Chapter 2 Flashcards
What are the 3 Gall and Spurzheim Principles?
1) The brain is the sole organ of the mind
2) Basic character and intellectual traits are innately determined
3) Since there are differences in character and intellectual traits among individuals, as well as differences in intellectual capacities within a single individual, there must exist differentially developed brain areas responsible for this
According to phrenology, the larger a structure is…
the more highly developed the function
Localization of Function
the idea that there is a direct correspondence between specific cognitive functions and specific parts of the brain
Ablasion
destroy cortex and observe behavioural consequences in animals - proved that mental processes were from the whole brain, not just parts
Law of mass action
learning and memory depend on the total mass of brain tissue remaining rather than the properties of individual cells
Law of equipotentiality
although some areas of the cortex may become specialized for certain tasks, any part of an area can (within limits) do the job of any other part of that area
Interactionism
mind and brain are separate substances that interact with and influence each other
Epiphenomenalism
the mind is simply a byproduct of brain processes and has no causal role in determining behaviour
Parallelism
mind and brain are two aspects of the same reality and operate in parallel
Isomorphism
Mental events and neural events share the same structure
Sensory system
A system that links the physical and perceptual worlds via the nervous systems; composed of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and distinct regions of the brain preferentially dedicated to the perception of information
Broca’s aphasia
a deficit in the ability to product speech due to damage of broca’s area
Wernicke’s aphasia
A deficit in the ability to comprehend speech as a result of damage to Wernicke’s area
Broca’s area
(part of the left hemisphere responsible for how words are spoken)
Wernicke’s area
Area of the brains left hemisphere that is responsible for processing the meaning of words
Interhemispheric transfer & who did a study on it and with what?
Communication between the Brain’s hemispheres, enabled in large by the corpus callosum
Think of Roger Sperry and his cat experiment
Split brain
a condition where each hemisphere acted as a separate mental domain with no regard for the other hemisphere
What did Roger Sperry say about consciousness
consciousness is an emergent property of the brain – a property that emerges as a result of brain processes, but not a component itself. Means that consciousness is neither reducible to, nor a property of, a particular brain structure or region
Supervenient
describes mental states that may simultaneously influence neuronal events and be influenced by them
Emergent causation
In Sperry’s sense, causation brought about by an emergent property, once the “mind” emerges from the brain, it has the power to influence lower-level processes
Event related potential (ERP)
An electrical signal emitted by the brain after the onset of a stimulus
Positron emission tomography (PET)
An imaging technique in which a participant is injected with radioactive substances that mingles with the blood and circulates to the brian. A scanner is then used to detect the flow of blood to particular areas of the brain
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
A non- radioactive magnetic procedure for detecting the flow of oxygenated blood to various parts of the brain
Magnetoencephalopathy (MEG)
A non-invasive brain imaging technique they directly measures neural activity
Connectionism
A theory that focuses on the way cognitive processes work at the physiological/ neurological (as opposed to information- processing) level. It holds that the brain consists of an enormous number of interconnected neurons and attempts to model cognition as an emergent process of networks of simple units (e.g. Neurons) communicating with one another
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
An MRI- based neuroimaging technique that makes it possible to visualize the white- matter tracts within the brain
Neural network
Neurons that are functionally related or connected
Hebb rule
A connection between two neurons takes place only if both neurons are firing at approximately the same time
