Ap Psychology Case Study On Major Brain Injury

During the period November 2005-January 2009 a survey was conducted by Dr. Owen at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences in the United Kingdom. This clinical study was conducted on 54 patients that received severe brain injury’s 23 of them were in a vegetative state and 31 were in a minimally conscious state. This study main goals are to define the capacitance for a response to stimulation and to evaluate any available response through intervention to form communication using information from routine Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The investigators developed two different imagery tasks, motor and spatial imagery that the patients were going to perform while they were in the MRI scanner. In the motor imagery they were asked to imagine playing tennis where they hit

the ball to an instructor. In the spatial imagery they were required to visualize their home as they walk from room to room and imagine all the items and furniture in the home. In the communication task study, the researcher’s asked six, yes or no questions such as “Is your sister's name Rebecca?”. The nature of the work is that the people managing the inquiry did not know the answers to the questions prior to analyzing the MRI data.
Brain lateralization means the two halves of the psyche are not precisely the same.

Each part the of the brain experiences a specific social occasion, it is responsible for. But after a trauma to the brain other regions of the cortex can often compensate. Therefore, when conducting this study as they were asked to imagine throwing a tennis ball at an instructor the Frontal lobe and the Wernicke’s area were being used. In the Psychology book the young man who had been overseas and was shot in the head while wearing his helmet, suffered a serve brain injury the one third of his brain being removed. The left side of the brain is where the injury accrued his right side was paralyzed nor could he speak. He could understand people and remember places and people. This pertains to brain performance because the remaining position of the brain controls the right and the right side controls the left, hence if you saw a trauma to your right side of the brain your right side of your body would be affected and opposite to the other position. When the brain is injured glial cells come to the rescue they began multiplying and secreting substances to defend the brain from infection and

inflammation.
In closing to this study as I interpret the article I would reason that the patients that are in a vegetative state or minimally conscious do not have much brain activity when they answered the research only five out of the 54 were able to record their brain activity. All of them received a traumatic head trauma. Where they could go from there they could ask them if they felt them touch their hand or even if they feel any emotion. They could say do you feel sad or happy if a dog died and see if there were any brain changes in the MRI.