NRSC 4500 Cognitive Neuroscience
This course is the cumulative course in the neuroscience sequence. The course begins by asking two questions, “What is cognition?” and “What do brains do?” Then, the course proceeds to answer those questions by exploring what is known about the biological basis of cognition. The course discusses the structure and organization of the cortex and its relationship with the rest of brain. The course covers the following topics: plasticity, interoception, emotion, attention, memory, executive function, spatial navigation, and social cognition. Several questions serve as unifying themes for the course: 1. Are cognitive processes localized in the cortex or distributed throughout the brain? 2. Do brains process, compute, or predict? and 3. How does cognition interact with other psychological processes? Like NRSC 4300, the goal of this course is to relate mental process to the complex behaviors engaged in by organisms in their environment. By the end of this course, you will be able to integrate what you have learned through the neuroscience course sequence to describe the neural circuits underlying the complex behavior depicted in a real-world scenario, such as a thirsty Zebra drinking from a waterhole while monitoring the presence of predators.