Course Description
Provides in-depth, empirically-grounded coverage of major issues with respect to cognitive and affective bases of behavior, including topics such as learning, memory, thought processes, decision-making, affect, mood, and emotion.
Athena Title
Cog/Aff Bases of Behavior
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and springOffered every even-numbered year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to: (a)articulate maajor theories of emotion and cognition (b)describe the neural circuitry involved with fundamental cognitive processes (e.g., attention, memory, decision-making, cognitive control), emotion ekicitation, emotion regulation, and the interaction between cognition and emotion (c)identify methods used to study emotion and cognition (d)write a research paper that synthesizes findings in a specific domain within this framework
Topical Outline
1. Structure and Function of the Nervous System Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience and Affective Science 2. The Structure of Emotion Functional Bases of Behavior 3. Theories of Basic Emotion Emotional Expression 4. Affective Forecasting 5. Neural Systems of Attention Theoretical Models of Selective Attention Emotion-attention Interactions 6. Neural Systems of Memory Theoretical Models of Memory Emotional Memory 7. Fear Learning 8. The Dopamine System and Reward Decision-making Reinforcement Learning Effort-cost Computation 9. Neural Systems of Cognitive Control Cognitive Control Emotion Regulation 10. Neural Systems of Social Cognition Perception of Emotion in Others 11. Theory of Mind Empathy Social Knowledge 12. Positive Emotion