Current Issues in Psychology II (PSYC4982)

Presentation and Discussion of Journal Articles

Each week a journal article related to the lecture topics will be presented by a pair of students and discussed by all members of the class. Presenters will be required to submit a 1,000 word report on the journal article ONE week after their oral presentation.

History and Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience

What is cognitive neuroscience and how does it relate to psychology? Is it possible to understand perceptual and cognitive functions in terms of brain structure and function? This lecture will provide an overview of the development of cognitive neuroscience as a distinct discipline. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the historical context in which the discipline has arisen, and the methods commonly used to test neural models of perceptual, cognitive, affective and motor behaviour in humans.

Neural bases of selective attention

How do we process the overwhelming amount of external information that bombards our senses during every waking moment? How completely can we filter out distractions? This lecture focuses on the neural mechanisms responsible for selecting just those inputs that are currently relevant for guiding behaviour, and for suppressing those that are not.

Unilateral spatial neglect

Patients with unilateral spatial neglect following damage to the right cerebral hemisphere behave as if the left side of their world has ceased to exist. Why? This lecture presents an overview of findings from neuropsychological, brain imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies, which have tried to explain the brain basis for neglect patients' bizarre behaviour. It also focuses on what clues the neglect syndrome provides for understanding normal mechanisms of selective attention, spatial working memory and unconscious perception.

The neural correlates of consciousness

What makes us conscious? To what extent can sensory information be processes without conscious awareness? Are all aspects of our motor behaviour under conscious control? This lecture draws on recent findings from functional brain imaging and neuropsychological studies to provide clues to the neural bases of conscious and unconscious mental processes.

The neural bases of multisensory integration

Why do we perceive all the sensory attributes of a single perceptual event as a coherent whole? How is information from the different sense modalities bound together? This lecture examines the critical role played by selective attention in binding sensory inputs from different modalities, and outlines some of the ways in which researchers have attempted to locate the neural sources of multisensory integration in the brain.

Multisensory processes underlying synaesthesia

Can letters and words elicit sensory experiences of colour? Can musical notes taste bitter or salty? For individuals with the unusual phenomenon of synaesthesia, there seems to be anomalous mixing of the senses. This lecture will provide an overview of recent cognitive and brain imaging studies of synaesthesia, and will critically evaluate the hypothesis that synaesthesia arises from abnormal neuronal "cross-wiring" between primary sensory areas.

How do populations of neurons represent the world?

A common goal in visual neuroscience is to understand how our subjective experience of the world arises from neural activity. Sensory information is initially encoded by populations of neurons whose joint activity signals simple visual features such as lines and edges. In this lecture, we will consider how an impression of a richly detailed visual world can be constructed from the output of such neural populations. We will examine how populations of neurons not only code things, such as lines and edges, but also how they code stuff: the complex visual appearance of materials such as wood or metal. Importantly, we'll also look at how these neural codes might explain visual working memory - the ability to hold imagery in mind for brief periods of time. These population codes therefore represent fundamental perceptual and memory processes, from which flows our ability to make complex actions and decisions.

Hemispheric asymmetries and object recognition

To what extent are the two cerebral hemispheres specialised with respect to the perceptual, cognitive and motor functions they subserve? Are there functional asymmetries in the processes involved in our ability to recognise familiar items such as words, faces and objects? This lecture will consider hemispheric asymmetries of function with a particular focus on object recognition, drawing on evidence from experimental psychology, brain imaging and neuropsychology.

Neural bases of decision making

Decision-making is a cognitive processes at the intersection between perception, attention and memory. As task-appropriate and accurate decision-making is the primary basis for adaptive behaviour, studies on decision making are important for both normative models of cognition and public policies (e.g., superannuation or public health). In this lecture, we will examine work on cognitive biases that lead to suboptimal decision making. We will also discuss computational models of simple decision-making processes, and consider some of the importsnt brain processes involved.

Neural oscillations in perception and cognition

With all of the information being passed around your brain at any given moment, how does it all stay organized? What stops two messages from getting mixed up? In this lecture we will talk about one way the brain solves this problem, through rhythmically timed waves of activation, or neural oscillations. We will examine how neural oscillations organise communication in the brain. We will then look at how these waves influence everything from the timing of action potentials right up to what we ultimately see, hear, and remember, as well as how we behave.

Mechanisms of sensory and motor brain plasticity

Brain plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to undergo change in both structure and function as a result of life experience. In this lecture, we will look at how our brain contains representations of our own body as well as sensory information from the outside world. We'll consider how these cortical representations undergo change (plasticity) in response to normal learning but also following injury or illness (phantom limb phenomena in amputees, dystonia), and discuss some of the underlying mechanisms. Finally, we'll cover recent research aimed at modulating brain plasticity in humans using non-invasive brain stimulation.

Enhancing behaviour with brain stimulation

So-called brain training is a billion-dollar business around the world, reflecting great public interest in self enhancement and augmentation. Whilst the science behind the benefits of training is a subject of debate, it may be that combining training with brain stimulation can boost performance outcomes. This lecture will discuss how we may be able to enhance our performance with non-invasive brain stimulation, what applications this may have, and the current areas of controversy surrounding the research.