Cognition and Human Thought

• Studying abstract mental processes can be complex due to the fact they cannot be directly observed.
• Mental processes are inferred from behavior and referred to as psychological constructs.
• Psychological constructs: Ideas that result from a set of impressions and the mind treats them as real despite intangibility. Constructs are not localized or unitary in the brain.
• Memory is not treated as unitary or localized in the brain - brain circuits distribute the different forms of memory.
• Psychologists define cognition as how we come to know about the world.
• Behavioral neuroscientists view cognition as ability to pay attention to stimuli, identify them, and plan meaningful responses, which include external stimuli via sensory receptors and internal stimuli from the autonomic nervous system.

Characteristics of Human Thought

• Human cognition includes both verbal and nonverbal elements, a unique trait compared to animal thought.
• Language gives humans an edge in thinking.
• Language enables the brain to categorize information, group similar items, actions, and events and organize time, especially future time.
• Syntax (sets of rules for combining words) is a key part of language to creates meaningful utterances.
• Modern language, guided by explicit principles, was a recent phenomenon, about 100,000 years ago.
• Neanderthals may have also had language, suggesting a common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals possessed this capacity approximately 500,000 years ago.
• The origin of human language correlates with a brain size increase.
• Nonhuman animals utilize vocalizations but do not generally rearrange them to vary meaning.
• Lack of syntax makes chimpanzee language literal and inflexible.
• Human language has enormous flexibility for discussing abstract topics.
• Language and syntax development is innate, but requires words otherwise grammar cannot develop.
• Syntax influences the nature of our thinking.
• Human brains organize events, movements, and thoughts, combining them into patterns such as music, dance, games and governments.

Linking Events

• Propensity to string things together may have evolved through natural selection.
• Calvin proposed motor sequences like throwing were most important to ancient humans.
• Ballistic movements are planned in detail with no corrections through feedback.
• Human predisposition to sequence movements encouraged language development b/c spoken language is a sequence of movements involving the throat, tongue, and mouth muscles.
• The frontal lobe is associated with creating novel sequences and is critical for organizing behavior and thinking.

Neural Units of Thought

• Intelligence of animals suggests a basis for understanding the neural basis of thought.
• Alex, an African grey parrot, demonstrated the ability to think and use language.
• Alex could apply labels to colors, shapes, count and materials
• Grey parrots have demonstrated an unexpected level of cognitive ability.
• Birds do not possess a neocortex like humans, they evolved specific brain nuclei.
• Thinking must be an activity of complex neural circuits, not of a particular brain region.
• Parrots and corvids have higher proportions of brain neurons in the telencephalon compared to other animals, indicating a basis for avian intelligence.
• Donald Hebb proposed that cell assemblies (networks of neurons) represent objects or ideas, and interplay among networks results in complex mental activity such as cognition.
• Connections are organized into systems and subsystems
• Neurons in visual area V5 respond to motion in a preferred direction.
• Individual neurons influence the perception of motion.
• Cell assemblies: An ensemble of neurons represents a complex concept and suggests a way of converging individual neuron inputs to arrive at a consensus.
• Cell assemblies provide the basis for cognition.
• Neurons in the brain combine evidence to generate knowledge, fundamental to cognitive processes and thought.
• Combination of neurons into networks produces complex mental representations and ideas.