PSY 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Excitatory Postsynaptic Potential
Document Summary
Relies on behavior and measures of behavior to infer mental processes. Study of the neural mechanisms underlying mental processes. Some people use cognition to better understand the brain. Helped solve some long-standing debates in the field of cognitive psychology. Cognitive neuroscience approach measures what"s going on inside the brain. Stimulus > cognitive and emotional processing > response. Faster reaction times on threat congruent trials should reflect an attentional bias to threat. Typical research participants don"t show reaction time bias to threat in this task. Measure activation in the brain by putting electrodes on the surface of the head. Safe and painless, can do it multiple times, can report from almost everybody. No delay in transmission, gives excellent temporal resolution, very small time scale, superior aspect of eeg compared to other neuroscience techniques. Consistent patterns of eeg that are triggered by a stimulus and are embedded in the overall eeg.
