Intro Flashcards
What does the discipline of cognitive neuroscience study?
How the brain supports the mind
- To identify the cognitive operations/psychological processes that are supported by different brain regions (brain mapping)
- to study brain function in order to understand the structure and function of the mind
Contributions from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neurobiology+physiology, cognitive neuropsychology, computer modelling
What is the difference between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience?
Different view points:
CNs and CP = two related disciplines that investigate cognition from different perspectives - low level brain mechanisms (CNs) and high level of thoughts and behaviours (CP)
CNs = just applied CP - using cognitive methods to look at how cognition is supported in the brain
CP = branch of CNs - looking at representations of brain mechanisms
Why is the psychology element useful?
Cognitive psychology is concerned with characterisation of mental life in terms of processes ie search, consolidation, retrieval
Brain mapping = top down ie you need a theory of a particular element of cognition before you can pin that to a supporting brain area
Psychologists isolate cognitive processes experimentally so they know explicitly that it is the process being looked at with imaging
What is traditional neuropsychology?
Interested in functional architecture of the mind ie a cognitive explanation of the mind
What are two key assumptions of modularity of mind?
Modularity of mind - different bits of the brain do different things
Double dissociation - in order to demonstrate that a system is made up of two modules - A + B - need to show that A can operate in the absence of B and vice versa
How can you demonstrate double dissociations?
Use of brain lesion evidence - damage to one part of the brain produces specific problems related to a central process but doesnt affect the other components of that process
Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas are examples; two separate areas involved in the task of speech but one responsible solely for the motor component and one for semantic
Other examples = phonological vs surface dyslexia ie reliance on whole word knowledge vs pronunciation rules
Describe what the case of patient HM shows
An example of a single dissociation of explicit and implicit memory
Involved removal of medial temporal lobes (MTL) bilaterally as a surgical treatment for epilepsy:
Resulted in anterograde amnesia and failures on explicit memory tests
Other types of memory ie motor learning and implicit ie priming remained intact
What is the problem with single dissociation evidence?
Although it might look like two tasks are using different resources, we cannot confirm:
Could be using the same resources but one task requires more than the other OR could be using the same resources but one is being performed suboptimally for some reason
A reversal of the dissociation is needed to confirm distinct modular function
What are the limitations of cognitive neuropsychology?
WHAT DO ALL OF THESE MEAN?
Functional recruitment
Functional reorganisation?
Patient motivation - variable across task?
Lesions are rarely restricted to one area + some regions are rarely damaged
Few patients have specific deficits (‘pure’ cases)
Static view of the brain
Lesion studies can only identify what is ‘necessary’ for completion of a given task
What are some pros and cons to studying animal brain lesions?
+ More precise control of location and size of lesion
+ Motivation is less of a concern (but fear??)
- Differences in brain structure/function
- Cognitive abilities not comparable
- Ethical issues
What are some pros and cons to single/multiple cell recording in animals?
+ Real-time measure of neural activity
- Differences in structure/function
- Abilities not comparable = limits the questions you can ask if you want to make human inferences
++ Testing (some things) on humans during brain surgery is a way around some of these negatives
How does structural imaging in awake individuals inform out understanding of the mind?
+ Simple volumetric analysis of areas can give indications about differences in cognitive abilities (and their change over time if serially scanned - London cabbies)
+ Useful for prediction/understanding functional deficits ie schizophrenia and ventricle size
- Static brain view
- May be limited to areas in which expertise/extreme/over-learned/absent abilities can be identified
