lecture week 2

Question 1

what is cognitive neuroscience

Answer 1

an extension of cognitive psychology

Question 2

what is the black box typically mean

Answer 2

what intervenes between the stimulus and the response , providing a solution of the behaviour

Question 3

what helps us understand cognitive neuroscience

Answer 3

biology

Question 4

what does cognitive neuroscience study

Answer 4

the study of how mental functions and processes are related to brain structure and function, it allows us to look inside of the brain with machines

Question 5

what is a MRI do

Answer 5

take picture of the brains structure

Question 6

what dies an fMRI do

Answer 6

watch the pattern of activity in the brain and track the moment-by-moment changes

Question 7

what is dualism

Answer 7

mind is mystical and spiritual, but the brain is a biological being. the mind and brain are separate substances, but they interact and influence one another

Question 8

what is epiphenomenalism

Answer 8

not caused indirectly, but it is a byproduct. the mind is simply a by-product of the brain processes and is irrelevant to understanding behaviour

Question 9

what is parallelism

Answer 9

have a relationship; changes in the brain have consequences for what you experience and vice versa. mind and brain are two separate aspects of the same reality; every event in the mind has a corresponding event in the brain, and vice versa

Question 10

what is phrenology

Answer 10

individual differences in mental abilities are reflected in unique patterns of cranial shapes

Question 11

what is the current view on the brain being the organ of the mind

Answer 11

they work together to serve functions, but they are more involved in certain things

Question 12

what is the different between the fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA)

Answer 12

the FFS remembers faces or things that people carry expertise, and the PPA remembers spaces or landscapes

Question 13

when is your brain at rest

Answer 13

during the default mode, the network

Question 14

what are neural recordings

Answer 14

the ability to measure activity in an individual neuron, they find out what groups of neurons work where

Question 15

what are the two parts of the nervous system

Answer 15

1. central nervous system: brain and spinal cord
2. peripheral nervous system: everything else

Question 16

what is the central nervous system

Answer 16

the central command systemw

Question 17

what is the peripheral nervous system

Answer 17

the body’s link to the outside world, it has two subcategories within it
1. the autonomic NS
2. the somatic NS

Question 18

what is the autonomic NS

Answer 18

you do not need to think about it: heart rate etc. it has two subcategories within it
1. sympathetic NS : fight or flight response
2. parasympathetic NS: rest and digest

Question 19

what is a single neuron in neural recordings

Answer 19

certain cells are likely specific to what they like and respond to. when a neuron becomes active, they see what they like.

Question 20

what is electrocorticography (ECoG)

Answer 20

electrical activity from large areas of the cortex can also be measured, it responds mostly to faces but cares about other things kind of.

Question 21

what are the benifits of neural recordings

Answer 21

1. direct measure of neural activity
2. shows how specific the area inside the brain are
3. gives insight into the functional specificity of individual neurons

Question 22

what are the limitations

Answer 22

1. typically performed in animals only
2. often requires animal sacrifice
3. limited insight into large-scale network properties of the brain
4. you can’t measure many things because they are so specific

Question 23

what plays a role in spatial communication and navigation

Answer 23

hippocampus

Question 24

what is reversible lesions

Answer 24

only temporarily deactivates the brain in that region, and it becomes better later

Question 25

what is neuropsychology

Answer 25

the study of psychological impairments following neural injury in humans

Question 26

what is Broca's aphasia

Answer 26

close to the motor area, they do not say much, and if they do, it's only a couple of words. they have difficulty producing speech, paucity of language

Question 27

what is wernicke's aphasia

Answer 27

temporal lobe gets damaged, there is no problem procuding speech but it is non sensical. They are fluent speech output, but little meaning

Question 27

what is prosopagnosia

Answer 27

face blindness, they have difficulty identifying familiar faces

Question 27

what happens to split brain patients

Answer 27

communication between each hemisphere of the brain is lost due to a severed corpus callosum. unique opportunity to assess how each hemisphere processes information of the other

Question 27

how does split brain syndrome work

Answer 27

the left hemisphere is verbal, and the right hemisphere is visuospatial. The info on the right is processed through the left hemisphere, and the info on the left is processed to the right hemisphere.

Question 27

limitations of lesion studies

Answer 27

1. when damage happens it is hard to know if they are pin pointing damage to wanted regions 2. sensory perception, the visual or auditory regions can be subsided by the other one if they get damaged

Question 28

what is facial electromyography (fEMG)

Answer 28

measures changes in facial muscle activity, which is important in studies of emotions.

Question 28

what is electrocardiography (ECG)

Answer 28

measures electrical activity of the heart and can link changes in cardiovascular functioning to behaviour

Question 28

what is psychophysiology

Answer 28

most often refers to the study of the relationship between bodily psychology and psychological functions, the scientific study of the interaction between the body and the mind

Question 29

how does fear conditioning work

Answer 29

fear response has to have been negatively elicited in the past to have a response, for example getting shocked every time a blue square comes on the screen

Question 30

what is electroencephalography (EEG)

Answer 30

it measures small electrical potentials from the scalp, and those electrodes measure voltage changes relative to reference electrodes. EEG tracks how things travel over time, and figures out where signals are coming from and what changes in activity after the event occurs.

Question 31

what is event related potential

Answer 31

represent systematic changes in neural activity linked to cognitive processing, what is happening in your brain that helps memorize

Question 32

what is the subsequent memory effect

Answer 32

part in the brain that happens during encoding that will predict why you remember it later

Question 33

what is functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI)

Answer 33

non-invasive imagining technique that can measure metabolic activity related to neural functioning, it has an excellent spatial resolution, which measures brain activity very precisely

Question 34

what can fMRI be used for

Answer 34

to communicate with non-responsive patients, as they use thoughts to answer questions

Question 35

what are the limitations of fMRI

Answer 35

reverse inference: the idea that every time you see something the same region applies. 1. it has been seen as a modern phrenology 2. very expensive