What cognitive styles do you use to interact with technology? PRE-REQ: https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/87536 LAST UPDATE: Changed title
This course studies the relations of affect to cognition and behavior, feeling to thinking and acting, and values to beliefs and practices. These connections will be considered at the psychological level of organization and in terms of their neurobiological and sociocultural counterparts.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Among the many complications patients with diabetes can experience, cognitive decline is one of them. Diabetes-induced cognitive decline, or DICD, begins with damage to the central nervous system and can result in impaired learning, memory, and judgment. A recent study found that in mice with DICD, injection with the antidiabetic protein FGF1 improved cognition. In a water maze task designed to test memory, diabetic mice treated with FGF1 (db/db+FGF1) reached their goal significantly faster than untreated mice with diabetes (db/db). And the brains of untreated mice (db/db) showed more shrinkage than those of treated mice (db/db+FGF1). Further research should help clarify how FGF1 reduces symptoms of both diabetes and DICD and whether FGF1 might be an effective treatment option for patients with DICD..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
More attractive people elicit more positive first impressions. This effect is called the attractiveness halo, and it is shown when judging those with more attractive faces, bodies, or voices. Moreover, it yields significant social outcomes, including advantages to attractive people in domains as far-reaching as romance, friendships, family relations, education, work, and criminal justice. Physical qualities that increase attractiveness include youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, masculinity in men, and femininity in women. Positive expressions and behaviors also raise evaluations of a person’s attractiveness. Cultural, cognitive, evolutionary, and overgeneralization explanations have been offered to explain why we find certain people attractive. Whereas the evolutionary explanation predicts that the impressions associated with the halo effect will be accurate, the other explanations do not. Although the research evidence does show some accuracy, it is too weak to satisfactorily account for the positive responses shown to more attractive people.
This course explores the problem of intelligence—its nature, how it is produced by the brain and how it could be replicated in machines—using an approach that integrates cognitive science, which studies the mind; neuroscience, which studies the brain; and computer science and artificial intelligence, which study the computations needed to develop intelligent machines. Materials are drawn from the Brains, Minds and Machines Summer Course offered annually at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, taught by faculty affiliated with the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines headquartered at MIT. Elements of the summer course are integrated into the MIT course, 9.523 Aspects of a Computational Theory of Intelligence.
Contributors
This course includes the contributions of many instructors, guest speakers, and a team of iCub researchers. See the complete list of contributors.
It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. Do our thoughts appear in our minds because of the electro-chemical workings of our brains? Or do thoughts come from something that can’t be described by science, such as a soul? Are there deeper levels to the scientific explanation of thinking, for instance involving sub-atomic quantum effects? Or do our thoughts come from pure magic? Does it fit the case to say that our thoughts ‘come from’ some place? Or that they ‘appear’ in our minds? Are the workings of the mind very different from the workings of the heart? Or are emotions and feelings only another kind of thinking? Might the same be said of intuitions, or inspirations, or dreams?
How genetics can add to our understanding of cognition, language, emotion, personality, and behavior. Use of gene mapping to estimate risk factors for psychological disorders and variation in behavioral and personality traits. Mendelian genetics, genetic mapping techniques, and statistical analysis of large populations and their application to particular studies in behavioral genetics. Topics also include environmental influence on genetic programs, evolutionary genetics, and the larger scientific, social, ethical, and philosophical implications.
This course explores the cognitive and neural processes that support attention, vision, language, motor control, navigation, and memory. It introduces basic neuroanatomy, functional imaging techniques, and behavioral measures of cognition, and discusses methods by which inferences about the brain bases of cognition are made. We consider evidence from patients with neurological diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Balint's syndrome, amnesia, and focal lesions from stroke) and from normal human participants.
This undergraduate course is designed to introduce students to cognitive processes. The broad range of topics covers each of the areas in the field of cognition, and presents the current thinking in this discipline. As an introduction to human information processing and learning, the topics include the nature of mental representation and processing, the architecture of memory, pattern recognition, attention, imagery and mental codes, concepts and prototypes, reasoning and problem solving.
Cognitive Psychology is a psychological science which is interested in various mind and brain related subfields such as cognition, the mental processes that underlie behavior, reasoning and decision making.
What cognitive styles do we use to interact with technology? The GenderMag Project has identified five cognitive facets we bring to our use of technology.
This interactive activity helps learners visualize the role of electrons in the formation of ionic and covalent chemical bonds. Students explore different types of chemical bonds by first viewing a single hydrogen atom in an electric field model. Next, students use sliders to change the electronegativity between two atoms -- a model to help them understand why some atoms are attracted. Finally, students experiment in making their own models: non-polar covalent, polar covalent, and ionic bonds. This item is part of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to transforming education through technology.
An idea or solution is considered creative if it is original, useful, and surprising. However, depending on who actually judges these three criteria, we must distinguish personal “little-c creativity” from consensual “Big-C Creativity.” In any case, psychologists who investigate creativity most often adopt one of three perspectives. First, they can ask how creators think, and thus focus on the cognitive processes behind creativity. Second, they can ask who is creative, and hence investigate the personal characteristics of highly creative people. Third, they can ask about the social context, and, thereby, examine the environments that influence creativity. Although psychologists have made major advances in the study of creativity, many exciting and important questions remain to be answered.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) is an autoimmune disease defined by destroyed pancreatic β-cells. which results in impaired insulin secretion and hyperglycemia, but one complication of T1D gets less attention than the others: cognitive dysfunction. Previous studies reported that modification of gut microbiota can reduce the incidence of T1D. So, researchers from Wenzhou Medical University hypothesized that modified gut microbiota may also affect cognitive function in T1D. Using an induced mouse model of T1D, researchers modified the microbiota with an antibiotic and measured the impact of these microbial changes on cognitive performance. Antibiotic-treated mice (TD1V) had a disrupted microbiome and altered host metabolic phenotypes. Antibiotic-treated mice (blue) also showed greater cognitive impairment than induced T1D alone (red). The antibiotic treatment depleted acetate-producing bacteria, which lead to long-term acetate deficiency..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
This course uses neuroscience methods to study the cognitive development of human infants and children. Case studies draw from research on face recognition, language, executive function, representations of objects, number and theory of mind.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Nutrient-poor diets can increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and diets poor in fiber are widespread, especially in industrialized nations. However, whether fiber deficiency—which alters the gut microbiota—impairs cognition through the gut–brain axis remains unclear. To find out, researchers recently analyzed mice fed a fiber-deficient diet for 15 weeks. Compared to normal mice, the fiber-deficient mice exhibited cognitive impairment and were unable to complete typical activities like nest organization. In addition, the synapses in the brain area regulating cognitive function were damaged, and neuroinflammation occurred. Immune cells called microglia (indicated by Iba1) engulfed synapses (indicated by PSD-95) in the fiber-deficient mice. Furthermore, the fiber-deficient mice exhibited gut microbiota disruption that was associated with, and possibly responsible for, the cognitive deficits..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units cover the traditional areas of intro-to-psychology; ranging from biological aspects of psychology to psychological disorders to social psychology. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs.
This book includes a comprehensive instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentations, a test bank, reading anticipation guides, and adaptive student quizzes.
This course is premised on the belief that emotions are a fundamental part of human nature. Accordingly, understanding emotions and incorporating emotions into our research can help us better explain variation in important political phenomena. Research on emotions and how emotions can influence decision-making has dramatically increased over the past two decades. This class aims to pick up on new findings from psychology and other disciplines and marshal this knowledge toward the most important issues of political science.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Our gut microbiome has far-reaching effects on our bodies - including on our brain. Gut microbes primarily communicate with the brain via metabolites that are carried in the bloodstream. However, to influence neuronal cells, these metabolites must first interact with the blood-brain barrier (BBB). While diet influencing the brain has been well documented, the impacts of specific metabolites on the BBB are not. To close this gap, researchers combined cell culture and mouse models to examine two metabolites: trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and its precursor trimethylamine (TMA). In humans, both TMAO and TMA are generated by the microbiota from dietary fish and seafood. At physiologically relevant concentrations, TMAO enhanced the integrity of the BBB and protected it from inflammatory damage. In fact, long-term exposure to TMAO in mice protected cognitive function from inflammatory challenge. In contrast, TMA impaired BBB function and disrupted the tight junctions between endothelial cells..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around us, and provides us with our most important channels of communication. This module reviews the basic mechanisms of hearing, beginning with the anatomy and physiology of the ear and a brief review of the auditory pathways up to the auditory cortex. An outline of the basic perceptual attributes of sound, including loudness, pitch, and timbre, is followed by a review of the principles of tonotopic organization, established in the cochlea. An overview of masking and frequency selectivity is followed by a review of the perception and neural mechanisms underlying spatial hearing. Finally, an overview is provided of auditory scene analysis, which tackles the important question of how the auditory system is able to make sense of the complex mixtures of sounds that are encountered in everyday acoustic environments.