Master 2020/2021

Cognitive Neuroscience

Type: Elective course (Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: From Neuron to Cognition)

Area of studies: Psychology

Delivered by: School of Psychology

Where: Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience

When: 2 year, 1, 2 module

Mode of studies: distance learning

Instructors: Matteo Feurra

Master’s programme: Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: From Neuron to Cognition

Language: English

ECTS credits: 4

Contact hours: 48

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course aims to introduce the students to neural processes that support high order functions. This course aims to introduce and discuss a number of commonly used methods and tools of cognitive neuroscience. We will explore the neural principles governing various aspects of behavior, vision, sensory-motor control, learning, and memory. Specific topics that will be covered include perception, attention, cognition, language and mirror neurons mechanism. The course is primarily aimed at masters graduate students interested in learning the neural basis of human cognition.

Learning Objectives

• Know about neurobiological basis of cognition, its foundation and connections to other branches of knowledge.
• Know about fundamental theory about neural processes that underlay high order cognitive functions.
• Know about recent progress in the field of cognitive neuroscience.
• Apply research methods in neuroscience applicable to the fields.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• - The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of perception in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of perception cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of perception in cognitive neuroscience.
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of attention in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of attention cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of attention in cognitive neuroscience.
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of memory in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of memory cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of memory in cognitive neuroscience.
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of language in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of language cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of language in cognitive neuroscience.
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of emotions in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of emotions cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of emotions in cognitive neuroscience..
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of motor control in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of motor control cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of motor control in cognitive neuroscience.
• The student is able to independently become acquainted with new methods of music processes in cognitive neuroscience. -The student is able to improve and develop intelligent and cultural level, to build track of professional development and career based on the theories of music processes cognitive neuroscience. - The student is able to conduct professional (including research) activity in international environment regarding main concepts of music processes in cognitive neuroscience.

Course Contents

• Perception
  • Anatomy of the visual system: Retina and Chiasm • Visual cortex: Dorsal and Ventral stream • Bottom up processing of object recognition • Top-down processing of object recognition • Physical characteristics of a visual stimulus: Spatial Frequencies • Visual perception deficits: Visual Agnosia • Object recognition and context valence • Face recognition
• Attention
  • What is attention? • Selective attention : Dichotic listening, Stroop test, Visual Search • Divided attention • Sustained attention • Neural correlates of attention: Orienting attention network, Executive attention network, Frontal eye Field, Pulvinar Nucleus, Superior Colliculus • Attention impairments in every day life: attentional blindness • Attention impairments in patients: blindsight and neglect • Consciousness
• Memory
  • The Atkinson & Shiffrin's model • The Alan Baddeley Model • Sensory register • Working Memory :Encoding, Short-term memory, Rehearsal • Long Term Memory: Explicit and Implicit Memory (Declarative and Procedural memory), episodic memory, semantic memory, Skill Learning, Priming, Conditioning. • Deep and shallow episodic encoding • Consolidation processing • Neural Correlates of memory • Classical memory processes effects • Long-term potentiation and long-term depression at a gross level and at a cellular level • Gross level: Perceptual learning, Classical Conditioning, Instrumental Conditioning, Relational learning • Role of Dopamine • Role of Hippocampus • Patient HM and his memory disorder. • Interfering transiently with brain function (TMS and rTMS) • The Baddeley “episodic buffer” model • The H.E.R.A. model • Anterograde and Retrograde Amnesia.
• Language
  • Language Comphrension • Language Production • Relevance of context and top-down processing in language comphrension • Digressions on the relationship between language and culture: Pragmatics, Linguistic relativity • Relationship between sensory processing and language • Hebbian Cell Assembly • Timing of linguistic brain processes • Serial model • Comphrension of written text • Different types of Aphasia • Language production: speaking, writing • Word learning processes • Non-verbal communication: Embodied Cognition • Neuroanatomy of Broca aphasia. • Dislexia • Language fluency and age of second language acquisition. • Problems in studying spoken language understanding • Use of MMN in neurolinguistic studies • TMS studies of action verbs • Differences for bilingual people
• Emotions
  • What is emotion? • Methods to study physiological changes. • Relationship between physiological changes and Six basic emotions • Reasoning • Neurobiology of emotions: amygdala, hypothalamus, Limbic System, Brainstem • Emotion regulation
• Motor Control
  • Movement classification • Movement control • Motor pathways • Motor brain regions • Motor diseases • The mirror-neuron system in monkey • Relation between their visual and motor properties • Time-course of human mirror-effect • The mirror-neuron system in humans: anatomy • Properties • Mirror System and Autism • Cortico-cortical connectivity of motor imagery and action observation Plasticity of motor and sensory brain maps
• Neuroscience of music
  • Auditory-motor interaction • Music production • Timing • Music perception • Music evoked emotions

Assessment Elements

• Class topic-test online by Kahoo/Survey Monkey
  Ten-point grade Criteria 0 – not accepted Less 5%, or the test was not taken 1 – very bad Not less than 5, but less than 15% 2 – bad Not less than 15, but less than 25% 3 – no pass Not less than 25, but less than 35% 4 – pass Not less than 35, but less than 45% 5 – highly pass Not less than 45, but less than 55% 6 – good Not less than 55, but less than 65% 7 – very good Not less than 65, but less than 75% 8 – almost excellent Not less than 75, but less than 85% 9 – excellent Not less than 85, but less than 95% 10 – perfect Not less than 95% and greater ---------Grading Scale Five-point Grading Scale 1 - very bad 2 – bad 3 – no pass Unsatisfactory – 2 FAIL 4 – pass 5 – highly pass Satisfactory – 3 PASS 6 – good 7 – very good Good – 4 8 – almost excellent 9 – excellent 10 – perfect Excellent – 5
• FInal exam is a multi-choice questions + short essay online by Kahoo/Survey Monkey
  Final exam essay questions (contents) examples and Final exam: sample of "true or false" questions: Decide whether the statement is true or false: 1. Short-term memory is a sub-component of long term memory 2. Broca area is involved in comprehension processes 3. Action observation activate mirror neurons of the primary motor cortex 4. Neglect is an attentional deficit 6. Prosopagnosia is a memory deficit 1. Anatomy of the visual system: Retina and Chiasm 2. Visual cortex: Dorsal and Ventral stream 3. Bottom up processing of object recognition 4. Top-down processing of object recognition 5. Visual perception deficits: Visual Agnosia and prosopagnosia 6. Object recognition and context valence 7. Face recognition 8. Selective attention: Dichotic listening, Stroop test, Visual Search 9. Divided attention 10. Sustained attention 11. Neural correlates of attention: Orienting attention network, Executive attention network, Frontal eye Field, Pulvinar Nucleus, Superior Colliculus 12 Attention impairments in every day life: inattentional blindness 13. Attention impairments in patients: blindsight and neglect 14. The Atkinson & Shiffrin's model 15. The Alan Baddeley Model 16. Working Memory : Encoding, Short-term memory, Rehearsal 17. Long Term Memory: Explicit and Implicit Memory (Declarative and Procedural memory), episodic memory, semantic memory, Skill Learning, Priming, Conditioning. 18. Deep and shallow episodic encoding 19. Neural Correlates of memory 20. Classical memory processes effects (primacy and recency effect) 21 Long-term potentiation and long-term depression at a gross level and at a cellular level 22. Patient HM and his memory disorder. 23. Interfering transiently with brain function (TMS and rTMS) 24. The Baddeley “episodicbuffer” model 25. The H.E.R.A. model 26. Anterograde and Retrograde Amnesia. 27. Language Comphrension 28. Language Production 29. Timing of linguistic brain processes 30. Different types of Aphasia 31. Non-verbal communication: Embodied Cognition 32. Neuroanatomy of Broca aphasia. 33. TMS studies of action verbs 34. Differences for bilingual people 35. The mirror-neuron system in monkey 36. The mirror-neuron system in humans: anatomy 37. Mirror System and Autism 38. Cortico-cortical connectivity of motor imagery and action observation 39. Mirror therapy(MT) in neurorehabilitation 40. Clinical use of MT 41. Physiological mechanisms of MT 42. Music production 43. Timing in music
• Research proposal/online Coursera
  As a homework students should choose one of the tasks described above.  Media Critique. Students will find a news article of 500 words or more that reports on a neuroscientific finding relevant for course topic. Based on the news article (published since 1995) and the original journal article on which it is based, students are to prepare a 2-4 page (double-spaced) critique of the news article’s claims and assess the degree to which it correctly represents the research finding and whether it might mislead the public’s understanding of neuroscience and behavior.  Commentary. Students will write down a Commentary paper on a recent original research published in the Cognitive Neuroscience field. Commentary is a critical paper that aim to highlight positive and negative aspect of the published research.  Paper presentation. Students will present a paper of significance.  Coursera. Students will take the online Coursera “Philosophy and the Sciences: Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive
• Evaluation of participation in lectures and seminars (i.e. discussions)
  Exception is due to medical reasons with presentation of medical certificate.

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (2 module)
  0.18Gtest+0.24*Gclass+0.18*Gresearch+0.4Gexam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Baldauf, D., & Desimone, R. (2014). Neural Mechanisms of Object-Based Attention. Science, 344(6182), 424–427. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1247003
• Bar, M., Kassam, K. S., Ghuman, A. S., Boshyan, J., Schmid, A. M., Dale, A. M., … Halgren, E. (2006). Top-down facilitation of visual recognition. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.4FDF5665
• Cattaneo, L., Fabbri-Destro, M., Boria, S., Pieraccini, C., Monti, A., Cossu, G., & Rizzolatti, G. (2007). Impairment of actions chains in autism and its possible role in intention understanding. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.175929D7
• Corbetta, M., & Miezin, F. M. (1990). Attentional modulation of neural processing of shape, color, and velocity in humans. Science, 248(4962), 1556. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2360050
• Peretz, I., & Zatorre, R. J. (2003). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music. Oxford: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=130812
• Pulvermüller, F. (2005). Opinion: Brain mechanisms linking language and action. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(7), 576–582. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1706
• Ramachandran, V. S., & Altschuler, E. L. (2009). The use of visual feedback, in particular mirror visual feedback, in restoring brain function. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.DB781429
• Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004). The Mirror-Neuron System. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27(1), 169-C-4. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230
• Uri Hasson, Yuval Nir, Ifat Levy, Galit Fuhrmann, & Rafael Malach. (n.d.). RESEARCH ARTICLES Intersubject Synchronization of Cortical Activity During Natural Vision. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.965D8DD7

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Butorina, A., Prokofyev, A., Nazarova, M., Litvak, V., & Stroganova, T. (2014). The mirror illusion induces high gamma oscillations in the absence of movement. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.CBBFCA1C
• Feurra, M., Fuggetta, G., Rossi, S., & Walsh, V. (2010). The role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in episodic encoding of faces: An interference study by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Cognitive Neuroscience, 1(2), 118–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/17588921003660736
• Innocenti, I., Cappa, S. F., Feurra, M., Giovannelli, F., Santarnecchi, E., Bianco, G., … Rossi, S. (2013). TMS interference with primacy and recency mechanisms reveals bimodal episodic encoding in the human brain. Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(1), 109–116. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00304
• Poeppel, D. (2011). Genetics and language: a neurobiological perspective on the missing link (-ing hypotheses). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.60168588