Cognitive Neuroscience

Voluntary Attention

Controlled, intentional focus on a stimulus (top-down).

Involuntary Attention

Automatic, stimulus-driven focus (bottom-up).

Visual Neglect

A neurological condition where individuals fail to attend to stimuli on one side of space, often due to brain damage.

Posner Cueing Paradigm

A method to measure how attention shifts due to cues.

Inhibition of Return (IOR)

Slower responses to previously cued locations at longer intervals.

N1 and P1 Components

Larger amplitude for attended targets, indicating early sensory selection in attention processing.

Negative Priming (NP)

Slower response to a previously ignored stimulus when it becomes relevant.

Episodic Memory

A type of long-term memory involving personal experiences and events.

Semantic Memory

A type of long-term memory related to facts and general knowledge.

Explicit Memory

Conscious recall of information, such as facts.

Implicit Memory

Unconscious memory, such as skills and tasks.

Weather Prediction Task

A probabilistic learning task demonstrating the role of the basal ganglia in implicit memory.

Mismatch Negativity (MMN)

Brain response to deviations in auditory stimuli, used in speech perception studies.

Phonological Pathway

The process of decoding written text into sounds.

Orthographic Pathway

Direct recognition of word forms without phonological decoding.

Developmental Dyslexia

A reading disorder characterized by difficulties with phonological awareness.

Cognitive Control

The capacity to coordinate mental processes to achieve a specific objective.

Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST)

A test of cognitive flexibility and problem-solving that requires adaptation to changing rules.

Frontal Lobe Pathology

Damage to frontal lobes resulting in cognitive, emotional, and social behavior impairments.

Role of Prefrontal Cortex

Central to cognitive control, involving forming goals, developing plans, and monitoring progress.

N-back Task

A cognitive test measuring working memory capacity by identifying if a stimulus matches one presented 'n' steps earlier.