Cerebral Cortex
Frontal Lobe
Functions (general)
 How we know what we are doing within our
environment (consciousness)
 How we initiate activity in response to our environment
 Judgments we make about what occurs in our daily
activities
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Controls our expressive language
Controls our emotional response
Assigns meaning to the words we choose
Involves word associations
Memory for habits and motor activities
Functions (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Motor planning
 Expressive language
Right Hemisphere
 Prosodic and suprasegmental aspects of language
Observed Problems
 Loss of simple movement of various body parts
(paralysis)
 Inability to plan a sequence of complex movements
needed to complete multi-stepped tasks, such as making
coffee (sequencing)
 Loss of flexibility in thinking
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Mood changes (emotionally labile)
Inability to focus on task (attending)
Changes in social behavior.
Changes in personality
Difficulty with problem solving
Observed Problems (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Inability to express language (Broca’s aphasia)
 Telegraphic speech
 Lack of grammatical function words
 Deformation of articulation, motor dysprosody, aphonia,
and hypophonia (whispering)
 Difficulty initiating spontaneous speech
Right Hemisphere
 Difficulty planning and problem solving
 Decreased behavioral initiation and spontaneity
 Distractibility
 Persistence of a single thought (perseveration)
 Poor memory for order of a sequence of events
 Flat or stereotypic prosody
Parietal Lobe
Functions (general)
 Location for visual attention
 Location of touch perception
 Goal directed for voluntary movements
 Manipulation of objects
 Integration of different senses that allows for
understanding a single concept
Functions (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Left versus right discrimination
 Telling time
 Mathematical skills
Right Hemisphere
 Depth perception
 Colors, hues
 Regulate forms by touch
 Spatial relations
Observed Problems (general)
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Inability to attend to more than one object at a time
Difficulty with drawing objects (constructional apraxia)
Difficulty in distinguishing left from right
Difficulties with eye/hand coordination
 Lack of awareness of certain body parts and/or
surrounding space (apraxia) that leads to difficulties in
self-care
 Inability to focus visual attention
Observed Problems (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Inability to name an object (anomia)
 Inability to locate the words for writing (agraphia)
 Problems with reading (alexia)
 Difficulty with doing mathematics (dyscalculia)
 Finger agnosia
 Difficulty understanding logical and spatial
relationships
 Paraphasia, acalculia, spelling errors
Right Hemisphere
 Ideational apraxia
 Hemispatial neglect (left-sided neglect)
 Dressing apraxia
 Spatial and temporal disorientation
 Autopagnosia—inability to indicate various parts of the
body
 Deficits in corporeal awareness (anosodiaphoria,
unilateral neglect, asomatognosia, hyperschematia,
misoplegia, personification, somatoparaphrenia,
supernumerary phantom)
Occipital Lobe
Functions (general)
 Vision
Functions (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Visual analysis and synthesis
Right Hemisphere
 Ability to recognize one’s own possessions
 Object and form recognition
 Recognition of familiar faces
Observed Problems (general)
 Defects in vision (visual field cuts)
 Difficulty locating objects in environment
 Difficulty in identifying colors (color agnosia,
achromatopsia)
 Production of hallucinations
 Visual illusions—inaccurately seeing objects
 Word blindness—inability to recognize words
 Difficulty in recognizing drawn objects
 Inability to recognize the movement of an object
(movement agnosia)
 Difficulties with reading and writing
Observed Problems (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Visual field deficits
 Cortical blindness
 Hemianopsia
 Prosopagnosia
 Scanning impairments
 Visual agnosia
 Alexia with agraphia and/or agnosia
Right Hemisphere
 Deficits in recognizing possessions, objects, forms, and
familiar faces
 Topographagnosia—loss of ability to recognize visual
stimuli relating to the environment (e.g., finding a room,
home, locating public buildings, drawing a map)
 Hemialexia—loss of reading ability in one visual hemifield
 Problems with reading caused by gaze instability and
spatial neglect
Temporal Lobe
Functions (general)
 Hearing ability
 Memory acquisition
 Some visual perceptions
 Categorization of objects
Functions (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Comprehension of language (Heschl’s gyrus and
Wernicke’s area)
Right Hemisphere
 Monitoring and comprehending suprasegmental aspects of
language
Observed Problems (general)
 Difficulty in recognizing faces (prosopagnosia)
 Disturbance with selective attention to what we see and
hear
 Difficulty with identification of, and verbalization
about, objects
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Interference with long-term memory
Short-term memory loss
Increased or decreased interest in sexual behavior
Inability to categorize objects (categorization)
Increased aggressive behavior
Observed Problems (hemisphere specific)
Left Hemisphere
 Difficulty in understanding spoken words (Wernicke’s
aphasia)
 Addition of functional words in expressive speech
 Disturbances of phrase comprehension
 Alienation of word meaning
 Disorders of naming
 Semantic and phonemic paraphasias
 Decreased awareness of verbal expression errors
 Problems with auditory phoneme and word
comprehension
 Neologisms for nouns and verbs
Right Hemisphere
 Persistent talking
 Difficulty processing music
 Deficits in nonverbal memory
 Sensory aprosody
 Inability to modify intonational contour
Brain Stem
Functions (general)
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Breathing
Heart rate
Swallowing
Reflexes to seeing and hearing (startle response)
Levels of alertness
 Controls sweating, blood pressure, digestion, temperature
(autonomic nervous system)
 Ability to sleep
 Sense of balance (vestibular function)
Observed Problems
 Decreased vital capacity for breathing, important for
speech
 Swallowing food and water (dysphagia)
 Difficulty with organization/perception of the
environment
 Problems with balance and movement
 Dizziness and nausea (vertigo)
 Sleeping difficulties (insomnia, sleep apnea)
Cerebellum
Functions (general)
 Coordination of voluntary movement
 Balance and equilibrium
 Some memory for reflex motor acts
Observed Problems
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Loss of ability to coordinate fine movements
Loss of ability to walk
Inability to reach out and grab objects
Tremors
 Dizziness (vertigo)
 Slurred speech (scanning speech, ataxia)
 Inability to make rapid movements
Information taken from Lehr, R.P. Brain functions and Map. Retrieved from http://www.neuroskills.com/tbi/brain.htm