Biological factors in cognitive processes

Biological perspective

Views behavior as determined by biological factors such as brain structure, genetics, or brain chemistry 

Cognitive perspective

the way we process and interpret information about the world

Sociocultural perspective

Focuses on how individual behavior is influenced by social and cultural group that one belongs to

Localization of function and cognitive processes

Theory that specific parts of the brain are responsible for specific behaviors or cognitive processes

Patient H.M.

Henry Molaison suffered from sever epileptic seizures, he underwent surgery to control the seizures, where large portions of the hippocampus and amygdala were removed from his brain, surgery helped with the seizures but H.M. developed both anterograde (ability to form new memories) and retrograde amnesia/ H.M. received memories from his childhood but lost the ability to recall what happened in the 3 years leading up to his surgery/ shows that different kinds of memories can be localized in different areas of the brain.

Clive wearing

Anterograde amnesia: inability to make new memories and no memory of past events/ Retrograde amnesia: cannot remember what happened before an incident/ Semantic memory: factual knowledge/ Procedural memory: remembering to perform everyday actions (muscle memory)/ episodic memory: memory of specific experiences

Facial recognition

Ability to remember and recognize faces is one of the cognitive skills that appears to be highly localized, this is fusiform face area/ Sergent found different brain activation patterns in response to processing a face vs object/ results linked with her studies of brain-damaged patients who showed an impairment in processing faces but no difficulty in remembering objects (prosopagnosia)

Brain structures

the brain stem, cerebellum, cerebrum, limbic system

Lobes of the brain

Frontal lobe: associated with executive functions/ occipital lobe: associated with visual processing/ parietal lobe: associated with perception of stimuli/ temporal lobe: associated with auditory processing and memory

Brain scanning technology 

MRI and fMRI, MRI provide images of the brain’s sturcutre/ fMRI focus on the function of the brain/ fMRI indicates which brain areas are active when engaged in a behavior or cognitive process, measures blood flow in the active brain

Sharot et al

Participants in the Downtown Manhattan group exhibited selective activation of the amygdala as they recalled events from 9/11, but not while they recalled control events/ 83% of ppts in this group showed higher activation in the left amygdala during 9/11 trials than summer trials/ Same difference was present in the Midtown group, less pronounced

Flashbulb memories

Participation of the left amygdala/ special type of memory that is vivd and long-lasting, almost photographic, believed to be triggered by shocking and unexpected events

Positron Emission Tomopgraphy

PET scanning, used to observe metabolic processes in the brain by injecting a radioactive tracer into the bloodstream