Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - Week 1

The study of how brain damage affects mental processes and abilities.

Examines the link between brain damage and psychiatric disorders.

The study of how the brain performs cognitive functions, often employing advanced imaging techniques.

The ability to understand and use language.

The ability to read.

The ability to name objects.

A breakdown in a specific cognitive function.

FRUs (Feature Representation Units) are activated when a specific feature is detected in the environment.

When an FRU is activated, it inhibits the activation of other FRUs within the same pool.

Activation can spread along connections between FRUs, starting from the initial activated FRU and activating others.

FRUs, along with PENS (Perceptual Encoding Networks), contribute to the representation of semantic information in the brain.

PENS are networks of neurons that are responsible for encoding and representing perceptual information, such as features, objects, and scenes.

PENS can be partially activated through shared semantics, meaning that different PENS can be activated by similar inputs or concepts.

Activity can spread from one PENS to another, facilitating semantic priming. This means that exposure to one concept can make related concepts more accessible.

Face recognition is a very complex cognitive ability that requires the brain to efficiently process and analyze facial features.

While basic facial features are important for recognizing a face, they are not sufficient for identifying individuals. The brain uses higher-order relations (like the subtle spatial arrangement of features) for more accurate recognition.

Parts of the brain responsible for recognizing specific shapes and features, like hands or faces.

A condition where a person has difficulty recognizing common objects, despite having normal vision.

A specific type of agnosia where a person has difficulty recognizing faces.

The area of the brain located at the back and underside of the brain, crucial for visual object recognition.

Damage to the occipital inferior temporal cortex is commonly associated with what condition?

Agnosia affects object recognition, what other abilities might be preserved despite this difficulty?

What does it mean when a person's object recognition impairments can't be attributed to vision, hearing, or other basic sensory issues?

What is the central issue in agnosia?

Where are T-junctions cells located in the brain hierarchy?

What does it mean when objects recognized by T-junctions cells are 'code specific shapes'?

A phenomenon where stimulating one sense, like hearing a sound, automatically triggers an experience in another sense, like seeing a color.

A type of synaesthesia where numbers are automatically perceived in specific spatial locations.

A study showing that areas of the brain responsible for color perception, like the left V4, are activated in synaesthetes when they hear or think about specific sounds.

A type of Stroop test using synaesthesia, where participants have to name the color of a word, which is simultaneously associated with a different color due to their synaesthesia.

An fMRI research finding where watching someone being touched activates the same area of the brain in the observer, as if they are being touched themselves.

The process of combining information from different senses to create a unified perception of the world.

Multi-sensory perception allows us to create a consistent and meaningful understanding of our surroundings.

The ability to respond and interact effectively with the world based on multi-sensory information.

A perceptual illusion where the visual information presented to the eyes influences the auditory information perceived by the ears.

Synaesthesia results in genuine perceptual experiences, not simply imagined or remembered associations.

Synaesthesia is triggered by external stimuli or internal thoughts, not spontaneous hallucinations.

Synaesthesia is an automatic and involuntary phenomenon that cannot be suppressed.

The McGurk Illusion demonstrates the interplay between auditory and visual information processing in the brain.

Synaesthesia provides insights into the complex connections and interactions between different sensory pathways in the brain.