Approaches: Cognitive Neuroscience

Question 1

What is the emergence of cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 1

• brain structure and neural imaging - combination of cognitive science and neuroscience.
• Main focus is to look for a biological basis to thought processes, specifically how neurons explain these processes.
• scientific study of the influence of the brain structures on mental processes.
• mapping brain areas to specific cognitive functions has a long history in psychology
• the discipline has emerged as technology has advanced - meant brain scanning machines have advanced so too has the ability to investigate how the brain activity might underpin thought
• Miller and Gazzaniga first used the label ‘cognitive neuroscience’ in 1972
  —> explains behaviours through neurochemicals in the brain, such as low levels of serotonin in OCD

Question 2

What’s an example of a cognitive neuroscience study?

Answer 2

Maguires taxi driver study
- 16 healthy, right-handed male licensed taxi drivers in London. They were compared to MRI scans of 50 healthy, right-handed males who did not drive taxis.
- the hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects.
- as well as this, the hippocampal volume correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver (e.g. the longer the ptp had been working, the larger his hippocampus was)

Question 3

What’s some evaluation of the emergence of cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 3

+ highly controlled and rigorous methods
+ lab experiments to produce reliable and objective data
+ enables two fields of biology and cognitive psychology to come together - established a credible scientific basis
- machine reductionism
- very deterministic
- casual conclusions about neurotransmitters are difficult to establish