Cognitive Connie
Let's explore Key Brain Functions
Understand how the brain performs its most important cognitive tasks — from planning and impulse control to memory, attention, and sustained focus.
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Memory
Understand how memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved — and why we forget. Covers the multi-store model, Baddeley's working memory model, and the causes of forgetting.
Executive Functions
Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that help us regulate thoughts and behaviour, maintain goals, adapt to changing circumstances, and coordinate complex actions. They are sometimes described as the brain's "control system" — but this metaphor needs qualification. Executive functions are not the product of a single executive centre: they emerge from interactions among several brain networks, particularly those involving the prefrontal cortex. The term refers to several related but distinguishable processes involved in cognitive control, not one unified ability.
Attention
Attention refers to the processes that help us select, prioritise, and maintain information for further processing. Because our sensory systems receive far more information than we can process in detail at any moment, attention determines which information receives priority — but unattended information is not simply suppressed or ignored; it may receive partial processing.
Perception
Perception is the process by which the brain interprets and organises sensory information to construct a coherent representation of the world. It is not a passive recording of reality but an active, constructive process: the brain uses prior knowledge, expectations, and context to resolve the inherently ambiguous sensory input it receives.
Consciousness
Consciousness — the subjective, first-person experience of perceiving, thinking, and feeling — remains one of the most profound and contentious topics in psychology and neuroscience. It is simultaneously the most familiar aspect of mental life (we are conscious right now) and the hardest to explain scientifically.
Social Cognition
Social cognition refers to the mental processes involved in perceiving, interpreting, and responding to other people. It is what allows us to infer the beliefs, intentions, desires, and emotions of others — to navigate a social world populated by minds, not just bodies.
Memory Systems
Memory is not a single system but a family of distinct processes and stores, each with its own neural substrate, operating principles, and vulnerabilities. Understanding memory requires distinguishing between how information enters the system (encoding), how it is stabilised over time (consolidation), how it is maintained (storage), and how it is subsequently accessed (retrieval).
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