Introduction to Cognitive Science

Welcome to the world of cognitive science, where the goal is nothing less than simulating the precise workings of the human brain. But with the mind hidden in the proverbial “black box,” how can science unravel its mysteries? Learn about the early theories of behaviorism and how the invention of the digital computer became the single most important development in the rise of cognitive science.

Professor Polk takes you on a quick tour of the anatomy of the brain. In addition to examining important structures and where they’re located inside the brain, you’ll also learn about their function. You’ll see firsthand where vision happens; how information is communicated between the hemispheres; and the brain regions involved in sleep, motor control, and memory.

Explore the fascinating cognitive process of human language, one of our most powerful tools. Discover some of the key features of natural languages and how we acquire them. You might be surprised to learn that one of the most significant aspects of language that we use every single day is ... guessing.

Meet French patient Louis Victor Leborgne and his physician Paul Broca. Learn how Broca’s work set the foundation for understanding that an injury in one brain region does not necessarily undermine cognitive function in other areas. Although the neurobiology of human languages is not yet fully understood, explore the dual stream model of language processing and the crucial but separate functions it addresses.

Artificial neural networks play a central role in cognitive science. Learn how these networks simulate the excitatory and inhibitory processing of real neurons, and how scientists train the networks using sophisticated learning algorithms. This type of modeling provides the foundation for the development of ChatGPT and other AI applications.

Learn about the violation-of-expectation paradigm that allows researchers to study infant cognition with often surprising results. From physical to psychological to moral reasoning, scientists have determined that babies and very young children understand much more about the world than we had previously realized.

Participate with Professor Polk in fascinating experiments that reveal many aspects of your working memory—your ability to store information for a brief period for a particular purpose. Learn about the several working memory systems you use every day and discover how cognitive scientists think working memory might be implemented in the human brain.

How is it that we can remember so much information for so long, but we also make so many mistakes in what we remember? Explore the psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling of episodic memory—long-term memory for personal episodes from your own life. Discover how and why this information gets distorted over time in subtle ways we don’t notice.

We each maintain an enormous database of information we’ve learned over the course of our lives, our semantic memory. Learn about the latest cognitive science models in which semantic memory is organized by modality, with some regions of the brain representing perceptual features and others representing functional features.

If an animal can learn specific hand signals and communicate with a trainer, does that mean he has language? If a great ape can recognize itself in a mirror, does it have the consciousness we attribute to humans? Learn about some exciting animal experiments and the resulting evidence. Cognitive scientists have arrived at some conclusions that you might find contrary to your personal experience.

While we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, why is it that we so often make what seem to be irrational decisions? Learn about Bayes’ Theorem, which tells us the correct way to calculate a conditional probability, as well as the “representativeness and availability heuristics” that so often cause us to misjudge.

How do we make decisions at the neural level? Explore a fascinating monkey experiment that allows us to see which neurons fire while the animal is making a real decision. You’ll also explore the timing of dopamine delivery as the monkey develops familiarity with a rewarding activity.

Could our brain and mind be designed as Bayesian computation engines? Instead of dealing in black or white absolutes, is it possible our brains are always updating the conditional probability of various hypotheses based on evidence and base rates? Explore the evidence for this possibility and the behaviors scientists would expect to see if this were the case.

Do your emotions cause physiological changes in your body or do physiological changes cause your emotions? Is each physiological change associated with one and only one emotion? You might be surprised by the answers to these questions as you learn about theories of cognition and emotion and explore the fascinating case of patient “SM.”

When we look at the world around us, we’re usually sure that we see our environment as it really exists, but that is just not the case. With fascinating visual examples, learn the many steps involved as our brain constructs the images that we think we just simply “see.” Once it’s created, is the image accurate—or can our expectations play a profound role in our perception?

Learn about one of the most influential computational models of the brain’s visual system and how it led to the development of convolutional neural networks, CNNs. CNNs revolutionized computer vision, but could this type of neural network also lead to a better understanding of the visual system in the biological brain?

Historically, one of the best ways for neuroscientists to learn about the brain has been to study people whose brains have been damaged, resulting in unusual and unexpected phenomena. Meet three such patients—Phineas Gage, “DB,” and John—and see how cognitive scientists used the deficits of each to uncover a wealth of information about the healthy brain.

Dig into computational psychiatry, the field that brings together computer science, math, and neuroscience to simulate the neural processes contributing to psychiatric disorders. Explore how many symptoms of depression and anxiety make sense when viewed through the lens of Bayesian decision theory.

Learn how cognitive scientists are developing theories and computational models to explain the behaviors associated with these three disorders. Explore the latest theories that explain the obsessions and compulsions of OCD, and recent research into the glutamate system’s impact on schizophrenia.

What is the nature of consciousness and how is it implemented in the human brain? Does consciousness inevitably arise when a certain threshold of intelligence is met? These are some of the most profound questions humans have ever asked. Explore what cognitive science has contributed to studying both the content and level of human consciousness.

Investigate ACT-R, one of the most well-developed cognitive architectures that exists today in the quest to create a unified theory of cognition. Learn how ACT-R implements a specific theory about how the mind’s different parts work together to give rise to cognition. With Professor Polk’s guidance, you’ll walk through a “simple” computation modeled by ACT-R.

Learn how AI has profoundly impacted the field of cognitive science. Explore the ways in which AI’s deep neural nets, trained using sophisticated supervised learning algorithms, have been able to rival human performance in many domains, ranging from generating art and other visual content to predicting the 3D structure of proteins with significant impacts in biology and medicine.

Explore how the latest discoveries about cognition have affected the field of education, helping both the learner and the teacher. We now have the science to influence decisions about when and how to study, and how to help students better retain information. Even in the disparate fields of law and design, learn how cognitive science has profoundly impacted best practices.

Have you wondered what could happen if we develop the ability to build artificial intelligences that rival or surpass our own? Scientists no longer believe the issue is “if,” only when. Consider the issues of transhumanism along with present-day positive impacts and concerns with respect to AI. What can we expect the future to hold?