PY2CBP: Cognitive and Biological Psychology - Module Introduction

Module Information

  • Module Title: Cognitive and Biological Psychology (PY2CBP)
  • Instructors: Dr. Lydia Yee (Module Convenor), Dr. Wiebke Gandhi, Dr. Nicholas Hedger
  • Contact: t.yee@reading.ac.uk
  • Student Hours: Thursdays 12-2pm at Harry Pitt 2S23 (check BB for updates)

Module Structure

  • Lectures (weekly): Yuja recordings available on BB within 7 days
  • Seminars (5 total): Consolidate lecture material, not recorded
  • Project workshops (Week 1 online briefing + 4 workshops): Help with project report, not recorded

Key Dates and Resources

  • Module Roadmap: Found on BB > Module Information
  • Online Project Briefing: Friday, Feb 14th, 1-2pm on Teams (link on BB; labelled “PY2CBP Briefing”)
  • BB Content:
    • Staff Student Hours and Module Roadmap
    • Assessment Briefs and Marking Criteria
    • Submission points for project report and SAQ exam
    • Weekly plans and slides for lectures, seminars, & project workshops
  • Learning Materials: Organized by week on BB; includes essential resources
  • General Module Resources: Resources applicable across the module (not specific to a week/topic)
  • Padlet Q&A Board: Post questions under the corresponding week for lecturer response.

Module Learning Outcomes

  • Describe and critically evaluate research on core topics in perception and cognition.
  • Use knowledge of biopsychology and neuroscience to evaluate research and theories.
  • Review relevant literature to develop accurate hypotheses for a quantitative research project.
  • Analyse data from the quantitative research project and present the project in a report format.

Assessments

  • Project Report:
    • Due Thursday 8th May 2025 at 12 noon (UK time)
    • 50% of module mark
    • Practice with ANOVA analyses
  • SAQ Exam:
    • During the Semester 2 Assessment Period (between 26th May and 13th June)
    • 50% of module mark
    • Answer 3 out of 5 questions; 300-word limit per question

Reading List

  • Essential items: Compulsory reading, content may be tested in assessments
  • Recommended reading: Advised to read a few to further explore areas of interest and demonstrate wider reading
  • Further reading: Sources cited in the lecture, for student reference & interest
  • Can filter reading lists by item type (essential, recommended, etc.)

Topics Covered

  • Week 1: Introduction
  • Week 2: Chemistry of Behaviour (neural effect of drugs)
  • Week 3: Attention and Consciousness
  • Week 5: Object and Face Recognition
  • Week 6: Pain and its Disorders (Nociception and ascending pain pathways, Central pain and top-down control of pain)
  • Week 7: Cognitive Control and Flexibility
  • Week 8: Judgement, Problem Solving and Decision Making
  • Week 9: Learning and Memory; Skills and Habits (Neural pathways of implicit learning and procedural memory)
  • Week 10: Emotional Behaviour, Stress and Hormones (The biopsychology of emotion, Stress responses and its consequences, Hormone)
  • Week 11: Sleep and Brain-Body Interactions
  • Week 12: Revision class

Relevant Previous Knowledge (From PY1PAB and PY1LAL)

  • PY1PAB: Structure of neurons, dendrites, axon hillock, axon, myelin sheath, synaptic bouton, vesicles, transmitter release, action potential, excitatory and inhibitory effects of neurotransmitters.
  • PY1LAL: hippocampus, short term memory, long term memory, amnesia, implicit learning, autobiographical memory

Other topics

  • Multisensory integration
  • Sleep deprivation and its consequences

Concepts You May Have Learned Before (From PY1INM)

  • fMRI
  • EEG
  • Psychopharmacology
  • TMS
  • Psychophysics
  • Psychophysiology
  • Brain lesions
  • Brain structure

Key definitions

  • Biological Psychology: Explores the interplay between cognitive and biological psychology to impact behaviour
  • Cognitive Psychology:
    • Aims to understand human cognition by observing behavior while performing tasks.
    • Concerned with internal processes involved in sensing the environment.

Biological Psychology

  • Defined: The study of the biological bases of behavior and mental processes.
  • Contributing Disciplines:
    • Neuroanatomy: The study of the structure of the nervous system.
    • Neurochemistry: The study of the chemical bases of neural activity. Includes neurotransmitters and synaptic vesicles.
    • Neuroendocrinology: The study of interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine system.
    • Neuropathology: The study of nervous system dysfunction.
    • Neuropharmacology: The study of the effects of drugs on neural activity.
    • Neurophysiology: The study of the functions and activities of the nervous system.

Divisions of Biological Psychology

  • Physiological psychology
  • Psychopharmacology
  • Neuropsychology
  • Psychophysiology
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Comparative psychology

Cognitive Psychology

  • Definition: Concerned with internal processes involved in making sense of the environment and deciding on appropriate action. These processes include attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning, and thinking.

Four Approaches to Human Cognition

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Cognitive neuropsychology
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Computational cognitive science

Cognitive Psychology: Limitations

  • Models have often been described verbally rather than computationally.
  • Proliferation of theories.
  • Sometimes over-specific (applies only to a limited set of paradigms).
  • Hard to identify the number and nature of processes involved on the basis of speed and accuracy measures

Cognitive Neuropsychology

  • Uses the pattern of performance of brain-damaged patients on cognitive tasks to make inferences about the mechanisms of cognition in healthy individuals.
    • Assumptions:
      • Modularity of processes.
      • Anatomical modularity (not necessarily the same as modularity of processes).
      • Subtractivity (damage impairs one thing but leaves others intact) and transparency (removing a module from a model should have the same effect as the damage in a patient)
      • Double dissociations should be strong evidence for a ‘module’

Cognitive Neuropsychology: Limitations

  • The idea of modularity is being questioned
  • Effects of a lesion can be widespread, affecting distant but connected parts of the brain.
  • Compensation occurs (patients recover function to some extent, i.e., plasticity).

Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Involves “intensive study of brain activity as well as behavior” (cognitive and biological psychology).
    • Techniques:
      • Single-unit recording: invasive technique
      • ERP, event-related potentials (EEG locked to stimulus onset)
      • PET, positron emission tomography (rare)
      • fMRI
      • MEG, magneto-encephalography (poorer spatial resolution than fMRI but much better temporal resolution)
      • TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation (temporary disruption to localised regions of cortex)
      • tDCS, transcranial direct current stimulation

Cognitive Neuroscience: Successes

  • Neural decoding
  • Resolve debates
  • Coordinated data analysis
  • TMS and timing

Cognitive Neuroscience: Limitations

  • ‘Blobology’
  • Usually studies report only the localisation of cortical processing associated with a task, not testing a cognitive theory

Computational Cognitive Science

  • Involves programming computers to model or mimic human cognitive functioning. If we can mimic both the successes and the failures of a human carrying out a cognitive task, it will improve our understanding of the processes the brain carries out.