Chapter 1: A brief history of cognitive neuroscience Flashcards
What is the aggregate field theory?
The theory that all individual mental functions are performed by the brain as a whole, not by discrete parts.
What is associationism?
The theory that the aggregate (total) of a person’s experience determines the course of mental development.
What is behaviorism?
The theory that environment and learning are the primary factors in mental development, and that people should be studied by outside observation.
What is cognitive neuroscience?
The study of how the brain enables the mind.
What is cytoarchitectonics?
Also cellular architecture. The study of the cellular composition of structures in the body.
What is empiricism?
The idea that all knowledge comes from sensory experience.
What is the Montreal procedure?
A surgical procedure to treat epilepsy, originally developed by Wilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper, in which the neurons that produced seizures were surgically destroyed.
What is the neuron doctrine?
The concept, proposed by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the 19th century, that the neuron is the fundamental unit of the nervous system, and that the nervous system is composed of billions of these units (neurons) connected to process information.
What is phrenology?
The study of the physical shape of the human head, based on the belief that variations in the skull’s surface can reveal specific intellectual and personality traits. Today phrenology is understood to lack validity.
What is rationalism?
The idea that, through right thinking and rejection of unsupportable or superstitious beliefs, true beliefs can be determined.
What is syncytium?
A continuous mass of tissue that shares a common cytoplasm.
