Lecture Notes: Human Brain - Prof. Nancy Kanwisher 🧠

Welcome and Introduction

• Class: 9.13 The Human Brain
• Professor: Nancy Kanwisher
• Purpose: Brief story, why/how/what of studying the human brain, mechanics, and course details.
• Agenda: Story, course overview, course mechanics & details, allocation of grades.

Opening Story

• Personal account involving a friend named Bob who experienced a medical emergency.
• Themes: Human mind, brain organization, resilience, expertise, recovery from brain damage, privilege.

Incident Description

• Bob collapses; 911 called; Bob woozy but alive.
• At the ER, tests don't reveal anything significant initially.

Background Concerns

• Prof. Kanwisher recalls Bob’s past issues with navigation and memory that suggested potential brain issues.
• Suggested the ER doc check Bob's brain despite initial reluctance.

Discovering the Problem

• Brain scan reveals a lime-sized growth near a region involved in navigation that Kanwisher's lab had studied.
• Previous scans showed the tumor was growing slowly, reducing immediate concern but confirming a problem.
• Diagnosis: Meningioma (a non-cancerous tumor) pressing on key brain regions.

Surgery and Outcome

• Surgery successful due to expert neurosurgeon choice; Bob quickly regains consciousness post-surgery.
• Long-term navigation ability didn’t recover; relies on GPS technology for navigation.
• Specific issue with imaginal and spatial tasks, not generalized cognitive impairment.

Key Points from the Story

• Brain organization: Different parts of the brain have specific functions.
• Damage to specific brain areas can lead to loss of particular abilities without general cognitive decline.
• Importance of specialized brain areas and their roles in mental functions.
• Bob’s case illustrates the varying degrees of specificity and functional compartmentalization in the human brain.

Course Themes

1. Brain Organization: Different parts do different things. (Example: Bob's specific navigational deficiency)
2. Specialized Brain Functions: Some brain parts have very specific roles (e.g., navigation, face recognition).
3. Mind-Brain Connection: Studying brain structure reveals insights about the organization of the mind.
4. Brain Plasticity and Development: How brains change over time and after damage; greater plasticity in children.
5. Methods of Studying the Brain: Combining behavioral observations, anatomical/functional imaging, and studies of brain-damaged patients.

Why Study The Brain?

1. Self-Knowledge: Understanding the brain is understanding ourselves; the brain is central to identity.
2. Limits of Human Knowledge: Cognitive self-assessment and its empirical impact on epistemology.
3. Advancing AI: Understanding brain function helps improve AI, although current AI (e.g., deep networks) has limitations compared to human cognition.
4. Intellectual Quest: The study of the human brain is one of the greatest scientific pursuits.

AI and Cognition Comparison

• AI advancements (e.g. AlexNet) have improved visual object recognition but struggle with more complex interpretations and variability in real-world scenarios.
• Humans excel in understanding context, building models, and more complex cognitive tasks where AI still lags.

How We Will Study the Brain

• Focus: Interaction between brain regions, specialized machinery for mental functions, and development over the lifespan.
• Methods: Psychophysics, perceptual illusions, functional MRI, neurophysiology, EEG/Meg, neuropsychology (patient studies).

Key Areas of Focus

• Perception: Visual and auditory systems—color, motion, shape recognition, face & body perception.
• Cognition: Numbers understanding, language, social cognition, music appreciation, and more.
• Special Topics: Brain-machine interfaces, development, theory of mind, attention, and awareness.
• Excluded Topics: Some motor control, subcortical functions, detailed circuit mechanisms, memory, and decision-making.

Course Goals

• Appreciate key questions and stakes in cognitive neuroscience.
• Understand a variety of experimental methods and what they reveal about the mind/brain relationship.
• Gain knowledge about specific cognitive domains and their neural underpinnings.
• Ability to read and critically assess current research papers.

Course Mechanics & Grading

• Midterm/Final: 25% each.
• Reading and Writing Assignments: Frequent and integral to the course; read and analyze current research papers.
• Quizzes: Regular short quizzes to ensure engagement and understanding.
• Longer Written Assignment: Designing an experiment, due towards the end of the course.

Paper Reading Tips:

• Key Questions: What is the research question? What did they find? Why does it matter? What experimental design and analysis were used?
• Abstract/Main Content: Focus on these sections for the key answers.
• Ignore: Some methodological details that aren't the core focus of this course.

Final Note

• Next class: Brief neuroanatomy review and live brain dissection demonstration by Ann Graybiel.

End of Lecture Notes.