GS140023  Cognitive Neuroscience I

Sereno, Anne. Three semester hours. Spring, odd years. Prerequisite: prior exposure to neuroscience and cognitive psychology, or consent of the instructor.

The course will begin with a brief review of the history of our understanding of mental processes. The course will then cover some basic concepts of brain organization and various methods used in cognitive neuroscience. The course will cover a number of cognitive processes including the perception of color, motion, objects, and faces, as well as higher order cognitive processes including aspects of multisensory integration, attention and inattention. A primary goal of cognitive neuroscience is to bridge the gaps between cognitive science, systems neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and cellular neuroscience. The selected topics will illustrate examples where these bridges are being made. Reading assignments will assist in the acquisition of the basics of perception, human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. These readings will also be used to expose students to a number of different techniques used in Cognitive Neuroscience. Finally, some of the readings will aim to foster an understanding of how disruption of these functions are related to neurological, psychopathological, and developmental disorders with the ultimate goal of showing how a better understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms of these cognitive functions may be useful in diagnosis or treatment.