CE SUNT NEUROŞTIINŢELE Flashcards
Conventional Explanation of Human Behavior
Definition: Explanation of human behavior in terms of “mental activity.”
Components: Desires, needs, opinions, beliefs, motives, etc.
Widely Accepted: Common approach in understanding mind and behavior.
Neuroscience Research
Focus: Studying neural bases of cognition, memory, attention, motivation, and emotion.
Timeframe: Last 50 years of the 20th century.
Objective: Establishing a valid taxonomy of mental processes and neural organization.
Traditional View in Neuroscience
Brain Modularity: Belief in modular brain functions.
Examples: Amygdala for emotions, hippocampus for memory, visual cortex for perception.
Description: Each brain area specialized for specific functions.
Challenges to Traditional Paradigm
Criticism: Modular view questioned based on neuroscience data.
Proposal: Understanding real functions of brain areas and their representations.
Alternative: Utilizing concepts from popular psychology for better comprehension.
Rethinking Mental Processes
Shift: Move away from modular view towards understanding brain functions and processes.
Importance: Emphasizing physiological activity over traditional psychological constructs.
Examining Simple Mental Processes
Focus: Starting with basic mental processes like sensations and perception.
Questioning: What does the “sensory cortex” truly do?
Issue: Logic problem regarding the construction of internal representations.
Challenges to Traditional Assumptions
Assumption: Implicit belief in the mind or soul separate from the brain.
Query: Who “sees” the representations formed by the visual cortex?
Critique: Traditional theory based on the assumption of a separate observer within us.
Metaphor of the Prisoner Within
Concept: Perception akin to a prisoner viewing the world through senses projecting onto a screen.
Implication: Challenges traditional notions of perception and cognition as separate from physiological processes.
Brain Processing:
Brain anticipates sensory stimuli before their appearance.
Sensory areas activated by anticipation.
Cortex activity increases before stimulus onset.
Similar effects observed across auditory and tactile modalities.
Imagery and Motor Processing
Mental imagery activates visual association cortex.
Motor simulation involves premotor and supplementary motor cortex.
Visual cortex predicts timing of visual rewards.
Neuronal plasticity in visual cortex correlates with reward anticipation.
Memory Formation
Memories stored across sensory cortices.
Various memory subcomponents: sensory, short-term, long-term, procedural, declarative, implicit, explicit, episodic, and semantic.
Memory defined as encoding, storing, and retrieval of information.
Memory retrieval intertwined with perception, imagination, and thought.
Brain Regions
Temporal medial zone integrates perception and memory.
Perirhinal cortex processes complex information.
Hippocampus crucial for memory ambiguity resolution.
Attachment and Reward Systems:
Endogenous opioids, vasopressin, and oxytocin implicated in attachment.
Attachment linked to reward neural circuits.
Similar neural pathways involved in romantic attachment and drug addiction.
Social Behavior and Dopamine
Dopamine receptor density influences social behavior.
Stress impacts dopamine receptor density and social reward perception.
Leadership roles influence dopamine receptor density.
Altruism and Neural Activation
Brain regions activated during altruistic behavior.
Neural overlap between social attachment and altruistic acts.
Concepts linked to psychology: attachment, addiction, prosocial behavior, leadership, and interpersonal relationships.
