Cognitive Neuroscience Exam 1 Review

Mind-body problem

The question of how physical brain processes give rise to mental experiences.

Dualism

The philosophical belief that the mind and body are separate substances.

Dual-aspect theory

The view that mind and body are two explanation levels of the same substance.

Reductionism

The belief that mental processes will eventually be explained solely by physical laws.

Phrenology

An obsolete theory linking personality traits to skull bumps and cortical size.

Cognitive neuropsychology

Associating cognitive functions with specific locations of brain damage.

Limitation of cognitive neuroscience neuroimaging

It usually reveals where brain activity occurs, not how it functions.

Temporal resolution

How accurately a technique measures the timing of brain activity.

Spatial resolution

How precisely a technique measures the physical location of brain activity.

Invasiveness in neuroimaging

Whether a measurement method requires surgical entry into the skull or body.

P-hacking (dead salmon study example)

Analyzing data in many ways until a statistically significant result appears by chance.

Replicability

Repeating an experimental design on a new sample to obtain identical results.

Reproducibility

Obtaining consistent results by applying the same analytical procedures to existing data.

Number of neurons in the human brain

Approximately 86 billion neurons.

Direction of electrical flow in a neuron

Dendrites → Cell body (soma) → Axon → Terminals.

Ion entry triggering neuron activation

Sodium ions (Na+) entering the cell.

Primary excitatory neurotransmitter

Glutamate.

Primary inhibitory neurotransmitter

GABA.

Association tract

White matter axon tract connecting different regions within the same hemisphere.

Commissure tract

White matter axon tract connecting corresponding regions between the two hemispheres.

Projection tract

White matter tract connecting cortical regions to sub-cortical structures.

Corpus callosum

A massive white matter commissure linking the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Amygdala primary function

Processing fear and emotional responses.

Hippocampus primary function

Creation and consolidation of long-term memories.

Basal ganglia primary function

Modulating action, habits, and thought via connections with the frontal lobes.

Single-cell recordings

An invasive technique measuring action potentials per second from individual neurons.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Non-invasive recording of summed electrical potentials from millions of neurons at the scalp.

Specificity coding

Representation where a single neuron responds to a specific concept (grandmother cell).

Population coding

Representation of information distributed across all neurons in a population.

Sparse coding

Representation of information using a small subset of neurons within a network.

Neural coding model supported by face perception

Sparse coding.

Rate coding

Information encoded by the firing rate of action potentials per second.

Temporal coding

Information encoded by the precise timing and synchrony of neural firing.

EEG electrode letter: F

Frontal lobe.

EEG electrode letter: T

Temporal lobe.

EEG electrode letter: P

Parietal lobe.

EEG electrode letter: O

Occipital lobe.

EEG electrode letter: C

Central brain regions.

Mental chronometry

Measuring the processing time of cognitive tasks to infer underlying mental structure.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

Measuring magnetic fields generated by sub-scalp neural electrical activity.

BOLD response in fMRI

Blood Oxygen Level Dependent response measuring changes in blood oxygenation.

Physical mechanism measured by MRI scans

Relaxation rates of hydrogen protons after applying a radio frequency pulse.

Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF)

The change in BOLD signal over time following neural activity.

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Measures BOLD responses using infrared light instead of magnetic fields.

Resting State fMRI

fMRI scanning while no task is performed to examine intrinsic functional connectivity.

Spatial smoothing in fMRI

Averaging activity across neighboring voxels to increase signal-to-noise ratio.

Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis (MVPA)

Analyzing pattern activity across individual voxels without applying spatial smoothing.