Week 4.1 Cog Neuro Flashcards
Why study the brain
- Knowing when + where cog processes happen in the brain = help understand nature of them
- Important for understanding + treating neurological disorders
Knowing where + when effects occur in the brain can
Constrain cognitive theories of those effects
Understanding neural basis of beaviour allows us to
Understand cog disorders + predicts effects of damage to brain
There are two ways to investigate neural activity and cognitive functions in relation to one another
- change behaviour and measure effect on the brain
or - change state of the brain and measure effect on behaviour
reading action words is correlated with
- greater activity in the motor cortex
- when people process actions words they simulate the action (helps understand the world)
damage to the motor cortex is associated with
- impaired action word understanding
- activation of the motor cortex is necessary to understand action words
What are recording methods for IVs and DVs in cog neuroscience?
IVs:
- conditions that manipulate behaviour/cog processes
DVs:
brain activity: electrophysiology/EEG/MEG
blood flow - fMRI (accuracy/RTs to confirm validity)
permits correlational technique
What are inference methods for IVs and DVs in cog neuroscience?
IVs:
- lesion
- brain stimulation (conditions manipulating behaviour as validity check)
DVs:
behaviour/cognitive process
permits causal inference
Why are inference studies better/worse
Allow stronger inference about necessity of brain region
But have issues e.g. plasticity + reorganisation of function
Why are recording studies better
- Greater flexibility in experimental design
- Often richer source of data
- Sample across multiple brain regions with high spatial resolution
- Sample at very high temporal resolution
the term cognition refers to
a variety of higher mental processes i.e. thinking, perceiving, imagining, speaking, acting and planning
dualism
the mind and brain are made up of different kinds of substance
dual aspect thoery
mind and brain = two different levels of explanation for the same thing
reductionism
psychology will eventually reduce to biology as we learn more about the brain
phenology
individual differences in cognition can be mapped on to differences in skull shape
issues with phrenology
not constrained by theories of cognition
not empirically derived
skull shape has nothing to do with cognitive function
functional specialization
different regions of the brain are specialized for different functions
information processing
an approach in which behaviour is described in terms of a sequence of cognitive stages
interactivity
later stages of processing can begin before earlier stages are complete
top-down processing
influence of later stages on the processing of earlier ones
parallel processing
different info is processed at the same time
neural network models
computational models in which information processing occurs using many interconnected nodes
nodes
basic units of neural network models that are activated in response to activity in other parts of the network
temporal resolution
the accuracy with which one can measure when an event occurs
spatial resolution
the accuracy with which one can measure where an event is occuring
modularity
certain cog processes for regions of the brain are restricted in the type of info they process
domain specificity
a cog process/brain region is dedicated solely to one particular type of info (colors, faces, words etc.)
modules
demonstrate domain specificity
central systems
domain-independent - info processed is non-specific e.g. memory/attention/exec functions
