Briefly discuss two findings by which the cognitive neurosciences have helped to challenge purely cognitive models
Lazarus model was challenged by LeDouxs neurological data
Model by Atkinson & Shiffrin was challenged by Hans Markotwitsch et al 1999 with patient with tumor in left angular gyrus after his tumor removal
describe an example of a study that supports the concept of a visual word form area in the brain. where is this located?
cohen et al compared split brain and control group in spatial and temporal characterization of an initial stage of reading
found_ activation in the left ventral visual path
presentation of box with either word or checkers on either left or right side of the box to present to either hemifield
Describe the dual pathway model and explain how its architecture applies to radiology (5P):
The model suggests that:
Selective Pathway
- Often requires attention
- Binds features and recognizes objects
- Capacity-limited, represented as a 'bottleneck'.
- Controlled by guidance mechanisms:
o Prioritizes likely target items for feature binding and object recognition
o Classic guidance prefers items with basic target features (e.g., color)
Nonselective Pathway
- Not capacity limited
- Extracts global statistics from the entire scene
- Enables a certain amount of semantic processing
- Does not support precise object recognition à but e.g. scene categorization
- Scene guidance involves:
o Semantic elements
o Episodic elements
Unlike English, Russian makes an obligatory distinction between lighter blues (‘‘goluboy’’) and darker blues (‘‘siniy’’). Winawer et al. (2007) found that Russian (but not English) speakers are faster to discriminate two colors when they fall into different linguistic categories than when they were from the same linguistic category. Name and describe the theory behind this study and outline one other example (from a language that you know) that could be cited in support of this theory.
Theory Behind the Study: Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
- theory posits: structure of a language affects its speakers' cognition and perception of the world
- Encoding of meaning in language constrained by shared non-linuistic experience (culture, norms)
o Meaning is tied to culture à influenced by experiences that people have living & using the languages
o Meanings diverge across languages à words cannot be mapped directly onto one another across languages
- Universalist view: Biology is the same so development of color terminology shares universal constraints
- Relativist view: Cross-linguistic variability of color terms suggests a more culture-specific phenomenon
Discuss three advantages & three challenges of the cognitive neurosciences compared to traditional cognitive psychology
Advantages:
- double dissociation
- it adds to the biological understanding of abnormal behavior à can help with pharmacological treatments
- it makes assessments independent of introspection & self report
Challenges:
- costs
- animal testing
- only correlates no causality
Why are the following two positions not a solution for the mind-body problem:
1. Qualia are an epiphenomenon
2. Phenomenal consciousness as societal & cultural phenomenon
1 - This statement says that qualia are a secondary phenomenon that is produced in the process of another primary phenomenon —> this contradicts the law of Conservation of energy
2 - People that grow up in isolation, they can see color and feel pain
It is not possible to pinpoint a point of development during socialization for pain or seeing colors
If they are societal phenomena:
—> how do culture & society influence a person so that they develop qualia?
—> could only be influenced via sensory information à then you are back to arguing on a neuronal level
Describe a thought experiment that illustrates the mind-body problem
Could be: imagining what it is like to be a bat à soaring through the air, imagining what it feels like to communicate via ultrasound
Explain what makes phenomenal consciousness a problem from a scientific view compared to access consciousness
- Operationalization
- Neuronal implementation
- Evolutionary function
e.g. On the example pain
1. What inherent contradiction does Pauen see in the intuitive/Singerschen term of free will? What solution does he propose?
a. Contradiction = if freedom is conscious self-determination of an individual it cannot be endangered by the self that is determining
b. Solution = Freedom should be attached to person
c. A decision is based on free will if it
i. Is derived from the personal factors of this person (beliefs etc.)
ii. Could be decided differently if it contradicted personal factors
1. How would Pauen & how would Singer differentiate between responsibility or not being responsible? When or why is punishment acceptable?
a. Pauen says that responsible is if the person acted out of conscious self-determination and it is derived from personal factors of this person (beliefs, motives). Not responsible if the act is not based on conscious personal factors à punishment is acceptable when is modifies the personal factors!
b. Singer says responsible is the person that acted. That is the mere criteria. Punishment protects society.
In which ways does expectation affect vision?
- contextual priors make objects in background appear bigger
- we expect light to shine from above
- we expect objects standing in shade to be darker than they are
- cueing like telling someone they are going to be presented with a letter: they recognize letter
Why is making predictions important?
è Reasons for this energy consuming task:
o information can be incomplete/noisy/ambiguous
o lets us predict better/earlier/faster for evolutionary advantage
o lets us build internal models to plan actions
Describe the proactive brain hypothesis
- brain actively uses past experiences to anticipate and predict future events rather than passively reacting to stimuli
- associations: brain forms links between related information based on previous events
- analogies: brain uses similarities between new stimuli and stored memory representations to generate predictions
- predictions: help in understanding & responding to new situations efficiently
- key brain areas: medial temporal lobe, lateral and medial prefrontal cortex, various sensory cortices for predictions
- goal: enhancing immediate decision-making, longer term planning, learning through continuous prediction generation
3 reasons why we would need computational models?
o Can be used as computationally explicit hypotheses à no ambiguity!
o Can be used to make predictions on new inputs à they are falsifiable
o often critiqued to be too complex & black box but: Complex systems require complex hypotheses in comparison to verbal models
- What is an example of where neural networks fail as models of the human visual system
o Adversarial examples are inputs to a neural network that have been intentionally perturbed in a subtle way to cause the network to make a mistake
When noise is added to pictures
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