The Neuropsychological Diseases and Dominant Gene - Research Paper Example

The Kindling model proposes that repeated environmental stimuli lead to progressively greater neural responsiveness, which changes brain excitability and therefore behavioural responses over time (Isaacs 24). The aspect of epilepsy it models is the seizure that occurs because of the bursting of electrical impulses in the brain which causes their normal limit to escape which spreads to neighbouring areas and creates an uncontrolled storm of electrical activity and can be transmitted to the muscles causing convulsions.

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) which includes hippocampal formation is known to be important for the storage and processing of long term memory allowing for factual recall. In the cases of patient H.M. (patient who suffered from epilepsy which resulted from a bicycle accident) and patient R.B. (with preceding of ischemic event), part of their hippocampus was removed that resulted to anterograde amnesia (lost of the ability to create new memories leading to partial or complete inability to recall the recent past) and suffered a moderate retrograde amnesia (loss of access to events and information of the past after the onset of a disease or injury).

Their cases had helped revolutionized the understanding of the organization of the human memory and allowed a good understanding of how areas of the brain are linked to one another. Their cases also helped form theories of normal memory function. Drug tolerance is the body’s physical adaptation to a drug wherein greater amounts of the drug are required to achieve the initial effect as the body is used to it and adapts to the intake.