Psychophysiology and neurophysiology of mental processes

The goal of the course is to introduce students to the methods of psychophysiology and neurophysiology for the study of mental processes, both in terms of their characteristics and utility, and in terms of their content – what they allow us to study and what are some of the the key findings they enabled.

The course provides students with an overview of a variety of psychophysiological and neurophysiological methods, including:

-Methods for monitoring heart rate frequency and variability,
-Methods for monitoring respiration,
-Methods for monitoring electrodermal activity,
-Methods for monitoring eye movement and pupil size,
-methods of monitoring electrical activity of muscles (electromyography),
-Electroencephalography,
-Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The course introduces students to the foundations of each method, the importance of the method in developing and validating models of cognition, study design, data collection, and the basics of preprocessing and analysis of the data collected.

In addition, students will gain insight into the state of current research, findings, and methodological advances in the study of cognitive processes, systems, and phenomena. Among them research on attention, working memory, episodic memory, semantic memory and language, cognitive control, decision making, emotion processing, intelligence, and individual differences.

1. Cacioppo, J., Tassinary, L., & Berntson, G. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of Psychophysiology (4th ed., Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Luck, S.J. (2005). An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique. MIT Press.
3. Poldrack, A.R., Mumford, J.A. in Nichols, T.E. (2011). Handbook of Functional MRI Data Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.