180 in the context of cognitive theory, a module is a hypothetical center of information in a process which is assumed to be relatively independent and highly specialized in the role it fulfils. MODULE: "Modules, in the context of cognitive theory, is a hypothetical center of all information flow into and out of the brain structures."
What is a modular model of the brain?
Michael A Arbib (2007), Scholarpedia, 2 (3):1869. Modular models of the brain aid the understanding of a complex system by decomposing it into structural modules (e.g., brain regions, layers, columns) or functional modules (schemas) and exploring the patterns of competition and cooperation that yield the overall function.
What is a module in cognitive psychology?
According to Fodor, a module falls somewhere between the behaviorist and cognitivist views of lower-level processes. Behaviorists tried to replace the mind with reflexes, which are, according to Fodor, encapsulated (cognitively impenetrable or unaffected by other cognitive domains) and non-inferential (straight pathways with no information added).
Is the MIND organized into modules?
One characterization of the mind, which generates plenty of debate, is that it is organized in specific “modules” responsible for specific tasks.
Is there any neurophysiological support for the modular theory of mind?
There’s a widely accepted connectionist model of mental functioning, which maintains that mental information is processed and stored in relatively differentiated neuronal circuits. This would mean there would be neurophysiological support for the Modular Theory of Mind.
Does the brain have modules?
A specific account of modularity with empirical support is “massive modularity” (16, 66, 68). Under this view, the brain consists of many modules that each executes a discrete cognitive function relatively autonomously from the other modules.
Why it is useful to have a modular brain?
New research suggests that when brains are organized into modules they are better at learning new information without forgetting old knowledge.
Is the brain modular or non modular?
The atom is like a solar system, with electrons whirling around the nucleus like planets orbiting a star. No, actually, it isn't.
What is meant by modularity of mind?
n. a theory of the human mind in which the various components of cognition are characterized as independent modules, each with its own specific domain and particular properties. It was first proposed by U.S. philosopher Jerry Fodor (1935– ) in his book The Modularity of Mind (1983).
Why the brain might be organized in a modular manner?
There are several general advantages to modular and hierarchically modular network organization, including greater robustness, adaptivity, and evolvability of network function.
What does modular mean in biology?
Modularity refers to the ability of a system to organize discrete, individual units that can overall increase the efficiency of network activity and, in a biological sense, facilitates selective forces upon the network.
What is a module in cognitive psychology?
A cognitive module in cognitive psychology is a specialized tool or sub-unit that can be used by other parts to resolve cognitive tasks. It is used in theories of the modularity of mind and the closely related society of mind theory and was developed by Jerry Fodor.
Is face recognition modular?
The modular brain The most striking example of modularity is the face perception network. Faces selectively activate a chain of distinct brain regions spanning the occipital and temporal lobes. Damage to this network profoundly impairs face recognition abilities, a condition called prosopagnosia.
What is massive modularity hypothesis?
The massive modularity hypothesis proposes to eliminate isotropic processing from cognition, spawning modern discussions about how modules should be defined, and about what kinds of processing are modular or not (Barrett & Kurzban, 2006; Bennett, 1990; Fodor, 2000; Samuels, 1998).
What is the brain module?
This module introduces the general external topography of the brain. To illustrate the relationship between specific behaviors and brain function, the module begins by showing a racecar driver exercising his skill, and then presents graphic illustrations of the internal activity of his brain. The module reviews several methods of studying brain activity including the CAT scan, PET scan, EEG, and MRI.
What is the purpose of the Face Recognition module?
This module concentrates on higher visual areas beyond the striate cortex, addressing the questions of when seeing becomes perception and where it all takes place. Face recognition provides an illustrative example — patients suffering damage to their temporal lobes may see familiar faces, yet be unable to recognize them.
What is the brain's ability to rebound after injury?
Hydrocephalus, a childhood disorder of excess fluid in the brain, illustrates brain plasticity — the brain's amazing ability to rebound after injury. While patients with this disorder experience compression and destruction of brain tissue early in life, many are able to function normally later in life, after their brains have compensated for the loss.
Which hemisphere is dominant in language and the brain?
The left hemisphere is dominant in this module on language and the brain. Relationships between specific brain areas and verbal processing are shown through the historic example of Dr. Paul Broca's brain-injury patient. The patient's preserved brain is subjected to CAT scan analysis, which shows correspondence between the damaged area and the patient's documented difficulties with language comprehension.
Can brain trauma be recovered?
The promising results of rehabilitation after brain trauma have encouraged a growing number of centers dedicated to working with brain-injury victims. Specialists at such centers discuss the range of treatments now available, and the cases of actual patients are reviewed. The module shows that people can recover significantly from brain damage.
What is modular theory of mind?
As opposed to previous conceptions of the brain as an 'online' information processing machine, the Modular Theory of Mind (also called Modularity of Mind) proposes a modular or compartmentalized view of mental functions, each one highly specialized and interrelated, although independent from the others. Until the last few decades of the 20th ...
What is the diversity of mental modules?
After extracting the necessary information regarding the Modular Theory of Mind, we can conclude that the diversity of mental modules corresponds to the enormous variety of needs that arise as the individual develops cognitively in a given context.
What is the connectionist model of mental functioning?
There’s a widely accepted connectionist model of mental functioning, which maintain s that mental information is processed and stored in relatively differentiated neuronal circuits. This would mean there would be neurophysiological support for the Modular Theory of Mind.
What was the end result of Fodor's theory of mind?
The end result was the Modular Theory of Mind, which served to explain mental processing that was somewhere between behaviorism and cognitivism.
What theory of mind introduced parallel processing?
They also thought that it couldn’t process new data until it had finished the current information. However, the Modular Theory of Mind introduced the notion of parallel or simultaneous processing.
Why do modules operate at high speed?
High speed. The modules operate at high speed, probably thanks to the gain in efficiency that the previous two points offer.
What is Müller-Lyer illusion?
An observable and replicable mental phenomenon that , like many others, offers empirical support to this modular theory of mind is the so-called Müller-Lyer illusion. This illusion occurs when a person perceives a visual illusion, and, even after becoming aware that the visual information is false, is unable to stop perceiving it with its false attributes.
Who studied the modules of the mind?
Before the early 20th century, Edward Bradford Titchener studied the modules of the mind through introspection.
Why is the mind modular?
Binding may suggest that the mind is modular because it takes multiple cognitive processes to perceive one thing.
What are the criticisms of modular minds?
Criticisms of the notion of modular minds from genetics include that it would take too much genetic information to form innate modularity of mind, the limits to the possible amount of functional genetic information being imposed by the number of mutations per generation that led to the prediction that only a small part of the human genome can be functional in an if an information-carrying way impossibly high rate of lethal mutations is to be avoided, and that selection against lethal mutations would have stopped and reversed any increase in the amount of functional DNA long before it reached the amount that would be required for modularity of mind. It is argued that proponents of the theory of mind conflate this with the straw man argument of assuming no function in any non-protein-coding DNA when pointing at discoveries of some parts of non-coding DNA having regulatory functions, while the actual argument of limited amount of functional DNA does acknowledge that some parts of non-coding DNA can have functions but putting bounds on the total amount of information-bearing genetic material regardless of whether or not it codes for proteins, in agreement with the discoveries of regulatory functions of non-coding DNA extending only to parts of it and not be generalized to all DNA that does not code for proteins. The maximum amount of information-carrying heredity is argued to be too small to form modular brains.
What is modularity of mind?
Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have been proposed by different ...
What did Gall claim about the individual mental faculties?
Gall claimed that the individual mental faculties could be associated precisely, in a one-to-one correspondence, with specific physical areas of the brain. For example, someone's level of intelligence could be literally "read off" from the size of a particular bump on his posterior parietal lobe.
What is Merlin Donald's theory?
Merlin Donald argues that over evolutionary time the mind has gained adaptive advantage from being a general problem solver. The mind, as described by Donald, includes module-like "central" mechanisms, in addition to more recently evolved "domain-general" mechanisms.
What is the mind made of?
Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is made up of genetically influenced and domain-specific mental algorithms or computational modules, designed to solve specific evolutionary problems of the past. Modules are also used for central processing. This theory is sometimes referred to as massive modularity.
Which part of the brain controls movement?
The largest part of the brain, the cerebrum initiates and coordinates movement and regulates temperature. Other areas of the cerebrum enable speech, judgment, thinking and reasoning, problem-solving, emotions and learning. Other functions relate to vision, hearing, touch and other senses.
How does the brain work?
The brain sends and receives chemical and electrical signals throughout the body. Different signals control different processes, and your brain interprets each. Some make you feel tired, for example, while others make you feel pain.
What is the brain made of?
Weighing about 3 pounds in the average adult, the brain is about 60% fat. The remaining 40% is a combination of water, protein, carbohydrates and salts. The brain itself is a not a muscle. It contains blood vessels and nerves, including neurons and glial cells.
How many nerves are in the cranium?
Inside the cranium (the dome of the skull), there are 12 nerves, called cranial nerves:
What organ controls memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, and every other process?
The brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body. Together, the brain and spinal cord that extends from it make up the central nervous system, or CNS.
Where is the spinal cord located?
The spinal cord extends from the bottom of the medulla and through a large opening in the bottom of the skull. Supported by the vertebrae, the spinal cord carries messages to and from the brain and the rest of the body.
How many halves are there in the cerebral cortex?
The cerebral cortex is divided into two halves, or hemispheres. It is covered with ridges (gyri) and folds (sulci). The two halves join at a large, deep sulcus (the interhemispheric fissure, AKA the medial longitudinal fissure) that runs from the front of the head to the back.
What is the modularity of mind?
A rival view argues that the human mind contains a number of subsystems or modules – each of which is designed to perform a very limited number of tasks and cannot do anything else. This is known as the modularity of mind hypothesis. So for example it is widely believed that there is special module for learning a language – a view deriving from the linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky insisted that a child does not learn to speak by overhearing adult conversation and then using ‘general intelligence’ to figure out the rules of the language being spoken; rather there is a distinct neuronal circuit – a module – which specialises in language acquisition in every human child which operates automatically and whose sole function is to enable that child to learn a language, given appropriate prompting. The fact that even those with very low ‘general intelligence’ can often learn to speak perfectly well strengthens this view.
What is the meaning of mind?
Mind – n. the human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.
Is modularity of mind a theory?
The evidence for a modular mind is compelling and the philosopher Jerry Fodor published a book in 1983 titled The Modularity of Mind which explained exactly what a module is. However the modular view is controversial and is not endorsed by all philosophers. Opponents argue that even in a general purpose problem-solver brain it is still possible that distinct cognitive capacities might be differently affected by brain damage. Fodor himself even admits that the answer may not be all that clear cut and suggests that while perception and language are modular, thinking and reasoning are almost certainly not – we solve some cognitive tasks using specialised modules and others using our ‘general intelligence’. However not all psychologists agree with this.
What are the problems with a rigidly modular brain?
Another problem with a too rigidly modular brain is that there would be less crosstalk between regions and would challenge the integration of information from different processing areas in the brain (e.g., those responsible for processing sound and visual information)—contrary to the conscious experience that we have.
What is modularity of mind?
This modularity proposal also can help us understand how cognition evolved in organisms—the more ancient the “module”, the earlier the abilities associated with it.
What is the characterization of the mind?
One characterization of the mind, which generates plenty of debate, is that it is organized in specific “modules” responsible for specific tasks. Theoretically, these modules operate independently of each other in order to perform their designated role in cognition, and many cannot be influenced by other modules or be processes ...
What is the architecture of the mind?
Trying to characterize the “architecture of the mind” is one of the central projects in cognitive science. From understanding what neurons actually do, to designating certain brain regions as responsible for specific activities, this interdisciplinary endeavor has defined the work of many neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and philosophers.
Who wrote the essay The Modularity of Mind?
Fodor, J. A. (1983). The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Is the brain modular?
Another problem with a too rigidly modular brain is that there would be less crosstalk between regions and would challenge the integration of information from different processing areas in the brain (e.g., those responsible for processing sound and visual information)—contrary to the conscious experience that we have. But then if the brain is too disorganized, it would be difficult to maintain systematic cognitive operations (e.g., think about how our internal organs are organized). There should be some “belief-independent” systems, for example, responsible for processing sound and some for processing vision, since these inputs have different physical properties. Clearly the brain cannot be completely modular or completely lacking organization. How can we identify the balance?
Does the brain have a rigid architecture?
If the architecture of the mind and the anatomy of the brain are such that a specific ability is completely encapsulated within a module, then it seems that the brain has a very rigid architecture that cannot recover from damage or adapt to the environment. We know from clinical examples that this is not the case.
Structural and Functional Modules
- Much of computational neuroscience focuses on properties of single neurons and small circuits. However, computational approaches to cognitive neuroscience (e.g., the interaction of perception, action and language) must deal with diverse functions distributed across multiple brain regions. …
Integration of Modeling and Experimentation
- With this, the concept of a “module” was well established within neuroscience as a structural entity (Mountcastle 1997). However, there is a complementary notion of a module as a functional entity (a schema in the sense of Arbib 1981). Analysis in neuroscience often goes to the extreme of focusing on one circuit or brain region and trumpeting it as "the" circuit implementing some s…
The Brain Operation Database Bodb
- The Brain Operation Database BODB (“Beau D B”) was motivated by the immense diversity of models in cognitive neuroscience, and the sad lack of using benchmarks to compare similar models against each other. BODB was designed to document not only Models but also Brain Operating Principles and Summary Data to aid in finding and comparing related models. Prelimi…
References
- Arbib, M. A. (1981) Perceptual structures and distributed motor control. In: Handbook of Physiology — The Nervous SystemII. Motor Control, ed. V. B. Brooks, American Physiological Society, pp. 1449-1480. Arbib, M. A., Érdi, P. & Szentágothai, J. (1998) Neural Organization: Structure, Function, and Dynamics, The MIT Press. Arbib, M.A. (1992) Schema Theory, In the Enc…