Cognition and Overcoming its Limits

Undergraduate / Graduate

The brains of humans and animals are remarkably flexible. We can juggle many tasks, sort through a barrage of information vying for our attention, become an expert in a vocation or hobby of choice, and remember a large amount of information while responsibly forgetting that which is unimportant. But cognition also has limited capacity, and humans expend a lot of effort trying to enhance that capacity in health and disease. This course will examine the neural mechanisms that enable and limit cognitive processes like learning, memory and decision making. We will also study behavioral and clinical efforts to enhance cognition in health and disease. These topics are very active areas of research, with new discoveries published every week. We will therefore focus on the primary literature. Each class will contain a discussion of an original research article, a wider ranging conversation about related issues and findings, and an overview of the next topics. We will focus on studies that use animal models to relate the activity of neurons to cognition and on behavioral and imaging work in humans. Students will gain experience reading and critiquing original research, presenting research findings to their peers, relating current research to a body of knowledge, and, through a culminating project, using writing or another medium to communicate neuroscience findings to a broad audience.