Cognitive Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind Chap 8-13

Damage to OFC

1) Impairs ability to use social knowledge to reason about social interactions 2) More likley to introduce impolite conversation topics 3) Feel less embarrassed --> less likely to change behavior for the next occurrence 4) Understand social rules to a degree but don't apply it to own social interactions. 5) Trouble learning new social knowledge. 6) Don't learn from negative experiences due to poor connections to amygdala 7) Lack of insight; lack of realistic self perceptions

Amygdala lesion

1) Klüver-Bucy syndrome: lack of fear manifested by a tendency to approach object that would normally elict a fear response 2) fail to acquire conditioned response NOTE: lesion to hippocampus results in the opposite result - don't remember that the conditioned stimulus will result an aversive reaction 3) can't recognize fear in human faces 4) Dissociation between intact explicit knowledge and impaired conditioned responses

Phineas Gage

1840's railway accident, tamping rod exploded upwards, frontal lobe damaged and when he recovered, but he was irritable, aggressive and had impulses which were much different from his normal personality 1823-1860; Field: neurobiology; Contributions: 1st person to have a frontal lobotomy (by accident), his accident gave information on the brain and which parts are involved with emotional reasoning

James-Lange Theory

1880s; William James and Carl Lange; theory of emotion; stimuli in environment cause physiological change in bodies, then emotion comes; ex. I see a bear which cause my heart to race, then I become afraid

Emotion

A physiological reaction to a stimulus and a behavioral response 1) Are distinct from moods because they often have identifiable triggers or objects 2) Can be either unlearned responses to stimuli or learned response that acquire emotional value 3) Can involve multiple types of appraisal processes 4) universal across cultures/people

Hemipariesis

AKA hemiplegia, paralysis on one side of the body due to dysfunction in one of the hemispheres

Theory of Mind (ToM)

Ability to infer the mental states of others, including their intentions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, perspectives, and desires; also known as mentalizing May be described as an innate "social sense" not fully developed until puberty

Explicit Emotional Learning

Ability to learn and remember info depends on hippocampal memory - amygdala modulates hippocampal activity; more active the amygdala the stronger the memory

Affective flexibility

Amygdala plays a role in processing the relevance of various stimuli depending on a person's current goals and motivation

Basic Emotions

Angry, disgust, happy, sad, surprised, afraid (fear); short lasting

Default Network

Areas of brain continue to engage in a number of psychological process during rest. Connects to medial temporal lobe memory system. Strongly activated with engagement in self-reflective thought and judgment assessments that depend on social and emotional content.

Ventromedial PFC in ToM

Associated with increased activity for self perceptions and perceptions of a similar person to self. Similarities are based on familiarity, closeness, emotional importance, warmth, competence, and knowledge. Key to predicting our state of mind; shows more activation when we consider the future, rather than shortsighted decisions Right VMPC - activates for the self perceptions Left VMPC - activates for the close other Both VMPC - activates for public other

Dorsomedial PFC in ToM

Associated with increased activity for self self perceptions and perceptions of a person opposite to self

OFC lesion

Associated with less inhibition, lower tolerance of frustration, increased aggression, immaturity, apathy, and emotional coldness; characterized by poor frustration tolerance, impaired goal-directed behavior, inappropriate social conduct, impaired autonomic response to emotional memories, and diminished regret; test normally on neuropsychological test - like Phineas Gage

Role of MPFC in ToM

Associated with the perception of self and others; important for reasoning about the intangible mental states of other beings. Involved in envisioning future self states; involved in daydreaming - relation to creativity

Huntington's disease

Basal ganglia disorder. Gradual change in mental attitude towards irritability, absentmindedness, loss of interest in activities. Movement abnormalities like clumsiness, balance issues, and restlessness. Excessive, involuntary movements. Due to changes in the inhibitory neurons of the indirect pathway. This leads to greater excitation of the thalamus and greater excitation of the motor cortex

Non-fluent aphasia

Basically Broca's aphasia; involves damage in the frontal part of the brain connected to motor cortex so that the patient struggles to produce and generate speech

Fluent aphasia

Basically Wernicke's aphasia; invovles damage to the posterior part of the brain struggle to plan speech; speech processing problems

Anomic Dementia

Can name other things and what describe what the object isn't but they can't think of the word; have a mental representation of the word but they think they don't know the word

Lesion to visuospatial sketchpad

Can result in difficulty in retaining and repeating a visuospatial sequence (STM damage)

Lesion to phonological loop

Can result in reduced auditory-verbal memory spans or poor rehearsal process

Basal Ganglia structures

Caudate and putamen = striatum, globus pallidus, substantia nigra, subthalamus nucleus Involved in the selection and initiation of actions

Basal ganglia lesion

Causes impairments in acquisition and retention of motor skills

Baddeley WM system

Central executive - integrates information from the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad; connects STM and LTM Phonological loop: deals with acoustically coded info in WM Visuospatial sketchpad: deals with storage in visual or visuospatial codes

Aphasia

Collective deficits in language comprehension and production that accompany neurological damage even though the articulatory mechanisms are intact

Complex Emotion

Combinations of basic emotions - longer lasting feelings that involved more neural systems

Arcuate Fasciclulus

Connects Broca's area and Wernicke's area Lesions to this connection piece leads to damage in understanding; Damage results in Conduction Aphasia

Insula in emotion

Connects with limbic areas, attention, memory, and cognition areas; associated with evaluative processing; associated with the blending of emotional and cognitive information; connected to disgust - leads to avoidance; a role in integrating affective and cognitive processes

Anterior cingulate gyrus

Correlates with sadness and anger Involved in rational cognitive functions like reward anticipation, decision making, empathy, motivation, and emotion. Also involved in error detection (activation of error-related negativity w/in ACC upon error occurrences) - monitors conflict.

Parkinson's Disease

Deficient dopamine production and maintenance in synapse; involves an absence or reduction in voluntary movements. Inhibits the output of the thalamus, which results in decreased activation of the motor cortex. There is increased inhibition in both direct and indirect pathways due to the cell death in DA producing cells in SN

Apraxia

Deficits in motor planning of articulations; patients knowledge about the intent of an action is disruptede

Mindblindness

Difficulty in representing the mental states of others. Found in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Wernicke's aphasia

Disorder of spoken and/or written language comprehension. Patients will be fluent with normal prosody and grammar, but the speech will be nonsensical. NOTE: The Wernicke's aphasia of the originally diagnosed patient included damage to region beyond Wernicke's area, meaning that all the language/speech comprehension issues are not necessarily due to just damage to Wernicke's area but also damage to the subcortical regions near this area like the posterior temporal lobe or underlying white matter that connects the temporal lobe language areas to other regions

Criteria of Basic Emotions

Distinctive universal signals, presence in other primates, distinctive universals in antecedent events, rapid onset, brief duration, automatic appraisal, unbidden occurrence, distinctive physiology

LTM declarative

Duration of storage - days to years; high capacity, conscious awareness

LTM nondeclarative

Duration of storage - days to years; high capacity, no conscious awareness

N400 response

ERP component related to linguistic processing that is a negative-polarity voltage peak in brain waves that reaches maximum amplitude at 400 ms after onset of word stimuli, specifically the last word in the sentence whether it is congruent (shows lower N400 response) or incongruent (shows bigger response); brain wave sensitive to SEMANTIC aspects of linguistic input; seen in all meaningful or potentially meaningful stimuli - shown in all words (may be for words that do or do not fit the sentence); height of amplitude is based on word frequency

Appraisal Theory

Emotional processing is dependent on an interaction between the stimulus properties and their interpretation; Emotion is caused by stimulus and its significance

Limbic System Theory

Emotional responses involve hypothalamus, anterior thalamus, cingulate gyrus, and hippocampus = Papez circuit; later additions amygdala and OFC - ALL form a rim around the corpus callosum

Motor cortex and mirror neurons

Evidence that there are mirror neurons in motor cortex for skill (physical) repetition as well as for language learning or emotion simulation - activation in the brain of the auditory or visual input Mirror neurons found in premotor cortex and parietal and temporal lobes. Mirror neurons are anticipatory in nature.

Declarative Memory

Explicit memory that involves facts (semantic memory) and events (episodic memory) Brain basis in medial temporal lobe, middle diencephalon, and neocortex

Theory of Mind Tasks

False - Belief Tasks: tests ability to take someone ele's point of view. Example: Sally comes into a room a places a marble in a bucket. Anne comes in without Sally's knowledge and moves the marble to the drawer. Where will Sally think the marble is when she reenters the room? Perspective Tasks - Two people sit on opposite sides of a hill where the sceneries are different. Does Jack see the same scene as Jill? Optical Illusion Tasks

Patient Tan

First patient given the diagnosis Broca's aphasia. Although the patient appeared to have sound language comprehension, Tan struggled with the production/forming of language. Tan had trouble speaking spontaneously and repeating phrases and word.

Amnesia

memory impairment that affects the sense

Patient H.M.

Had anterograde amnesia. When it came to implicit memory tasks (e.g. procedural), H.M. would be able to show improvement in the procedure although H.M. could not remember learning and practicing the skill prior to that time. Had bilateral removal of hippocampi and parahippocampal gyrus

Amygdala

Helps perceive and interpret emotion and sociability across a wide range of stimuli; active during the categorization of people into groups; associated with recognizing fear - appraisal process can reduce or inflate fear conditioning Also connects to feelings of sadness in addition to fear - leads to a withdrawal response Important for emotional memory but isn't critical for episodic memories although it may emphasize them

False memories

Imagination fills in the details. Memories aren't permanent but are reconstructions of the original event by environmental influences.

Lesioned hippocampus

Impairment in learning to associate visual cues to new info and new contexts (anterograde amnesia). Still can learn repeated practice tasks

Chronic stress

Impairs performance of the hippocampal memory system

Nondeclarative Memory

Implicit memory learned through actions, emotions, etc. Involves 1) procedural memory (skills in motor or cognitive processing), 2) perceptual representation system (perceptual priming), 3) classical conditioning, and 4) nonassociative learning (habituation, sensitization) Brain basis for 1) Basal ganglia and skeletal muscle 2) perceptual and association neocortex 3) cerebellum 4) reflex pathways

LTP in Memory

Important for higher activation (excitatory PSP) to create increased connectivity - creation and consolidation of memory

Anomia

Inability to find the words to label things in the world; not a deficit in knowledge; may know/recognize the word once shown it visually or told the word

Medial temporal lobe memory system

Includes hippocampus and surrounding rhinal and parahippocampal cortices. Also involves PFC, parietal cortex and subcortical structures. Key compoenent in organizing and consolidating LTM that is permanently stored in the neocortex Involved in memory functions but is not critical for general intelligence, cognitive control, language, perception, and motor function

Accessibility in Language

More frequently used words are accessed more quickly than less frequently used words

Brain plasticity for language

Infants do not have a genetic understanding of language but neural connections are pruned after being surrounded by language inputs to articulate certain phonemes more regularly than others. For adults, it becomes difficult to differentiate phonetic variation and becomes easier to differentiate between phonemes. Also harder for adults to learn a second language. Although brain is plastic, it may just take longer.

Modal model

Information must move through the systems of memory before it can be stored in LTM and retrieved accurately = serial processing Sensory memory --> (by paying attention) STM --> (by rehearsal) LTM --> retrieval At each stage info can be lost by either decay (Sensory and STM) or interference (LTM) ** Doesn't necessarily need to be true. Sensory memory moved directly to LTM

Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS)

Integrates nonverbal cues like body language, posture, facial expression, and eye gaze as well as mental states. STS is involved in the ability to monitor another person's attention (joint attention), e.g. checking other person's eye gaze and noting his/her head position. Therefore, it is important for interpreting eye gaze and its features like length and timing of gaze in relation to mental states. People with autism struggle to monitor another person's attention.

Hippocampus

Involved in LTM - storage (encoding) and retrieval, especially for episodic memories; binds the representations of items in their context - relational memory Essential for rapid consolidation of information

Wernicke's area

Involved in language comprehension

Broca's area

Involved in understanding of language morphology and other pieces of speech and language expression/production; directs muscle movements of speech

Working Memory

Involves the maintenance and manipulation of memory for a task

Broca's aphasia

Leads to poor production of sentences - lack function words or grammatical markers; Can be difficult to find the appropriate word or combination of words and then to execute the pronunciation as well; characterized by slow, effortful, and telegraphic speech. May also have comprehension deficits related to syntax. NOTE: The Broca's aphasia that Patient Tan had included damage to region beyond Broca's area, meaning that all the language/speech problems Tan had are not necessarily due to just damage to Broca's area but also damage to the subcortical regions near this area like the insular cortex and parts of the basal ganglia.

Implicit Emotional Learning

Learning is expressed indirectly through a behavioral or physiological response. Example: Fear conditioning: occurs when neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties when paired with an aversive event

Sensory Memory

Lifetime of ms-s; high capacity, no conscious awareness; iconic - visual, haptic - tactile, echoic - auditory

Retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory for events occurring before a lesion; lesion occurs in the medial temporal lobe

Lemmas

Lowest level elements of surface structures connecting word's syntactic properties, its semantic specification, and conceptual conditions; part of the formulation of speech production

Cortical regions involved in Theory of Mind

Medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, right temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus

Mental lexicon

Mental store of info about words that include semantic info (word meaning), syntactic info (combination of words to form sentences) and details of word forms (spelling and sounding pattern); brain storage for words and concepts

Difficulty in studying Social Cognition

Mind always changing topics and thoughts are fleeting, so when brain is scanned using fMRI, although the spatial resolution is good the temporal resolution is poor in comparison to how quickly the mind thinks, which may result in differing activation patterns than that of the original thought. Question: What is base activation? Can a base activation of the brain exist if we are always thinking of something? Depending on the experiment, the base may be more positive than neutral for instance. Brain is still "active" during "rest." --> Default network

Vocalization/gestures vs human language

NOT the same; vocalization can be inflexible, automatic, and independent from shared attention; gestures and language are connected though

Cannon-Bard Theory

Neocortex generates the emotional feelings and peripheral system carries out the emotional reaction

Facial expressions

Observable, automatic manifestations that correspond to a person's inner feelings; not socially learned - similar from culture to culture

Hippocampus Lesion

Patient able to acquire conditioned response (opposite of amygdala lesion) but unable to associate conditioned stimulus with the response. Hippocampus is necessary for the explicit knowledge of the emotional properties of a stimulus. Also results in anterograde amnesia (Patient HM).

Emotional regulation

Processes that influence that type of emotions we have, when we have them, and how we express and experience them; Done by changing the input (emotional stimulus: ex- avoidance, removal from situation) or the output (emotional response: ex - reappraisal)

Episodic Memory

Remembering experiences, contexts, emotions together. Type of declarative memory (explicit memory). This suffers in those with early Alzheimer's disease. Involves the medial temporal lobes

Semantic Memory

Remembering facts. Type of declarative memory (explicit memory). This suffers in those with semantic dementia. Involves the anterior temporal lobes

Lesions to lateral temporal and prefrontal regions

Result in impairments of conceptual priming and connections to ideas

Medial Temporal Lobe Memory System lesion

Results in retrograde amnesia

STM/WM

Seconds to minutes in storage; limited capacity (George Miller: 7 +- 2 items); consciously aware; STM - memory maintenance while WM - memory maintenance and manipulation

PFC in memory

Serves a specific role in active maintenance of WM

Temporoparietal Junction in ToM

Shows enhanced activation for differential activity in relation to person perception; Shows increased activity when responding to info on mental state rather than social background or life event. Involved in the reasoning for the mental states of others; supports engagement for mentalizing and reorienting attention. Helps shift attention to novel stimuli.

Agrammatic aphasia

Similar to Broca's aphasia, but patient will retain over-learned grammatical phrases

Phoneme

Smallest unit of sound that makes a difference to meaning

Feeling

Subjective experience of the emotion; has a different neural system from emotion

Patient S.P.

Suffered from bilateral amygdala lesions, which impaired the perception of emotionally salient events. S.P. showed no skin conductance response to conditioned stimuli - didn't learn fear conditioning (conditioned response) when presented with the conditioned stimulus.

Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC)

Supports appropriate social behavior; helps choose correct behaviors through reversal learning; associated with rational decision making Humans can have an unrealistically positive view of self. The OFC is important for spontaneous, accurate self-perceptions.

Prosody

Syllable stress; rate of speech

P600 response

Syntactic positive shift occurring 600 ms after onset of words that are incongruous with expected syntactic structures and grammatical errors

High Road and Low Road

Two emotional systems that work in parallel: 1 - for our emotional response, 2 - to generate the conscious feeling High road involves slow processing through an analyzation by the cortex before response thalamus --> cortex --> amygdala Low road involves faster processing, from thalamus to emotional response. thalamus --> amygdala

Communication

Used to influence behavior of others by changing what they know, think, believe or desire; intentional; can be in the form of gestures or vocalizations

OFC role in emotion

Uses experiences to rapidly evaluate possible behavioral responses and their likelihood for reward in certain situations; emotion is the motivator for seeking reward and avoiding punishment More active when viewing expressive angry faces Connects to anger; helps to indicate social violations

Visual reconstruction

Using an encoding model to decode brain activity to natural images. Takes orientation and spatial information from neuronal firings and forms an activation map by matching the voxel input and response to the image seen

Perisylvian Cortex

an area on the lateral wall of the left dominant hemisphere for language that includes the major centers and pathways for language reception and production; Surrounding regions include Broca's area, Wernicke's area, sylvian fissure, superior temporal gyrus, angular gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, suppramarginal gyrus, and inferior temporal cortex

Brain Machine interface

device that uses the interpretation of neuronal signals to perform desired operations with a mechanical device outside the body signals recorded from neurons or EEG can be used to move a prosthetic arm; conducted after gathering data from population vectors - connecting the signal pattern to the action

Major stages of learning and memory

encoding [acquisition and consolidation], storage, retrieval

Acute stress

facilitates memory

Anterograde amnesia

loss of memory for events occurring after the lesion (like HM); inability to learn new things

Fear and Eye whitening

more amygdala response to eye whites than black parts; amygdala activation correlates with our feeling of fear and not our knowledge of fear

Asymmetrical responses to emotion

natural left gaze bias (to the right side of the face) - faster/first to show emotional response

Morpheme

smallest meaningful unit of language; representational unit, e.g. pre-, -er, -ed