Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering key terms from chapters on brain structure, function, imaging, and plasticity in cognitive neuroscience.

Cognitive neuroscience

An interdisciplinary field merging brain function and cognition to understand how the brain enables thinking, perception, memory, language, and other mental processes.

Golgi staining

A histological technique that reveals individual neurons and their connections by impregnating a small portion of cells with a silver stain.

Neuron

The basic nerve cell that transmits electrical and chemical signals in the brain.

Dendrites

Tree-like extensions of a neuron that receive input from other neurons.

Soma (cell body)

The central part of a neuron containing the nucleus; it processes incoming signals.

Axon

Long fiber that transmits electrical signals away from the neuron to other neurons or muscles.

Myelin sheath

Fatty covering around axons that speeds up electrical transmission of neural signals.

Axon terminals

Endings of an axon where neurotransmitters are released to communicate with other neurons.

Synapse

The junction between neurons where neurotransmitters cross to transmit signals.

Neurotransmitter

Chemical messengers released at the synapse to relay signals to the next neuron.

Glial cells

Supportive brain cells (Greek for ‘glue’) that aid neurons, provide nutrients, and maintain the brain’s environment.

Microglia

Glial cells that remove dead cells and debris and participate in immune defense in the brain.

Astrocytes

Glial cells that regulate the chemical environment and help maintain the blood-brain barrier.

Oligodendrocytes

Glial cells that create the myelin sheath around axons in the central nervous system.

Cerebrospinal fluid

Clear fluid that cushions the brain and spinal cord and circulates nutrients.

Blood-brain barrier

A selective barrier formed by glial/endothelial cells that protects the brain from potentially harmful substances in the blood.

Transduction

The conversion of one form of energy into another, such as light into neural signals.

Resting potential

Baseline electrical charge of a neuron, typically about -70 millivolts.

Action potential

All-or-none electrical impulse that travels along the neuron when the threshold is reached.

Depolarization

Phase during which the neuron's membrane potential becomes more positive toward firing.

Repolarization

Phase after depolarization where the membrane returns toward its resting potential.

Hyperpolarization

Phase where the neuron becomes temporarily more negative than resting potential, inhibiting firing.

Graded potential

Small, local changes in membrane potential that can summate to reach threshold.

Refractory period

Brief period after an action potential when a neuron is less able to fire again.

All-or-none

Principle that a neuron fires fully or not at all once threshold is reached.

Firing rate

How often a neuron fires; higher rates indicate greater neural activity in a region.

Hubel and Wiesel

Researchers who showed that neurons in the occipital visual cortex are orientation-selective, responding to specific angles of visual input.

Visual cortex

Occipital lobe region responsible for processing visual information and orientation.

Broca’s area

Frontal lobe region involved in speech production.

Wernicke’s area

Temporal lobe region involved in language comprehension.

Fusiform face area (FFA)

Region in the fusiform gyrus specialized for facial recognition.

Prosopagnosia

Face blindness caused by damage to face-processing areas like the fusiform face area.

Jennifer Aniston neuron

A purported neuron that fires selectively to a very specific familiar face or concept, illustrating high-level semantic coding.

Sparse coding

Representing a stimulus with a small subset of neurons rather than the entire population.

Population coding

Representing information by patterns of activity across many neurons.

Plasticity

Brain's ability to change its structure and function in response to experience or injury.

Hebbian plasticity

The idea that neurons that fire together wire together, strengthening connections through co-activation.

Blakemore and Cooper kitten study

Classic experiment showing that visual experience during development shapes cortical organization (e.g., orientation-selective cells) via environmental exposure.

Orientation selectivity

Property of neurons (notably in the visual cortex) that respond preferentially to specific orientations of stimuli.

Corpus callosum

Large band of nerve fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres to coordinate information flow.

Connectome

The comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, the brain’s wiring diagram.

Default mode network

A network of brain regions more active during rest or self-referential thinking than during focused tasks.

Six connectivity networks (briefly)

Key brain networks involved in task performance: visual, somato-motor, dorsal attention, executive control, salience, and default mode networks.