Cognitive Neuroscience PDF

Introduction 09 January 2024 15:58 Main Ideas Notes Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State (Owen et al., 2006) Challenges in assessing residual brain function: ○ Difficulties: Assessment is extremely difficult and relies on subjective interpretations of behavior. ○ Limitations: Standard methods...

Introduction 09 January 2024 15:58 Main Ideas Notes Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State (Owen et al., 2006) Challenges in assessing residual brain function: ○ Difficulties: Assessment is extremely difficult and relies on subjective interpretations of behavior. ○ Limitations: Standard methods may miss cognitive abilities in patients with limited motor function. Traditional approach for patients with motor function: ○ Focus: Rigorous behavioral assessment supported by imaging and electrophysiology. ○ Goal: Establish level of wakefulness and awareness. ○ Emerging challenge: non-responsive patients with intact cognition: ○ Problem: Damage to the peripheral motor system may prevent overt responses. ○ Implication: Cognitive abilities may remain undetected by standard methods. ○ Promising solution: functional neuroimaging: ○ Method: "Activation" studies to identify residual cognitive function and even consciousness. ○ Potential: Detect previously hidden cognitive abilities in patients assumed to be vegetative. 'Locked-in' people - conscious but paralysed state Research in this area give insights and developments for cognitive neuroscience Faces and the brain The brain has face-specific activity - investigating prosopagnosia patients can contribute to findings in this area local versus global processing of face features - recognising features when face is right-side up but not vice-versa Pareidolia - seeing order in randomness ○ What part of the brain is active when you see a face that is not really there Experimental design: ○ People saw displays with easy to detect faces/letters, hard to detect faces/letters, and random noise. ○ In random noise displays, activity in the right fusiform face area (FFA) increased when people reported seeing faces. ○ Processing of imagined faces = processing of actual faces. Evidence-based critical thinking - What is the evidence? - Do I trust the evidence? - Are the conclusions valid? - Are there alternative interpretations? What is cognitive neuroscience? A field of study that investigates the relationship between the mind and the brain. ○ studies the biological foundations of mental phenomena ○ aims to understand how cognitive functions, and their manifestations in behaviour and subjective experience, arise from the activity in the brain (Rugg, 1997) Cognitive Neuroscience = Cognitive Psychology + Neuroscience Cognitive Neuropsychology (more about work with patients) is an area within Cognitive Neuroscience Notes Key features: ○ Multidisciplinary ○ Focus on humans (esp. in vivo) ○ System-level explanations ○ Multiple approaches to look at the brain Notes Philosophy of mind Assumptions are made when studying the mind and the brains No theoretical framework can yet fully explain how the mind arises from the brain Viewpoints ○ Dualism: the mind and the brain are separate entities. ○ Monism: the mind and the brain are one and the same Brief History 10,000 years ago ○ Skulls with circumscribed holes found. ○ Evidence of trepanning (purposely making incisions). ○ Indicates that there was an interest in the head Ancient Greeks ○ Started to think about the concept of the “mind” (psyche) Middle ages ○ Questions focused on where the mind resides Cognitive neuroscience: physicalism. ○ Reductive: mental states can be reduced to physical states. ○ Non-reductive: mental and physical states are related but not the same ○ Cognitive neuroscience tends to assume a one-to-one-mapping between brain patterns and cognitive functions – ▪ ○ To assess mind-brain links, brain patterns are compared across experimental conditions (tasks, events, and/or groups). After Middle ages ○ Mind is related to brain but how? Ventricles? Tissue? 1800s ○ Advances in technology, physics and medicine led to more experimentation. ○ Better understanding of the brain. ○ How does brain tissue enable cognitive function? Forward inferences One approach: assess similarities and differences of brain patterns across conditions (e.g., two memory tasks) Possible outcomes: ○ ○ 1900s ○ Further technical advances meant better measurement of the (living) brain. ○ Advances in cognitive psychology also improved understanding of the mind. Late 1970s ○ Term - "Cognitive Neuroscience" was invented Currently ○ Still immense interest in mind-brain questions. ○ fMRI criticised; importance of other techniques (EEG, eye tracking, optical imaging) recognised. ○ Focus is changing (from localisation to brain mechanisms, more consideration of time courses, more complex data analyses). Reverse inferences Alternative: infer the engagement of particular cognitive functions from brain patterns Only valid in one-to-one mapping Is one-to-one mapping valid? Under reductive physicalism, this is not possible: Aims of cognitive neuroscience the identity and organisation of cognitive functions. how these are instantiated in the brain. how these develop across life and change with disease. patient classifications and treatment, real-world applications ○ But this is possible: ○ One-to-one mapping not always a reasonable assumption – we don’t know when it is and isn’t Summary PSYC0031 Cognitive Neuroscience Page 1 More philoso Difficul ○ Ps ○ B What is Philosop Notes ophical issues t to define concepts: sychology: what is a cognitive “function”? rain: what is a brain “pattern”? What constitutes the “same” versus “different” patterns? the best level of explanation? phical issues usually ignored in cognitive neuroscience papers. PSYC0031 Cognitive Neuroscience Page 2 Notes Notes PSYC0031 Cognitive Neuroscience Page 3 Notes Notes PSYC0031 Cognitive Neuroscience Page 4 PSYC0031 Cognitive Neuroscience Page 5