Introduction to BCN

Experimental Psychology

The final meeting of Introduction to BCN was about Experimental Psychology. Jacob Jolij
introduced experimental psychology as efforts in psychology to discover how the brain
perceives a dynamic environment and generates certain response by means of cognition.
Continuing his presentation, Jolij told about an intriguing topic: mind reading. Nowadays,
some available techniques give us chance to read what one is thinking about. There are
electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical dynamic of the brain; MRI and
fMRI, which record oxygen consumption of the brain thereby predict which area of the brain
is active to think of certain thing. The main principle of the experiment is that everything that
we think in mind will be expressed as a specific pattern in EEG and fMRI. By knowing that
specific pattern and its correlation to what the brain think about, we can use this pattern as
sort of marker to do further experiment, trying to explore what one is thinking about.
Regarding to individual cognitive process, Pieter de Vries explained about how ones
cognitive process works by organizing previous and various information that one perceived.
Using Hebbians theory of learning on which learning is a matter of neuronal assembly, then
he generates computational model of cognitive processes which is plausibly happened among
neuronal-synapse cluster. Binding process is the important mechanism behind the cognitive
model by which the model describes the connection between some neuronal assemblies in the
brain that represent certain memory traces. By formulating the possible model of certain
neuronal-cluster connection, then he can test the plausibility of the model in human
experiment. Using those methodology, then he discovered how the binding process works in
some phenomenon such as working memory, letter-word recognition, and tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon.
Experimental psychology in perceptual process was explained by Elkan Akyrek. He
highlighted on temporal integration, our cognitive ability to produce a meaningful perception
from our environment by creating serial sensory events so-called perceptual moments. Since
the environment that we perceive is highly dynamic, our brain is also adapt to this condition.
Using the paradigm of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), it has been concluded that the
brain tend to perceive changes over time by fusing several rapid snapshots and then integrate
them into one moment. The experiments in temporally dynamic auditory and colour stimulus
has also been conducted and has confirmed this perceptual mechanism in the brain. Overall,
temporal integration seems to be economical mechanism of how the brain perceive the
environment as is proved by less mental effort during integration process.
Finally, Hedderik van Rijn talked about his experiment in interval timing. Interval timing is
defined as the cognitive capacity to estimate the duration of short event intervals where we
take an action and expect a response. Take an example of judging whether we should brake
for a yellow traffic light or not; or when we have multiple tasks, for example using a mobile
phone in a car. Some models are exist in explaining this theory. Scalar model simply explains
interval timing as a utilization of reference memory of timing that is previously generated by
dopaminergic neuron, thought as the pacemaker of this memory accumulation. The other
model, striatal based frequency (SBF), integrates the other brain areas which involves in

cognitive process then formulates striatal neuron as the oscillator, encoding timing for the
other brain areas to execute a task.
Overall, experimental psychology is performed by means of non-invasive tools which
measure the activity of the brain. By firstly generating plausible model of certain cognitive
process, then it is possible to conduct experiments to prove the proposed mechanism of how
the brain works during cognition.

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Written by Muhammad Nazmuddin S2633574 (N-track)