Speech perception
Agnosia is "the loss or diminution of the ability to recognize familiar objects or stimuli usually as a result of brain damage". There are several different kinds of agnosia that affect every one of our senses, but the two most common related to speech are speech agnosia and phonagnosia.
Selfish brain theory
In the first DFG funding period from 2004 to 2007 researchers from the Clinical Research Group “Selfish Brain: brain glucose and metabolic syndrome" expanded the scope of validity of the “Selfish Brain" theory in central aspects by carrying out experiments on healthy and diseased test subjects. The researchers in Luebeck found the following key results regarding the axioms of the theory:The special position of the brain during inanition (due to fasting or tumor disease) was already confirmed experimentally over 80 years ago: The body mass reduces, but the mass of the brain hardly reduces, if at all (see 3). Recently this axiom of the selfish brain theory was supported by work at the University of Luebeck involving state-of-the-art magnetic resonance procedures, e.g. during metabolic stress. The ATP content in the brain and musculature of test subjects was examined by a magnetic resonance technique while either an energy deficit or surplus was induced in the blood by insulin or glucose injection. In both situations a sufficiently high ATP-concentration was measured in the brain. The measured high-energy-rich substances changed throughout to the benefit of the brain and to the disadvantage of the body cells. The glucose-supply of the brain had priority despite the physical stress that was being endured (see 11).