Cognitive Psyc Chapter 2 Flashcards
(55 cards)
cognitive neuroscience
-study of physiological processes underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes
-addresses the questions of how cognitive functions are produced by the brain
the brain
-cognitive neuroscience focuses mainly, but not
exclusively, on neural processes in the brain
the neural net
-nervous system was thought to be a network of connected fibres that was similar to a highway system
-believed info can flow in all directions along the fibres
neuron doctorine
nervous systems consists of individual,
unconnected cells
neurons
cells specialized to receive and transmit information
in the nervous system
cell body
life support centre of the neuron
dendrites
branching extensions at the cell body. Receive
messages from other neurons
axon
long single extension of a neuron, sometimes
covered with myelin sheath to insulate and speed up messages through neurons
terminal branches of axon
branched endings of an axon
that transmit messages to other neurons
how neurons communicate
-through the neural system
-specifically accomplished through electrical (within neurouns) and chemical (between neurons)
-neurons recieve input from other neurons and the environment
action potential
-a change in intracellular electrical potential that travels from the cell body to the axon terminals
-generated by the movement of
positively charged atoms in and out
of channels in the axon’s membrane
-intensity remains the same throughout
all or none response
-excitatory input received by the neuron exceeds the neurons threshold the neuron will fire an action potential
-strength is always the same
encoding intensity
-pressure intensity is encoded by the
neurons’ rate of firing
-Low intensities: slow firing
High intensities: fast firing
principle of neural representation
Everything a person experiences is based on representations in the person’s nervous system
neural code
specific pattern of neural firing that corresponds to a particular piece
of information
feature detectors
neurons that respond best to a specific stimulus
simple cells
Neurons that respond best to stimuli with a given feature
-ex. bars of light of a particular orientation
complex cells
neurons that respond best to stimulus with a specific
combination of features
specificity coding
representation of a specific object by
firing of specifically tuned neurons specialized to just
that object
Distributed coding
representation of objects by a pattern
of firing across a number of neurons
Sparse coding
when objects are represented by a
pattern of firing of a subset of the population of neurons
specificity coding or grandmother cell hypothesis
Each face might be represented by a single
neuron (more realistically by a subgroup of neurons)
tuned to respond only to that face
Evidence for localization of function
-Neuropsychology
-Brain imaging (e.g., fMRI)
-Electroencephalography (EEG)
neuropsychology
-study of behaviour and cognitive abilities of
individuals with brain damage
-cognitive functioning breaks down in specific ways when areas of the brain are damaged
-provides insight into the function of different areas of
the brain
