Chapter 2: Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
What are levels of analysis?
refers to the idea that a topic can be studied in a number of different ways with each approach contributing its own dimension to our understanding
Where do action potentials occur?
nodes of ranvier in our neurons
What is the principle of neural representation?
everything a person experiences is based not on DIRECT contact with stimuli, but on representations in the person’s nervous system
What does understanding cognition allow us to do?
allows us to consider how our experiences are represented both in our mind (measured behaviourally) and in the brain (measured physiologically)
What was the experiment done by Hubel and Wiesel?
presented visual stimuli to cats and determined which stimuli caused specific neurons to fire
what was the results of the hubel and wiesel test?
found that each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina
What are feature detectors according to hubel and wiesel?
feature detectors are neurons in the brain that fire to specific stimulus features such as orientation, movement and length
What is hierarchical processing?
progression from lower to higher areas of the brain; neurons in the visual cortex respond to simple stimuli and then higher visual systems respond to more complex stimuli
What is sensory code?
sensory code refers to how neurons represent various characterists of the environment (code for senses)
What is specificity coding?
specificity coding is the idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object
What is a problem with specificity coding?
even though there are neurons that respond to faces, these neurons usually respond to a number of faces; theres way too many different types of the same stimulus for us to have a different neuron for so it doesnt make sense
What is population coding?
population coding is the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons
What is an advantage to population coding?
a large number of stimuli with different features can be presented through the inifinite connections made between the neurons in the population
What is sparse coding?
occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons and the majority of the neurons remain silent
What is neuropsychology?
study of people with brain damage
