Vijay Shankar Sharma
Textbook neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and clinical terms. Not a reinterpretation of Vijay's Law or the Consciousness Index. 148 terms. Textbook meanings only.
20 terms. Page 1 of 1.
cognitive-science · intermediate
Also called: mental schema
A cognitive framework or mental structure that organises and interprets information based on prior knowledge and experience, helping people quickly process new information by fitting it into existing categories. Schemas make cognition efficient but can also produce systematic distortions in memory and perception when new information is forced to fit a pre-existing, imperfect framework.
cognitive-science · intermediate
The ability to focus cognitive processing on one source of information while filtering out competing, simultaneous information. The classic 'cocktail party effect', in which a person can follow one conversation in a noisy room yet still notice their own name spoken elsewhere, is a well-studied example of how selective attention operates alongside residual, low-level processing of unattended input.
self-and-social-cognition · intro
The capacity to recognise oneself as an individual, distinct from the environment and other individuals, and to reflect on one's own mental states, traits, and behaviour. It is often studied experimentally through tasks like the mirror self-recognition test, and is considered a foundational, though not sufficient, component of many theories of self-consciousness.
consciousness-theories · intermediate
A theory, associated with philosopher Thomas Metzinger, proposing that the subjective sense of being a self is generated by the brain constructing and continuously updating an internal model of itself, and that this self-model, rather than corresponding to any actual persisting entity, is simply the most useful representation the organism has for coordinating its behaviour.
self-and-social-cognition · intermediate
The subjective experience of being the author of one's own actions and of controlling events in the external world through one's own will. It can be experimentally weakened or disrupted, for example when an action's normal sensory consequences are delayed or altered, revealing that the felt sense of agency depends on specific, measurable predictive processes rather than being a simple, unmediated given.
self-and-social-cognition · intermediate
The subjective experience that a particular body, or body part, belongs to oneself. It can be experimentally manipulated, most famously in the rubber hand illusion, in which synchronised visual and tactile stimulation can cause a person to briefly experience an artificial rubber hand as part of their own body.
perception · intermediate
The neurological process by which the brain filters out redundant or unimportant sensory stimuli, preventing sensory overload and allowing attention to be directed toward more relevant information. Impairments in sensory gating have been studied in relation to certain psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, where filtering of sensory input appears to function less effectively.
perception · intro
The process by which raw sensory input from the eyes, ears, skin, and other sense organs is organised and interpreted by the nervous system to produce a coherent experience of the external world. Perception is not a passive recording of sensory data but an active process of inference, which is why the same physical stimulus can sometimes be perceived differently depending on context and expectation.
neuroscience · intro
Also called: 5-HT
A neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, appetite, sleep, and social behaviour. Many antidepressant medications, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, work by increasing the availability of serotonin at synapses. Most of the body's serotonin is actually found in the gut rather than the brain, where it regulates intestinal movement.
sleep-and-altered-states · intro
The recurring pattern of alternating REM and non-REM sleep stages that a person progresses through during a night's sleep, typically completing four to six cycles of roughly ninety minutes each. Disruption of normal sleep cycles, whether through sleep disorders or lifestyle factors, is associated with impairments in mood, cognition, and physical health.
sleep-and-altered-states · intermediate
A temporary inability to move or speak that occurs when a person becomes consciously aware while the muscle paralysis characteristic of REM sleep is still active, often accompanied by vivid, sometimes frightening hallucinations. It is a widely reported phenomenon that occurs at least once for a substantial fraction of the general population.
self-and-social-cognition · intro
The set of mental processes involved in perceiving, interpreting, and responding to information about other people and social situations, including recognising emotions, inferring intentions, and navigating social relationships. It draws on a broad network of brain regions and is studied across psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry.
clinical-and-disorders · intermediate
A condition, most often resulting from a surgical procedure to sever the corpus callosum as a treatment for severe epilepsy, in which the brain's two hemispheres can no longer directly exchange information. Experiments with split-brain patients, who can show each hemisphere information independently, have provided influential evidence about hemispheric specialisation and raised deep questions about the unity of conscious experience.
self-and-social-cognition · intermediate
A term, coined by psychologist and philosopher William James, describing the continuous, ever-flowing, and constantly changing nature of subjective experience and thought, as opposed to a series of discrete, separable mental states. James used the metaphor to emphasise that ordinary conscious experience does not naturally divide into neat, separate units the way early psychological theories often assumed.
perception · intermediate
The processing of sensory information below the threshold of conscious awareness, such that a stimulus can influence behaviour or judgement without a person being consciously aware of having perceived it. Rigorous laboratory studies have found genuine but generally modest and short-lived subliminal effects, in contrast to the exaggerated claims made about subliminal advertising in popular culture.
philosophy-of-mind · intermediate
The view, most associated with René Descartes, that mind and body are two fundamentally different kinds of substance: an unextended, thinking substance and an extended, non-thinking physical substance. It faces the long-standing interaction problem of explaining how an entirely non-physical mind could causally affect, or be affected by, a physical body.
neuroscience · intro
The junction between two neurons, or between a neuron and a target cell, where signals are transmitted, most commonly through the release of chemical neurotransmitters across a small gap. Synaptic strength can increase or decrease with use, a property called synaptic plasticity that underlies learning and memory. A single neuron may have thousands of synaptic connections.
neuroscience · intermediate
The ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time in response to increases or decreases in their activity, widely considered the primary cellular mechanism underlying learning and memory. Long-term potentiation, a long-lasting increase in synaptic strength following repeated stimulation, is the most extensively studied form of synaptic plasticity.
perception · intermediate
A neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway automatically triggers an involuntary experience in another, such as perceiving specific colours when hearing particular sounds, or associating numbers with distinct colours or spatial positions. It is estimated to occur in a small percentage of the population and tends to run in families, suggesting a genetic component.
cognitive-science · intro
Terms popularised by psychologist Daniel Kahneman for the two modes of thought described by dual-process theory: System 1 is fast, automatic, and intuitive, while System 2 is slower, deliberate, and effortful. Many cognitive biases arise when System 1's quick judgements are accepted without the more effortful checking that System 2 could, in principle, provide.