Cognitive and Neural Contributions to Understanding the Conceptual System

Barsalou article:

• conceptual system: extensive system distributed throughout the brain, and represents knowledge about all aspects of experiences.
• What is the role of attention in these categorizations?
• It allows us to focus on distinctive elements that separate categories (ex. spatial, physical, social).
• The conceptual system (whole of knowledge representation) is used for basically anything we want to think about or do mentally. There is no such thing as a knowledge-free cognitive process... top down knowledge.
• What's semantic memory?
• facts. Its amodel, that is, its not linked to episodic memory or anything else... specifically not particular senses.
• This is a big debate between cognitive science and neuroscience. Barsalou questions this idea in the article. If we don't have vision, then visual memory decreases, so perhaps semantic memory is liked to vision in some way.
• Conceptual system: an entire system of knowledge that includes concepts, categories, and how they're linked together.
• It is used for everything that we do with our minds.
• There is no such thing as a knowledge free action.
• Semantic memory is amodal, meaning it is not based on vision or hearing, etc.  Semantic memory is another name for the conceptual system.
• Cognitive revolution came about around 1970, breaking out of behaviorism... so they concluded it was amodal.
• How does neuroscience view differ from cognitive?
• Its grounded in modal cortexes, so, knowledge is perhaps based in vision, or auditory, not separate areas that are abstracted from the senses. Perhaps some knowledge is based in the areas that process the senses.
• What happens when those areas are damages?
• Lesions to visual areas produce deficits in categories that rely heavily on visual processing (ex. animals).
• In imagery studies, the people imagining still have areas activated like they were seeing something.
• the knowledge is somewhat stored in the areas that do the processing in the same way... otherwise you wouldn't know if you were perceiving or imagining.
• Cognitive science and neuroscience are disagreeing: Perhaps cognitive students need to be open to the modal processing areas bringing about the knowledge.
• Neural network theory: entities that hold knowledge may have some of the same properties as neurons... which may begin to bring about common ground between the cognitive and the neuro perspective. 
• Impact on grounded theories: the brain attempts to redefine the experience when remembering - knowledge: simulating the way in which we learned it at first... same mental state.