Cognitive neuroscience

[Singu]

"The effort to understand the human mind and brain is worthwhile even if it never led to the treatment of a single disease. What could be more thrilling than to understand the fundamental mechanisms that underlie human experience, to understand, in essence, who we are? This is, I think, the greatest scientific quest of all time."

- Nancy Kanwisher, MIT professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences


Interesting article and a video. I would recommend watching it:

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/25/11163.full



Here are the keys:



RED = Facial recognition
LIGHT PURPLE = Color recognition
DARK GREEN = Perception of places and spaces
YELLOW = Visual motion/movement
LIGHT GREEN = Recognition body parts - but not other objects i.e. typewriter
DARK BLUE = Hearing of clear sounds i.e. sirens, horns, door bell bell ring - but NOT when the pitch is unclear i.e. toilet flushing, percussion/drum roll, foot steps
DARK PURPLE = Speech recognition - selective sounds of speech
PINK = Language recognition - processing of whole languages
TURQUOISE = RTPJ or what we think about other peoples thoughts (see Rebecca Saxe TED Talk)
WHITE = "Any difficult mental task"
Gray = Still unknown.

- They have scanned a bunch of people's brains and they all more or less activate in similar regions for each specific activities. They call this "Functional Specialization" or "localization". Not all mental functions are known to be localized, but only some.

"Indeed, these regions are found, in more or less the same place, in virtually every neurologically intact subject; they are part of the basic functional architecture of the human brain."

"Human mind and brain is not a single, general-purpose processor, but a collection of highly specialized components, each solving a different specific problem, and yet collectively making up who we are as human beings and thinkers."

[hatchback176]

Duh, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lane_Friesen
I am definitely at least 10 years ahead of you.

[Singu]

Good for you... dude. Post something interesting.

[wacey]

What selective pressures drove this localization.. and also very cool thanks for bringing this to attention. Will have to take a look at the video.

[Pallas]

knowledge that can't be acted upon is not knowledge at all. just a string of fashionable words

[hatchback176]

Linking to a TED talk because you've never picked up a Cognitive Neuroscience textbook doesn't make your post interesting. Get a clue.