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What we will talk about today is the nature of thought. And
that is of course a very difficult question. If you would think
about your thoughts you would think about emotions and
those kind of things. But today we take it from a more abstract
perspective, so how can we think, how can we recognize
thoughts and those kind of things. It is a question that is so big
so what we do in this lecture is, we look at several aspects of
cognition, intelligence and consiousness. And they are all
related to the thoughts that we have. And specifically with
cognition we split that up in many different subparts. By
looking at those seperately we will understand more about how
the brain processes information. Which eventually will help us in awnsering how thought are
represented in our brain. So it may feel a bit like a collection of random examples, but it is not. It is
really, the phase we are in in research investigating what the nature of thoughts is in the brain on a
more abstract level. So those are the specific examples that I will discuss and then we will discuss
asymmetry and handedness because it is important to understand the asymmetry of the brain and
how that has an impact on our thought and what we can do for example if we see something and
you will find out what I mean with that. But it’s also an important aspect to understand not
everything in the brain is processed in the same way on the left and right part of the brain.
And then I will go into some fields that have recently developed within neuroscience. And they all
study cognition but from a different perspective.
What is the nature of Thought?
Cognition
So we start with cognition.
Cognition is also a very abstract concept so I
thought it would be good to kind of have an
idea of what I revere to with cognition in this
context. So it is processes involved in
acquisition and understanding knowledge,
formation of beliefs and attitude, as well as
decision making and problem solving.
It is really a higher order function that is not
something you can easily point to or say oh it’s
located there in the brain or it is really this
specific aspect of human functioning. It is actually maybe also what makes us unique as humans
compared to many animals.
If we talk about cognition it is very much associated with the association cortex. The association
cortex is actually the part of the neocortex that is not involved in really primary sensory and motor
functions. So all the cortices that are not involved in the primary sensory and motor processes that is
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,actually the association cortex. Which means they are automatically involved in higher order
functions such as cognition.
There is an important difference between the association cortex and the primary sensory and motor
cortices because the association cortex has much more widespread connections with other regions in
the brain. So there is a lot of information that is already processed by some part of the cortex or
limbic system or the hypothalamus or whatever, and then it is send to the association cortex so the
input to the association cortex is already highly processed so the basic processing and understanding
has already been done by the lower order regions in the brain. And then the association cortex really
thinks about discission making, problem solving, really understanding things, so it’s really the last
step in the complexity of functions that we as humans have.
And then the temporal association regions, and
I think this is not new information but you
know it based on the previous lectures, but in
this context its good to repeat. So the temporal
association regions tend to produce cognition
related to visual and auditory processing. And
in contrast the parietal cortex is more closely
related to somatosensation, that is really
feeling and the integration of feeling what you
feel, and movement control. And not only that,
you also know from previous lectures and it will also be back in this lecture, that the parietal cortex is
also highly involved in attention processing and monitoring.
So as you can see here, this are all higher order functions already. And the frontal cortex receives
information from the parietal and temporal regions and there the judgements, the plans, the
strategies are made. And it is really about solving motivated problems and goal directed behavior. So
the frontal cortex is that part that brought you here today because you thought that attending this
lecture would help you in achieving the end goal which is in this case passing the exam. As part of the
bigger goal that you want to understand humans better.
And then the association cortices, I already told you this, they receive already processed information
from the thalamus. So the thalamus is this part of the brain where all the sensory input is collected
and processed in a very rough way. And then from the thalamus it is send to the association cortices,
among other regions. And then because of the many connections between the different parts of the
association cortex, it may be that for example the thalamus sends the information to the parietal
lobe and after that it is send to the frontal lobe. So most of the information that we use to base our
goals and our plans on is processed already in at least two or three regions in the brain.
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, And here can see this
network. So they colors
mean that they are
connected, so this region is
connected to this region
(points at something), and
this region is connected to
this region. So you see here
that many regions are
highly connected within the
association cortex or within
the cortex. Except for the
regions that are involved in
the auditory processing like here this region (points at something). Others are widely distributed. Like
for example the yellow region here, that connects the temporal and the parietal lobe and it is really
important this network for cognition. Because the frontal lobe is the end station and the parietal lobe
is involved in attention, for example it will make you aware of something that is happening in your
environment that you have to brake for example in the car. And then the frontal region makes the
exact decision.
So that is the association cortex, and of course this topic of object recognition is also taking place in
the association cortex so it doesn’t mean that all the other things that I discuss are not in the
association cortex. Understanding objects is very important in understanding human thought
because if we first understand how we can recognize objects we can later on also understand how
we can think about objects. So first the more basic part is recognizing the object and then later on we
can do research on how people can have mental images of certain objects. For example, if you are
shopping online you have to make a mental image of how that dress for example will look on you and
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