… [People] occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

- Sir Winston Churchill

Setting the stage for Cognitive Neuroscience

Important events in history:• Scientific revolution• Dualism v. Monism• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea• The Golden Age of Neuropsychology• Ramon y Cajal• Antecedents of modern era

Scientific Revolution

Scholasticism vs. Empiricismauthority vs. direct observation of the

phenomena Mechanism vs. Animism Falsifiability Precision, mathematical tools Openness, peer-review Skepticism Parsimony

Dualism vs. Monistic Materialism

• Dualism defined• Problems with Cartesian dualism

- interaction?- simplicity?

• de la Mettrie and Hobbes 1700’s

Monistic Materialists

So, if nearly every neuroscientist has given uppursuing dualist accounts, why is the idea sopersistent?

Is it persistent?

EcclesPenroseSheldrakevision

Predicate dualismProperty dualismSubstance dualism(InteractionismEpiphenomenalismPsychophysical parallelism)

Assignment:Find on-line one interesting argument againstMind-Brain identity to present.

Nagel's (1986) Position

"The subjective features of conscious mental processes... cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlies appearances... mental states - however objective their content - must be capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in mind at all."

Brief History of Localizing Mind Within the Human Body

Four events in the 19th Century paved the way

• Mind-brain identity evidence- phrenology- brain damaged patients- Broca, Alzheimer, Wernicke

• Darwin’s theory of evolution

Ventricular Doctrine:

Localization of mental faculties to the ventricles

Ventricular Doctrine:

Localization of mental faculties to the ventricles

First Ventricle: Integration of sensory information; Fantasy & Imagination.

Ventricular Doctrine:

Localization of mental faculties to the ventricles

First Ventricle: Integration of sensory information; Fantasy & Imagination.

Second Ventricle: Cognitive processes – reasoning; judgement

Ventricular Doctrine:

Localization of mental faculties to the ventricles

First Ventricle: Integration of sensory information; Fantasy & Imagination.

Second Ventricle: Cognitive processes – reasoning; judgement

Third Ventricle: Memory

Franz Joseph Gall & J. C. Spurzheim – localization of different psychological functions to different regions of the cerebral cortex (late 1700’s – early 1800’s)

Franz Joseph Gall & J. C. Spurzheim – localization of different psychological functions to different regions of the cerebral cortex (late 1700’s – early 1800’s)

- phrenology

Understanding the Relationship Between Brain and Behavior

The brain hypothesis: functional specialization or distribution?

1810

Brain Hypothesis

Flourens (1794-1867)

• Mass action (Lashley, 1930s) and aggregate field theories

Darwin’s theory of evolution

Any trait shows variation in a population Within an environment, some varieties are

favored (or selected) such that they have more offspring compared to other varieties

If any of the variation is inherited, then the selected variant will spread through the population

Novelty of Darwin’s idea

Importance of geological time No purpose, goal Makes plausible human integration with

the rest of nature Makes plausible comparative studies Integrates with modern genetics Processes can be adaptive

So what does this have to do with brains and minds?

FUNCTIONAL DESIGN!

Is the brain & therefore the mind functionally organized? Yes. The brain is a physical system that transforms other physical systems in very specific ways.

Four events in the 19th Century paved the way

Mind-brain identity evidence- phrenology

- brain damaged patients- Broca, Alzheimer, Wernicke

Darwin’s theory of evolution Wilhelm Wundt founds first laboratory

in Leipzig 1879s Ramon y Cajal’s conclusions

Neuron Hypothesis

Golgi

Ramon y Cajal

• Functional segregation begins at the neuronal (cellular) level.

TOP TEN LIST: Reasons for avoiding brain-mind identity theory

10. It is repugnant to believe that we are only a relatively unimpressive, but pretty fancy piece of meat.

9. It is a well known fact that we only use 10% of our brain, so it is more or less useless.

8. Almost our whole cultural heritage (including mommy and daddy) tell us that we are actually a litte spirit only temporarily residing on this comparatively rotten planet.

7. When we have a thought about a unicorn, it is not located in a specific location or time and is about something that doesn’t exist; our brain events occur in a specific location and time and definitely exist.

6. If you take it seriously you must learn about things like molecular genetics, neurophysiology, and other biophysical things that seemed too hard in undergraduate school.

5. Neuroscientists do not make much money (and their books are not popular).

4. Reductionism is politically incorrect (and always has been).

3. Didn’t the antiphrenologists and Karl Lashley and a host of others show that brain (or cortical) organization was irrelevant for psychology?

2. This whole business isn’t “really” psychology or neuroscience, but rather part of somebody else’s program - eventually they will figure it out and tell us the answer.

1. If you really believe it, you would have to hang around with people like Kolb, Whishaw, Prusky, or Sutherland.