The History of Cognitive Neuroscience

Question 1

Define Neuroscience

Answer 1

The scientific study of the brain and nervous system

Question 2

Cognition

Answer 2

Mental processes involved in knowing and thinking

Question 3

What was neuroscience called prior to the 1950s?

Answer 3

Biology, neurobiology, pharmacology, Neuro pharmacology, physiology, psychophysiology

Question 4

What did Behaviorists believe?

Answer 4

If you can’t observe it, you shouldn’t study it.
Psychology should study the relationship between the environment and behavior.

Question 5

What did Behaviorists call the mind?

Answer 5

A black box

Question 6

James Watson

Answer 6

all behavior can be understood as reactions (responses) to the events in the environment (stimuli)

Stimulus-Reponse (S-R) Psychology

Question 7

B.F. Skinner

Answer 7

Focused on consequences of responses; behaviors that are rewarded/punished will increase/decrease in frequency

Question 8

What was the Cognitive Revolution?

Answer 8

A time period in the 1950s, a reaction to behaviorism, that posited that it is not possible to explain complex human behavior with S-R Psychology OR there is a mind, and it can be studied

Question 9

Who were the major players of the cognitive revolution?

Answer 9

Noam Chomsky
Jean Piaget
George Miller
Lurie Neisser
Michael Gazzaniga

Question 10

Noam Chomsky

Answer 10

Language acquisition cannot occur with feedback alone
There are innate rules for language
Children are rewarded for saying things correctly, but this doesn’t explain how children rapidly learn language

Question 11

Jean Piaget

Answer 11

The development of reasoning ability suggests a predictable (innate) sequence of mental constructs during childhood.
Even though children have different experiences/environments, they all seem to have the same sort of reasoning abilities in different stages of their development

Question 12

George Miller

Answer 12

Established the Cognitive Neuroscience
One of the people to coin the term “Cognitive Neuroscience” with Michael Gazzaniga

Question 13

Ulric Neisser

Answer 13

Published Cognitive Psychology (1967)

Question 14

What is the “computer metaphor”?

Answer 14

Computers have input (stimuli) and output (responses), but also complex software and hardware that manipulate stimuli/information

The mind = software

Question 15

What were Gazzaniga and Millers contributions to Cognitive Psychology

Answer 15

They coined the term “cognitive psychology”

Raised funds to seed research and training
Developed the Cognitive Neuroscience Summer School to train emerging scholars in Cognition and Neuroscience.

First summer school was in 1989.

They focused on combining these two research areas.

Question 16

What did Ancient Egyptians believe about the mind

Answer 16

The Heart is the seat of mental processes (only organ embalmed)

Had a written term for “brain” and described its anatomy in papyrus texts

Question 17

Aristotle believed the ______ is the seat of mental processes

Answer 17

Heart

Question 18

Hippocrates and Plato believed that the ______ is the seat of the mind

Answer 18

Brain

Question 19

Who was Herophilus of Chalcedon?

Answer 19

A talented anatomist in Alexandria, Egypt

Clearly associated brain with behavior and performed complicated dissections of humans and animals

Distinguished sensory vs. motor nerves

Question 20

Who was Aelius Galenus?

Answer 20

Galen.

A Greek physician in Rome

Dissected animals, including monkeys

Believed the cerebellum controlled muscles, given its complexity and density

Question 21

Who was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi?

Answer 21

Razi

A physician-scientist in Iran and Iraq

Early proponent of experimental method

Interest in mental health and experimental studies of meningitis

Question 22

Who was Hassan Ibn al-Haytham?

Answer 22

Alhazen

Arabic scientist from Basra working in Cairo

Published widely on optics

Argued that vision occurs in the brain

Question 23

What was Da Vinci contribution to cognitive neuroscience and the brain?

Answer 23

He thought that perception and reasoning were due to the brain, but thought it was due to the “essence” (the substances in the chambers/ventricles of the brain) that gave rise to these behaviors

Did not think it was brain tissue itself

Question 24

Thomas Willis

Answer 24

One of the most influential early scholars.

English Physician, Anatomist, Neurologist

Challenged the idea that ventricle were central to sensation and thought

Noted relationships between brain damage and specific behavioral deficits

Coined the term “neurology”

Published “Cerebri Anatome” (1664) with drawings by Christopher Wren (designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London)

Question 25

What were the good parts of Phenology Location of Function?

Answer 25

It brought direct attention to the brain as an enabler of the mind

Introduced idea that different brain regions are localized to discrete brain regions

Question 26

What were the bad parts of Phrenology Location of Function?

Answer 26

They believed the size of an organ is a measure of its power

As the skull takes its shape from the brain, the surface of the skull can be read as an accurate index of psychological aptitudes and tendencies

Question 27

Who was major in phrenology?

Answer 27

Franz Joseph Gaul
Ideas were debunked

Question 28

Holism

Answer 28

The idea that the brain works in concert

Question 29

Who was Pierre Flourens?

Answer 29

He challenged Gaul’s localizationist view for cognitive functions like memory

Believed things like memory were distributed in the brain

BUT also showed evidence that different brain regions controlled different functions such as cerebellum for balance and cortex for perception

Question 30

Karl Lashley

Answer 30

He circumscribed lesions in rats did not produce deficits in learning, but they did affect acquisition vs. retention of memories

Argued that the whole brain works together to produce behaviors

Didn’t see deficits depending on the part of the brain he damaged, but rather how much of the brain he took out

Question 31

Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 31

Presented by Paul Broca

Speech loss after a lesion in left frontal cortex

Showed the brain of a patient named “Tan”

Called that because he could only say “Tan”

Question 32

Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 32

Found by Carl Wernicke

Comprehension loss after lesion in left temporal cortex

Question 33

Wilder Penfield

Answer 33

A Canadian Neurosurgeon

1950s - stimulated brain tissue to find the source of epileptic seizures

Discovered that stimulating different parts of the brain elicited different response (movement, sensations, memories, etc.)

Developed a map of the motor cortex “motor homunculus”

Question 34

Prior to the 1990s, much of cognitive neuroscience research relied on ____________

Answer 34

Rare patients with specific brain lesions

Question 35

What did pharmaceutical companies reassure the medical community of in the late 1990s?

Answer 35

That patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers. They ended up being prescribed with increasing frequency

Question 36

What did the Department of Health declare in 2017 as a result of an increase in opioid medication addiction and deaths?

Answer 36

Opioid Addiction is a public health emergency