COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

Psychology 123

Instructor

Alan Hartley

Steele 110

Ext.73247

Office Hours: MWF 10:00-10:50

About the Course

Cognitive neuroscience is an emerging field that is concerned with understanding how the human mind arises from the functioning of the brain. It brings together knowledge of processes such as perception, memory, language and emotion from cognitive psychology, knowledge of the biological bases of behavior from the neurosciences, and knowledge of the effects of brain dysfunction, disorder, and damage from clinical neuropsychology and neurology. There are contributions, too, from computer science, particularly the study of neural network or connectionist models. Cognitive neuroscience is a young field, characterized not only by excitement but by confusion. This course will introduce you to the field; I hope that you will see the reason for the excitement and have patience with the confusion.

A word of caution. Undergraduate texts in a field of scientific inquiry appear only after many years of accumulating knowledge, digesting it, and debating its interpretation. Cognitive neuroscience is far too young for that. As a result, you will be reading material written for those in the field--the raw material from which undergraduate textbooks will be written in the future. It will have none of the simplifying, organizing devices that texts use to aid learning, and few of the pictures and graphics psychology texts are noted for. It's written by scientists, for scientists, not by professional writers for a grade-12 reading level. Don't let that get you down! Read for the sense of the material. Keep a list of things you don't understand and ask about them. As your knowledge and understanding grow, you will find fewer and fewer terms and concepts that seem totally foreign or incomprehensible.

The course will be divided into three main sections. The first section will introduce the fundamentals of neuroscience--the anatomy and physiology of the brain and the biochemical messenger systems that underlie its functioning. This will be a little like learning conversational French in preparation for a visit to France; you won't be fluent, but you'll know enough to make the trip easier and more rewarding. The second section will examine several basic building blocks of human function--perception and attention, language, memory and emotion--from the perspectives of psychologists and neurobiologists. We will also explore clinical syndromes such as neglect, agnosia, dyslexia, and amnesia in which these functions are impaired. In the third section, each student will lead a seminar discussion of one category of functional problems from clinical neuropsychology (such as reading disorders). She will describe the kind of problems that are found and how they are diagnosed, and lead us in a discussion of what this tells us about cognitive structure and normal functioning. At the end of the course, if time allows, we will also explore some more complex and less understood disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.

Texts (available in Huntley Bookstore)

Marian Diamond, Arnold Scheibel, & Lawrence Elson. (1985). The Human Brain Coloring Book. New York: Barnes & Noble. [HBCB]

Stephen Kosslyn & Olivier Koenig. (1992). Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Free Press. [WM]

Mind and Brain. Scientific American special issue, September, 1992. [MB]

Readings on Reserve in Denison Library

Readings for Cognitive Neuroscience (PSYC 123). [RDG]

Joseph LeDoux & William Hirst. (1986). Mind and Brain: Dialogues in Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Cambridge University Press. [LeDoux]

Rosaleen McCarthy & Elizabeth Warrington. (1990). Cognitive Neuropsychology: A Clinical Introduction. San Diego: Academic Press. There are no assigned readings from this book; see "Seminar Paper" below.

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

Week Topic Reading

Sep. 6 Introduction to the Course WM 1

Fundamentals of Neuroscience MB: Fischbach

Sep. 13 Fundamentals of Neuroscience MB: Shatz, Kimura

Sep. 20 Fundamentals of Neuroscience

Sep. 27 Neural Networks WM 2

Perception WM 3

Oct. 4 Perception WM 4, MB: Zeki

RDG: "To see"

Oct. 11 Language WM 6, MB: Damasio

RDG: "Silent childhood"

Oct. 18 Movement WM 7

Oct. 25 Memory WM 8, MB: Kandel,

Goldman-Rakic

Nov. 1 Emotion LeDoux: 275-367

Nov. 8 Schizophrenia MB: Gershin

Tourette's Syndrome RDG: "Surgeon's Life"

Nov. 15 Alzheimer's Disease TBA

Nov. 22 to Student Seminars TBA

Dec. 6

Academic Exercises

Human Brain Coloring Book. A relatively painless way to begin learning the names, locations, and functions of the brain structures we will be talking about is to color the plates in this coloring book. You will need a set of colored pencils or felt tip pens (at least 6 colors; the more the better) and about 1 hour per plate to complete the plates carefully and thoughtfully (and that is how you should do them). So that you don't let this pile up, the plates are assigned in manageable sets.

Due Sept. 8: Plates 1-1 to 1-5

Due Sept. 15: Plates 2-1 to 2-5, 2-7, 5-1, 5-2

Due Sept. 22: Plates 5-16 to 5-22, 5-24, 5-25

Due Sept. 29: Plates 5-26, 5-27, 5-29, 5-30, 5-33, 5-34

Some of you may already have substantial familiarity with neuroanatomy and may not wish to complete the Coloring Book. If so, consult me about the possibility of an exemption exam.

Case Studies: For four of the classes you will find and read one of the case studies referred to by Kosslyn and Koenig in the assigned reading for the week. Write a short paper (3 to 5 typewritten or word-processed pages) in which you describe the symptoms shown by the patient and what is known about her or his brain pathology. You should also speculate on what this case tells us about the organization and functioning of the normal brain. Be prepared to describe the case to the class. The four classes are Oct. 6 (Chs. 3,4), Oct. 11 (Ch. 6), Oct. 25 (Ch. 8), and Nov. 1 (LeDoux). All four will be graded; only the highest three will contribute to your final grade.

Seminar Paper: There will be a major paper on the same topic which you presented as a class seminar, although you may want to narrow it to a subset of the disorders presented in one of the chapters of Cognitive Neuropsychology, one of the books on reserve in Denison. Your paper should be based on more extensive reading--case studies, research studies, theoretical papers--taking the references in the chapter as a starting point. The paper should be an evaluative review. That is, it should describe the evidence and then present and evaluate theories about the origins of the cognitive dysfunction and what it implies about normal functioning. You should not hesitate to present your own theories. The paper is due by Noon, Wednesday, December 15.