NS/304 Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience
Unit 1
Lecture 1. A Brief History of Cognitive Neuroscience
“Throughout the history of brain science, an unfortunate and oft –
repeated trend is that we fail to consider crucial observations
made by our predecessors.”
Image Source: [Link]
neurobiology-luis-de-garrido/#
Faculty: Shilpi Singh
School of Studies in Neuroscience
Jiwaji University, Gwalior
Date: 7th October, 2020
‘Cognitive Neuroscience’
Term coined by M. Gazzaniga and George Miller in 1970
Cognition: the process of knowing (i.e., what arises from awareness, perception, and
reasoning); how the brain creates mind
Highly interdisciplinary Michael S. Gazzaniga
• Philosophy (1939-)
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Neuroscience
• Anthropology
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
Miller G,
2003 George A. Miller (1920–
Cognitive science in 1978. Each line joining two disciplines 2012)
represents interdisciplinary inquiry that already existed in 1978.
Suggested Textbook: Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind by Gazzaniga, Ivry and Mangun (Chapter 1)
1650s: Foreshadowed cognitive neuroscience with
the notion that specific brain damage (biology)
could affect behavior (psychology)
Thomas Willis (1621–1675)
Founder of clinical neuroscience
Ancient Greeks: made the theoretical leap to the
view that we are separate from the world we occupy
Monism: flesh-and-blood brain produces thoughts
Thales of Miletus
(620-545 BCE)
Image Source: Wikipedia
Dualism: mind appears from elsewhere and is not
the
result of the machinations of the brain
René Descartes (1596–
1650)
The Scientific Method: 19th Century
The scientific method as incorrectly taught to
our children. Image from Washington Prep
High School, Los Angeles Unified School The Method of Science, as it happens
District. photo: T. McGlynn
Image source: [Link]
The Brain Story
Issue: Is the whole brain working in concert or parts of the brain working
independently to enable mind?
Localizationist View
Emphasized the idea that different brain functions are localized to
discrete brain regions (phrenology)
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–
1828), one of the founders of
phrenology
Image Source:
Aggregate field theory: Holistic view
whole brain participates in behavior
[Link]
[Link]
Image Source: Wikipedia
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794–
1867)
“All sensations, all perceptions, and all volitions occupy the same seat
in these (cerebral) organs. The faculty of sensation, percept and
volition is then essentially one faculty .”
John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911), an English
neurologist who was one of the first to recognize the
localizationist view
proposed a topographic organization
in the cerebral cortex
concluded from his observations that
many regions of the brain contribute to a
given behavior
Broca’s aphasia (1861) – lost ability to
talk
Wernicke’s aphasia (1876) – talk but
make little sense
Focal brain damage causes specific B
behavioral deficits A
A: Wernicke’s sensory speech center; B: Broca’s area for
speech; C: Wernicke’s area concerned with language
comprehension and meaning
Brodmann (1909): Analyzed the cellular
organization of the cortex and
characterized 52 distinct regions, based
on cell structure and arrangement.
developed one of the most famous cell stains in the history of
the world: the silver method for staining neurons—la reazione
nera, “the black reaction”—which impregnated individual
neurons with silver chromate.
Camillo Golgi (1843–1926),
cowinner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine.
Neuron doctrine
Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934),
cowinner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine; Father of modern
Neuroscience
electrical current in the cell was not a by-product of
cellular activity , but rather the medium that was actually
carrying information along the axon of a nerve cell
first to suggest that invertebrates would be good
models for studying vertebrate brain mechanisms
Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz (1821–
1894).
even though particular neuronal locations might serve independent functions, the
network of these locations and the interactions between them are what yield the
integrated, holistic behavior that humans exhibit
knowledge of the parts (the neurons and brain structures) must be understood
in conjunction with the whole (i.e., what the parts make when they come
together: the mind)
The Psychological Story
1868: method of using differences in reaction times to infer differences in
cognitive processing
Led to the field called Experimental Psychology
Rationalism all knowledge could be gained through the use of reason
Franciscus Donders alone: Truth was intellectual, not sensory
Supported by René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz
Empiricism is the idea that all knowledge comes from sensory experience
Associationism When simple ideas interact and become associated with one another,
complex ideas and concepts are created in an individual’s knowledge system
Ebbinghaus: mental processes that are more
internal, such as memory, also could be measured
a response that was followed by a reward would be
stamped into the organism as a habitual response
Edward L. Thorndike
(1874–1949)
Behaviorism: a theory of learning based on the idea that all
behaviors are acquired through conditioning
turn any baby into an adult that could do
anything from tightrope walking to
John B. Watson neurosurgery
(1878–1958)
created maps of the sensory and motor cortices in the
brain
Wilder Penfield workings of the brain explained behavior, and
(1891–1976)
that the psychology and biology of an organism
could not be separated
Donald O. Hebb
(1904–1985)
the complexity of language is built into the
brain, runs on rules and principles (a
grammar) that are universal
Noam Chomsky
(1928–) rejected the idea that psychology should
just study behavior, rather it should
incorporate cognition
George A. Miller (1920–
first to provide anatomical and physiological proof
that there are multiple memory systems
Brenda Milner (1918–)
put together a multidisciplinary team to study working
memory
• discovered that individual cells in the prefrontal cortex
are dedicated to specific memory tasks, such as
remembering a face or a voice
Patricia Goldman-Rakic
• first description of the prefrontal cortex circuitry and (1937–2003)
how it relates to working memory
• first studies on the influence of dopamine on the
prefrontal cortex
The Instruments of Neuroscience
Seijnowski et al. 2014, Nature Neuroscience
By Elizabetho93 - Own work, CC BY 3.0, [Link]
Goal of this course
“to introduce you to the big questions and discussions in
cognitive neuroscience and to teach you how to think, ask
questions, and approach those questions like a cognitive
neuroscientist”
Image source: The logic of Science
Thank you all for your participation!
Food for thought
Credit: Neoplantski/Alexey Pushkin/Shutterstock/Big Think Credit: Amarnath Tade/ Unsplash
Both images from: [Link]
