2. Cognitive Neuroscience z What do neurons have to do with cognition? z How can neurons do complex things? z How do we know how the brain works? z What do different areas of the brain do? z Is each part of the brain specialized to do one specific thing?

3. About Neurons z The nervous system is made up of neurons in the brain, spinal cord, and throughout the body. z Every perception, thought, emotion, and action is related to activity in the nervous system.

4. A Typical Neuron

5. Two Neurons Chatting

6. How Neurons Do Complex Things z Excitation z Inhibition z Convergence z LOTS of neurons (about 180 billion) z Neural circuits z Distributed processing

8. Studying the Brain Brain Imaging ä fMRI - magnetic resonance ä PET - radioactive emissions

10. Studying the Brain z Single-Unit Recording z Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) z Neuropsychology ä Testing ä Dissociations ä Autopsy

12. Brain Structures z Cerebral Cortex ä Occipital Lobes ä Parietal Lobes ä Frontal Lobes ä Temporal Lobes

13. Lobes of the Cerebrum

14. The Two Hemispheres z Similar, but not identical in structure or function z Corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres z Right hemisphere controls left side of body, and vice versa

15. Left Brain-Right Brain z Left Hemisphere specialized for sequential/analytical processing z Right Hemisphere specialized for simultaneous/holistic processing z True for almost all right-handers and many left-handers.

16. Subcortical Areas

17. Localization vs. Distributed Processing z Hubel and Wiesel: feature detectors in visual cortex z Prosopagnosia and the Inferotemporal Cortex z Distributed coding