… [People] occasionally stumble over the
truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Setting the stage for Cognitive
Neuroscience
Important events in history:
• Scientific revolution
• Dualism v. Monism
• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
• The Golden Age of Neuropsychology
• Ramon y Cajal
• Antecedents of modern era
Scientific Revolution
 Scholasticism vs. Empiricism
authority vs. direct observation of the
phenomena
 Mechanism vs. Animism
 Falsifiability
 Precision, mathematical tools
 Openness, peer-review
 Skepticism
 Parsimony
Dualism vs. Monistic
Materialism
• Dualism defined
• Problems with Cartesian dualism
- interaction?
- simplicity?
• de la Mettrie and Hobbes 1700’s
Monistic Materialists
So, if nearly every neuroscientist has given up
pursuing dualist accounts, why is the idea so
persistent?
Is it persistent?
Eccles
Penrose
Sheldrake
vision
Predicate dualism
Property dualism
Substance dualism
(Interactionism
Epiphenomenalism
Psychophysical parallelism)
Nagel's (1986) Position
"The subjective features of conscious mental processes...
cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for
dealing with the physical world that underlies appearances...
mental states - however objective their content - must be
capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in
mind at all."
Assignment:
Find on-line one interesting argument against
Mind-Brain identity to present.
Brief History of Localizing Mind
Within the Human Body
Four events in the 19th
Century paved the way
• Mind-brain identity evidence
- phrenology
- brain damaged patients
- Broca, Alzheimer, Wernicke
• Darwin’s theory of evolution
Ventricular Doctrine:
Localization of mental
faculties to the ventricles
Ventricular Doctrine:
Localization of mental
faculties to the ventricles
First Ventricle:
Integration of sensory
information; Fantasy &
Imagination.
Ventricular Doctrine:
Localization of mental
faculties to the ventricles
First Ventricle:
Integration of sensory
information; Fantasy &
Imagination.
Second Ventricle:
Cognitive processes –
reasoning; judgement
Ventricular Doctrine:
Localization of mental
faculties to the ventricles
First Ventricle:
Integration of sensory
information; Fantasy &
Imagination.
Second Ventricle:
Cognitive processes –
reasoning; judgement
Third Ventricle: Memory
Franz Joseph Gall & J. C. Spurzheim –
localization of different psychological
functions to different regions of the cerebral
cortex (late 1700’s – early 1800’s)
Franz Joseph Gall & J. C. Spurzheim –
localization of different psychological
functions to different regions of the cerebral
cortex (late 1700’s – early 1800’s)
- phrenology
Understanding the Relationship
Between Brain and Behavior
The brain hypothesis: functional
specialization or distribution?
1810
Brain Hypothesis
• Mass action (Lashley, 1930s) and aggregate field theories
Flourens (1794-1867)
Darwin’s theory of evolution
 Any trait shows variation in a population
 Within an environment, some varieties are
favored (or selected) such that they have
more offspring compared to other varieties
 If any of the variation is inherited, then the
selected variant will spread through the
population
Novelty of Darwin’s idea
 Importance of geological time
 No purpose, goal
 Makes plausible human integration with
the rest of nature
 Makes plausible comparative studies
 Integrates with modern genetics
 Processes can be adaptive
So what does this have to do with brains
and minds?
FUNCTIONAL DESIGN!
Is the brain & therefore the mind functionally organized?
Yes. The brain is a physical system that transforms other
physical systems in very specific ways.
Four events in the 19th
Century paved the way
 Mind-brain identity evidence
- phrenology
- brain damaged patients
- Broca, Alzheimer, Wernicke
 Darwin’s theory of evolution
 Wilhelm Wundt founds first laboratory
in Leipzig 1879s
 Ramon y Cajal’s conclusions
Neuron Hypothesis
• Functional segregation begins at the neuronal (cellular) level.
Golgi
Ramon y Cajal
TOP TEN LIST: Reasons for avoiding brain-mind identity theory
10. It is repugnant to believe that we are only a relatively
unimpressive, but pretty fancy piece of meat.
9. It is a well known fact that we only use 10% of our brain,
so it is more or less useless.
8. Almost our whole cultural heritage (including mommy and
daddy) tell us that we are actually a litte spirit only
temporarily residing on this comparatively rotten planet.
7. When we have a thought about a unicorn, it is not located
in a specific location or time and is about something that
doesn’t exist; our brain events occur in a specific location and
time and definitely exist.
6. If you take it seriously you must learn about things like
molecular genetics, neurophysiology, and other
biophysical
things that seemed too hard in undergraduate school.
5. Neuroscientists do not make much money (and their books
are not popular).
4. Reductionism is politically incorrect (and always has been).
3. Didn’t the antiphrenologists and Karl Lashley and a host of
others show that brain (or cortical) organization was irrelevant
for psychology?
2. This whole business isn’t “really” psychology or neuroscience,
but rather part of somebody else’s program - eventually they will
figure it out and tell us the answer.
1. If you really believe it, you would have to hang around with
people like Kolb, Whishaw, Prusky, or Sutherland.