PSYC 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Jerry Fodor, Frontal Lobe, Epiphenomenalism
16 May 2018
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Lecture 003 - 01/16/2018
• The mind & brain and cognitive neuroscience
• Cognitive neuroscience: the field of psychology that examines the brain
mechanism that gives rise to mental functions
o Have to look at cognition from multiple levels of analysis
• Levels of analysis
o Chemical stimulated > neuron activated > brain area > recover past
experience > memory (mental experience) > cause one to engage in act
of eating
Recap from last class:
• Early cogsci: information theory
o We actively select info from our perceptual world, info is processed as a
means to reduce uncertainty, processing info has its limits
• 2 processing models
o Broadbent model of attention
o Waugh & Norman model of memory
• Gibson & Neisser ecological approach: study how we think in the real world
• Metacognition
This class:
• 2 broad views of mind-brain link
o One that supports functional specialization
o One that opposes functional specialization
• 4 classic approach to understanding mind brain link:
o Interactionism
o Epiphenomenalism
o Parallelism
o Isomorphism
• Ways to study brain using cognitive neuroscience methods
• Brain is organized into lobes
o Frontal lobes on front
o Parietal lobes on top
o Occipital lobes at back
o Temporal lobes by ears
• Neural representation: everything we experience is because of the computations
performed by neurons
o Aka: our experiences are due to representations in our nervous system
• Functional specialization: Jerry Fodor modularity of mind hypothesis (1983)
o The brain is composed of modules
o Modules perform a very limited number of tasks
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o Modules are inborn compartments (updated rationalist view)
• Modules are dedicated input systems needed for specific mental tasks
• A module will process info at a lower level
o Ie: module to detect lines/ color or orientation
• He thought they were localized in particular brain areas, they were domain
specific and that they work quickly and in a mandatory manner
o The idea of modules opposes the view that the brain is a general purpose
device
• Kind of a newer version of phrenology
o Phrenology = parts of the brain correspond to mental functions and
personality characteristics (Gall and Spurzheim in 1700) - well used
functions cause the related brain area to grow and protrude Vs. not used
function will cause the area to shrink
• They thought they could use bumps and dents on the skull to measure mental
strength and weaknesses
• Problems with phrenology: assumption that size matters, also method for
localizing function was very speculative and it justified discrimination
o European scientists would use this to justify the superiority of white races
• Opposition to functional specialization, led by Franz (1912), he studied the effect
of ablation on the change of behavior
o Tested the following hypothesis: if brains functions are localized then
destroying one area should be evident in very specific behavior
impairment (regardless of size damage)
• Franz and his student Lashley studied the effects of the degree & location of
frontal lobe damage in rats on maze memory
o They found small brain lesions didn’t really impair performance whereas
large lesions did so concluded they depended on amount of brain damage
• Overall idea: learning is directly proportional to the extent of brain damage but
not the location of the damage
• “Mental processes are due to activity of the brain as a whole, not as functional
parts”
• Lashley proposed 2 laws:
o Law of mass action: learning & memory depend on total mass of brain
tissue remaining
o Law of equipotentiality: any part of the brain can do the job of any other
part of the brain even if certain brain areas may become specialized to
perform functions (some acceptance of specialization)
• Current research & functional specialization
• Visual selective areas: parahippocampal place area: active when recognizing or
even thinking about places (spatial layouts)
• Motor selective areas: supplementary motor cortex: active when performing or
imagining motor movements
• This worked even with people in a vegetative state!
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
This class: 2 broad views of mind-brain link, one that supports functional specialization, one that opposes functional specialization, 4 classic approach to understanding mind brain link: If the mind & brain are different then: how can an immaterial entity cause change in a physical element, how can a physical elements cause changes in immaterial mind. Parallelism: the mind & the brain are 2 aspects of the same reality, another form of dualism, every event in the mind has a corresponding event in the brain, no explanation for this parallel structure. Eeg: the brain produces electrical activity when active so eeg can measure this electrical activity and tells us how brain is functioning in a certain time period. It gives us erp (event related potentials: eeg provide info about activity in the brain at certain time periods in response to stimuli.
