Ch 2 Cognitive Neural Science Flashcards
Action potential
Sent electrical responsible for transmitting neural information and for communicating between neurons. Travel down a neuron’s axon.
Axons
Part of the neuron that transmits signals from the cell body to the synapses at the end of the axon.
Broca’s aphasia
Associated to damage to Broca’s area, in frontal lobe, characterized by laboured ungrammatical speech and difficulty in understanding some types of sentences.
Broca’s area
An area in the frontal lobe associated with the production of language.
Cell body
Part of a cell that contains mechanism that keep the cell alive. In some neurons, the cell body and the dendrites associated with it receives information from other neurons.
Cerebral cortex
The 3-mm thick outer layer of the brain that contains the mechanism responsible for higher mental functions such as perception, language, thinking, problem solving.
Cognitive neuroscience
Field concerned with studying the neural basis of cognition.
Cortical equipotentiality
The idea, popular in the 1800’s, that the brain operates as an indivisible whole ñ, as opposed to operating based on specialization areas.
Default mode network
Network of structures that active when a person is not involved in specific tasks.
Dendrites
Structures that branch out from the cell body to receive electrical signals from other Neuron.
Distributed representation
Occurs when specific cognition activates many areas of the brain.
Double dissociation.
- FunctionA is present, function B is damaged.
- Function A is damaged, function b is present.
Experience dependent plasticity
A mechanism of hat causes an organism neurons to develop so they respond best to the type of simulation to which the organism has been exposed. Cat experiment.
Extrastriate body area
An area in the temporal cortex that is activated by pictures of the bodies and parts of bodies, but not by faces or other objects.
Feature detection.
Neurons that respond to specific visual features, such as orientation, size, or the more complex features that make up environmental stimuli.
Frontal lobe
The lobe in the front of the brain that serves higher functions such as language, thought, memory , and motor function.
Functional connectivity
A he extent to which the neural activity in separate brain areas correlate with each other.
Functional magnetic resonance
A brain imaging technique that measures how blood flow changes in response to cognitive activity.
Fusiform face area
An area in the temporal lobe that contains many neurons that respond selectively to faces
Hierarchical processing
Processing that occurs in a progression from lower to higher areas of the brain.
Levels of analysis
A topic can be understood by studying it at a number of different levels of a system.
Localization of function
Location of specific functions in specific areas of the brain.
Microelectodes
Small wires that are used to record electrical signals from single neurons.
Multidimensional
The multidimensional nature of of cognition refers to the fact that even simple experience involve combination of different qualities.
Nerve fibres
Part of the neuron that transmits signals from the cell body and o the synapses at the end of the axon.
Nerve impulses
An electrical response that is propagated down the length of an axon. Action potential.
Nerve net
A network of continuously interconnected nerve fibres in which rivers are connected by synapses.
Neural circuits
Groups of interconnected neurons that are responsible for neural processing.
Neural network
Groups of neurons or structures that are connected together.
Neuron doctrine
The idea that individual cells called neurons transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous.
Neurotransmitter
Chemicals that is released at the synapses in response to incoming action potential.
Parahippocampal place area PPA
An area in the temporal lobe that contains neurons that are selectively activated by pictures of indoor and outdoor scenes.
Parietal lobe
The lobe at the top of the brain that contains mechanism responsible for sensations caused by stimulation and some aspects of visual information.
Principal of neural representation.
Everything a person experience is based on representation. In the persons nervous system.
Prosopagnosia
Condition caused by damage to the temporal lobe that is characterized by an inability to recognize faces.
Receptors
Specializing neural structures that respond to environmental stimuli such as light, mechanism stimulation, or chemical stimuli.
Recording electrodes
Very thin glass or metal probe that can pick up electrical signals from single neurons.
Reference electrode
Used to measure the difference in charge between two areas.
Resting state FMRI
The FMRI response recorded when a person is at rest.
Resting state functional connectivity
A method for determining functional connectivity that involves determining the correlation between the rating state FMRI in separate structures.
Resting potential
Difference in charge between the inside and outside of nerve finer when the finer is at rest.
Seed location
The area of the brain associated with carrying out a specific cognitive or motor task that serves as the reference area the resting state functional connectivity.
Sensory code
How neural firing represents various characteristics of the environment.
Sparse coding
Neural coding based on the pattern of activity in small groups of neurons.
Specificity coding
The representation of a specific stimulus by the firing of neurons that respond only to that stimulus.
Synapses
Space between the end of an axon and the cell body between the dendrites of next axon.
Task related FMRI
The response that occurs in response to a specific cognitive task.
Temporal lobe
The lobe on the side of the brain that contains mechanism responsible for language, memory, hearing, and vision.
Test location
The activity of the test location is also measured at the seed location. The degree of functional connectivity.
Time series response
The way the FMRI response changes over time.
Track weighted imagine TWI
A technique for determining connectivity in the brain that is based on detection of how water diffuses along the length of nerve fibres.
Visual cortex
An area in the occipital lobe that receives signals from the eyes.
Voxels
Small cube shaped areas in the brain used in the analysis of data from brain scanning experiments.
Wernicke’s aphasia
A condition, caused by damage to wernickes area, that is characterized by difficult in understanding language , grammatically correct but incoherent.
Wernickes area
Area in the temporal lobe associated with understanding language. Damage to this area causes wernickes aphasia.
