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Summary Cognitive Neuroscience part one
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Cognitieve neuroscience/cognitive neuroscience summary (8 t/m 15). Everything you have to know for exam 2 :)
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Cognitive Neuroscience (200300074) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION 2nd Exam
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Answering open questions knowledge clip:Why:
Goal 1: how to answer an (exam) question as an academic.
Goal 2: practicing the course material and peer feedback.
What to do:
1. No spelling errors, leave a bad impression.
2. Write full sentences, no stenography.
3. Make sure you understand the question. Take your time.
4. Don’t forget to answer the sub-questions.
- Helps to write down 1. And 2. When they ask for two arguments for example.
5. Use scientific language.
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1. If you don’t know the answer: don’t guess. Will annoy the examiner..
2. don’t be too elaborate, be concrete.
Chapter one; Cognitive neuroscience: definitions,
themes and approaches
Cognitive neuroscience integrates investigations of brain structure and function, and seeks to
measure cognitive abilities and behavior to understand how the human brain works at all levels
(cognitive neuroscience = neuroscience + cognitive science).
Seeks to develop new models of cognitive functions
Cognition
= the set of processes (cognitive functions) that allow humans and many other animals to perceive
external stimuli, to extract key information and hold it in memory, and ultimately to generate
thoughts and actions that help reach desired goals.
Mind = the subjective sense of self
Behaviorism
= matching objective external stimuli to measurable behavior (e.g. how do changes in stimuli
presentation shape the way individuals adapt their behavior to the demands of the environment).
Downside: behaviorists did not deny
the existence of mental states and the
cognitive functions that those states
implied, but they dismissed those states
as inappropriate topics for scientific
study, arguing that psychological
concepts could be discussed only in
terms of the experimental
manipulations that evoked them (a
view sometimes called “operationism”).
Cognitive science
Computational science gave new insights into
perception, memory, and motor performance.
,Cognitive science = unifies research on mental processes regardless of the specific topic,
experimental approach, method, or even discipline. It focuses on information processing associated
with cognitive functions, and includes research with human participants, studies in non-human
animals, and computational simulation of cognitive functions.
Cognitive models describe these underlying psychological processes.
The elements of cognitive models = psychological contructs. Created to help explain
diverse phenomena without reference to their ultimate causes in the brain.
Neuroscience
The field of neuroscience is concerned with how the nervous systems of humans and other animals
are organized and function. Early knowledge about nervous system function came primarily from
clinical cases and took a relatively holistic view of brain function, although more was known about
brain structure.
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) had long suspected that differences among individuals in their
cognitive functions and personality traits were associated with different parts of the cerebral cortex,
and he hypothesized that the size of the cerebral cortex (and thus the extent of the function or trait)
could be mapped by measuring bumps on the overlying skull = phrenology. This theory is now
rejected, except the idea of:
Localization of functions = the idea that different parts of the brain contribute to
different sorts of information processing.
Neuron:
1. Cell body = contains the nucleus and most of the neuron’s metabolic machinery
2. Axon = carries information to other cells via its synaptic endings
3. Dendrites = receive inputs from synapses with other nerve cells
The major way information travels between cells in nervous systems = neurotransmitters. Whereas
dysfunction of neurotransmitters can lead to psychiatric disorders, cellular problems are reflected by
neurological conditions like Alzheimers.
Cognitive neuroscience: the neurobiological
approach to cognition
Cognitive neuroscience combines all the difficulties of measuring brain function
with all the problems of trying to accurately assess cognition and behavior, as well
as the complexities of trying to link them together.
Search for neural correlates of cognition = misconception, simply mapping
brain regions that are activated during a psychological process. Although it
could be important.
Much current research combines information about brain structure and function
to create neurobiologically grounded models of cognition.
Individual differences = understanding how and why people differ in their
cognitive abilities is a major area of research in psychology, medicine, and
epidemiology.
Methods: converge and complementarity
Using multiple methods provides two critical advantages: convergence and complementarity.
1. Convergence = the approach of combining results from multiple experimental paradigms to
illuminate a single theoretical concept. The result of a set of experiments is harder to reject.
Convergence is often facilitated by meta-analytic methods = combining information
across multiple studies. By combining data across multiple studies, researchers increase
, the effective sample size for their analyses, allowing the identification of effects that
replicate across studies. Qualitative meta-analyses >> quantitative meta-analyses (using
activation likelihood estimation) >> semantic meta-analyses (underlying concepts).
2. Complementarity = because brain function is expressed through many diverse physiological
changes, cognitive neuroscientists use a welter of research methods that provide insight into
different aspects of physiology: fMRI, EEG, PET, TMS, single-neuron recording, neurological
disorders, lesion studies, assessments of behavior, and others. None of these techniques
provide a complete accounting of brain function.
, Chapter two; The methods of
cognitive neuroscience
Neuroscience-based approaches can be divided into
two broad categories:
1. Studying changes in cognitive behavior when
the brain has been perturbed in some way
(clinical brain lesions, pharmacological and
electrical methods).
2. Measuring brain activity while cognitive tasks
are being performed
Introductory box: early brain mapping in
humans
One of the earliest methods used to directly examine cognitive brain function in humans was
intracranial electrical stimulation in patients. This is highly invasive, but is sometimes used in humans
to enable neurosurgeons to map the functions of brain regions on or near the site of a tumor,
suspected epileptic focus, or other lesion that needs to be dealt with surgically.
One of the first scientists to use electrical stimulation in this way was the neurosurgeon
Wilder Penfield.
Penfield found that the layout of these cortical representations followed the general
somatotopic relationships of the different parts of the body. That is, adjacent body parts
generally had adjacent cortical representations, which together gave rise to a
representational map of the entire body termed a homunculus.
Brain pertubations that elucidate cognitive function
A. Stroke, trauma or disease
- Advantage: if damage to a brain area or system disrupts a cognitive function, it is likely that
the damaged region is involved in some critical way in the performance of that function.
- Limitation: of clinical-pathological correlations in humans, however, is that the brain damage
is the result of many factors that are not under the control of the experimenter. (Although
stroke-induced lesions can be relatively focal, they follow vascular-supply boundaries rather
than being restricted to functional brain regions, and thus a single lesion can have diverse
effects on cognitive functions.)
- Moreover, the distribution of brain regions supporting cognitive functions varies among
individuals, making it difficult to generalize results >> can be addressed to some degree by
combining information about the locus of damage across a group of patients, allowing
researchers to delineate the affected region that is common to the loss of a particular
function. The region of overlap among a group of patients more accurately defines the part
of the brain relevant to the cognitive function at issue.
Lesion can also be made on purpose:
- Disadvantage: the training and assessment of animals carrying out cognitive tasks is
considerably more difficult than for similar studies in humans, and making deliberate lesions
in the brains of healthy animals, particularly non-human primates, can raise ethical concerns.
- Advantage: the use of carefully controlled brain lesions in experimental animals has provided
useful information complementing that derived from neuropsychological studies in humans.
Overall disadvantage:
- Interpretation = if one area of the brain is lesioned, other areas of the brain innervated by
the damaged area may, from the loss of input, also cease to function normally. Such effects,
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