Brain and Behaviour Flashcards
What is cognition? Give 4 examples
Higher mental processes e.g., thinking, speaking, acting, planning
What is behavioural neuroscience?
Scientific study of how brain activity influences behaviour
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Study of neural basis of behaviour
What can understanding the neural basis of a mental process help distinguish between?
Different theories relating to how that process is performed
What are mental representations?
The sense in which properties of the outside world (e.g., colours, objects) are copied by cognition
What are neural representations?
The way in which properties of the outside world manifest themselves in the neural signal (e.g., different spiking rates for different stimuli)
What word is associated with mental representations?
Simulation
What word is associated with neural representations?
Implementation
Where did Aristotle and Plato think mental experiences came from? (Historical perspectives)
Aristotle - heart
Plato - mind
What is the mind-body problem? (Historical perspectives)
How can a physical substance (brain/body) give rise to mental experiences?
Who had the theory of dualism and what was the basic idea? (Historical perspectives)
Descartes
Mind (eternal) and body (mortal) are separate substances
What did Descartes believe about the soul (Dualism - Historical perspectives)
It controls the movement of muscles through influence on the pineal body
How did Descartes believe our muscles moved? (Dualism - Historical perspectives)
The eye send visual info to the brain
The soul examines this info and decided to act
The soul tilts the pineal body
This diverts pressurised fluid through nerves to appropriate muscles
Who proved Descartes wrong and how? (Historical perspectives)
Galvani
electrical stimulation of decapitated frog nerves’ caused contraction of attached muscle
Muscles contracting was its own characteristic
Brain didn’t inflate muscles with directed pressurised air
What is dual aspect theory?
Mind and body are 2 levels of explanation of the same thing
e.g. like photons with wave-particle duality
What is reductionism?
Mind will eventually be explained solely in terms of physical/biological theory
True or false?
Dual-aspect theory and reductionism are issues still relevant to modern cognitive neuroscience
True
What do psychologists often deal in terms of?
Generalisation e.g., behaviours as general laws
What do physiologists often deal in terms of?
Reduction e.g., complex behaviour explained in simpler terms
What is the modern history of behavioural neuroscience?
combined experimental methods of psychology and physiology and applied them to issues that concern all psychologists
e.g., recent interest in studying physiology of pathological conditions such as addiction and MH disorders
What surgery have split brain patients had and why?
Splitting of corpus callosum to cure severe epilepsy
What is the corpus callosum?
A bundle of nerve fibres connecting the left and right brain hemispheres
Who studied split brain patients?
Sperry and Gazzinga
What did Sperry and Gazzinga find about split brain patients?
Left hemisphere = language (and right side motor control)
Right hemisphere = motor control of left side