5.1 - Feats of Animal Navigation

5.1 - Feats of Animal Navigation

Dear Viewers of these Videos-

            These lectures are from my undergrad course The Human Brain, currently being taught in the spring of 2018 at MIT. Lectures will be added as the course proceeds.

            Over time I intent to expand, revise, and improve this set of lectures, for which I would welcome your feedback. If you are a newcommer to these topics and find parts unclear or boring pelase let me know. If you are in the field I would particularly appreciate hearing about any errors you catch or any content that you think should be added or removed.

            Just send me an email at ngk@mit.edu.

Nancy

Description of MIT Course 9.11: The Human Brain

            The last quarter century has revealed the functional organization of the human brain in glorious detail, including an unexpectedly precise mapping of specific perceptual and cognitive functions to particular cortical regions. This course surveys the core perceptual and cognitive abilities of the human mind and asks how they are implemented in the brain.  Specifically, we will explore in some detail a number of distinct domains of cognition like face recognition, navigation, number, language, music, and social cognition, and the cortical regions and networks that implement these functions. Key themes include the representations, development, and degree of functional specificity of these components of mind and brain. The course also emphasizes the inferences that can (and cannot) be drawn from each of the main methods in human cognitive neuroscience. The course will take students straight to the cutting edge of the field, empowering them to understand and critically evaluate empirical articles in the current literature.