H1 intro Cognitive Science

• Cognition

  Collectively refers to a variety of higher mental processes such as thinking, perceiving, imagining, speaking, acting and planning
• Cognitive neuroscience

  Aims to explain cognitive processes in terms of brain-based mechanisms
• Mind-body problem


  • The problem of how a physical substance (the brain) can give rise to our sensations, thoughts and emotions (our mind)
• Dualism

  The belief that mind and brain are made up of different kinds of substance
• Dualism


  • Rene Descartes: mind = non-physical and immortal, body = physical and mortal, interact in the pineal gland (center of brain)
• Dual-aspect theory

  The belief that mind and brain are two levels of description of the same thing
• Dual-aspect theory

  • Spinoza: mind and brain were two different levels of explanation for the same thing, but not two different kinds of thing
• Reductionism

  The belief that mind-based concepts will eventually be replaced by neuroscientific concepts
• Aristoteles


  • Ratio brain size to body size greatest in more intellectually advanced species, he claimed cognition was product of the heart
• Galen

  • Nerves project to and from the brain, mental experiences themselves resided in the ventricles of the brain
• Vesalius


  • Father of modern autonomy
• Gall and Spurzheim


  • Phrenology: the failed idea that individual differences in cognition can be mapped on to differences in skull shape
• Phrenology


  • Different regions of the brain perform different functions and are associated with different behaviors → functional specialization: Different regions of the brain are specialized for different functions

  2. The size of these regions produces distortions of the skull and correlates with individual differences in cognition and personality
• Cognitive neuropsychology


  The study of brain-damaged patients to inform theories of normal cognition
• Information processing


  An approach in which behaviour is described in terms of a sequence of cognitive stages
• Fodor's theory of modularity


  • Mind is made of specialized cognitive modules, each dedicated to processing specific types of information (e.g. color, shape, words, faces)
• Domain specificity


  The idea that a cognitive process (or brain region) is dedicated solely to one particular type of information (e.g., colors, faces, words)
• Interactivity


  Later stages of processing can begin before earlier stages are complete
• Top-down processing


  The influence of later stages on the processing of earlier ones (e.g., memory influences on perception)
• Bottom-up processing


  The passage of information from simpler to more complex (e.g., edges to objects)
• Parallel processing


  Different information is processed at the same time
• Neural network models


  Computational models in which information processing occurs using many interconnected nodes
• Nodes


  The 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 occurs
• Connectome


  A comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain that may be thought of as its "wiring diagram"
• Graph theory


  A mathematical technique for computing the pattern of connectivity (or "wiring diagram") from a set of correlations