What is Cognition?

• Middle English cognicion, from Anglo-French, from Latin cognition-,

cognitio, from cognoscere to become acquainted with, know,

from co- + gnoscere to come to know

• The act or process of knowing; perception.

• the product of such a process; something thus known, perceived,

• Faculty for processing information

• Intellectual or mental process whereby an organism become aware of

or obtain knowledge (MeSH)

• A conscious intellectual act , mental process of knowing learning,

thinking, judging

What is Cognition?

Part of speech: noun

Definition: understanding

Synonyms:

– acknowledgment, apprehension, attention, awareness,  

cognizance,  comprehension, discernment,  insight

intelligence,  knowledge , mind,  need, 

note, notice, observance, observation,  perception,

percipience, reasoning, recognition,  regard

Antonyms: ignorance, unawareness

Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition

Copyright © 2008 by the Philip Lief Group. 

Spectrum of Cognition

Nano

Meta

Para

Macro

Micro

Cognitive Science

Philosophy : Mind behind Mind

Psychology : MindNeuroscience: Brain

Three States of Cognition

Evolution & Cognition

“Cognition is survival instinct a consequence of

carefully crafted modules dedicated to solving

specific evolutionary problems”

Evolutionary Cognitive Science

Conditioned taste aversion

Garcia discovered that animals learned to avoid novel food products that made them ill in as little as one learning conditioning trial, something that had not been demonstrated with any other stimulus class previously.

Prepared learning

Seligman demonstrated a phenomenon in which it is easier to make associations between stimuli that possess a biological predisposition to be conditioned because of a role these stimuli played in an organism’s evolutionary history

What is the seat of Cognition?

•Trepanning done in

South America over

10,000 years

•To let the bad spirit out

that tormented the

brains

Surgical Papyrus

•Surgical Papyrus the

oldest medical writing

1600 BC the first known

descriptions of cranial

sutures, the external

brain surface, brain

liquor (CSF) and

intracranial pulsation

•Head and spine trauma

and their effect

Alcmaeon of Croton (500 BC)

•Brain as the site of sensation

•Optic nerve as hollow carried the information to the brain where sensory modalities had its own localization

•human soul was immortal and partook of the divine nature, because like the heavenly bodies it contained in itself a principle of motion

Brain vs. Heart

Hippocrates 460-377 BC

“Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and

jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, grieves and tears”.

Aristotle 384-322 B.C

“the heart as the organ of thinking, of perception and feelings,”

“brain could cool the passion of heart”

Galen 130-200 AD

Brain as hollow organ : Nemesius (circa 320),

Leonardo Da Vinci April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564 CE)

Phrenology 1806

Lobar Localization

Paul Broca 1868

Brodmann’s area

Emotion Localization

Modern Phrenology

Imaging of brain CT Scan

MRI Brain

fMRI

PET scan

Descartes, Brain and Mind

(1596-1650)

Bioelectricity

(1737-1798)

Discovery of Neuron

Ramony Cajal and Camillo Golgi 1906 Noble

Nerve Cell

Study of Cognitive Neural Science

1. Single cell recording of behaving animal

2. Cellular study of brain architecture

3. Cognitive genetics

4. Study of behavior of patient with specific lesion the brain

5. Imaging of brain of normal and abnormal

6. Computer modeling

Objectives

To know

1. Organization of Nervous system

2. Nerve signal processing

3. Sensory processing : Physical, chemical, EM

4. Motor control mechanism voluntary and involuntary

5. Consciousness, sleep, emotion reproduction

6. Cognitive function: Language, Memory…

7. Development of NS and Genetics

8. Cognitive Neurophilosophy

9. Recent development

1 Functional Organization of NS

1 Structural Organization of NS

2 Nerve signal processing

3. Sensory Signal Processing

Laws of specific sense energies – Muller 1826

“Each nerve fiber is activated primarily by a certain type of stimulus

and each makes specific connections to structures in the central

nervous system whose activity gives rise to specific sensations”

4. Motor Control

VoluntaryInvoluntary

5. Consciousness, Sleep, Emotion Reproduction

6. Higher Cognitive Functions: Language, Memory

7. Brain Development and Genetics

8 Cognitive Neurophilosophy

9. Recent advances

Selected Reading