Brain and Spinal Cord: Motor and Sensory Functional Systems

This course, covering the anatomy of the central nervous system, including a detailed examination of the functional and clinical neuroanatomy of the brainstem, cerebellum, diencephalon, visual system, auditory system and cerebral cortex, prepares students to: - Describe the cerebellar connectional anatomy that permits the right side of the cerebellum to promote fine-tuning of skeletal muscles on the right side of the body. - Recall how cerebellar lesions cause tremor with movement and how hemisphere lesions of the cerebellum differ from vermis lesions. - Identify which lesions result in dysmetria, disdiadochokinesis, and gait ataxia. - Describe the major components of the Direct and Indirect Basal Ganglia Pathways, the neurotransmitters that they use and their roles in initiating movement or suppressing unwanted movement. - Contrast the signs and symptoms of those with a direct (Parkinson's) and indirect (Huntington's) basal ganglia disease and how each causes different forms of resting tremors. - Name the 4 major tracts that traverse the brainstem and the signs and symptoms if each is lesioned. - Discuss how motor and sensory nuclei of brainstem cranial nerves are organized into functional longitudinal columns in the brainstem and note how this organization correlates with the entry and exit points of cranial nerves. - Distinguish the gaze malfunctions that result from lesions to the Frontal Eye Field, PPRF, and MLF. - Trace the path of a visual stimulus from the nasal and temporal parts of the retina to the cuneus and temporal gyrus of visual cortex. - Draw out the different visual field deficits and the causes evident in lesions to the optic nerve, optic chiasm, optic tract, optic radiations and visual cortex. - Describe the three components of the ear and how the organ of Corti transduces mechanical energy into generator potentials. - Distinguish between the lesion sites and causes of a sensorineural versus a conductive hearing loss and how one uses the Weber and Rinne tests to determine the nature of the hearing loss. - Differentiate the major nuclei of the thalamus and their functions. - Describe the different embryonic origins of the pituitary and the nuclei in the hypothalamus that control or contribute to the functional activity of each pituitary component. - Name the lobes that make up the cortex and distinguish the vascular territories of the anterior, middle and posterior cerebral arteries. - Describe how the dominant hemisphere differs functionally from the non dominant hemisphere. - List four different lesion sites in the dominant hemisphere that result in an aphasia and list the signs and symptoms of that aphasia. -