Important
- Principle of Dissociation – A super important method used to find out how different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions by studying healthy versus impaired brain regions.
- False Belief Task in Chimpanzees – A crucial experimental paradigm demonstrating that chimpanzees track missing objects and expect a human actor’s reaction based on the human’s false belief, strongly suggesting non-human primates have a theory of mind.
- Functional Segregation – The foundational concept that distinct cognitive processes and subprocesses are mapped to specialized, physically segregated neural structures in the brain.
Core concepts
- Functionalism: The approach of analyzing cognitive systems based strictly on their functional output and goal-oriented behaviors rather than their material makeup.
- Multiple Realizability: The functionalist idea that identical mental states or cognitive properties can be realized across completely different physical or neural substrates, such as human versus octopus brains.
- Double Dissociation: A methodology comparing two different neural substrates across multiple subjects to prove that two distinct cognitive functions operate independently of one another.
- Brain Measurement vs. Brain Activity: The understanding that neuroimaging techniques (like fMRI or PET) do not directly measure raw brain activity, but instead measure correlative biological markers like blood oxygenation or glucose metabolism.
- Neural Segregation vs. Connectivity: Distinct neural populations can be physically identified (e.g., via Nissl staining), but their actual functional networks and pathways are mapped through techniques like tract tracing.
- Comparative Cognition: The interdisciplinary study of how mental processes operate across different species, comparing human capabilities to mammals, birds, and other animals.
- Cumulative Culture: The ability to generate complex behaviors and sequentially build upon them to teach subsequent generations, a trait previously thought to be exclusively human but now found in animals like crows and apes.
- Basal/Minimal Cognition: The study of the minimum criteria required for a system to process information, demonstrating that even organisms without neurons, like slime molds, can exhibit cognitive behaviors like avoidance and problem-solving.
- Continuity Thesis: The idea that cognitive capacity is not a binary all-or-nothing trait, but rather exists on a gradient or continuous spectrum across all species.
Theories and Frameworks
- Two Visual Systems Hypothesis: Proposes that vision involves two segregated pathways: the dorsal “where” stream processing spatial location and the ventral “what” stream processing object features like color and shape.
- Modularity of Mind: A framework positing that the brain functions as a collection of functionally distinct, encapsulated components or “modules” specializing in different tasks.
- Connectionism: The perspective that cognitive processes are not strictly modular, but emerge from distributed, intricate networks of neural connections that can recruit different brain areas.
- Morgan’s Canon: A principle of skepticism warning that animal behavior should not be attributed to higher-level complex psychology if it can be explained by simpler, lower-level processes.
- Intentional Systems (Intentional Stance): A framework that attributes mental states, beliefs, and desires to organisms to functionally explain and predict their behavior, without needing to know their exact neurochemical makeup.
- Triune Brain Theory: A general evolutionary heuristic dividing the brain into the reptilian brain (instincts and motivation), the mammalian limbic system (emotion and memory), and the human neocortex (abstract thought and language).
- Affective Neuroscience: A neurobiological framework identifying core emotional systems in animals, specifically categorizing them into seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, and panic/grief systems.
- Theory of Mind: The cognitive capability to attribute mental states, such as beliefs, ignorance, or intentions, to other agents independent of one’s own knowledge.
Notable Individuals
- Franz Joseph Gall: Developed phrenology, an early pseudoscientific attempt to map distinct brain functions to bumps on the skull.
- Paul Broca & Carl Wernicke: Pioneered early mapping of functional segregation in language production and comprehension through brain damage case studies.
- Ungerleider & Mishkin: Formulated the two visual systems hypothesis differentiating the dorsal and ventral visual streams.
- Jerry Fodor: Philosopher who developed the concept of the modularity of mind.
- Aristotle, Descartes, & John Locke: Historical thinkers who largely viewed animals as instinct-driven automatons lacking complex emotional or cognitive capacities.
- Conwy Lloyd Morgan: Established a skeptical canon opposing the attribution of human-like psychological traits to animal behaviors.
- Daniel Dennett: Philosopher who introduced the intentional stance, advocating for treating animals as intentional systems with beliefs and desires.
- Christopher Krupenye: Conducted the 2016 false belief task experiments providing evidence for theory of mind in chimpanzees.
- Jaak Panksepp: Founded affective neuroscience and identified distinct neurobiological emotional structures in animals.
- Jonathan Birch: Philosopher advocating for an ethical “err on the side of caution” approach when considering animal sentience and cognition.