History Of Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience

• Cognition = the process of knwoning

• Neuroscience explains how the nervous system is organized and functions.

• Cognitive Neuroscience: How the brain enables the mind

  • Physical Brain -> Thoughts, Actions, Beliefs and Ideas.

A Historical Perspective

• Thomas Willis and Petty

  • Thomas Wills coined the term "Neurology".

  • Willis was also one of the first anatomist to link brain damage to a specific behavorial deficit.

  • He has also coined a lot of terms in neurology which are still used today

• Rene Descartes (Dualist)

  • He believed that the mind interacted with the body, but that the mind didn't follow the law of nature. They are two separate entities that interact together

  • Dualism: the idea that the mind appears from elsewhere and isn't a result from the work of the brain.

• Phrenology (The Brain Story)

  • Gall and Spurzheim

    • One of the founders of phrenology

      • Pumps and grooves of the skull can give you information about one's cognitive capabilities. (This isn't accurate but it was the starting point which unlocked the door for people's interest in the idea that certain areas could playy a role in certain functions

  • Aggregate Field Theory

    • Floruens

      • Idea that the whole brain participates in behavior

      • It is impossible to localise things because the entire brain is involved in all of different functions

      • He would take parts out of bird brains and then notice the changed behaviors such as loss of baalnce in the case of cerebellum

      • Couldn't find a place for memory and higher order cognitive abilities

• John Huglings Jackson (The Localizationalist View)

  • Topographic organization of the cerebral cortex

  • First to realize cognitive functions can be localized

• Paul Broca (more emphasis on the left side of the brain)

  • He had a patient that he noticed has a stroke and noticed that this individual could understand language but couldn't produce proper speech (Only one word)

  • The Broca area is a region in the frontal lobe of the brain, primarily in the left hemisphere, responsible for speech production and language processing. 

    • It coordinates the motor movements necessary for speaking and helps in organizing language elements like grammar and syntax. 

      • Damage to this area can result in Broca's aphasia, where individuals have difficulty producing coherent speech but can comprehend language.

• Carl Wernicke

  • A german neurologist who had a stroke vitim who could produce speech fluently but the speech content did not make any sense.

  • The Wernicke area is a region located in the left temporal lobe of the brain, responsible for language comprehension and processing.

    •  It helps in understanding spoken and written language, as well as forming coherent thoughts. 

      • Damage to this area can result in Wernicke's aphasia, where individuals have difficulty understanding language but may still produce fluent yet nonsensical speech.

• Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig

  • Used electrical simulation to understand brain function

  • Electrical stimulation of dogs and frogs

    • Revealed muscle contractions

  • Provided further support for localization

• Korbinian Brodmann and Camillo Golgi

  • Brodmann

    • Coined Cytoarchitectonics

      • Found out that cells differ between different brain regions

      • Physically you can see different cells in different parts of the brain.

      • Started identifying where certain walls were different or similar.

    • Golgi

      • Looked at Syncytium

        • The cells in the rain form a network or a continuous mass of tissue

• Santiage Romon Y Cajal

  • Discovered direction of travel of nerve impulses (Dendrites through axons)

  • Neurons Doctrine

    • Nervous system made up of individual cells

• Purkinje

  • First to describe a cell of the nervous system

• Helmholtz

  • First measurement of nerve conduction

  • When you know the speed of nerve conduction, you can guage one's reaction times in comparison to the norm

  • Used a complicated apparatus to measure velocity of neural signaling

• Random Vocabulary

  • Rationalism: reliance on reason

  • Empiricism: reliance on data

  • Associationism: experiences determines mental development

    • Ebbinghaus to Watson

  • Behaviourism: focused on observed behavior

    • Watson and Skinner

      • Baby Albert Studies: through conditioning, they altered a baby's behavior to become frightened of different things.

  • Cognitive Neuroscience

    • Milner to Goldman