Chapter 2 Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
Action potential
Propagated electrical potential responsible for transmitting neural information and for communication between neurons. Action potentials typically travel down a neuron’s axon.
Axons
Part of the neuron that transmits signals from the cell body to the synapse at the end of the axon.
Brain imaging
Technique such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (f MRI) that results in images of the brain that represent brain activity. In cognitive psychology, activity is measured in response to specific cognitive tasks.
Broca’s aphasia
A condition associated with damage to Broca’s area, in the frontal lobe, characterized by labored 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. Damage to this area causes Broca’s aphasia.
Cell body
Part of a cell that contains mechanisms that keep the cell alive. In some neurons, the cell body and the dendrites associated with it receive information from other neurons.
Cerebral cortex
The 3-mm-thick outer layer of the brain that contains the mechanisms responsible for higher mental functions such as perception, language, thinking, and problem solving.
Cognitive neuroscience
Field concerned with studying the neural basis of cognition.
Connectome
“wiring diagram” of neurons in the brain
Cortical equipotentiality
The idea, popular in the early 1800s, that the brain operates as an indivisible whole, as opposed to operating based on specialized areas.
Default mode network (DMN)
Network of structures that are 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 neurons.
Distributed representation
Occurs when a specific cognition activates many areas of the brain.
Double dissociation
A situation in which a single dissociation can be demonstrated in one person and the opposite type of single dissociation can be demonstrated in another person (i.e., Person 1: function A is present, function B is damaged; Person 2: function A is damaged, function B is present).
Experience-dependent plasticity
A mechanism that causes an organism’s neurons to develop so they respond best to the type of stimulation to which the organism has been exposed.
Extrastriate body area (EBA)
An area in the temporal cortex that is activated by pictures of bodies and parts of bodies, but not by faces or other objects.
Feature detectors
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 functioning.
Functional connectivity
The extent to which the neural activity in separate brain areas is correlated with each other.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
A brain imaging technique that measures how blood flow changes in response to cognitive activity.
Fusiform face area (FFA)
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. For example, areas have been identified that are specialized to process information involved in the perception of movement, form, speech, and different aspects of memory.