To see a complete list of recently offered courses and their descriptions, visit the online course catalog.
The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found on the SIS website.
Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.
Course # (Section)
Title
Day/Times
Instructor
Room
PosTag(s)
Info
AS.001.146 (01)
FYS: Nature, Nurture, Cognition
T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Landau, Barbara
Krieger 134A
COGS-COGPSY
FYS: Nature, Nurture, Cognition AS.001.146 (01)
Using both seminal and contemporary readings as a foundation, we will explore the foundations of cognition and how they support human cognitive development, focusing on how ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ collaborate to shape development of the human mind. This semester, we will read at least three, and possibly four books, along with supplementary readings, as appropriate. Our focus will be on understanding the roles of nature and nurture in the context of typical and atypical development, including an understanding of how knowledge about objects, language, number, and other minds all emerge during human development, from infancy to adulthood, in typically and atypically developing individuals.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Landau, Barbara
Room: Krieger 134A
Status: Waitlist Only
Seats Available: 0/12
PosTag(s): COGS-COGPSY
AS.001.189 (01)
FYS: Language, Advertising, and Propaganda
MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Rawlins, Kyle
Krieger 134A
COGS-LING
FYS: Language, Advertising, and Propaganda AS.001.189 (01)
Advertising pervades our culture; interactions with advertising are an unavoidable fact of modern life. This class uses tools from linguistics and cognitive science to analyze these interactions, and understand the impact of advertising on its viewers. A central theme is to treat ads as communicative acts, and explore the consequences -- what can theories of communication (from linguistics, psychology, and philosophy) tell us about ads? How do ads use central features of human cognition to accomplish their aims? Do ads manipulate, and if so, how successfully? The theories of communication we explore include Gricean pragmatics, theories of speech acts, linguistic theories of presuppositions, and more. Students will collect, analyze, and discuss advertisements in all mediums.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Instructor: Rawlins, Kyle
Room: Krieger 134A
Status: Waitlist Only
Seats Available: 0/12
PosTag(s): COGS-LING
AS.050.102 (01)
Language and Mind
TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Gilman 50
COGS-LING, COGS-COGPSY
Language and Mind AS.050.102 (01)
Introductory course dealing with theory, methods, and current research topics in the study of language as a component of the mind. What it is to "know" a language: components of linguistic knowledge (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) and the course of language acquisition. How linguistic knowledge is put to use: language and the brain and linguistic processing in various domains.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Instructor: Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Room: Gilman 50
Status: Open
Seats Available: 16/125
PosTag(s): COGS-LING, COGS-COGPSY
AS.050.105 (01)
Introduction to Cognitive Neuropsychology
TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
McCloskey, Michael E
Gilman 50
COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
Introduction to Cognitive Neuropsychology AS.050.105 (01)
When the brain is damaged or fails to develop normally, even the most basic cognitive abilities (such as the ability to understand words, or perceive objects) may be disrupted, often in remarkable ways. This course explores a wide range of cognitive deficits, focusing on what these deficits can tell us about how the normal brain works. Topics include brain anatomy and causes of brain damage, reading and spelling deficits, unilateral spatial neglect, hemispheric disconnection, cortical plasticity, and visual perception of location and orientation. Students read primary sources: journal articles that report deficits and discuss their implications.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Instructor: McCloskey, Michael E
Room: Gilman 50
Status: Open
Seats Available: 3/125
PosTag(s): COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
AS.050.116 (01)
Visual Cognition
MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Li, Donald
Krieger 111
COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
Visual Cognition AS.050.116 (01)
How do humans make sense of the visual world around them? This course will provide an introductory survey of current research, methods, and theories in visual cognition. We will draw upon topics in cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Instructor: Li, Donald
Room: Krieger 111
Status: Open
Seats Available: 2/25
PosTag(s): COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
AS.050.233 (01)
Lost in Space: How Humans Learn, Think, and Talk About the World Around Us
MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Talmina, Natalia
Shriver Hall Board Room
COGS-COGPSY, COGS-COMPCG, COGS-LING
Lost in Space: How Humans Learn, Think, and Talk About the World Around Us AS.050.233 (01)
The ability to perceive, navigate, and explain space around us is essential in our everyday life: every day humans find their favorite coffee mug, make their way to work, hang their coat, and give directions to dinner guests with relative ease. How is this assorted set of tasks accomplished? How does the human mind structure the space around us and recognize the spatial relations between various objects? What happens when this ability is impaired? This course will attempt to answer these questions by sampling key concepts, theories, and experimental findings from a diverse set of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics. We will get an overview of spatial cognition from multiple perspectives and draw analogies between different research paradigms.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Instructor: Talmina, Natalia
Room: Shriver Hall Board Room
Status: Open
Seats Available: 1/18
PosTag(s): COGS-COGPSY, COGS-COMPCG, COGS-LING
AS.050.236 (01)
Neurolinguistics
TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Krieger 111
BEHB-BIOBEH, COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
Neurolinguistics AS.050.236 (01)
This course provides an introductory survey of the cognitive neuroscience of language – a multidisciplinary field in the intersection of Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, and Neuroscience. We will explore current research on the neural bases of the perception, production, and acquisition or human language in neuro-typical and impaired individuals.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Instructor: Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Room: Krieger 111
Status: Open
Seats Available: 3/20
PosTag(s): BEHB-BIOBEH, COGS-COGPSY, COGS-NEURO
AS.050.312 (01)
Cognitive Neuroimaging Methods in High-Level Vision
MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Li, Donald
Krieger 111
COGS-NEURO, COGS-COGPSY, NEUR-CG
Cognitive Neuroimaging Methods in High-Level Vision AS.050.312 (01)
This course is an advanced seminar and research practicum course. It will provide the opportunity to learn about fMRI methods used in the field of vision science and for students to have hands-on experience to develop, design and analyze a research study on topics in the cognitive neuroscience field of high-level vision. In the first part of the course students will read recent fMRI journal papers and learn about common fMRI designs and analysis methods; in the second part of the course students will conduct a research study to address a research question developed from readings. Students are expected to write a paper in a short journal article format at the end of the course and to present their results in front of the class. Research topics will vary but with special focus on topics in high-level visual processing.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Instructor: Li, Donald
Room: Krieger 111
Status: Open
Seats Available: 7/19
PosTag(s): COGS-NEURO, COGS-COGPSY, NEUR-CG
AS.050.348 (01)
First Language Acquisition
TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Krieger 111
COGS-LING, COGS-COGPSY
First Language Acquisition AS.050.348 (01)
This course provides an introduction to the fields of first and second language acquisition by looking at questions such as the following: Can the grammar of a native language be learned solely on the basis of noticing statistical correlations among words? How does native language acquisition explain — or is explained by — the universal properties, shared by all languages, of words and grammars? How does being exposed to multiple languages from birth affect language acquisition and what happens when a child is not exposed to any language early in life? Does the same cognitive mechanism guide language learning in children and adults? What factors account for individual differences in ease and ultimate attainment when a second language is learned later in life? Is it possible to become indistinguishable from a native speaker in a foreign language? What changes take place in the brain when a new language is learned? Also offered as AS.050.648.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Instructor: Yarmolinskaya, Julia S
Room: Krieger 111
Status: Waitlist Only
Seats Available: 0/19
PosTag(s): COGS-LING, COGS-COGPSY
AS.050.352 (01)
Applying Cognitive Neuroscience to Artificial Intelligence Part I
Applying Cognitive Neuroscience to Artificial Intelligence Part I AS.050.352 (01)
As a result of greater computing power and Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly improving for well-defined tasks and narrow intelligence. Moreover, it has entered all industries in a myriad of ways. But will AI ever have human-like general intelligence? What does humanlike general intelligence even mean? Why should we even care? This course is designed to answer these complex questions by giving students working knowledge of the underlying principles and mechanisms of human behavior and cognition, and how they may be applied to solving current and rising industry challenges. Key topics to be addressed will include vision, audition, language, learning, emotion and social cognition, creativity, and consciousness. Each topic addressed will cover latest advancements within cognitive neuroscience, with relevant applied case studies. Students will apply learned topics to a final group research project on the topic of their choice.
Cracking the code: Theory and modeling of information coding in neural activity AS.050.365 (01)
One of the most foundational concepts in neuroscience is the idea that neural activity encodes information about an animal’s sensory environment and internal mental states. This idea is closely connected to the concept of mental representation in cognitive science and philosophy, whereby the mind is proposed to contain internal symbols that represent things in the external world. There have been many fascinating discoveries about how neural signals encode information, but we are still far from a comprehensive theory of neural representation. Recent major developments in neuroscience and machine learning have opened up a new world of possibilities for investigating the underlying principles of information coding in the brains of humans and other animals. In this course, we will discuss primary research articles on neural representation and information processing, and students will implement computational analyses that address issues in these domains. We will mostly focus on vision as a system that illustrates broader principles of information processing in the human brain. The reading material will include work from philosophy, neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and computational modeling. The topics covered include mental and neural representation, neural tuning, population coding, information theory, encoding and decoding models, dimensionality reduction, computational models, deep learning, and other applications of machine learning in neuroscience. Enrollment is limited to Juniors and Seniors. While this class does not have formal prerequisites, programming experience (e.g., AS 250.205 Introduction to Computing) and mathematical preparation (e.g., AS.110.107 Calculus II) are essential. It is also highly recommended that students have previously taken introductory courses in cognitive or systems neuroscience (e.g., AS.050.203 Neuroscience: Cognitive) and machine learning or neural network modeling (e.g., AS.050.372 Foundations of Neural Network Theory).
This course introduces techniques for computational modeling of aspects of human cognition, including perception, categorization, and induction. Possible topics include maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference, structured statistical models (including hierarchical and graphical models), nonparametric models. The course emphasizes the close connections among data analysis, theory development, and modeling, with examples drawn from language and vision. Also offered as AS.050.671.
Humans are a fundamentally social species with amazing capabilities beyond that of any other biological or artificial system. Yet the cognitive and neural computations underlying our vast social abilities are largely unknown. Advances in naturalistic neuroscience paradigms and machine learning are revolutionizing the way cognitive scientists study social cognition. This course will explore new research in computational social cognition, drawing from topics in cognitive neuroscience, development, and artificial intelligence. Our goal is to understand the motivation, methodology and implications of recent research. The class will be heavily focused on social vision, but will also explore other aspects of social cognition including theory of mind and moral reasoning.
