Famous People
Founded psychoanalysis and developed the concept of the unconscious mind
Sigmund Freud
This lobe is responsible for processing visual information.
Occipital lobe
The term for the part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness
The unconscious
This movie follows a man as he discovers that the world around him is a simulation created by machines to control human minds
The Matrix
This is the tallest (and ugliest) building on campus.
CDS
Proposed the idea of dualism, suggesting that the mind and body are distinct substances.
René Descartes
A process involved in learning and memory that involves the addition of AMPA receptors to strengthen synapses.
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
The term for a diminishing response to a stimulus after repeated exposure
Habituation
This actor portrays a U.S. Marshal in a famous psychological thriller, where he investigates a psychiatric facility and questions his own reality
Leonardo DiCaprio (in Shutter Island)
This is the largest organ in the human body.
The skin
The first woman to receive a PhD in psychology in the United States and known for her work on animal behavior.
Margaret Floy Washburn
This area of the brain contains over 50% of the brain's neurons, despite only making up 10% of the brain's volume.
Cerebellum
The term for the problem of explaining how mental states, such as beliefs and desires, can cause physical states, like actions.
The mind-body problem
This novel by Ken Kesey, later adapted into a film, is set in a psychiatric facility. It explores the oppressive nature of psychiatric institutions and the treatment of mental illness.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Reykjavik
The first person to discover that individual cells, called neurons, are the basic unit of the nervous structure.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
___ is a brain disorder that results in the inability to recognize familiar faces caused by damage to the ____.
Prosopagnosia; fusiform gyrus
The ability to understand that other people have mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, and knowledge
Theory of mind
In the film Memento, the main character, Leonard Shelby, suffers from what condition that affects his memory
Anterograde amnesia
This professor at BU teaches Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Victor Kumar
Discovered "place cells" in the hippocampus, which activate for specific locations and form an internal map of an area.
John O'Keefe
The white matter tract that connects the Broca's and Wernicke's areas.
Arcuate fasciculus
The idea that our feelings and emotions influence how we perceive the world and make sense of it
Affective realism
In George Orwell’s 1984, this is the term for the process of altering the mind's ability to accept contradictions, such as believing two opposing ideas at once.
Doublethink
This is Professor Somers' favorite hobby.
Running