occur due to the death of nerve cells, leading to a deterioration of brain function in those areas. Experimental Lesion studies in mice have enabled a correlative relationship between strokes and Alzheimer’s disease: in particular micro-strokes which are asymptomatic, and do not exhibit early signs of the disease, as in the lesion experimentation of (Garcia-Alloza et al 2011). Though whilst having good correlative extrapolation they are poignant of their own experimental design to critique the use of mice as directly translational to humans, a problem which all brain lesion experiments on animals wave in inferring results on to humans.
Strokes in a person cause Cerebral Infarction, in which a cluster of brain cells die. Use of Lesion st...

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