L1: Introduction / L2: Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
What is cognition?
Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experiences and the senses.
What is phrenology?
Phrenology is the study of the physical shape of the human head, it is based on the belief that variations in the skulls surface can reveal specific intellectual and personality traits (today it is understood to lack validity).
What is aggregate-field theory?
Aggregate-field theory postulates that all individual mental functions are performed by the brain as a whole, not by discrete parts.
What did Marie-Jean Pierre do to try and prove/disprove the localisationist’s view?
He legions certain parts of pigeons brains and found no evidence for specific behavioural deficits and therefore argued against localised function.
What did Marie-Jean Pierre believe?
He believed cognition was the result of the interaction of brains, not specific areas.
What did John Hughlings believe (localised or aggregate-field)?
The localisationist’s view.
1What did John Hughlings observations of epileptic patients give rise too?
The Topographic Organisation of Muscle Representation in the Cortex.
What were Broca and Wernicke able to associate?
They were able to associate specific language production and comprehension deficits with specific brain legions (localisationist’s view).
Who divided the brain into 52 distinct areas?
Braodman
How many areas did Broadman divided the brain into?
52 distinct regions.
Which theory did Broadman’s work support? Localisationist’s view or Aggragate-Field Theory?
Localisation’s perspective as it suggested each area serves a different purpose.
Golgi and Cajal argued that…
… the nervous system is made up of discrete individual cells, a.k.a, neurons.
Who developed The Neuronal Doctrine?
Golgi and Cajal.
What were Thorndike and Waston instramental in developing?
The foundations of behaviourism.
Thorndike and Watsom (behavourists) argued that ___ and ___ are the main determinants of all behaviour.
learning, conditioning
What aspects of learning did Miller and Chomsky realise could not be explained by conditioning?
Language.
What is a mental represenation?
A mental represenation is a hypothetical entity that is presumed to stand for a perception, thought, memory, or the like during cognitive operations.
What task is used to study mental representations and mental operations?
Posner’s letter matching task.
What is the terms used when time measures are used (reactions times) to infer the workings of the brain?
Chronometry.
What does the Posner’s Letter Matching Task involve?
Mulitple different conditions. e.g., vowels and consonants. Participants asked to press same or different response. Understanding reactions times vary for different conditions (Chronometry).
Posner (Letter Matching Task) argued that the different latencies reflect…
… the degree of processing required to do the task.
Can we usefully subdivide mental operations?
Yes, by using memory comparison tasks.
Describe the memory comparison task.
The subject is shown a set of one, two or four letters and is asked to memorise them, after a delay, a single probe letter appears, and the subject indicates whether that latter was a memory of the memory set
What are the hypothesised stages of the memory comparison task?
Encode (fixed time), compare, decide, and repond (fixed time).
What does the fact that the reaction time increases with set size indercate? (Memory comparison task)
It indercates that the target letter must be compared with the memory set sequentually (one at a time) rather than in parallel (simultaneously).
When the target letter is or is not apart of the orginal set, the reaction times are the…
(Memory comparison task)
… same.
When the target letter is or is not apart of the orginal set, the reaction times are the same. This is suprising because?
(Memory comparion task)
when the latter is not present in the memory set it should require more comparisons.
When the target letter is or is not apart of the orginal set, the reaction times are the same. This is surpising because when the letter is not present in the memory set, it should require more comparisons. What does the fact that the reaction times are the same suggest?
It suggests that the whole set is compared irrespective of whether the target letter is present or not.
What does cognitive neuroscience attempt to do?
- Reveal brain areas involved in specific cognitive operations.
- Reveal neuronal processes.
- Reveal the interareal communication.
- Reveal the neural basis of mental representations.
- Reveal the molecular processes involved.
What are different methods used in cognitive neuroscience?
- Electrophysiological
- Electroencephalogram
- Functional neurosurgery
- Functional brain imaging (e.g., PET and fMRI)
What is brain lesion analysis?
Brain lesion analysis involves comparing people with brain lesions in the region of interest (ROI) with people who have the ROI intact (i.e., experimental vs, control group).
Define Thalmatic reticular nucleus (TRN)
The thalmatic reticular nucleus (TRN) is a thin layer of neurons surrounding the nuclui of the thalamus, which receives inputs fro the cortex and sub-cortical structures and sends projections to the thalamic relay nuclei.
Define Superior colliculus
The superior colliculus is a sub-cortical visual structure located in the midbrain. The superior colliculus receives input from the retinal system and is interconnected with the sub-cortical and cortical systems. It plays a key role in visuomotor processes and may be involved in the inhibitory component of reflexive attentional orienting.
Define Ventral attention network
The ventral attention network is a proposed attention control network, involving ventral frontal cortex and the temporo-partietal junction of the right hemisphere, that mediates reeflexive attention on the basis of stimulus novelty and salience.
Define Visual search
Visual search is the visual task of finding a specific stimulus in a display or scene with multiple stimuli.
