BCSC 153: Cognition
Cross-listed: PSYC 153
Prerequisites: BCSC 110 (BCSC 111 recommended)
Offered: Spring
Required or recommended for: BCS Majors--This course is one of the three core courses required for the concentration.
This course builds on the material covered in BCSC 110 and 111. We begin by examining how sensory signals get integrated into a coherent perception of the world, building mostly from examples of visual cognition. The second section of the course focuses on how our memories are organized and how we encode, store and retrieve information. The third section examines the process by which we reason, plan actions and control behavior. The fourth section of the class covers advanced topics such as consciousness, issues of brain lateralization, and brain plasticity. The behavioral, brain imaging and computational methods used by cognitive scientists in their quest to understand the nature of cognition will be introduced as needed throughout the class.