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PSC-134-Main

5 min read

📗 -> Computational Cognitive Neuroscience

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🔗 Critical Links

  • OReilly, R. C. Munakata, Y., Frank, M.J., Hazy, T. E. and Contributors. (2024). Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, 5th Edition: freely available online:
  • Website
  • Syllabus
  • Simulations Github
    • Lots of cool README.md, spans a wide variety of subjects functionally

🔶 Course Description

Explorations of how brain secretes mind, via computer simulations that are manipulated and probed to investigate how neurons produce perception, attention, memory, language, and cognitive control.

❗ Important

Instructor:

TAs:

Alan Lu, Christian Nelson, and Alan Zheng

  • Office Hours:
    • Thu 3-4: Zoom Meeting ID: 959 4221 3824, Passcode: 483699
    • Friday 11:50-12:50, TLC 2216
    • Friday 2-3:00, TLC 2212

PSC134-Final-Prep

📄 Class Material

Week 1 - Introduction

Week 2 - Neurons

Week 3 - Networks

Week 4 - Learning

Week 5 - Learning / Brain Areas

Week 6 - Perception

Week 7 - Memory

Week 8 - Motor

Week 9 - Executive Function

Week 10 - Language / Thanksgiving

Week 11 - Language / Grand Finale

  • Language (Chapter 10) - Reading reaction due night before
  • Grand Finale
  • Homework: Chapter 10 due

🧪 -> Class Review Question

1) If this class had included a final project where you created/tested your own simulations, what kinds of domains/questions would you have explored? What are your initial ideas for how you would have explored your ideas by creating/manipulating/testing a model?

If this class had featured a final project like that, I would have been very interested in simulating emotional memory. It would have needed a lot of research to understand, but I'd be interested to see what the interplay between the emotional region of the brain (potentially the thalamus?) and the memory system (hippocampus proper?) is for encoding episodic memories.  
My goals with the simulation would have been to emulate some sort of trial data, where I suspect that emotionally neutral memories (like driving down an empty road) do not get encoded very well, but emotionally salient memories (hitting a home run in the big game) are more likely to be encoded. I would also be very interested in looking into the role of trauma in memory, and try to accommodate a third condition where extremely negative memories get repressed instead of encoded strongly like other emotional memories.   
To manipulate the model to try and find insights, I would see how the interplay between an emotional regulator and the encoding system would affect memory performance. I suspect that it would find that if there was no regulation and all memories where encoded equally, the model might over represent unimportant things and clutter its memory. On the other hand, if the emotional regulator was too strong it might be found that traumatic negative emotional memories are too prominent and lead people to anxious conditions and/or PTSD.
  1. How might you use things from this class in the future in terms of content (how the brain secretes the mind) and/or process (exploring simulations, integrating across levels — psychological / biological / computational / mathematical, asking questions, reading/sharing reactions/discussing, providing input on the class, etc.!):
a. In your work:

  In my work I will carry forward the visualizations of network interactions. I liked to think of the brain as a computer science, trying to modularize things and wave a lot of things away with the spirit of "that part of the brain just takes care of it". I really enjoyed getting to see how this is not necessarily the case, and that analyzing the brain is a lot more complicated than just tracing down who does what. It also involves seeing how the information is distributed, what organizations help it to achieve its goals, and what structures does it operate alongside. This new neurological lens will help me a lot with deepening my understanding of the brain going forwards.

b. In your life

  I think the biggest impact on my life will be the memory unit. Hearing about how complex it is and how cue focused it is will definitely impact how I try to learn things and interact with new information going forwards.

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