Chapter 2: Cognition and the Brain: Basic Principles

Electrical potential that travels down a neuron’s axon.

Part of the neuron that transmits signals from the cell body to the synapse at the end of the axon.

Techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) that result in images of the brain that represent brain activity. In cognitive psychology, activity is measured in response to specific cognitive tasks.

A condition associated with damage to Broca’s area, in the frontal lobe, characterized by difficulty in using speech to express thoughts, but with a remaining facility for understanding speech.

An area in the frontal lobe associated with the production of language. Damage to this area causes Broca’s aphasia.

Part of a cell that contains mechanisms that keep the cell alive. In some neurons, the cell body and the dendrites associated with it receive information from other neurons.

The 3–mm–thick outer layer of the brain that contains the mechanisms responsible for higher mental functions such as perception, language, thinking, and problem solving

Field involved in studying the neural basis of cognition.

Structures that branch out from the cell body to receive electrical signals from other neurons

Representation of an object or experience by the pattern of firing of a number of neurons.

Processing that involves a number of different areas of the brain

An electrical potential, recorded with disc electrodes on a person’s scalp, that reflects the response of many thousands of neurons near the electrode that fire together. The ERP consists of a number of waves that occur at different delays after a stimulus is presented and that can be linked to different functions. For example, the N400 wave occurs in response to a sentence that contains a word that doesn’t fit the meaning of the sentence.

An area in the temporal cortex that is activated by pictures of bodies and parts of bodies, but not by faces or other objects.

Neurons that respond to specific visual features, such as orientation, size, or the more complex features that make up environmental stimuli.

The lobe in the front of the brain that serves higher functions such as language, thought, memory, and motor functioning.