Cognitive Neuroscience

认知神经科学

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Rong Li (李蓉)，Ph.D.
Researcher
rongli1120@[Link]

❖ School of Life Science and Technology,

❖ University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Cognition is a term referring to the mental processes involved in gaining
knowledge and comprehension.

“… from the brain, and from the brain alone,

arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jokes, as
well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears.
Through it, in particular, we think, see, hear,
and distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the
bad from the good, the pleasant from the
unpleasant… all the time the brain is quiet, a
man can think properly.”

--- Attributed to Hippocrates

5th century BCE.

(Quoted by Kandel et al., 1991).

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 Upper left : The human body and its basic
orientation planes.
Lower left : A standard view of the brain
from the left side. The left hemisphere is ‘
looking ’ left. The light blue region in the back
of the brain is the occipital lobe.
▪ The diagram on the lower right shows a ‘
neural hierarchy ’ , a simplified way of
showing neural connections in the cortex,
and on the upper right we see the entire
cortex as a ‘ circle of hierarchies ’ . The yellow
arrow in the center depicts a common view
of the role of consciousness in the brain.

Source : Drake et al ., 2005.

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• Cognitive Neuroscience is the combined study of mind and
brain.
• The development of new ways to image the living brain has
revolutionized the study of human cognition.
• These new techniques allow us to explore topics like language,
vision, memory, conscious and unconscious, and mental
processes that were very difficult to study before.

fMRI allow us to investigate brain structure and function

in healthy and clinical individuals. This figure shows a
3-dimensional structural head and brain image.

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▪ Rong Li (20 class hours), Weihua Zhao (20 class hours)

▪ Email: rongli1120@[Link]

▪ QQ:814065056

▪ Address:综合楼121，QingShuiHe Campus

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▪ Course work(50%)
▪ Includes in-class participation、class performance
and presentation

▪ Final exam(50%)

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▪ 2024-Now:Researcher
▪ 2018-2024:Associate Researcher
▪ 2012-2018:Postgraduate and PhD; Biomedical Engineering; UESTC
▪ 2015-2016:Visiting Scholar: Yale University
▪ 2008-2012:Bachelor; Biomedical Engineering; UESTC

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2011, UESTC 2016, Yale
▪ fMRI brain network and clinical applications in epilepsy
▪ Neural mechanism of consciousness
▪ Pattern recognition and classification

Brain Imaging and Pattern Recognition Lab Epilepsy Research Group

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Suggested books:
▪ 《Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of Mind》，Michael S.
Gazzaniga, Richard B. Ivry, and George R. Mangun，W.W. Norton, 2013
▪ 《Cognitive Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive
Neuroscience》，Bernard J. Baars, Nicole M. Gage，Academic Press
，2010
▪ 《Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience》，an
autobiographical book of Michael S. Gazzaniga

Fifth Edition Second Edition

▪ Know the basic principles and technologies of cognitive
neuroscience
▪ Learn a wide range of cognitive studies from behavioral and
neuroimaging aspects
▪ Enable to generate and to explore ideas of neuroscience

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▪ Country\Education\Major\Research Interests…
▪ Who have learned Psychology?
▪ Who have learned Physiology?
▪ Who knew the structure of the brain?
▪ Who did psychology/cognitive experiments?
▪ Who analyzed the neuroimaging data?
▪ Why you choose this course?

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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course and What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Discussion: Human intelligence VS
machine intelligence

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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course?
▪ What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Debate: Human intelligence VS machine
intelligence

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 Some starting points: Thinking about spatial dimensions
Seven orders of magnitude ---
expanding from about one step (1 meter) to 107 meters

• From front to back, a brain is about one seventh of a meter long, that is 1/7 m.

•If you take a step, the length of your stride is about one meter (a little more than a yard).

• If you raise that step to the next order of magnitude, 10 meters or 101, you would get the
length of a typical classroom.

• Raise the order of magnitude just once and you have 100 meters or 102 – the distance of
a standard sprint. Raise it again and you have 1,000 meters – 103, a kilometer – which is
the length of a city street.

• By the time you have raised the exponent to ten to the seventh power (107), you are at a
distance of 10,000 kilometers-ten million steps. This is approximately 6,000 miles or the
distance from coast to coast in North America.

• From 10o to 107 – the distance from a single step to a continent!

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 Thinking about fast-shrinking distances

Seven orders of magnitude --- shrinking from 1 meter to 10-7 meters

Back Front
Now let’s go in the reverse direction – toward smaller and smaller
distances – using negative powers of ten --- again, starting from about one
full stride, or one meter.

Brain networks operate at an order of magnitude of about one tenth meter,

The midline slice of the
that is, 10-1 m.
brain. (above and below)
The size of area V1, the first cortical map of the visual cortex, is about the
size of a credit card, or ten to the minus two power (10-2) meters.

Cell bodies of neurons are around 10-4 m in size.

If you drink alcohol your brain will change dramatically.

Alcohol molecules (ethanol) are about 10-7 m in size.

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 The brain’s orders of magnitude over time.
The brain must be able to function over milliseconds and years.

• When you hear a high-pitched note, your auditory nerve may be firing as fast as the
sound waves that move your eardrum --- up to 1,000 times per second --- or one
wave peak per millisecond.

[1 ms = 1000th of a second, or 10 -3 s. Remember that “cycles per second” = “Hertz” = Hz.]

• If the sound track of a movie lags behind the video, you will perceive a break between
hearing and vision, starting at a 1/10 second time lag --- or 100 ms, --- or 10 -1 s.

--- 100 ms is also about the fastest Reaction Time for humans --- the time
needed to respond correctly to a predictable event, as in pressing a car’s accelerator
when a traffic light turns green.

• Conscious thinking takes longer. If you count to yourself mentally from one to ten,
your inner speech may take place over a period of about 10 seconds. A typical lecture
lasts one hour -- more than 3,000 seconds! ( = 3 x 103 s)

• The brain grows from the beginning of gestation, over days, months, years and
decades. It undergoes predictable changes with each developmental stage.

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CLASS DISCUSSIONS
1. Name three scales spatial events in the brain, with their
order of magnitude.

2. Name three scales temporal events in the brain, with

their order of magnitude.

➢ Neurons do not act alone; they are grouped with others in small networks,
perhaps ten times larger than single neurons. Small cortical columns are
about 10-3 m or one millimeter in diameter
➢ In a remarkable feat, our brain can distinguish differences between sounds
arriving at the two ears, down to several microseconds

➢ If you study this chapter carefully, it will take you an hour or more – more than
three thousand seconds. (Sorry about that!)
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 Anatomy: The major planes of section (cuts) of the brain

The top figure shows a vertical, midline, front-to-back cut of the

brain, called sagittal. When brain images are recorded in this vertical
plane, they go from one side of the brain, across the midline
between the two hemispheres, on to the other side. When the cut is
exactly through the midline between the two hemispheres, it is
called mid-sagittal.

The middle figure shows a horizontal or axial cut through the brain. A
series of horizontal cuts goes from the top to the bottom.

The lower figure shows a coronal (side-to-side) section. A series of

coronal sections --- named for its crown shape --- will go from the
forehead to the back of the neck, like a salami slice. Coronal
sections show both hemispheres in cross-section.

If you have trouble visualizing these sections, think of a familiar

object, like an automobile or a cake that is cut in half, lengthwise,
crosswise, or horizontally.

Spatial thinking is hard! You’ll find it helpful to keep sketching the

brain by hand throughout this course.
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 Some major landmarks of the brain.

The left side shows major landmarks seen from the inside or medial (midline) division (also called
mid-sagittal). This reveals the great valley between the two hemispheres. The corpus callosum is the
bridge between the hemispheres.

Longitudinal fissure: The largest valley runs along the

midline between the right and left hemispheres

Corpus callosum: A great fiber bridge flowing between

the right and left hemispheres, begins behind the
frontal lobe and loops up and to the back, ending just
in front of the cerebellum. When the corpus callosum
Front is cut, it looks white to the naked eye because it
consists of white matter.

Back
The brain is looking left

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 Some major landmarks of the brain.

The right side shows an outside (lateral) viewpoint of the brain’s left side. Notice that the brain is
“looking to the left” in both figures. You should be able to identify which way the brain is “looking,” and
which plane of section you are seeing. Learning to draw and label the landmarks is very important.

Lateral sulcus: A second large fold runs forward at a

slant along the side of the brain.

Central sulcus: Which divides the posterior half from

the frontal lobe. The posterior cortex is predominantly
sensory, with visual, spatial, auditory and
body-sense regions, while the frontal lobe is motor Front
and cognitive. So the central sulcus is a clear dividing
line between the input-and output-related areas
of cortex.
Back
The brain is looking left
- lateral view
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Please practice sketching the brain and marking some
of the major brain landmarks after class

Here is a model brain for your use.

It is very helpful to draw or color
the following areas. Many people
find it useful to make a habit of
coloring brain parts in consistent
colors, to help to associate brain
regions by color. All kinds of
memory aids can help.

▪ Mark the major lobes (seen from the outside view, both right and left).

▪ What are the names of the major lobes?

▪ Where is Broca’s area? Wernicke’s? What are their traditional functions?

▪ Which area is associated with vision? With speech? With executive control?
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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course?
▪ What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Debate: Human intelligence VS machine
intelligence

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2 SOME HISTORY AND ONGOING DEBATES

▪ Is history created
by a few or by a
majority?

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• Thomas Willis actually coined the term
neurology and became one of the best-known
doctors of his time.

• Willis was among the first to link specific brain

damage to specific behavioral deficits, and to
theorize how the brain transfers information in
what would later be called neuronal conduction .

• Willis created drawings of the human brain that

remained the most accurate representations for
200 years.

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Willis set in motion the ideas and knowledge base that took hundreds of years
to develop into what we know today as the field of cognitive neuroscience 29
Founder of phrenology
Gall(1758 ‐1828)

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Chinese Physiognomy

If you have large foreheads and little

hair, no worry, you are supposed to
smarter than others！

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 Phrenology-related research

(a) An analysis of Presidents Washington, Jackson, Taylor, and McKinley by Jessie A.

Fowler, from the Phrenological Journal , June 1898. (b) The phrenological map of personal
characteristics on the skull, from the American Phrenological Journal , March 1848. (c) Fowler
& Wells Co. publication on marriage compatibility in connection with phrenology, 1888.

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He did not support Gall’s
view (localizationist view)

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 This state of affairs （aggregate field theory）
did not last for too long, new evidence back to
the localizationist view

During the start of seizures, some epileptic

patients moved in such specific ways that the
clonic and tonic jerks in muscles, produced by
the abnormal epileptic firings of neurons in the
brain, progressed in the same orderly pattern
from one body part to another.

This observation led Jackson to

propose a topographic organization
in the cerebral cortex

Jackson was one of the first to realize

this essential feature of brain organization.

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Careful studies of brain damage are important in the sciences
of mind and brain. It was the French physician Pierre-Paul
Broca who first discovered a region of the left hemisphere
that was tied to language production --- output from thought
to speech.

Broca had a patient who had lost all ability to speak except to
say the single word ‘tan …tan…tan’. After the patient died,
Broca was able to perform an autopsy, finding damage to “the
posterior part of the third frontal convolution in the left
hemisphere”. This region is now called Broca’s area, and is
indeed involved in the production of speech.

Broca’s Area was one of the first parts of the brain that was
identified by its function.

Pierre-Paul Broca
1824-1880

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 Paul Broca and speech production in the brain.

This is the actual preserved brain of Broca’s

first patient. Notice the damaged region in the
dotted red square.

Broca’s hypothesis was hotly debated among

scientists: were there localized functional
areas in the brain or was the brain
equipotential, with all regions able to support
cognition? This debate continues today.
Approximate location of Broca’s Area before
brain damage occurred.
While the ‘speaking’ region of the left
hemisphere is now called Broca’s Area, its
precise functions are still being studied.

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 Carl Wernicke and speech comprehension in the brain.

Some years after Broca’s work on speech output, the

German scientist Carl Wernicke discovered a part of
the brain involved in speech input -- perception and
comprehension.

Wernicke discovered this by observing a variety of

aphasic patients whose brain damage resulted in
Carl Wernicke language input deficits. Wernicke concluded that
1848-1905 damage to different parts of the brain resulted in
different language disorders.

“Wernicke’s area” is thought to be involved in speech

input processing, located near auditory parts of
cortex.

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 Broca’s area and Wernicke’s ares

A = Wernicke’s sensory speech center;

B = Broca’s area for speech;

Pc = Wernicke’s area concerned with

language comprehension and meaning.

The connections between the speech centers, from

Wernicke’s 1876 article on aphasia

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▪ Brodmann classified the cortical cells according to the
differences of cell structure and tissue form, and acquired 52 ▪ Brodmann map with function attributions
brain regions which represent the functional division of brain.

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Huge Revolution of Nervous system

▪ Italian physician,
developed one of the
most famous cell stains
▪ Staining Method: Silver
was injected into a
single neuron for
staining.
▪ Argument: The brain is
a syncytial body, is a
continuous mass of
tissue sharing a cell
membrane.
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 Cajal’s neuron doctrine:
The working assumption of brain science.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal is often considered to be
the founder of brain science.

A hotly debated question of his time was the

nature of the nervous system ---- whether it
consisted of billions of separate cells, or whether it
was one great continuous network. Even good light
microscopes at the time made it hard to be sure,
because one could not see the tiny synapses ---
the gaps between neurons. So at first the brain
looked like a giant, continuous network.

Cajal used microscopic staining methods to bring

out different colors for different types of cells,
thereby making individual neurons visible for the
first time. On the right, Cajal’s drawings, based on
careful microscopic observations of stained slices
of brain tissue.

Cajal’s “neuron doctrine” therefore states that the Cajal

basic functional unit of the brain is the single
nerve cell, the neuron.
1852-1934

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▪ Thomas Willis first introduced us, in the mid 1600s, to the idea that damage
to the brain could influence specific behaviors.

▪ Phrenologists developed a localizationist view of the brain.

▪ Patients like those of Broca and Wernicke later supported the importance
of specific brain locations on human behavior (like language).

▪ Ramón y Cajal, Camillo Golgi and Brodmann among others, provided

evidence that although the micro-architecture of distinct brain regions could
support a localizationist view of the brain, these areas are interconnected.

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▪ Two common points:

▪ Functional segregation: different function locates different

parts of the brain. Such as Broca, Gall’s phrenology

▪ Functional integration: the brain is as a whole to participate

in behavior, the integration of the brain’s neural networks
might be what enables the mind. Such as Flourens

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▪ Is the brain as a whole to participate in
behavior? Or do the specific parts of brain
work independently of each other?

▪ Will the modern brain-imaging experiments

（fMRI） become the new phrenology？

▪ How do you think the brain might be studies

in future?

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• At the same time that neuroscientists were
researching the brain, psychologists were studying
the mind as well

• Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and

behavior.

• Psychology is a multifaceted discipline and includes

many sub-fields of study such as human development,
sports, health, clinical, social behavior and cognitive
processes.

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▪ Behaviorism ：The human
mind/brain is a black box,
the internal structure can
not be studied, only the
relationship between input
and output can be studied.
▪ Cognitivism ：The human
mind/brain is a black box,
but its internal structure
can be inferred by
studying the relationship
between input and output.
▪ Information Processing
Process can be studies by
neuroscience techniques

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▪ Why does Cognitive Psychology need
Neuroscience ?
▪ Psychological activity needs to be explained with
neurological activity
▪ Neuroscience can provide detailed index and proof

▪ Why does Neuroscience need Cognitive

Psychology ?
▪ Neurons work together to produce advanced
cognitive activities

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 Chapter Summary

• Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of mind and brain.

• Old and new questions are being studied using modern neuroimaging
techniques, along with converging evidence from behavioral studies,
brain damage, and other sources.

• Cognitive neuroscience combines psychology, neuroscience, and

biology. Questions that could not be addressed earlier are now
beginning to be explored.

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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course and What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Discussion: Human intelligence VS
machine intelligence

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WHY WE STUDY?

“… from the brain, and from the brain alone, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jokes, as
well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. Through it, in particular, we think, see, hear, and
distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the bad from the good, the pleasant from the
unpleasant… all the time the brain is quiet, a man can think properly.

Because brain controls everything

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▪ Cognitive Neuroscience is the study of
mental processes
▪ Sensation and perception
▪ Emotion
▪ Attention
▪ Memory
▪ Problem solving
▪ Reasoning
▪ ……

Where/how do these happen?

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 What we study?
- main contents of cognitive neuroscience
–The brain
–Approaches and Tools
–Sensation and perception
–Attention
–Emotion
–Memory
–The frontiers of clinical application in
cognitive neuroscience
–… 52
 The Brain

“The brain is contained within the cranium, and constitutes the upper, greatly
expanded part of the central nervous system.”
Henry Gray, Anatomy of the Human Body, 1918

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 A Functional Framework

“It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find
them in things … Knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from a
comparison of the inventions of the intellect with observed fact.”
Albert Einstein (1949)

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 The Tools: Imaging the Living Brain
“I believe the study of neuroimaging has supported the localization of mental operations within the human
brain.”
-Michael I. Posner, 2003

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Sensation and perception (Vision、Hearing、Speech)

How brain works when you look, listen

smell, taste and feel the world? 56
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▪ What is Memory?
▪ What is Working Memory?
▪ Which brain areas are responsible for memory?
▪ How to improve memory?
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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course and What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Discussion: Human intelligence VS
machine intelligence

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▪ Start Points of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Brief history of cognitive neuroscience?
▪ Why we study the course and What we study?
▪ - main contents of cognitive neuroscience
▪ Discussion: Human intelligence VS
machine intelligence

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Artificial intelligence(AI)

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◆ Question1: Does only the human brain have
intelligence?

◆ Question2: Can machine have intelligence?

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▪ AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence computer
program developed by Google DeepMind in London
to play the board game. In March 2016, it beat Lee
Sedol in a five-game match, the first time a computer
Go program has beaten a 9-dan professional without
handicaps.

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▪ May 23-27, 2017, AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie in
Wuzhen, China

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▪ Alphafold, is an AI system developed by DeepMind
that predicts a protein’s 3D structure.
▪ It regularly achieves accuracy competitive with
experiment

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▪ Alphafold、 Alphafold2 related papers published
in Nature
▪ Predict almost the entire human proteome(98.5%)

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 Robots of Boston Dynamics Company

Boston Dynamics focuses on creating robots with advanced

mobility, dynamics and intelligence. Robot can walk, jump,
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climbs stairs, traverse.
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 Android Sophia, built by Hansen Robotics Technology Company in
Hong Kong, was activated in April 2015 and is known as "the most
humanlike robot"
 She has decent communication skills and numerous facial expressions
 Saudi government officials were so impressed by Sophia, that they
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granted Sophia a citizenship
AI evolution: Where do we currently stand, where will we go?

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1

Stages of machine evolution

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Meissner G. AI & SOCIETY, 2020
▪ Do you think the machine can have intelligence like human
being?
▪ Pro side: can
▪ Con side: can not

▪ Do you think the machine can have consciousness like human

being in the future?
▪ Pro side: can
▪ Con side: can not

▪ Do you think the machine intelligence will replace and

override human mental intelligence?
▪ Pro side: will
▪ Con side: never

▪ Debate or presentation on next Wednesday 18th

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