Cognitive Neuroscience Intro Flashcards
What is cognitive science?
Characterizing the mind in computational terms
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Discovering the neural substrates supporting the computational processes of the mind
What are the levels of analysis according to Marr (1980)?
Computational - Problem we want to solve
Algorithmic - How can it be solved?
Implementation - How algorithm is physically implemented
What is the doctrine of independence?
That the 3 levels of analysis of cognition can be answered independently of eachother
What is scientific determinism?
That the “wholes are the sum of their parts” or e.g the brain is the sum of neuronal interactions
What arguments are there against scientific determinism?
- Different levels of organisation have their own laws and can only be understood at the level examined
- These levels can sometimes interact
Define emergence
“wholes more than the sum of their parts”
Physical system composed of bits of matter can exhibit novel properties not possessed by its simpler constituent
What is the principle of ‘multiple realizability’?
- Functional system properties can in principle be instantiated by indefinitely many distinct physical structures
- Does not depend on material constitution but rather the way it functions in the system to which it belongs
Describe the computational level of analysis
- Abstract problem analysis
- Decomposing a task into its main constituents
- Relation between input and output; specification
of what the process does; conditions under which the process operates
Describe the algorithmic level of analysis
- specifying to formal procedure to perform a task
- process is described in terms of the mechanisms that translate input into
output; - specification of format of the representations (or codes) on which the mechanism operates
Describe the implementational level of analysis
- Description of how the code or algorithm is physically implemented
