Cognitive Neuroscience - Comprehensive Lecture Notes (ENGLISH)

Emergence of Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Emerged from a blend of neuroscience (brain structure/function) and cognitive psychology (mental processes as information processing).

  • Phineas Gage Case (1848): A foundational case showing specific impairments (personality change) from focal brain damage (left frontal lobe), illustrating localization of function.

  • Franz Joseph Gall (Phrenology): Early, albeit flawed, theory proposing specific mental faculties reside in distinct brain regions.

  • Localizationist View: Evidence accumulated for region-specific functions:

    • Marc Dax: Left-hemisphere lesions linked to speech deficits.

    • John Hughlings Jackson: Topographic organization of the cerebral cortex.

    • Paul Broca (1861): Lesion in left inferior frontal lobe (Broca's area) linked to impaired speech production.

    • Carl Wernicke (1876): Lesion in left posterior temporal-parietal junction (Wernicke's area) linked to impaired language comprehension and nonsensical speech.

  • Korbinian Brodmann (1909): Identified 52 distinct cortical regions (Brodmann areas) based on cytoarchitecture, forming a basis for functional mapping.

Cellular Basis of Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Camillo Golgi (1873): Developed the silver staining technique to visualize individual neurons.

  • Santiago Ramón y Cajal: Used Golgi's technique to establish the Neuron Doctrine (nervous system composed of discrete, individual cells). Both shared the 1906 Nobel Prize.

Cognitive Psychology's Contributions to Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Information-Processing View: Mental activity as processing information, involving mental representations and internal transformations (e.g., ability to read jumbled text).

  • Reaction Time (RT): Used as a proxy for processing speed and cognitive efficiency.

  • Key Figures & Tasks:

    • Mike Posner: Used cognitive letter-matching and Posner Cueing Task to show attention modulates processing speed.

    • Saul Sternberg: Used RT paradigms to describe serial processing stages in memory recall.

Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience

  • EEG (Electroencephalography): Measures electrical activity from the scalp (first human studies in 1924).

  • fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging): Measures brain activity via BOLD signals (first studies in early 1990s).

  • These methods link cognitive tasks to neural substrates and dynamics.

Definition and Scope

  • Cognitive Science emerged in 1956 (George A. Miller).

  • Cognitive Neuroscience established in 1977 and coined in 1976 by Mike Gazzaniga and George Armitage Miller, bridging the study of the mind with the brain.

  • Focus: Investigate cognitive deficits due to brain lesions; emphasizes biological factors/genetics in mental health.