After this course, you are able to:

1. Relate a number of important cognitive functions to the neurophysiological processes that may underlie them (FQ 1.1, 1.2)
2. Describe a number of behavioural phenomena that constrain the possible underlying neurophysiological mechanisms (FQ 1.1, 1.2, 5.1)
3. Explain why a particular set of experimental results speaks for one or the other postulated neurophysiological mechanism (FQ 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 5.1, 5.2)
4. Read and discuss primary reports of empirical research, mostly journal articles (FQ 1.4, 5.1, 5.2).
5. Evaluate whether you want to proceed in the research masters Cognitive Neuroscience (FQ 6.5).

 

Cognitive functions and behaviours are the result of neurophysiological processes in our brains. To understand these cognitive functions and behaviours, it makes sense to uncover these underlying neurophysiological processes. This is a difficult enterprise. For many functions and behaviours, we don’t know what are the internal dynamics of these processes, and the best we can do is localising the brain areas in which theses processes occur. However, for a small number of cognitive functions and behaviours we do know some aspects of these internal dynamics. In this course, we show you what we know about the following cognitive functions and their underlying neurophysiological processes: