18 Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
What is cognitive neuroscience?
a branch of neuroscience that focuses on brain function and brain dysfunction (neuropsychology) on a cognitive level.
Cognitive neuroscientists relate behaviour to brain function.
What is cognitive psychology?
Branch of psychology that focuses on complex mental processes, such as perception, learning and memory.
Cognitive psychologists study mental processes (e.g. how people focus their attention) and information-processing problems (e.g. bottlenecks and limitations).
Tools in cognitive neuroscience?
Brain lesion analysis (neuropsychology research)
Electroencephalography (EEG)
- Event-related potentials (ERPS)
Functional brain imaging
- Positron emission tomography (PET)
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
What is a brain lesion analysis?
This method of research aims to uncover how the brain normally functions by investigating the behaviour of a patient with a brain lesion in a specific region.
Involves comparing people with a brain lesion in the region of interest (ROI) to the intact ROI group (Control).
Patients are screened from brain session with neuroimaging
damage brain group should have defects in tasks.
What is Electroencephalography? (EEG)
EEG provides a recording of brain’s electrical activity
Electrodes are attached to the surface of the scalp.
EEG can detect abnormalities in brain functioning (seizure activity).
What are Event-Related Potentials (ERPS)? How do they consider electrical activity in response to an event?
ERPs are based on EEGs
EEG trace is elicited by an event called an ERP (i.e a signature of the electrical activity that occurred in the brain in response to a specific event).
Average EEG traces are compared to stimuli A & B
ERP research considers electrical activity in response to an event in terms of
- Latency
- Amplitude and Polarity
- Scalp
Spatial resolution not very accurate
Provide a good account of the timing of brain activity (e.g. temporal resolution is quite accurate).
What categories does Neuroimaging fall into? What methods are involved in each one?
Structural imaging: CT, MRI and DTI
functional imaging: PET and fMRI
What are Structural Imaging and the 3 methods of it?
Computed tomography (CT) uses X-ray technology to produce a series of brain images, enabling the structure of the brain to be viewed
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) produces images of the brain with higher resolution
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides a view of white matter tracts
What is Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). how is its image resolution?
fMRI is an adaption of MRI that records changes related to metabolic activity in successive images in order to produce a functional view of the brain
fMRI is sensitive method for measuring neural activity that has considerably greater spatial resolution than PET scanning
What is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
TMS is a non-invasive method that causes a transient disruption of brain activity by emitting a bride magnetic pulse. This disruption can be exitaroy or inhibitory.
What are the converging methods?
Combing the information from these tools can lead to clearer conclusions about the underlying system for example:
- fMRI data shows that a given structure is involved in a given mental operation: however, disruption of the structure (via TMS or brain damage) is not associated with a deficit in performing the mental operations
- fMRI data shows that a given structure is involved in a given mental operation and disruption of the structure (via TMS or bran damage) is associated with a deficit in performing the mental operation.
