CO SCI 136 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Clive Wearing, Parietal Lobe, Cortical Blindness
Document Summary
Cognitive neuropsychology is the study of cognitive impairments following a brain injury. It looks at individual cases to determine what processes have been disrupted to develop an understanding of normal cognitive processing. It looks at case studies of patients with brain lesions, using brain scans and uses this information to understand normal cognitive ability. It uses a variety of neuropsychological tests to understand the patient"s impairment. Origins: aristotle: source of cognition of thoughts and feelings being in the heart. Bigger the brain = higher the intellect: plato: tri-partite soul = soul is divided into 3 parts. Associations = clusters of abilities or tasks that patients can"t do. Dissociation = a patient who is impaired at one task but normal at another. Double dissociation = 2 or more patients with opposing deficits. Conclude that 2 functions involve separable processes: modularity. Cognitive processes can be reduced to separable modules. Multiple modules interact to result in a particular function/behaviour.