Cognitive Neuroscience

What happens in your brain when you are secretly paying attention to a conversation at the next table? How is that conversation recorded into memory? Cognitive neuroscience aims to address such questions by exploring the brain mechanisms that underlie human mental processing. This course will examine the neural basis of core cognitive processes including perception, attention, memory, action, and language (identified using techniques such as functional MRI, event–related potentials, and lesion studies). Other mind–brain topics that will be considered include hemispheric specialization, neural plasticity, frontal lobe function, and consciousness.

Text: Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind (Gazzaniga, Ivry, & Mangun)

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Lecture/seminar

Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory

Memory enables you to have skills, to communicate with other people, to make intelligent decisions, to remember your loved ones, and to know who you are. Without memory, you would not be you. Although human memory has been studied for over two thousand years, the neuroscience of human memory has only been studied for the last two decades. In this course, following an introduction on the types of memory and brain regions of interest, we will discuss the following key topics on the neuroscience of human memory: the tools of cognitive neuroscience, brain regions associated with long–term memory, brain timing associated with long–term memory, long–term memory failure, working memory, implicit memory, memory and other cognitive processes, explicit memory and disease, long–term memory in animals, and the future of memory research.

Text: Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory (Slotnick)

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Seminar

Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention

Over a century ago, William James (1890) wrote “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” Since that time, the study of attention has become one of the core topics of inquiry in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Despite its apparent simplicity, the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying attention are quite complex. In this course, following an introduction on what attention is and considering the role that attention plays in everyday life, we will discuss the following key topics on the neuroscience of human attention: methods of cognitive neuroscience, deficits in attention, attentional selection in the brain, voluntary and involuntary influences on attention, the control of attention, temporal attention, and predictive coding models of attention.

Text: Neuroscience of Attention (Hopfinger)

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Seminar

Methods in Human Brain Mapping

For over two centuries, human brain mapping has been conducted by correlating lesion location with impaired behavior. In the last few decades, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) – a noninvasive neuroimaging technique with excellent spatial resolution – has given rise to an explosion of knowledge regarding the role of specific brain regions in particular types of cognitive processing (such as shifting attention or memory retrieval). The aim of this course is to provide an in–depth examination of fMRI by reviewing the physical basis of the fMRI signal and its relation to neural activity in addition to considering issues of experimental design and data analysis. Brain mapping techniques based on lesions and electrophysiology are also discussed.

Text: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Huettel, Song, & McCarthy)

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Lecture/lab

Controversies in Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience is the study of how human mental processing relates to activity in specific brain regions. In this course, current controversies in Cognitive Neuroscience will be critically examined by evaluating key articles relating to the following questions. Are there category specific processing regions in the brain (e.g., a region specialized for processing faces)? Can visual images be pictorial? Does short–term memory related activity in prefrontal cortex mirror more posterior perception related activity patterns? Do recollection and familiarity – two types of long–term memory – depend on different sub–regions of the medial temporal lobe? Does attention modulate activity in primary visual cortex?

Text: Controversies in Cognitive Neuroscience (Slotnick)

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Seminar

Graduate Programming Lab

The course provides an introduction to MATLAB. Students will learn how to program in MATLAB, and how to use MATLAB for research in psychology. Students will develop a programming mindset by learning and exercising programming tasks, e.g., manage the data, manipulate the variables, plot the data, make graphs and tables, and conduct statistical analysis.

Text: MATLAB A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving (Attaway)

Format: Lecture/lab

Professional Development Workshop and Seminar

The aim of this course is to provide an overview of important topics to first-semester graduate students in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. Each class consists of a discussion on specific topics (e.g., hypothesis testing, applying for graduate-student grants), presentations/discussions led by faculty members in different areas of the department (behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, quantitative and computational psychology, and social psychology), or colloquia (where faculty from outside the department present their research).

Supplemental Readings: Scientific articles

Format: Seminar