Cognitive Science and
Cognitive Neuroscience
PSY 421 – Fall 2004
Overview
 Getting
all the terminology straight
 Cognitive Science
 Cognitive Neuroscience
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Methodology
What do we know about the organization of
the brain?
 Where
is the field of cognition today?
 Where is the field of cognition going?
Terminology
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Cognitive Science – multidisciplinary study of the nature of the human
mind – (study of the brain not necessarily involved)
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Cognitive Neuroscience - investigating the psychological, computational,
and neuroscientific bases of cognition (the brain and mind)
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Psychology
Artificial Intelligence
Linguistics
Anthropology
Neuroscience
Philosophy
Education
Neuroscience – study of the brain and nervous system
Behavioral Neuroscience – cognition and emotion
Computation Neuroscience – neuroscience, computer science, and applied
mathematics
Neurocognition – study of cognitive functions closely linked to the
function of particular areas, neural pathways, or cortical networks in the
brain
Neuropsychology – study of the relationship between the brain and
behavior; how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific
psychological processes
Cognitive Science
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Psychology – everything from this class would be relevant
Artificial Intelligence – development of computational
models that simulate aspects of human performance
Linguistics – identification of grammatical principles that
provide the basic structure of human languages
Anthropology - expanding the examination of human
thinking to consider how thought works in different cultural
settings
Neuroscience – non-invasive methods of studying the brain
and behavior; use of computation models to guide theory
development
Philosophy – deep understanding of the abstract ideas
behind mind and behavior; deals with general questions
such as the relation of mind and body
Education – considering the way in which individuals learn
and experience new information and how to improve
learning
Cognitive Science
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Critics of cognitive science and its computational-representational
approach have offered such challenges as:
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The emotion challenge: Cognitive science neglects the important role of
emotions in human thinking.
The consciousness challenge: Cognitive science ignores the importance
of consciousness in human thinking.
The world challenge: Cognitive science disregards the significant role of
physical environments in human thinking.
The body challenge: Cognitive science neglects the contribution of the
body to human thought and action.
The social challenge: Human thought is inherently social in ways that
cognitive science ignores.
The dynamical systems challenge: The mind is a dynamical system, not a
computational system.
The mathematics challenge: Mathematical results show that human
thinking cannot be computational in the standard sense, so the brain must
operate differently, perhaps as a quantum computer.
Thagard (1996) argues that all these challenges can best be met by
expanding and supplementing the computational-representational
approach, not by abandoning it.
Cognitive Neuroscience
 The
study of “how the brain thinks”
 Whereas cognitive psychologists seek to
understand the mind and its processes,
cognitive neuroscientists are concerned
with understanding how the mental
processes take place in the brain
 The two overlap, however, in that:
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an understanding of mental structure can
inform theories about brain functions
knowledge about neural mechanisms are
useful in understanding mental structure
Neuroscience Methodology
 Lesions
 Direct
Stimulation (Penfield)
 Imaging
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Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
What we know about the
organization of the brain
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The cerebral hemispheres control activity in the body contralaterally;
this means that the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body
and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body (in a few
situations, the brain hemispheres control the same side of the body as
the hemisphere, right hemisphere to right side of body, left
hemisphere to left side of body; this is called ipsilateral)
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The two hemispheres look similar but are actually structured
differently and process different information - this is referred to as
hemispheric specialization
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Within the two hemispheres, particular locations are thought to be
primarily responsible for certain behaviors - this is referred to as
localization of function and Broca’s and Wernicke’s language areas
are examples of this; localization of function does not mean that one
particular location controls all of a certain type of information
processing, like language, exclusively; it just means that the area is
thought to make a large contribution to the processing of that
information
Where is the field of cognition
today? In the future?
 Today
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Basic Research in cognition?
Collaborative research
• Within Psychology
• With other disciplines
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Computational Psychology
Neuroscience
 Future
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Neuroscience!!!