PSYCH 65 NOTES (CHAPTER 2)

KEY TERMS
 Cognitive Neuroscience – the study of the psychological basis of cognition.
 Levels of analysis – idea that a subject can be looked at from different angles, and that each
angle adds something new to our understanding.
 Neuron doctrine - the idea that individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system, and that
these cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by nerve net theory.
 Synapse – small gap between the end of a neuron’s axon and the dendrites or cell body of
another neuron.
 Neural circuits – groups of interconnected neurons.
 Receptors – neurons that are specialized to pick up information from the environment (e.g. eye,
ear, and skin).
 Microelectrodes (3) – small shafts of hollow glass filled with a conductive salt solution that can
pick up electrical signals at the electrode tip and conduct these signals back to a recording
device.
 Resting potential – when there are no signals in the neuron. -70 millivolts (mV) difference in
potential between to electrodes.
 Action potential (neuron firing) – electrical impulses that sends signals around your body. A
temporary shift (from negative to positive) in the neuron’s membrane potential caused by ions
suddenly flowing in and out of the neuron. (+40 mV)
 Neurotransmitter – the body’s chemical messengers. They are the molecules used by the
nervous system to transmit messages between neurons, or from neurons to muscles.
Communication between two neurons happens in the synaptic cleft. (3)

 Principle of Neural Representation (4) – everything a person experiences is based on

representations in the person’s nervous system.
 Feature Detector - respond to specific stimulus features (e.g orientation, movement & length)
 Experience-Dependent Plasticity - structure of the brain is changed by experience (4)
 Visual Cortex -  where images received from your retina begin to get processed
 Temporal lobe - sit behind the ears and are the second largest lobe. They are most commonly
associated with processing auditory information and with the encoding of memory.
 Hierarchal Processing - progression from lower to higher areas of the brain.
PSYCH 65 NOTES (CHAPTER 2)
 Sensory Code - how neurons represent various characteristics of the environment.
 Specificity coding - The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a
specialized neuron that responds only to that object.
 Population coding - the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a
large number of neurons.
 Sparse coding - when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a
small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent.

PEOPLE TO REMEMBER
1. Camillo Golgi (Italian anatomist) – developed a staining method using silver nitrate to dye
neurons (1873).
2. Ramon y Cajal (Spanish physiologist) – developed what became known as neuron doctrine.

3. Edgar Adrian - able to record electrical signals (action potentials) from single sensory neurons
using microelectrodes. Also found that each action potential travels all the way down the axon
without changing its height or shape.
 The Basis of Sensation (1928) – if nerve impulses “are crowded closely together the sensation is
intense, if they are separated by long intervals the sensation is correspondingly feeble”.
4. David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel - started a series of experiments in which they presented
visual stimuli to cats. They found that each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to
a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina.
5. Charles Gross - Presented monkeys with lines, squares, and circles (some were light, some
were dark). Discovery that neurons in the temporal lobe (monkey) respond to complex stimuli.
PSYCH 65 NOTES (CHAPTER 2)

Organization:
Neuropsychology and
Recording from
Neurons
Organization:
Neuropsychology and
Recording from
Neurons
Organization: Neuropsychology and Recording from Neurons

KEY TERMS
 Localization of function — specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain
 Cerebral cortex — layer of tissue (3mm thick) that covers the brain (carry out most cognitive
function).
 Neuropsychology — study of behaviour of people with brain damage.

LOCALIZATION DEMONSTRATED BY NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

 Brain damaged caused by stroke — disruption of blood supply to brain (usually caused by blood
clot)
 Paul Broca: Left frontal lobe — Broca’s area — specialized for speech
 Patient “Tan”: can only say the word “Tan”
 Producing language
 Carl Wernicke: temporal lobe — Wernicke’s area — speech was fluent and
grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent
 Comprehending language
 Effect of Brain Injuries:
PSYCH 65 NOTES (CHAPTER 2)
 E.g Japanese soldiers during Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) & Allied soldiers in
WWI
 Damaged to occipital lobe — visual cortex is located — resulted in blindness
 Upper temporal lobe – auditory cortex (receives signals from the ears) — hearing
 Parietal lobe — somatosensory cortex (signals from skin) — perceptions of touch, pressure &
pain
 Frontal lobe — signals from all senses — coordination of senses & (thinking + problem solving)
 Prosopagnosia — inability to recognize face (⾯面部認知障外) — damage to temporal lobe
on lower right side — cannot recognize whose face it is
 Double dissociation — occurs if damage to one area of brain causes function A to be absent
while function B is present, damage to another area causes function B to be absent while
function A is present
 E.g Face recognition & object recognition
 Find a patient who can’t recognize face (Function A) but can recognize objects
(Function B) + patient who can recognize face but can’t recognize objects
 Shows that functions A & B are served by different mechanisms (operates
independently of each other)

ORGANIZATION: BRAIN IMAGING

 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) — create images of structures within the brain
 Detecting tumours & other brain abnormalities
 Excellent for revealing brain structures, but doesn’t indicate neural activity
 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) — determine how various types of cognition
activate different areas of the brain
 METHOD: BRAIN IMAGING
 Blood flows increases in areas of brain activated by cognitive task
 Measure: hemoglobin (carries oxygen) contains a ferrous (iron) molecule ~
has magnetic properties
 fMRI indicates presence of brain activity because hemoglobins molecules in
areas of high brain activity lose some oxygen they are transporting → more
magnetic → molecules respond to magnetic field
 Detects changes in magnetic response of hemoglobin
 Red & yellow → increases in brain activity; Blue & Green → decreases in
brain activity
 Activity is recorded in voxels — small cube-shaped areas of brain about 2 or 3 mm on a side —
small units of analysis created by fMRI scanner (like pixels).
 BRAIN IMAGING EVIDENCE FOR LOCALISATION OF FUNCTION
 Looking at pictures:
 Fusiform face area (FFA) — specific area of brain activated by face (in the
fusiform gyrus on the underside of temporal lobe)
 Parahippocampal place area (PPA) — specific area of brain activated by
pictures representing indoor and outdoor scenes (spatial layout)
 Extrastriate body area (EBA) — specific area of brain activated by pictures of
bodies & parts of bodies
 Looking at movies:
 Alex Huth: fMRT experiment having subjects view film clips for 2 hours — to
analyse how voxels in brains responded to different objects & actions in films
 DISTRIBUTED REPRESENTATION ACROSS THE BRAIN
 Distributed representation — specific cognitive functions activate many areas of brain
PSYCH 65 NOTES (CHAPTER 2)
 E.g Face recognition: activate FFA but also other areas of brain
 E.g Perceiving a rolling ball: neutral stimulus causes a wide distribution of activity in
brain (each ball’s qualities, color/movement/shape/location, processed in different
areas of brain)

ALL TOGETHER NOW: NEURAL NETWORKS

 Neural networks — groups of neurons or structures that are connected together
 e.g Pain matrix: all structures in this network, determine the nature of overall
experience of pain
 Trace pathways of nerve fibres that create communication between different structures
 Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) — detection of how water diffuses along length of nerve
fibres

!!KEY NOTE: Levels of analysis (studying topic at different levels) // Neural representation
(experience determined by representations in nervous system)!!