Lecture 1

Question 1

How does your brain choose what to process?

Answer 1

attention

Question 2

First Medical text to associate brain with behavior

Answer 2

Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus which described cases of head injury

Question 3

Cognitive ideas in the Islamic golden age:

Answer 3

Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna): The book of the cure; mind body links(violation); experimental approach

Hasan Ibn al - Haytham (Alhazen): The book of optics, described fundamental principles of perceptual research; unconscious inference, behavior of the two eyes (Herring’s law)

Question 4

What was Wilhelm Wundt’s non experimental introspection and what were its faults

Answer 4

Observers were told to ask themselves what they thought they perceived and to record their observations

Problems with introspection:
- Variability: individual’s impressions can vary widely
- Verification: no way to validate one person’s introspection versus another’s
- Limited to conscious perception: how much of cognition is conscious
- Opaque: no way to access the underlying process that produced the impression

Question 5

How does cognitive neuroscience differ from cognitive psychology?

Answer 5

• Cognitive neuroscience: how does the anatomy of the brain represent information
• Cognitive psychology: how can we learn about the inner workings of the mind without access to the hardware

Question 6

What is Neuronal Specificity, Population coding, Sparse coding

Answer 6

Neuronal Specificity:
- Neurons might just prefer one particular stimulus
- Theory: not how brain actually does things
Population coding:
- Each stimulus is represented by a large group of neurons
- More neurons = more detailed representation, but this is metabolically expensive
Sparse coding: each stimulus is represented by a small group of neurons

Question 7

fMRI and EEG and relations with Spatial and Temporal resolution

Answer 7

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): use a very powerful magnetic field to record changes in blood oxygenation of the brain of an awake, behaving observer in the scanner

EEG: Measuring the fluctuation of voltages in the brain from outside the skull

Spatial resolution: where things are happening in the brain (fMRI is better for this, EEG really bad)

Temporal resolution: when things happen and at what time (EEG is better)