History of Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience

  • Vocabulary:

    • Modularity: The idea that the brain has many specialized regions

    • Connectome: The idea that different parts of the brain must work together for cognition

    • Monism: The body is one cohesive unit

    • Dualism: The idea that the body and mind are separate, for instance in afterlife the body can be left behind but the mind can move on

    • Phrenology: The idea of localized and functionally specialized regions, “use it or lose it”

    • Aggregate field theory: The whole brain participates in behavior

    • Aphasia: A disorder where speech and language are understood, but speech is impaired

    • Dreamy state: Consists of vivid memory like hallucinations

    • Deja vu: The sense of having previously lived through exactly the same situation before

    • Neuron Doctrine: The nervous system is made of individual cells called neurons, neural transmission is unidirectional

    • Syncytium: The idea that the brain is unicellular, one large body

    • Forgetting curve: How quickly things are forgotten, more so the later something is tested on

    • Spacing effect: If something is reviewed further apart and after a certain amount of times, it will be remembered easier

    • Shaping: The process of rewarding an animal at certain checkpoints to encourage and train a specific behavior. For example to train a mouse, researchers might start by rewarding the mouse for getting closer to a target, then for entering it hallways, and finally for entering it to end, gradually making a desired behavior occur

    • Law of effect: Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences are strengthened, behaviors followed by annoying or unpleasant consequences are weakened, the basis of operant conditioning

    • Tabula rasa: “Blank slate”, people come into the world being able to learn absolutely anything

  • People:

    • Thomas Willis (1621): Studied cause and effect relationships, involved in the story of Anne Green, founded cognitive and clinical neuroscience, coined “neurology”

    • Franz Josef Gall: Founded phrenology, unpopular

    • Marie Jean-Pierre Flourens: Liked, hired to prove Franz Gall wrong, formed aggregate field theory

    • Marc Dax: studied speech impairments and left hemisphere lesions, suppressed by Broca

    • Paul Broca (1824): Suppressed Marc Dax’s work, discovered Aphasia

    • Leborgne: Has aphasia, had massive speech loss and only said “tan” despite having language understanding, showed dementia like symptoms, autopsy showed a large left hemisphere lesion

    • Lelong: Had Broca’s aphasia, could only say 5 words

    • Anne Green: Killed for having a miscarriage, though was still alive and tried to be brought back by Thomas Willis

    • Korbinian Brodmann (1868): Characterized 52 distinct regions that are still used today

    • John Hughlings Jackson: Had epileptic patients, noticed characteristic motor and behavior outputs that seemed routine (like a program), used to connect behavior with brain activity

    • Wilder Penfield (1891): Did brain mapping by stimulating different parts and asking patients how they felt, created the homunculus (topographical map), determined behaviors were complex and required coordinated activity of many regions. Discovered amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe stimulation led to dreamy states

    • Jackson: Observed that seizures arising in the medial temporal love may result in “dreamy states” and deja vu, along with epigastric phenomena and fear

    • Halgren: Showed that dreamy states were evoked by simulation of hippocampal formation and amygdala

    • Gloor: Suggested that dreamy states are evoked by lateral stimulation, believed in the syncytium

    • Camillo Golgi (1843): Developed a staining method
      Ramon y Cajal (1852): Used golgi staining, disagreed with syncytium, called neurons discrete entities

    • Sir Charles Sherrington: Coined synapses

    • Otto Lowei: Determined brains used chemical signals

    • Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850): Said learning and memory could be studied empirically, discovered the forgetting curve and spacing effect

    • Ivan Pavlov (1849): Created classical conditioning, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned response etc.

    • B. F. Skinner (1904): Created operant conditioning, a behavior is strengthened or weakened based on consequences/rewards, uses positive/negative reinforcement/punishment, voluntary behaviors matter a lot more

    • Edward Thorndike: Created law of effect, said habits are the result of strengthened associations between stimuli and responses

    • John B. Watson: Believe in tabula rasa

    • Donald Hebb (1904): Described cell assemblies, theorized that learning has a biological basis, influential in computational neuroscience

    • Brenda Miller (1918): Anatomical evidence for multiple memory systems comes from her research with H. M.

    • H. M.: Had hippocampus surgically removed, case studies on him revealed information about memory. Couldn’t make new memories, and lost 10 years of memory

    • George Miller (1920): Founded cognitive neuroscience, called the brain a computer, studied working memory and chunking with a limited capacity

    • Patricia Goldman-Rakic (1937): Did biochemistry, anatomy, pharmacology, did research with dopamine in the PFC to show schizophrenia wasn’t due to bad parenting

  • The Egyptians believed in monism, like many historical cultures