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Last update   11/9/2008  
 
 
 
 
 
       E-Courses

Brain and Cognitive Sciences:

Science Description :

The human brain is the most complex, sophisticated, and powerful information-processing device known. To study its complexities, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology combines the experimental technologies of neurobiology, neuroscience, and psychology, with the theoretical power that comes from the fields of computational neuroscience and cognitive science.

 

Undergraduates Courses:

-   Introduction to Psychology, Fall 2004

Readings
Lecture notes
Assignment

- Kettlewell, Julianna. "'Fidelity gene' found in voles." BBC News, Science/Nature (June 16, 2004). Online edition.
Diamond, Lisa M. "Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Sexual Desire." Current Directions in Psychological Science 13, no. 3 (2004): 116-119.

- Calder, Andrew J., Andrew D. Lawrence, and Andrew W. Young. "Neuropsychology of fear and loathing." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2, no. 5 (2001): 352-363.

- McDonald, Robert V., and Shepard Siegel. "Intra-Administration Associations and Withdrawal Symptoms: Morphine-Elicited Morphine Withdrawal." Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 12, no. 1 (2004): 3-11.


- Kitaoka, Akiyoshi, and Hiroshi Ashida. "Phenomenal Characteristics of the Peripheral Drift Illusion." Vision 15, no. 4 (2003): 261-262.

- Wolfe, Jeremy M., and Todd S. Horowitz. "What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it?" Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, no. 6 (2004): 495-501.

- Ernst, Marc O., and Heinrich H. Bulthoff. "Merging the senses into a robust percept." Trends in Cognitive Science 8, no. 4 (2004): 162-169.
Freeman, William T. "The generic viewpoint assumption in a framework for visual perception." Nature 368, no. 6471 (1994): 542-545.

- Kandel, Eric R. "The molecular biology of memory storage: a dialog between genes and synapses." Nobel Lecture, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University, New York, U.S.A., December 8, 2000.

- Wegner, Daniel M., and Thalia Wheatley. "Apparent Mental Causation." American Psychologist 54, no. 7 (1999): 480-492.
Wegner, Daniel M. "Ironic Processes of Mental Control." Psychological Review 101, no. 1 (1994): 34-52.

- Hauser, Marc D., Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch. "The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?" Science 298 (2002): 1569-1579.
Fitch, W. Tecumseh, and Marc D. Hauser. "Computational Constraints on Syntactic Processing in a Nonhuman Primate." Science 303 (2004): 377-380.

- Duncan, John, et al. "A Neural Basis for General Intelligence." Science 289 (2000): 457-460.
Flynn, J. R. "The Flynn Effect: Rethinking intelligence and what affects it." 2004. Unpublished manuscript.

1- The Brain: Between the Ears, Behind the Eyes

(PDF)

2- Motivation and Emotion: "Reason Alone Cannot Move Us To Do Anything"

(PDF)

3- Learning: The Power of Association

(PDF)

4- Sensing: Gathering the Information

(PDF)
 

5- Attending: Limiting the Information

(PDF)

6- Perceiving: Interpreting the Information

(PDF)

7- Memory: What Do You Remember?

(PDF)

8- Cognition: How Do You Think?

(PDF)

9- Sub-populations at Risk

(PDF)

10- Language: What Do You Say?

(PDF)

11- Language Development: What Do Children Say?

(PDF)

12- Intelligence: How Do We Know You Are Smart?

(PDF)

13- The Battle of the Sexes: Love and Evolution

(PDF)

14- Social Exchange: Romantic Economics

(PDF)

15- Attitudes and Behaviors: How Can We Be Controlled?

(PDF)

16- Who Are you? The Psychology of the Self

(PDF)

 Paper 1

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 Paper 2

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 Paper 3

(PDF)

 Paper 4

(PDF)

Example of good and bad writing

(PDF)

 

   Graduates Courses:

-   Brain Mechanisms for Hearing and Speech, Fall 2005

Readings
Lecture notes
Assignment

- Oertel, D., and E. D. Young. "What's a cerebellar circuit doing in the auditory system?" Trends Neurosci 27 (2004): 104-110.
Young, E. D., and K. A. Davis. "Circuitry and function of the dorsal cochlear nucleus." In Integrative Functions of the Mammalian Auditory Pathway. Edited by D. Oertel, A. N. Popper, and R. R. Fay. New York, NY: Springer, 2001. ISBN: 038798903X.

- Venecia, R. K. de, M. C. Liberman, J. J. Guinan, Jr., and M. C. Brown. "Medial olivocochlear reflex interneurons are located in the posteroventral cochlear nucleus." J Comp Neurol 487 (2005): 345-360.
 

- Khalfa, S., R. Bougeard, N. Morand, E. Veuillet, J. Isnard, M. Guenot, P. Ryvlin, C. Fischer, and L. Collet. "Evidence of peripheral auditory activity modulation by the auditory cortex in humans." Neurosci 104 (2001): 347-358.
 

- Adams, J. C., and E. Mugnaini. "Immunocytochemical evidence for inhibitory and disinhibitory circuits in the superior olive." Hearing Res 49 (1990): 281-298.
 

- Riquelme, R., E. Saldaña, K. K. Osen, O. P. Ottersen, and M. A. Merchán. "Colocalization of GABA and glycine in the ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus in rat: An in situ hybridization and semiquantitative immunocytochemical study." J Comp Neurol 432 (2001): 409-424.

- Delgutte, B. "Physiological models for basic auditory percepts." In Auditory Computation. Edited by H. H. Hawkins, T. A. McMullen, A. N. Popper, and R. R. Fay. New York, NY: Springer, 1996, pp. 157-220. ISBN: 0387978437.
Parker, A. J., and W. T. Newsome. "Sense and the single neuron: Probing the physiology of perception." Annu Rev Neurosci 21 (1998): 227-277.
 

- Takahashi, T. T., A. D. Bala, M. W. Spitzer, D. R. Euston, M. L. Spezio, and C. H. Keller. "The synthesis and use of the owl's auditory space map." Biol Cybern 89 (2003): 378-87.
Note: You can skim the section entitled "Neural computation of auditory space," which lies beyond this theme's focus.

- Middlebrooks, J. C, L. Xu, S. Furukawa, and E. A. Macpherson. "Cortical neurons that localize sounds." Neuroscientist 8 (2002): 73-83. (Gives an overview of Middlebrook's work on cortical coding of sound location. Background for the assigned Furukawa and Middlebrooks paper.)

- Wang, X., T. Lu, R. K. Snider, and L. Liang. "Sustained firing in auditory cortex evoked by preferred stimuli." Nature 435 (2005): 341-6.

1- Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus

          (PDF)

2- Quantitative Methods

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3- Neuroimaging

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4- Speech Motor Control

          (PDF)
 

5- Descending Systems

6- Cell Types and Circuits

7- Thalamus and Cortex

8- Motor Control

9- Cortical Language Processing

10- Special Lecture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Absolute Pitch

          (PDF)

 Cortical correlates of audio-visual integration

(PDF)

Neural Centers and Perceptual Characteristics of Auditory Short-term Memory

          (PDF)

 Brain Attending a Cocktail Party

(PDF)

 A Gene for Speech?

(PDF)

 

 Undergraduate, and Graduates Courses:

-   Neural Basis of Learning and Memory, Fall 2003

Readings
Lecture notes
Assignment

- Corkin, S. "What's new with the amnesic patient H.M.?" Nat Rev Neurosci 3, no. 2 (2002): 153-60.

- Martin, K. C., A. Casadio, H. Zhu, E. Yaping, J. C. Rose, M. Chen, C. H. Bailey, and E. R. Kandel. "Synapse-specific, long-term facilitation of aplysia sensory to motor synapses: a function for local protein synthesis in memory storage." Cell 91, no. 7 (Dec 26, 1997): 927-38.

- Sutton, M. A., J. Ide, S. E. Masters, and T. J. Carew. "Interaction between amount and pattern of training in the induction of intermediate - and long-term memory for sensitization in aplysia." Learn Mem 9, no. 1 (Jan-Feb 2002): 29-40.


- McGuire, S. E., P. T. Le, and R. L. Davis. "The role of Drosophila mushroom body signaling in olfactory memory." Science 293, no. 5533 (Aug 17, 2001): 1330-3.

- Bliss, T. V. P., and G. L. Collingridge. "A synaptic model of memory: long-term potentiation in the hippocampus." Nature 361, no. 6407 (Jan 1993): 31-9.

- Turrigiano, G. G., K. R. Leslie, N. S. Desai, L. C. Rutherford, and S. B. Nelson. "Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons." Nature 391, no. 6670 (Feb 26, 1998): 892-6.

- Strange, B. A., L. J. Otten, O. Josephs, M. D. Rugg, and R. J. Dolan. "Dissociable human perirhinal, hippocampal, and parahippocampal roles during verbal encoding." J Neurosci 22, no. 2 (Jan 15, 2002): 523-8.

- Dobbins, I. G., H. J. Rice, A. D. Wagner, and D. L. Schacter. "Memory orientation and success: separable neurocognitive components underlying episodic recognition." Neuropsychologia 41, no. 3 (2003): 318-33.

- Wilson, M. A., and B. L. McNaughton. "Dynamics of the hippocampal ensemble code for space." Science 261, no. 5124 (Aug 20, 1993): 1055-8.

Lecture 2                     Cells and Synapses

(PDF)

 Lecture 3,4                   The Aplysia Model; Habituation and Sensitization

(PDF)
 

 Lecture 5                    The Drosophila Model

(PDF)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Assignment for the Undergraduate Students

* Read and re-read your assigned journal article

* Outline your talk as follows:       

- Purpose of study (hypotheses, questions)                - Participants            - Methods                  - Results                   - Interpretation         - What experiment(s) should follow?

* Use Microsoft® PowerPoint® or overheads

* Limit your presentation to 10 mins

* Define new terms

* Be critical as appropriate, i.e., don't just read and regurgitate - think

* A 5-min discussion will follow

 

 
For more information visit: www.ocw.mit.edu