psych 258- midterm #1 (textbook)

brain

sophisticated computing device

cogntiion

sum of mental activities acquired by information form the environment, and uses this data to make a behvaioural decsiion

different areas of cognition

perception, attention, short-term memory and long term memory, language, problem solving, and decision making

basic research

scientific research to try to understand the world, no specific end use of this knowledge

• goal is to understand, not neccesarily tryring to apply it

applied research

research conducted with goal of developing a useful tool, product, or solution to a problem

• goal is to find a solution

human factors

field of psychology concerned wit with applying scientific findings to the design of systems that people interact with

• designing something with human experiences in mind to help with human experience

aticial intelligence (AI)

branch of cumpeter science and enginerring concerned with building machines can perform human-like intelligent behvaiours

• build machines that think and behave like a human

large language models (LLMs)

advanced machine learning algorithim that processes and generate human-like text by understnding patterns in the data theyve been trained on

• based on neural networks modelded in the brain

  • can anwer questions, write essays, summarize text,etc.

artificial general intelligence

type of AI that posesses the capacity to understand,learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a level comparable to humans

neuroscience

field of science concerned with the study of the brain and related physiological systems

cogntiive psychology

field of psychology concerned with studying intelligence through observatio of behaviours

• behavioural experiments

• naturalistic observation

computational modeling

most research in AI focused on imitating human cognition, but as newer research tries to focus on human cognition itself

mind-body problem

question of how mental events, such as thoughts, beliefs, and sensations are related to physical mechanisms taking place in the body

• how does the same things in the body allow us to move also produces cognitive abilities such as thinking

responses to the mind-body problem

dualism and monism

dualism

mind and body consist of fundamentally differnet kinds of substances or properites

• mind and body exist seperately

monism

view that there is only one kind of basic substance in the world, whether exclusively physical or exclusively mental

• mind and body are the same

physicalism/materialism

type of monism that beieves that all of reality is physical or material in nature

• mental states form processes in the physical bran

• only the body exists

idealism

type of monism that believes all of reality is mental in nature- the brain (and physical reality) is a mental construct

• everything is made up the mind

• only the mind exists

neutral monism

view that metnal and physical are identical and all of reality is made up of the same, one of a kind thing

• mind and body are the same thing

plato

argued that miind was based ona n immortal soul, more ‘real’ than the physical world

descartes

made the disticntion between mind and body → they fromed 2 different types of substnaces that could interact with one another

• found the pineal gland

what do scientists now believe abt the mind and body problem

beliebe that the products of the mind can be understood by the workings of the physical brain

• they state tat observable behaviour can be exlained based on physcial process and inner htought smight not be exlained by physical processes

to uderstand intelligent behvaiour that the brain produces msut study:

the brain, body, society and the world

• brain behaves within multiple contexts

structuralism (wundt and titchner)

school of psychology, approach relied on introspection n ones own conscious mental states to understand the mind

• tries to break down complex processes into simpler elements, through introspection

introspection

technique used by structuralist to study the mind by training people to examine their own conscious experiences

• goal to disocver basic principles of how these elements combined to form contents of the working mind

• not scientifically valid

example of how majority of brain activity takes place outside of awareness..

cortical blindness and blindsight

cortical blindness

damage to visual cortex, report no visual experience, despite having working eyers

• able to see, but cannot process/interpret what theyre seeing (consious perception)

blindsight

pehnomenon where someone reports blindness due to cortical damage still showsbehvaiour consisting wiht some perception

behaviourism (watson)

school of psychology that emphasized using observable stimuli and behaviors as the basis of scientific experimentation

• look at stimulus and response rather than internal mental states

• brain as the ‘black box’ → the interveinign process

classical conditioning

learning protocool where involuntary behaviour is paired with a stimulus, eventually leading to that behaviour being elcited by the stimuus alone

• ex. pavlov and the conditioned salivation

operant conditioning (skinner)

type of conditioing that reinforces certain ebahviours throigh as sytem of rewards and punishments

• reinfrocement learning

reinforcement learnng

form of behvaioural conditioning based on punsihment and reinfrocement feedback

skinner box

chamber used to contain and automatically provide behvaioural feedback to an animal duirng operant conditioning experiment

what did skinner believe behvaiour was caused by

a combination of classical and oeprant conditoning

who were the main peopel that criticized behaviourism

chomsky and tolman

chomsky

argued that behaviourism couldnt explain all actions since people enagge in novel behaviours that they havent learned yet

tolman

used rats in a maze to show latent learning, and showed that instead of ocmmiting the smae actions urely by memory they were able to make cognitive maps of the maze to get to the reward efficiently

• stated that behaviourism couldnt account for flexible cognition

latent learning

learning in absence of reward or punishment

why was th ebehvaiourist appraoch to cognitio ultimatley rejected

because it couldnt accout for the flexible cognition to generate novel intlligent behvaiours that hadnt been observed or performed

fucntions

mappings form inputs to outputs

• take an input and produces its respective output

algorithim

set of operation that produces the input/output mapping of a fucntion

• the recipe to produce the desired results

alan turing

proposed that computing devices were able to compute any function; machines recieved set of instructions for what fucntions to compute rather than a single function

transistor

device used in computers to control wehter or not a current flowed through paarts of the system

• controlled whether or not the current flowed through (acted like neurons) → looked like true intelligence

cognitive revolution

movement in 1950s that proposed the mind could be understood as a computational system

• sensory info was the input and the resulting behaviour/decision would be the output

  • information processing

information processing

what happens between the input and output when the brain is determining a behavioural output

• goal: determine underlying algorithim the brain uses to compute its input/output fucntions

cognitivism

approach in psychology that uses beaviour as a method for developing and testig theories of underlying processing in the mind

donders

interested in how indiidual mental responses might consitt of coponent processes

• test using reaction times in responding to light (simple detection, discirmination, or choice condiiton) —> the more processes involved in the task, the longer the RT

stroop effect/ interference

psychological phenomenon in which reporting the ink color of hte words is slowed down when the words spell out the name of a differnet color

human factors

field of applied psychology concerned with interactin between human perception and the design of systems

indepednednt variables (IV)

conditions that are manipulated by the experimenter in order to determine their effects on the depednent variable

dependendt variables (DV)

properties being measured in an experiemtn; often behavioural responses

• voluntary repsonses

individual differences

variation in performance across diffeent individuals in cognitive tasks

cognitive neuroscience

scientific field that merges brain imaging with behavioral experimentation

• includes non-invasive techniques to measure brain

behavioural neuroscience

scientific field that assesses behavior and neurological factors in animals as models of human function

• allows researchers to measure activity of indiiudal neurons during behvaiour and alter brains of animals to study effects on behvaiour

  • ex. permannelty damging neural tissue, temporarily deactivating partsof brain, breeding genetic mutants, etc.

optogenetics

technique used to control activity of the brain cells based onn light sensitive proteins into cells and activating them with light

computational neuroscience

scientific field that uses computer models of the brain to model real brain fucntinos

• allows researchers to experiementally manipulate properites of simulated brain in a systematic way

nervous system

portion of the body consiting of neurons, nerves, and glial ells whose funtin is to allow different portions of the body to communicate with one another

neurons

speciailized cells that can recieve and transmit information, connected through nerves

nerves

connective tissues that allow neurons to communicatew ith one another and othe rparts of the body

glial cells

cells within the NS that provide support for neurons and overall NS fucntions

CNS

portion of the NS consisting of the brain and spinal cord

• cognition priariy takes place here

PNS

portion of th eNs consisitng of neurons, nerves, and glial cells outside of NS

• provides input form external senses and passes along to CNS for processing

wht is involved in the involuntry ystems

the autonomic NS, that is also split into sympathetic and parasympathetic

autonomic nervous system

part of the PNS that onnects to most organs in the body and regulates certainun consious bodily funcitons

• keeps body regulated by cotnrolling involuntaty bodily fincitons such as heart rate

• split into sympathertic and parasympathetic

sympathetic NS

subdivision of ANS that unconsiously regulates certain fucntions of body to prepare for imediate action

• reduces certain fucntions

  • fight or flight response

fight or flight response

prepares body with increased strengths and stamina in response to perceived threat

parasympathetic NS

subdivision of ANS that regulates certain bodily fnctions under conditions whrn immediate action is not needed

• relaxes funcitons needed for immiediaate physical action and increases those useful fro long-term survival

  • rest and digest response

the ANS is regulated by…

brainstem and hypothalmus

brainstem

regualtes involuntary functions like heart rate and breathing

hypothalamus

highly complex cluster of neurons that regulate mulitple involuntary behavioural function

• ex. temperature, hunger, thirst, etc.

reflex action

simplest form of autonomic behavioural resposnes in which cinal cord genertes bhavioural signal without the brain

• useful for simple input and output relationship

voluntary systems

mutliple possible variations possible depending on th ee environment, that includes many different parts

• cerebrum, cerebral cortex, hippocmapsu, etc.

cerebrum

larget portion of the human brain that sits on top of the brain and consists of the cortex and related structures

• deovted to controllung nad regulation voluntary behaviour

  • assumed to be the site of cognition

cerebral cortex

folded, layered structure that is the largest single structure and most supericial portion of the brian

• closest to the skull

  • made up grey and white matter

grey matter

makes up part of the cerebrl cortex, and i smade u of neuronal cell bodies

white matter

makes up part of the cerbral cortex, and consisits of nerve tracts that connect neurons to each other

hippocampus

complex struture involved in memory frmation and strucutral extension of the temporal lobe of the cortex and involved in formation of long-term memories

encephalization quotient (EQ)

measure of actual brain size relative to the size that would be predicted based on body size alone

• strongly correlated with intelligence

who is informtion processed in the average human body regarding sensory input and the brain

processed contralaterally

contralateral

spatial relationship between brain and body observed in vertebrates in whih one side of th ebody controls or receives input from the opposite side of the body

gyri

hill-like projections of the folds of the cerabral cortex- the bumps

sulci

valley-like indentations of the folfd of the cerbral cortex— the indents

why does the brain have those bumps

since the cortex is made up of folds, catgeorized as the gyri and sulci which allow more brain tissue to fit into the small volume

lobes

4 anatomical divisions of the cortex that exist on each hemisphere, made up of the occipital, tmeporal, frontal, and parietal

• made up of large folds of cortical sheets that are sepeared by deep sulci aka fissures

hemispheres

the left and right dicision of the cerebrum that make up the cortex, which are connexted through corpus callosum (cluster of fibres)

what is the left hemisphere the dominant lcoation of..

language

what is the right hemisphere the dominant location of…

spatial processingfu

fucnitonal localization

cocnpt that certain cogntiive fucntions reside inspecific reginos of the cerebral cortex

neuropsychology

study of brain function and impairment due to brain pathology

• the idea that damaging specific areas of the brain cause specific behavioural deficits

• limited approach , relies on special individual cases

what type of impairments was used as evidence for the theory of fucntional localization…

aphasia (expressive and receptive), and spit brain brain patients

aphasia

loss of language comprehencion or expression due to brain damge

broca’s/expressive aphasia

form of aphasia typialy due to damage to inferior frontal gyrus that leads to slow and labored speech production

• slow and deliberate speech that consisits of single words at a time

• problem with identifying and stringing together the ruight words into fluid speech (not a motor problem)

wernickes/receptive aphasia

form of aphasia due to damage to superior temporla gyrus that leads to fluid but nonsensical speech production

• fluid grammatical speech but lacks understandable meaning as well as difficultyunderstanding language spoken to them

how did brocas and wernickes aphaia show evidence for functional localization

they showed that language production and compreension were double dissociated

• one fucntion can be maintaned while the other is impaired → fucntions are seperately located in the brain

evidence of hemispheric lateralization

stroke pateitns with damage to right hemisphere show difficultues with coordiantion and navigation, hwile dmage to the elft hemisphere dmeonstrate slurreed or confused speech

split brain

patients who have had their corpus callosum severed, disconnecting the 2 heipshere of the cortex

• stil hsow normal cogntivie fucntion afterwards

what happens whenu show a split brain something on their right visual field

patents repsond verbally to object that they see, but since no connection to the other hemisphere they cannot draw it

what happens when u show a split brain something on theri left visual field

patient draw what they see, but since no connection to the other hemisphere they are unable to verbalize what they saw

what happens when u present 2 different stimuli on teh left and right visual field to a spit brain patient

patent repsonds verbally what they seee on the right visual field, but draw the stimulus they saw on the left visual field

cognitive neuroscience

subfield of neruosicne that uses ultiple tools to measure and analyze active brain processing in awake and healthy individuals

• study the brain without having to damage it