THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY: THEORY AND MEASUREMENT

Abstract

This chapter describes the neuromuscular servo-loop model of internal information processing. The classical problem of the mind is to be understood in terms of the this model that holds mental activities are generated by extensive internal information-processing circuits involving interactions among the brain, receptors, and effectors. The chapter schematically illustrates potential circuits during internal information processing. The optimal method for studying neuromuscular circuits during mental activities, such as sensation, perception, cognition, memory, dreams, hallucinations, and imagination is that of the psychophysiologist. By placing sensors at selected bodily regions during the performance of mental activities, the psychophysiologist can, with extremely sensitive electronic equipment, study minute electrical components of the internal, information-processing circuits that generate mental activities. These electrically sensed events are often less than one microvolt in amplitude. By temporally relating electrical signals as they occur in selected bodily regions, one can infer sequences of various central and peripheral events during mental activities. The psychophysiologist's direct approach to the timing of mental activities can, thus, supplement the indirect, yet viable, approach of classical psychology.