Dr. Adam Krawitz Associate Teaching Professor

PSYC 251 Intro to Mind and Brain

Gateway course for the Mind and Brain Stream. How does the mind arise from the physical brain?

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PSYC 351A Cognitive Psychology

What cognitive processes are there, and how do they function?

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PSYC 351C Cognitive Neuroscience

How do we study the neural basis of cognition?

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PSYC 317 Sensation and Perception

How do we construct our perception of the physical world?

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PSYC 451C Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience:
Computational Beauty of Mind

How do we use computational models to understand mind, brain, and behavior?

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PSYC 451C Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience:
Decision Making

What are the mental and neural foundations of decision making?

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PSYC 574B Cognitive Methods: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

What is fMRI, and how do we use it to study the mind and brain?

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PSYC 574C Cognitive Methods: Computational Modelling

How can we use formal models to understand the relationship between cognition and behavior?

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PSYC 576D Cognitive Processes: Cognitive Control

What is the “operating system” of the mind/brain?

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Working Memory

At the shortest timescales, we rely on stimuli in our environment to support action. At long timescales, we develop routines, skills and explicit memories stored in persistent neural changes. Working memory lies in the crucial intermediate timescale where the maintenance and manipulation of online information is used to guide flexible and dynamic action.

Executive Control

Much of the brain is dedicated to the stimulus-response arc — perception of stimuli, response selection, and action generation. But a critical component of the human information processing system, executive control, is the modulation of these pathways based on changing goals and context.

Decision Making

Our environment provides input which is often understood as novel combinations of previously learned concepts. We store this recent information in working memory and through executive control processes use it to modulate ongoing behavior and generate novel sequences of skilled actions. Decision making is the selection of responses based on current goals, past experience, and expectations about future outcomes.

Example

Consider a basketball player in a game. She has a repertoire of skills at her disposal — passing, dribbling, shooting — built up through dedicated practice. This depends on long-term memory. And she reacts instantaneously to her immediate surroundings — catching the ball when she sees it flying towards her, and dodging a screen when she hears her teammate's warning. This depends on rapid perception and action. But in addition, she runs a particular play her coach recently called during a timeout, she employs a different strategy near the end of the game than she used just minutes earlier, and she improvises when she recognises the defense has switched from man to zone defense. All of this depends on maintaining and updating recently acquired information in working memory, using executive control processes to maintain focus on the task at hand, and selecting and performing novel combinations of skills.

Computational Modeling

Building symbolic, neural network, and Bayesian models of mental and neural processes.

+ Cognitive Psychology

Developing behavioral experiments to decompose mental processes into their constituent parts.

+ Cognitive Neuroscience

Applying functional brain imaging to analyze neural processes during task performance.

= Computational Cognitive Neuroscience

A synergistic combination of methods used to build computational theories explaining mental and neural processes, the goal of which is to explain how “the mind is what the brain does”.

• Baker, T. E., Umemoto, A., Krawitz, A., & Holroyd, C. B. (2015). Rightward-biased hemodynamic response of the parahippocampal system during virtual navigation. Scientific Reports, 5, 9063. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep09063
• Smart, C. M., & Krawitz, A. (2015). The impact of subjective cognitive decline on Iowa Gambling Task performance. Neuropsychology, 29(6), 971–987. https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000204
• Nee, D. E., Brown, J. W., Askren, M. K., Berman, M. G., Demiralp, E., Krawitz, A., & Jonides, J. (2013). A meta-analysis of executive components of working memory. Cerebral Cortex, 23(2), 264–282. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs007
• Ahn, W.-Y., Krawitz, A., Kim, W., Busemeyer, J. R., & Brown, J. W. (2011). A model-based fMRI analysis with hierarchical Bayesian parameter estimation. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 4(2), 95–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020684
• Krawitz, A., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Brown, J. W. (2011). Impaired error-likelihood prediction in medial prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia. NeuroImage, 54(2), 1506–1517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.09.027
• Krawitz, A., Fukunaga, R., Brown, J. W. (2010). Anterior insula activity predicts the influence of positively framed messages on decision making. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 10(3), 392–405. https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.10.3.392
• Mueller, S. T., Krawitz, A. (2009). Reconsidering the two-second decay hypothesis in verbal working memory. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 53, 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2008.11.001
• Krawitz, A. (2007). Computational modeling of updating operations in the performance of basic verbal working-memory tasks (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database (UMI No. 3253318) and Deep Blue.

Learn more about the best sport on earth:  USA  Canada

Leagues

I currently live in Victoria, BC, home to VUPS. Leagues in my past homes include: BCUD in Bloomington, IN; AAUL in Ann Arbor, MI; and CoMo Ultimate in Columbia, MO.

Teams

I've played with many over the years, including Real Huck, Skeetpocalypse, Big Ass Truck, Viscous Coupling, Nemo, Fliegenplatte, MUtants, and my alma mater Brownian Motion.

Tournaments

Not-to-be-missed summertime tournaments include Poultry Days (the best of all), Potlatch, Mars, Sandblast, and Gender Blender.

What's a personal website without a list of intriguing links?

True/False Film Festival

Organized by my friends David and Paul in my home town of Columbia, Missouri.

Best Illusion of the Year Contest

Illusions not only entertain, but provide insight into mental processes, often by revealing the degree to which our perceptions are constructs related too, but distinct from external reality (such as it is).

Gallery Of "Misused" Quotation Marks

Now you too will notice them everywhere.

Internet Pinball Database

Pinball embodies the transition from the industrial to the information age, and its fun to boot!

World Rock Paper Scissors Society

The Ultimate tool for dispute resolution.

Codex Seraphinianus

What you might expect if Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Adams, and M.C. Escher collaborated on an encyclopedia.

Museum of Jurassic Technology

If you're ever in LA, skip the Getty and go here instead.

Victim of the Brain

A movie, directed by Piet Hoenderdos, based on the work of Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett.

Butterick's Practical Typography

A clear and useful guide to text formatting and fonts.