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- Glossary
dorsal
The positional term dorsal means "towards the back." In relation to the nervous system, it refers to a direction perpendicular to the neural axis, i.e., upwards towards the head or backwards.In animals that do not walk upright, the term is simpler, as it always means toward the back. Due to the upright posture of humans, the brain bends in relation to the spinal cord, making dorsal mean "upward."
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- Glossary
Dorsolateral PFC
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is the upper (dorsal) and lateral part of the frontal lobe. It is involved in the planning and regulation of complex motor and intellectual actions. According to one experiment, this also seems to include lying. The dorsolateral PFC regulates these and other abilities in coordination with many other areas of the brain with which it is closely linked.
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Duchenne smile
The kind of smile where not only the corners of the mouth turn upward, but the muscles around the eyes also create laugh lines. It is considered the only genuine, unfeigned smile. Named after the French physiologist of the same name.
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Dura mater
The outermost of the three membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. Consists of connective tissue.
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dysdiadochokinesia
Medical professionals understand dysdiadochokinesia to be the limitation of the ability to perform rapid successive movements. The disorder is usually accompanied by lesions in the cerebellum, caused, for example, by a stroke.
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EEG
An electroencephalogram, or EEG for short, is a recording of the brain's electrical activity (brain waves). Brain waves are measured on the surface of the head or using electrodes implanted in the brain itself. The time resolution is in the millisecond range, but the spatial resolution is very poor. The discoverer of electrical brain waves and EEG is the neurologist Hans Berger (1873−1941) from Jena.
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Efference
An axon (long, fiber-like extension of nerve cells) that conducts signals away from the central nervous system to peripheral areas, as is the case with motor function, for example, is called efferent. The opposite is afferent.
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Eidetic memory
The term eidetic memory refers to the phenomenon of near-perfect visual memory. The term "photographic" memory is also sometimes used. The phenomenon is very rare, but has not been clearly defined scientifically.
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Simple cell
An orientation-sensitive cell in the primary visual cortex (part of the cerebral cortex) whose receptive field is divided into ON and OFF subfields. For example, it reacts strongly to lines of a certain orientation.
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- Glossary
Protein synthesis
The process by which cells translate units of information on DNA into functional carriers in the form of proteins. According to the central dogma of molecular biology, this process consists of two phases: During transcription, a section of genetic material is transcribed into mRNA. This tells the cell the sequence in which it should assemble individual amino acids into a protein. This happens during translation. After translation, some proteins still need to be folded or modified in other ways before they can be used as structural proteins or enzymes.
