COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: MAPPING THE MIND

This mid-level neuroscience course explores how the mind emerges from activity in the brain. To enroll, students must have already taken an introductory neuroscience course and have a solid grasp of the organization of the nervous system. This course focuses on a set of cognitive functions that underlie intelligent behavior. These functions include object recognition, attention, memory, emotion, language, and decision-making. The study of these topics is grounded in behavioral experiments that allow us to define cognitive functions and dissociate them from each other. We will then dive into the methods of landmark neuroscientific studies that attempt to map those cognitive functions onto brain functions. Throughout the course, students will explore the implications of cognitive neuroscience for the future of technology, education, law, and medicine.