Chapter 1: A Brief History of Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
Aggregate field theory
Book definition: “The belief that the whole brain participates in behavior. (p. 7)”
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794-1867), a French physiologist, was the first to prove that the mind was located in the brain instead of the heart. In 1824, he proposed the aggregate field theory; the view that all sensations, perceptions and volitions are evenly spread throughout the brain, and that they are “essentially one faculty.”
This theory was later abandoned in favor of localizationism, i.e. the view that the brain’s faculties are localized.
Associationism
Book definition: “The theory that the aggregate of a person’s experience determines the course of mental development. (p. 12)”
Behaviourism
Book definition: “The theory that environment and learning are the primary factors in mental development, and that people should be studied by outside observation. (p. 13)”
The arguably most famous example of behaviorism is the case of “Pavlov’s dogs”: Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) would ring a bell (which was the neutral, conditional stimulus) every time he gave his dogs food (which was the natural, unconditional stimulus). After repeating this procedure enough times, the dogs finally started producing saliva from the ringing of the bell alone.
Cognitive neuroscience
Book definition: “The study of how the brain enables the mind. (p. 4)”
Cytoarchitectonics
Book definition: “The way in which cells differ between brain regions. (p. 8)”
By staining thin slices of brain tissue with chemical agents, it is possible to study the tissues’ cellular composition under a microscope.
Using this method to define differences in cerebral cytoarchitecture, German neurologist Korbinian Brodmann (1868-1918) divided the cerebral cortex into 52 discrete areas, which he proposed each served unique functional purposes. “Brodmann area” (or simply “BA”) is now used to refer to several such areas – e.g. BA4, which is the primary motor cortex, and BA17, the primary visual cortex.
Empiricism
Book definition: “The idea that all knowledge comes from sensory experience. (p. 10)”
Also known as the “blank slate view,” empiricism is in contrast to the nativism view, which suggests that humans are born with certain knowledge about language already encoded in our genes.
Montreal procedure
Book definition: “Created by Wilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper, a procedure to treat epilepsy in which the neurons that produced seizures were surgically destroyed. (p. 13)”
Neuron doctrine
Book definition: “The concept proposed by the great Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon 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. (p. 9)”
Phrenology
Book definition: “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. (p. 6)”
Rationalism
Book definition: “The idea that, through right thinking and rejection of unsupportable or superstitious beliefs, true beliefs can be determined. (p. 10)”
Syncytium (pl. syncytia)
Book definition: “A continuous mass of tissue that shares a common cytoplasm. (p. 9)”
Camillo Golgi (1843-1926), an Italian physicist, believed that the whole brain was a syncytium – a continuous mass of tissue. Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) was the first to identify that although the brain’s neurons are unitary in nature, they are not a continuous mass, but individual cells. This became known as the neuron doctrine.
