Describe at least three different sources of brain damage. Compare and contrast the neuropsychological consequences that can follow from each, and give specific examples to illustrate your answer.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The brain can be damaged by cerebrovascular accident, traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative disease. Cerebrovascular accident (also called stroke) occurs when a blood vessel carrying blood into the brain becomes blocked. Because the brain requires a constant supply of fresh blood to get oxygen and blood sugar, if a blood vessel is blocked, then the brain tissue that was supposed to get the blood dies. Strokes cause symptoms based on the specific brain area that is damaged. Typically, the symptoms start suddenly. An example is a left frontal stroke that causes the sudden onset of Broca's aphasia.Traumatic brain injury (also called trauma) occurs when the brain is damaged from a mechanical injury, such as when a hard object hits the brain or when the brain hits a hard object. A rock flying through the air and hitting the head is an example of the former, and a person falling and hitting his or her head on the pavement is an example of the latter. Such a process damages the brain because the brain is floating inside the skull in fluid, so when these problems occur the brain slides back and forth. As the brain does this, it gets damaged in the areas in which it slides up against bone, and nerve fibers within the brain get stretched and damaged. Typically, the neuropsychological effects of this kind of damage are sudden but not very specific because very different brain areas can be affected. Neurodegenerative diseases occur when brain cells stop working properly due to disease. Typically, only certain brain cells fail because different kinds of neurodegenerative diseases affect different specific subsets of brain cells. As a result, brain cells in some brain areas die, whereas brain cells in other brain areas may keep working. Typically, the neuropsychological symptoms start slowly and are specific to the brain areas that contain the brain cells affected by the particular disease involved. Examples are Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal degeneration.