A comment or question that challenges a participant’s answer by highlighting a potential contradiction. Counter-suggestions are commonly used in Piagetian clinical interviews and are designed to counteract the possible suggestive influence of a previous question. See Closed-end interviewing
Author Archives: Brian Hopkins
Cortisol
A hormone, the primary glucocortoid (aka hydrocortisone), secreted by the adrenal cortex glands in response to any kind of physical or psychological stress. Cortisol has a fundamental role in metabolism and is essential in maintaining normal physiological functions in the liver, heart and lungs, kidneys, the immune system and the brain. Low or high levels …
Count (or countable) noun
A common noun, singular or plural, that refers to a discrete object or objects (e.g., people, places, things) as opposed to some general property, substance or mass that is non-countable (e.g., a person’s disposition such angriness). Often used incorrectly by adults as “A large amount of words” as against “A large number of words.” …
Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH)
A protein-like molecule or neuropeptide produced by the hypothalamus consisting of a chain of amino acids that functions like a hormone to stimulate the release of corticotrophin by the anterior pituitary gland. From the pituitary gland, it travels to the outer part of the adrenal cortex that secretes cortiocosteroids (mainly glucocorticoids), which are cortisone-like hormones. …
Corticospinal tracts (CST)
Also known as the pyramidal tract or system, it consists in fact of two descending tracts from layer 5 of the cortex containing the axons from neurons in the primary and secondary motor cortex and somatosensory cortex to nuclei in the brain stem, and to motoneurons and interneurons in the spinal cord. The ventromedial (or …
Corticosteroids
Man-made versions of cortisol hormone or naturally produced in the adrenal cortex of the kidneys through being synthesised from cholesterol. Steroids have anti-inflammatory properties involved in responses to stress. They work by decreasing inflammation and reducing the activity of the immune system. To understand this, it is necessary to realise that Inflammation is a process …
Corticobulbar tract (CBT)
A myelinated pathway originating in the motor cortex of the frontal lobe and terminating in the brain stem. The tract descends through the genu (or bend) of the internal capsule. The axons exit at the appropriate level of brain stem to synapse on the so-called lower motor neurons of the cranial nerves in the brain …
Cortical lobes
Wernicke’s area See Agnosia, Anterior commissure, Aphasia, Cerebral cortex (or pallium), Cerebral cortex (functions), Cerebellum (development), Declarative (or explicit) and procedural memory, Double dissociation, Entorhinal cortex, Gyrus, Inferior parietal lobe (IPL), Parietal cortex, Primary motor cortex, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)
Cortical plate
The term for the developing cortex in embryogenesis, before it contains all its cellular components and has differentiated into its mature structure. See Cajal-Retzius cells, Cerebral cortex (development), Embryogenesis
Cortical column
A cylinder of cells extending the depth of the cerebral cortex, and which is the fundamental repeating unit of the cortex. Each column does a stereotyped intake, transformation and distribution of a particular class of information. Cortical columns were first discovered electrophysiologically by Vernon B. Mountcastle in 1957: neurons horizontally no more than 0.5 mm …