Progress in brain research
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Cognitive control and decision making are two important research areas in the realm of higher-order cognition. Control processes such as interference control and monitoring in cognitive and affective contexts have been found to influence the process of decision making. Development of control processes follows a gradual growth pattern associated with the prolonged maturation of underlying neural circuits including the lateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and the medial prefrontal cortex. ⋯ Neuroimaging studies have shown the involvement of separable neural networks for cognitive (medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate) and affective control (amygdala, ventral medial prefrontal cortex) shows that one system can affect the other also at the neural level. Hence, an understanding of the interaction and balance between the cognitive and affective brain networks may be crucial for self-regulation and decision making during the developmental period, particularly late childhood and adolescence. The chapter highlights the need for empirical investigation on the interaction between the different aspects of cognitive control and decision making from a developmental perspective.
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Biography Historical Article
John Bell (1763-1820): brother artist and anatomist.
John Bell, brother-surgeon of Charles Bell, was, like Charles, an outstanding surgeon and a good artist. John was one of the few who illustrated his work with their own drawings in the days before audiovisual aids were available and without the benefit of reliable drawing aids, photography and computer-aided design. Charles, on the other hand, was the better artist and illustrated much of the normal anatomy of the nervous system. Each brother undertook extensive surgery of men who had been wounded in war; John Bell left us his engravings from the textbooks, more numerous perhaps than Charles, but Charles left us a series of oil paintings and watercolours in addition to the illustrations in his textbooks.
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The Alice in Wonderland syndrome is a term applied to altered bizarre perceptions of size and shapes of a patient's body and illusions of changes in the forms, dimensions, and motions of objects that a patient with this syndrome encounters. These metamorphopsias arise during complex partial seizures, migraine headaches, infections, and intoxications. The illusions and hallucinations resemble the strange phenomena that Alice experienced in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. ⋯ The author of this chapter suggests that Dodgson suffered from migraine headaches and used these experiences to weave an amusing tale for Alice Liddell. The chapter also discusses the neurology of mercury poisoning affecting the behavior of Mad Hatter character. The author suggests that the ever-somnolent Dormouse suffered from excessive daytime sleepiness due to obstructive sleep apnea.