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Ch. 49 - Nervous Systems

Chapter 49, Problem 6

Injury localized to the hypothalamus would most likely disrupt a. regulation of body temperature. b. short-term memory. c. executive functions, such as decision making. d. sorting of sensory information.

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Hello everyone. And in today's video we have the following problem. All functions will be affected by hypothalamic damage with the exception of. So remember that we are looking for the exception and modern answer choices regarding damage to the hypothalamus. So before we jump into the problem I want you to think about what the hypothalamus is and what it does for the body. Well the hypothalamus is a region of the body that is heavily involved in homeostasis which is the process of keeping our body in this balanced state. So right off the bar we can look at answer choice is A. And B. Which involved the regulation temperature balance and the regulation of water balance. Both of these we can see that are heavily involved with homeostasis and thus with the hypothalamus as they involve just the balancing of these two aspects of the body. So we're going to cancel this out as damage to the hypothalamus would definitely affect the regulation of these two characteristics. And so it all leaves us with the answer choices C. And answer choice. D. Answer choice C. Is not as clear as these first two answer choices. However, the hypothalamus does have a role to play in the menstrual cycle, particularly by affecting the release of hormones such as LH and FSH, which in part they have a strong control of the menstrual cycle and so the hypothalamus if there is damage to it, the menstrual cycle will be disrupted. So this answer choices actually correct as well. We cannot eliminate. It is not the exception that we are looking for. So we're going to cancel it out and this all leaves us with body equilibrium. And if you remember, body equilibrium is actually an aspect of the cerebellum. It is not an aspect of the hypothalamus of hypothalamic damage is not really going to affect a person's equilibrium, and so we are going to highlight it as being the final answer or the exception to a question. So I really hope this video helped you and I hope to see you on the next one.