Evidence from the Cognitive Sciences

1. Evidence from the Cognitive Sciences James A. Van Slyke

2. From the Soul to the Brain • Sciences and Human Nature • Cognitive Neuroscience • Characteristics of the soul linked with particular brain areas • No place in the brain specialized for interacting with the soul • No “Cartesian Theatre”

3. Thomas Aquinas • Three parts of the soul • Rational • Intellect – Active and Passive • Will • Animal or Sensitive • Locomotion, appetite, sensation, emotion • Vegetative • Reproduction, nutrition, growth • Body

4. Aquinas on the Brain • Locomotion • Motor cortex + pathways to muscles throughout the body • Sensation • Somatosensory Cortex – directly behind motor cortex

5. Aquinas on the Brain • Emotion • Amygdala – implicit aspects of emotion • Emotional valence to memories • Fight or flight response • Cingulate Cortex – emotional attachment • Mothering instincts • Damage leads to decreases in empathy

6. Aquinas on the Brain • Other areas • Language – Broca’s and Wernicke’s • Vision – Occipital Lobe • Identifying Objects • Where? – Parietal Lobe • What? – Temporal Lobe • Two pathways beginning in the occipital lobe

7. The Famous Case of Phineas Gage • Before accident • Intelligent • capable worker • excellent manager • responsible family man • upstanding citizen • After Accident • Maintained his general intelligence • Unreliable and capricious • Socially Inappropriate • Lost his family and fortune

9. Case of Elliott – Damasio • before • good husband and father • high level job at business firm • had attained an enviable social status • post surgery, tumor removed in orbital frontal area • irresponsible • unable to manage his time • flawed decision making • Divorced; entered unwise marriage • lost his job

10. Case of Elliot • Laboratory test results • maintained superior IQ (WAIS) • flawless memory • superior language ability • normal on lab tests of financial and ethical decision making • normal lab ability to generate solutions to social problems • Could predict social consequences

11. Gambling game • Test of decisions and consequences • Gambling Game • normal individuals develop anticipatory evaluative autonomic response (mini emotional response) first to choosing form the bad deck, and eventually to the thought of so choosing. • Differential autonomic reasons develop prior to conscious awareness of the game’s contingencies • Elliot was never able to develop a discriminatory anticipation while choosing from the bad decks

13. Theory of Somatic Markers • Experiences with the contingencies of life cause development of anticipatory evaluative (negative or positive) autonomic response which are coupled to knowledge. • These autonomic response guides behavioral choices in ways that are often not directly available to consciousness • Individuals with orbital frontal brain damage have knowledge de-coupled form the autonomic response system

14. Declarative Memory Processes • Declarative memory: memories available as facts, events, or specific stimuli • Where I parked my car this morning • People with anterograde amnesia are unable to talk about their experiences following brain damage • Nondeclarative memory: stimulus-response and motor memories that control behaviors at an unconscious level • How I am able to ride a bicycle 15.14

15. Hippocampal Damage and Amnesia • Severe anterograde amnesia follows bilateral damage to the hippocampus • Patient H.M. suffered from severe epilepsy • Following surgery, H.M. showed severe anterograde amnesia • No retention for events that have occurred since 1953 • Can recall events that occurred prior to 1953 • H.M.’s amnesia was attributed to hippocampal damage 15.15

16. Hippocampus Hippocampus • MRI scan of hippocampus (in red)

17. Cognitive Sciences and the Mind • Neuropsychology of Religious Experiences • Brain images of Tibetan Buddhists and Franciscan Nuns • Increased activity in frontal lobe and right parietal lobe during meditation • Brain is quite active in a specialized way during religious experience