Neuropsychology: Introducing Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
Who was Wilder Penfield?
-Canadian neurosurgeon, pioneered new technique for treating epilepsy
-Goal: remove source of brain seizures in brain
-Gives understanding in architecture of brain
-Conclusion: certain mental health processes organized an implement brain
What is cognitive neuroscience?
-Aims to provide brain-based account of cognitive and behavioral processes
-Made possible by technological advances to study brain: safer and less crude
What was the philosophical approach to the mind and brain?
Mind-body problem
-Classical antiquity: convinced about link between brain and behavior
-Descartes’ dualism: 2 seperate substances
-Spinoza’s dual-aspect theory: 2 levels of same thing
-Churchland’s reductionism: mind physical and biological
What scientific approaches to mind and brain have there been throughout time?
-Early vision: ventricles important and cortex side product
-Gall and Spurzheim: phrenology
-Functional specialization: determining building blocks of cognition
-Minds without brains: computer metaphor
What was Gall and Spurzheim’s phrenology?
-1810
-Assumption 1: all psychological functions are innate
-Assumption 2: people differ in these functions (cortical size and bumps on skull)
-Criticism
-Historically important
What criticism was there for phrenology?
-Crude division of psychological traits and not grounded in science
-Impossible to objectify or quantify findings
-Skull not good representation for shape of brain surface
Why is phrenology historically important?
-Basis for modern techniques to localize functions
-Brain lobes named after bones in skull
-Maps of brain made my Gall resemble modern maps: subdividing cortex into regions, each region certain function
-Notion that different regions serve different functions remains
-Modern cognitive neuroscientists use empirical methods to ascertain different functions
-Modern view assumes some degree of functional specialization, but not that each region has only 1 function or that each function has discrete location
What are examples of functional specialization?
-Broca’s observations: observed patient with left frontal lesion
–>Not able to speak, good cognitive abilities
-Wernicke’s observations: observed patient with left posterior lesion
–>Poor speech comprehension, good speech production
-> Suggests that 2 specialized language faculties exist in brain: Broca’s and Wernicke’s area
What is the computer metaphor of the brain?
-After Broca less interest in brain, but more in mind
-20th century psychology: concerned with observations of behaviour itself
-Led to models of cognition: without direct reference to brain
Which brain imaging methods are there?
-EEG/ERP
-Single cell (and multi-unit) recordings
-TMS (1985)
-tES
-MEG
-PET (1980)
-fMRI (1990)
-fMIRS
What kind of brain imaging method is EEG/ERP?
-Recording
-Non-invasive
-Electrical
-High spatial resolution, low temporal resolution (good)
What kind of brain imaging method is single-cell (and multi-unit) recording?
-Recording
-Invasive
-Electrical
-Low spatial resolution, low to high temporal resolution
What kind of brain imaging method is TMS?
-Stimulation
-Non-invasive
-Electromagnetic
-High spatial resolution, low temporal resolution
What kind of brain imaging method is tES?
-Stimulation
-Non-invasive
-Electrical
What kind of brain imaging method is MEG?
-Recording
-Non-invasive
-Magnetic
-High spatial resolution, low temporal resolution
