Biological

Psychology 2
 Cognitive Neuroscience
• It is an academic
field concerned
with the scientific
study of
neurobiological
substrates
underlying
cognition, with a
specific focus on the
neural substrates of
mental processes.
Anatomy of
the Brain
Anatomy of the Brain: 3 Division of the Brain

1. The brain has three

major regions:
• Forebrain
(Pronsencephalon)
• Midbrain
(Mesencephalon)
• Hindbrain
(Rhombencephalon)
Anatomy of the Brain: Forebrain
• Cerebral Cortex
• carries out essential functions of your
brain, like memory, thinking, learning,
reasoning, problem-solving, emotions,
consciousness, and sensory functions
• Basal Ganglia
• a key part of the network of brain cells
and nerves that control your body's
voluntary movements.
• Limbic System
• a group of interconnected brain
structures that help regulate your
emotions and behavior.
Anatomy of the Brain: Forebrain (Limbic System)
• Septum & Amygdala
• Involved in anger, aggression, fear
• Hippocampus
• memories
• Thalamus
• Relays sensory information to the
cerebral cortex
• Hypothalamus
• helps manage your body
temperature, hunger and thirst,
mood, sex drive, blood
pressure and sleep
Anatomy of the Brain: Midbrain
• Helps to control eye movement
and coordination
• Reticular activating system
• Controls respiration,
cardiovascular function,
digestion, alertness, and sleep
• Brain stem
• Vital in basic attention, arousal,
and consciousness
Cerebrum versus Cerebral Cortex
• Cerebrum
• Grey matter and white matter
• Cerebral cortex
• Grey matter
Four Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex
• Frontal
• higher mental functions such as
appropriate social behaviors and
controlling emotions
• Parietal
• sensory processing and spatial reasoning
e.g., the manipulation of objects, numbers,
and their relationships
• Occipital
• visual processing
• Temporal
• auditory processing
Cerebral Cortex
• Contralateral
• Having to do with the opposite side of the
body
• Corpus Callosum
• Neural fibers connecting left and right
lobes
• Allows communication between right and
left side
Left Hemisphere: Language and Analytical Thought
• Aphasia
• is a loss of speech as a result of
brain damage.
• Wernicke’s aphasia
• impaired language comprehension
• Broca’s aphasia
• a loss of normal grammatical
structure
• Global aphasia
• profound impairment of all modalities
of receptive and expressive
language
Other Brain Disorders
• Capgrass Syndrome
• delusion that familiar people have
been replaced by identical doubles
or imposters
• Prosopagnosia
• having difficulty recognising faces.
You'll still see the parts of a face
normally, but all faces may look the
same to you.
STRUCTURE OF A NEURON
Diffusion, Degradation, Reuptake
Thank you!
Any Questions?
Sensation and
Perception
SENSATION &
PERCEPTION
▪ Sensation tells us
what is outside our
own mental world.
▪ Perception is the
process of
interpreting the
sensations we
experience so we
can act upon them.
Sensation + Perception = Our interpretation of reality around us.
SENSORY SYSTEM
▪ How information get into the
senses to the perception?
▪ Your senses gather information
through various forms of
energy
▪ This energy is encoded into
neuronal activity
▪ Neuronal activity relays signal
to the brain
FRASER’S SPIRAL
▪ Is this actually a spiral?
THE SPINNING GIRL
▪ Which way is the dance spinning in
this optical illusion?
VISUAL PERCEPTION
▪ Visual principles are ‘rules’ that
we apply to visual information to
assist our organization and
interpretation of information in
consistent and meaningful
ways.
▪ Visual perception relies on three
key principles to organize
information:
▪ Perceptual constancies
▪ Depth Perception
▪ Gestalt principles
PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES SIZE & SHAPE
▪ Our ability to understand
that an object’s size, shape,
brightness or orientation will
stay the same even though
it has a different retinal
image. Size Constancy
▪ Size constancy Involves recognizing that an object’s actual size
▪ Shape constancy remains the same, even though the size it casts on the
retina changes.
▪ Brightness constancy
▪ Orientation constancy Shape Constancy
Is the tendency to perceive an object as maintaining its
shape despite any change in shape of the image on
the retina.
 BRIGHTNESS Constancy
Is the tendency to perceive an object as
maintaining its level of brightness in relation to its
surroundings, despite changes in the amount of
ORIENTATION Constancy light being reflected from the object on the retina.

Is the tendency to perceive an object

as maintaining its orientation despite
any change in orientation of the image
on the retina.
DEPTH
Importance of depth
PERCEPTION perception
▪ Is the ability to ▪ When you drive, you use
accurately depth to assess the distance
estimate the of an approaching
distance of objects automobile
and therefore ▪ When you decide to call out
perceive the world to a friend walking down the
in three street, you determine how
dimensions. loudly to call, based on how
far away you perceive your
friend to be
Binocular Depth Cues
• Use both eyes to judge depth
• Convergence - inward turning of the eyes to
focus on nearby objects try looking at the
end of your nose
• Retinal disparity - the difference between
the images of both eyes....line an object up
in the distance with your finger. Try looking
at this with the left eye and then the right eye
separately. What happens

Monocular Depth Cues

• Use one eye to judge depth
• Accommodation - the bulging and flattening
of the eye to focus
DEPTH PERCEPTION
• Is the ability to accurately
estimate the distance of
objects and therefore
perceive the world in three
LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
dimensions. Two lines that
• Depth cues are sources of converge (come
information from the together) as they go
environment or from within into the distance.
our body that help us to
perceive how far away
objects are.
INTERPOSITION &
RELATIVE SIZE
Interposition
An object that sits
in front of /
obscures another
object is perceived
as being closer.
HEIGHT IN THE VISUAL FIELD
Relative size An object that is closer to the
The object that horizon is seen as being more
has a smaller distant.
retinal image is Texture Gradient
seen as being An object that is further
further away. away from the person will
have less detail.
GESTALT PRINCIPLES
Gestalt Principles Closure
▪ It is believed that we organize We complete the gaps in
stimuli into categories or a figure to view the
groups to understand them. stimulus as a whole.
▪ The following are the
categories we put visual Similarity
information into: We perceive objects that
▪ Figure-Ground have similar features
(size, shape, colour) as
organization
belonging to a group.
▪ Closure
▪ Proximity Proximity
▪ Similarity We perceive objects that
Figure-ground organisation are physically close
A stimulus appears to stand out together as belonging to
(figure) against the background a group.
(ground).
THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO
PERCEPTION
Bottom-Up Approaches
▪ Start from the bottom, considering
physical stimuli being perceived and
then work their way up to higher-
order cognitive processes (organizing
principles and concepts)

Top-Down Approaches
▪ The perceiver builds (constructs) a
cognitive understanding (perception) of
a stimulus, using sensory information
Perceptual Set / Perceptual Expectancy is the
as the foundation for the structure but tendency to perceive things in a certain way
also using other sources of information because of influence from previous experiences or
to build the perception Expectations
BOTTOM-UP APPROACH
▪ Gibson’s Theory of direct
perception
▪ The array of information in our sensory
receptors, including sensory context, is
all we need to perceive anything
▪ We do not need higher cognitive
processes or anything else to mediate
between our sensory experiences and
our perceptions
▪ Existing beliefs or higher-level inferential
thought processes are not necessary for
perception
TOP-DOWN
APPROACH
▪ Constructive Perception
(Jerome Bruner)
▪ During perception we quickly
form and test various
hypotheses regarding percepts
based on
▪ What we sense (sensory data)
▪ What we know (knowledge
stored in memory)
▪ What we can infer (using
thinking)
▪ What we expect
 PERCEPTUAL ILLUSIONS

MULLER-LYER ILLUSION THE HERMAN GRID

 PERCEPTUAL ILLUSIONS

MOON ILLUSION ILLUSION OF MOTION

DEFICITS IN
PERCEPTION
▪ Visual Agnosia
▪ People with visual
agnosia have normal
sensations of what is
in front of them, but
they cannot recognize
what they see
▪ Prosopagnosia
▪ Severely impaired
ability to recognize
human faces
Thank you!
Any Questions?