Neuropsychology Traumatic Brain Injury

Neuropsychology Traumatic Brain Injury essay assignment

Neuropsychology Traumatic Brain Injury essay assignment

CASE 1: It was a dark and scary night, as the Zombie Apocalypse reaches your neighborhood. A hoard of undead, brain eating creatures who used to be your neighbors are coming after you. You run for your life to try and get to your house, where you have a safe room made from an old bomb shelter.  As you run with the zombies gaining on you at every step, your heart pounds, your breathing is very rapid, your nerves are on edge.  You reach the house just as they reach you, but your father grabs your hand and pulls you into the house. You reach the shelter as the zombies bust through the door. It takes a few minutes to calm down.

Get solution to your nursing paper : Neuropsychology Traumatic Brain Injury

1. Which nervous system division prepared you to flee the zombies in terror?
2. Which nervous system division calmed you down once you were safe?
3. What is the term used to describe the internal state of balance or equilibrium to which you returned?

CASE 2: The symptoms of a traumatic brain injury sometimes do not appear until days or weeks after the injury happens. For example, actress Natasha Richardson goes for a ski lesson and falls. She gets up, declines medical care and goes back to her hotel. Later, she becomes ill and goes to the hospital. Without realizing it, she had an epidural hematoma (bleeding that occurs between the tough outer membrane that encases the brain and the skull). She slipped into a coma because the pressure from the blood accumulating pushed down on the brain stem and damaged the part of the brain responsible for putting a person into sleep and taking a person out of sleep called the (A) _____________________.” She died two days later from the brain injury. Had she gone to the hospital right away, doctors could have used a computer to digitally construct an image of her brain based upon the measurement of the absorption of X-rays, which is called a (B) ______________.  This would have allowed them to see the bleeding in her skull and resulted in timely treatment, which likely would have saved her life.

 

CASE 3: Jenkins went through a lot as a refugee from Liberia. However, his troubles did not end when he settled his family in Brooklyn Park, MN. Just after he turned age 30, he started having trouble with his mood fluctuating. He got angry at his wife and children for little to no reason. He “went off” and yelled at an instructor after earning a poor grade and was reported to the college he was attending. When he met with the code of conduct officer, he admitted he was having trouble controlling his emotions. Jenkins was referred to a medical doctor where tests showed this was not his only issue. The problems with feeling like he could not move smoothly and the little twitches that he thought were caused by stress were actually caused by a hereditary, neurological disorder called Huntington disease.  As time progressed, he got worse. Eventually, he could no long move his muscles smoothly. To help ease his symptoms a bit, doctors gave him a medication usually given to people with schizophrenia, because it reduced the functioning of the same neurotransmitter involved in both smooth movement problems and schizophrenia. Unfortunately, there is no cure for this disease, so eventually Jenkins died.
A. Which part of the brain was being damaged by the Huntington’s disease leading to jerky movements (be sure to use the term in the lesson)?
B. Which neurotransmitter was blocked by the antipsychotics in order to help Jenkins?

CASE 4: Here’s a real horror story. There is a tiny bug that lives under beds and comes out at night when a person is asleep. The bug crawls into the person’s ear and keeps on going until it reaches the brain. Very quietly, so as not to wake the person, the bug begins to eat away its favorite part of the person’s brain. The next morning, the person gets up and realizes he can hear things clearly but cannot recognize what he hears. He mistakes his toothbrush for a razor and starts brushing his face.

1. Which specific part of the person’s brain was eaten away and interfered with his ability to perceive (recognize) sounds he hears?
2. Can you describe what would occur if the bug had eaten the visual association area instead?

CASE 5: Concussions, a type of traumatic brain injury, generally occur when the head either spins rapidly or accelerates quickly and then stops — like when a player tackles another player on the field. The National Football League and Congress have both held hearings on the head injuries, which can cause memory loss, confusion, nausea, blurred vision and long-term neurological effects, including symptoms of dementia, headaches and concentration problems.

1. What part of the brain would be damaged if the football player’s symptoms were primarily problems with forming new memories?
2. If after repeated blows to the head a football player has difficulty with making good judgments and decisions, and the personality changes, which part of the brain has been damaged?

Case 6: Out with his friends on Thursday night for drinks, Felix was trying all of the different craft beers on tap. He drank too much in a short period of time and found himself standing on the second-floor balcony, loudly boasting that he was going to do a swan dive into the swimming pool. Everybody told him not to dive because he was too drunk and the pool was too shallow. Felix wouldn’t listen because he wanted to show off to the new coeds. Shouting, “Look at me!” he jumped off the balcony and dove into the pool. He struck his head on the bottom and broke his neck. Although he survived the accident, Felix cannot move any part of his body or feel any sensations from his shoulders down. However, all his other sensory and motor functions are completely normal. (Be very clear, use the terms afferent and efferent when needed, and indicate direction of neural transmission.)

ANSWERS GIVEN IN VIDEO LECTURE ON NERVOUS SYSTEM.

1. Why doesn’t Felix have any sensations below his shoulders? (Hint: It is always best to start your description where the sense of touch starts in your body, in the skin.)

1. Why can’t Felix move his muscles below his shoulders? (Hint: it is always best to start where movement signals start, in the primary motor cortex in the frontal lobes.)

CASE 7: Every time Abel talked, people laughed and said that he had one of the best routines that they had ever heard. Abel would begin with what seemed like normal sentences, but after a few words, he would start talking about an entirely different topic, and after a few more words, he would go off on another topic. The result was that Abel never seemed to finish a sentence or make any sense, but he talked in a very fluent manner. For example, Abel might sound like this, “Like, it’s all sunny, cause book cost a lot, and there’s no reason for a car, and don’t buy shoes, and I like hamburgers on sale except in bad times.”

1. Which specific part of Abel’s brain was damaged?
2. In which lobe and hemisphere (side) is this area located?

CASE 8: You are a nurse who works in the emergency room at North Memorial Hospital. A patient comes in complaining of difficulties walking without holding the wall, because of balance problems. He also reports mild hearing loss and ringing in his ear. As you help the patient get comfortable, you think to yourself, “I learned about the sense of balance in my general psychology class. The sense of balance is also called the (A) _________________ sense.” The doctor comes in and looks in the patient’s ears, but nothing is visibly wrong. You start preparing the paper work and put a call in to radiology, because you are sure the doctor will order scan. The doctor orders a test where a machine containing a large magnet can produce very detailed pictures of the brain, including the inner ear, called a (B) ____________________.  You attend the doctor as she explains the results to the patient. She tells him in easy to understand words that the nerves in his inner ear have a fatty white substance that protects and speeds the messages being sent by the nerves. She further explains that this substance is made up of a type of glial cell called a schwann cells, which has started growing out of control causing a schwannoma. Although it is likely the schwannoma is a nonmalignant tumor, it should be removed as it could keep growing and cause worse problems. The doctor never tells the client the name for the fatty white substance that you learned in class to be (C) _______________.

 

CASE 9: Julio is an 8-year-old boy who is having trouble paying attention in class. He seems to me missing announcements about directions for assignments and cannot remember some of the material already covered by the teacher. Julio is sent to a neurologist for an evaluation. The first thing the doctor wants to rule out is attention deficit disorder. Julio answers a bunch of questions and takes neurological tests. The doctor is quite sure that the problem is not with the (A) ___________________________, the part of the brain that helps us pay attention by blocking out distractions. It is clearly not ADD. However, during one of the tests, the psychometrician noted that Julio stared at the wall for a few seconds during a timed test and did poorly. The neurologist next wanted to rule out seizures. Julio was admitted to a hospital where electrodes were glued to his scalp to measure his brain waves in a procedure called an

(B) ______________.  The results of the test confirmed the diagnosis of absence seizures. These seizures cause brief periods of “blanks out” where the child is unresponsive. The child is usually unaware of the episode.

CASE 10: Yusuf had a stroke that resulted in slurred speech because he could not pronounce the words due to issues controlling the small muscles in his lips and tongue. He also walked with an unsteady gait due to issues with keeping his balance. Yusuf was very annoyed to find that on top of those two problems, he could not learn new procedural memories. He would practice playing his guitar every day, but never improved his performance. In what part of Yusef’s brain was the stroke? (A)_____________________.

CASE 11: Tanesia thought she was depressed. She has been feeling tired a lot, sleeping restlessly, and her muscles feel weak. And the worse part, her relationship with her boyfriend has not been as good lately due to lack of sex drive. After doing poorly on her midterm exams, she decides to seek help from the campus counselor. Thankfully, her counselor took a course in biopsychology, where she learned that not all symptoms that look like depression actually are depression. As with any well-trained psychologist, she referred her to a medical doctor to rule out any physical problems. Tanesia soon finds out that she has Grave’s Disease or Hyperthyroidism, which is due to the thyroid gland releasing too much thyroxin. This overabundance of thyroxin results in the symptoms Tanesia was experiencing and increase in heart rate and blood pressure, weight loss, restlessness, tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), heat intolerance, tremors, heart palpitations, increased sweating, and increased appetite.

1. What is the name for the system of the body that is made up of glands that secrete hormones?
2. What is the name for the master gland that releases a hormone that triggers the thyroid to release thyroxin?
3. What part of the brain is responsible for the regulation of the hormone system?

CASE 12: Susie was a very healthy, child until she started having trouble seeing the blackboard in class. Her vision got progressively worse. Her mom noticed a jiggling of her eyes and took her to the doctor. A CT Scan showed a mass in her visual system. So, although her eyes were working fine and her (A) ____________________ lobes that process sight were working well, she was losing her vision. It turns out the mass was pressing on the part of the brain that takes in sensory signals and sends the signals to the proper lobe for processing, called the (B) _______________________. In this case the small mass eventually just shrunk down on its own and when the brain had some time to recover, her vision came back. She was very lucky that the tumor only affected vision, as the brain part involved also sends signals for hearing and touch.

CASE 13: Sleepy is a gang member who is hiding out after killing a rival gang member. When the other gang finally tracks him down at a local Taco Bell, he is shot in the head while trying to get out through the back. The bullet hits him in the side of his head toward the top back of the brain. The paramedics arrive and rush him to the hospital where he survives brain surgery. The next day when he wakes up, Sleepy becomes afraid that a rival gang member may still try to kill him. He tries to get out of bed and finds that he cannot feel where his left foot and leg are and cannot move his left foot and leg.

1. What specific part of the brain is damaged causing Sleepy not to be able to move his foot and leg?
2. What lobe and hemisphere is that damaged part found in?