Cognitive Neuropsychology Research Articles

The Genius of Creativity and the Creativity of Genius: The Neuro-Dynamics of Creativity in Karl Jaspers and Sigmund Freud

Creativity is one of the areas which continuously attracts attention. In an interdisciplinary spirit, this article focuses on the dynamics of creativity with respect to Freudian psychoanalyt- ical thought processes and Jaspers’ conception of a boundary situation. This effort is correlated with the newest research findings in cognitive neuroscience and neurocognitive psychology of creativity. Philosophical research is also brought in to explain the activity of creative thought and a new conception of creativity is offered, with a third thought process used, along with a miniature boundary situation. This represents a development and extension of the original ideas of Sigmund Freud and Karl Jaspers. The current article thus constitutes an examination of the intersection of creativity research, the metapsychology of Sigmund Freud, and the exis- tential philosophy of Karl Jaspers. It makes it a neuro-philosophical discussion par excellence and represents both a theoretical project and translation. Subsequently, a novel conception is offered, namely that creativity as unique human experience is illuminated in the miniature of boundary situation as controlled disinhibition of the intellect or regression in the name of the ego and as controlled spiral movement via dialectical “jumps” or “leaps.”

Simple dissociations for a higher-powered neuropsychology

Dissociations in cognitive neuropsychology are often investigated at the level of the single-case, and formal criteria exist for the detection of dissociations, and their sub-classification into ‘classical’ and ‘strong’ types. These criteria require a patient to show a frank deficit on one task (for a classical dissociation) or both tasks (for a strong dissociation), and a significantly extreme difference between tasks. I propose that only the significant between-task difference is logically necessary, and that if this simple criterion is met, the patient should be said to show a dissociation. Using Monte Carlo simulations, I show that this simplification increases the power to detect dissociations across a range of practically-relevant conditions, whilst retaining excellent control over Type I error. Additional testing for frank deficits on each task provides further qualifying information, but using these test outcomes to categorise dissociations as classical or strong may be too uncertain to guide theoretical inferences reliably. I suggest that we might instead characterise the strength of the dissociation using a continuous index, such as the effect size of the between-task difference.

Over time, the right results will emerge

ABSTRACTScientific research involves going beyond the well-trodden and well-tested ideas and theories that form the core of scientific knowledge. During the time scientists are working things out, some results will be right, and others will be wrong. Over time, the right results will emerge. Lisa Randall (Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science, Physics Department, Harvard University)We are grateful to all the commentators for the important and thoughtful comments raised in response to the Geskin and Behrmann (G & B) literature survey. The issues raised in the introduction to this Special Issue and in these commentaries not only address and challenge aspects of the G & B literature review, but contribute perspectives and extensions that go well beyond the scope of the review. As is evident from G & B and from the 13 commentaries, many aspects of congenital prosopagnosia (CP) remain controversial. Adopting the language of the quote above, the intention of the G & B survey, along with the commentaries and this response, is to establish a collaborative process from which the right results (and right theory) will emerge in time. We are grateful to the editor of this Special Issue, Dr. Brad Mahon, for his support and for facilitating this collaborative exchange in Cognitive Neuropsychology.

The Integration of Realistic Episodic Memories Relies on Different Working Memory Processes: Evidence from Virtual Navigation.

Memory is one of the most important cognitive functions in a person’s life as it is essential for recalling personal memories and performing many everyday tasks. Although a huge number of studies have been conducted in the field, only a few of them investigated memory in realistic situations, due to methodological issues. The various tools that have been developed using virtual environments (VEs) have gained popularity in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology because they enable to create naturalistic and controlled situations, and are thus particularly adapted to the study of episodic memory (EM), for which an ecological evaluation is of prime importance. EM is the conscious recollection of personal events combined with their phenomenological and spatiotemporal encoding contexts. Using an original paradigm in a VE, the objective of the present study was to characterize the construction of episodic memories. While the concept of working memory has become central in the understanding of a wide range of cognitive functions, its role in the integration of episodic memories has seldom been assessed in an ecological context. This experiment aimed at filling this gap by studying how EM is affected by concurrent tasks requiring working memory resources in a realistic situation. Participants navigated in a virtual town and had to memorize as many elements in their spatiotemporal context as they could. During learning, participants had either to perform a concurrent task meant to prevent maintenance through the phonological loop, or a task aimed at preventing maintenance through the visuospatial sketchpad, or no concurrent task. EM was assessed in a recall test performed after learning through various scores measuring the what, where and when of the memories. Results showed that, compared to the control condition with no concurrent task, the prevention of maintenance through the phonological loop had a deleterious impact only on the encoding of central elements. By contrast, the prevention of visuo-spatial maintenance interfered both with the encoding of the temporal context and with the binding. These results suggest that the integration of realistic episodic memories relies on different working memory processes that depend on the nature of the traces.

A Database of Radicals in Written Chinese with Reliable Logographeme Boundaries

A Database of Radicals in Written Chinese with Reliable Logographeme Boundaries

Multimodal conceptual knowledge influences lexical retrieval speed: evidence from object-naming and word-reading in healthy adults

Multimodal conceptual knowledge influences lexical retrieval speed: evidence from object-naming and word-reading in healthy adults

Revisiting the dual-nature account of homophony: Evidence from picture naming in aphasia

Revisiting the dual-nature account of homophony: Evidence from picture naming in aphasia

Episodic memory and the witness trump card.

We accept Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) causal claim that episodic memory provides humans with the means for evaluating the veracity of reports about non-occurrent events. We reject their evolutionary argument that this is the proper function of episodic memory. We explore three intriguing implications of the causal claim, for cognitive neuropsychology, comparative psychology, and philosophy.

Neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience in the fMRI era: A recapitulation of localizationist and connectionist views.

We highlight the past 25 years of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, focusing on the impact to the field of the introduction in 1992 of functional MRI (fMRI). We reviewed the past 25 years of literature in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, focusing on the relation and interplay of fMRI studies and studies utilizing the "lesion method" in human participants with focal brain damage. Our review highlights the state of localist/connectionist research debates in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology circa 1992, and details how the introduction of fMRI into the field at that time catalyzed a new wave of efforts to map complex human behavior to specific brain regions. This, in turn, eventually evolved into many studies that focused on networks and connections between brain areas, culminating in recent years with large-scale investigations such as the Human Connectome Project. We argue that throughout the past 25 years, neuropsychology-and more precisely, the "lesion method" in humans-has continued to play a critical role in arbitrating conclusions and theories derived from inferred patterns of local brain activity or wide-spread connectivity from functional imaging approaches. We conclude by highlighting the future for neuropsychology in the context of an increasingly complex methodological armamentarium. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neuroplasticity and the logic of cognitive neuropsychology

ABSTRACTMore than thirty years ago, Alfonso Caramazza laid out assumptions for drawing inferences about the undamaged cognitive system from individuals with brain damage. Since then, these assumptions have been challenged including the transparency or subtractivity assumption, that the cognitive system does not reorganize following brain damage. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that brains are highly plastic. However, there is no clear connection between brain plasticity and cognitive reorganization. Brain plasticity research does not require a rethinking of the core logic of cognitive neuropsychology. Differences in task-based activation between damaged and undamaged brains provide little insight into the cognitive architectures of brain-damaged patients. Theory and methods are needed to understand cognitive neuroplasticity, or how neural reorganization that follows brain damage relates to reorganization of functions. We discuss alternative types of cognitive neuroplasticity that may occur in damaged brains and consider how they impact the basic logic of cognitive neuropsychology.

Investigation on the relationship between oxidative stress and cognitive neuropsychology status in patients with MS

The efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) on dexterity remains controversial despite its recognition as an effective strategy for Parkinson disease. The present study investigated the efficacy of STN-DBS for ameliorating bradykinesia and dexterity compared with dopaminergic medications.Part III of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale was used for the evaluation of bradykinesia, whereas the Purdue Pegboard Test and the Box and Block test were selected for dexterity.Our findings indicate that bradykinesia is significantly improved with both DBS and dopaminergic medication, whereas dexterity is improved only with DBS. Dopaminergic medication did not show a satisfactory efficacy on dexterity, and there was little synergistic effect of dopaminergic medication and STN-DBS for improving dexterity associated with Parkinson disease.Our results suggest that DBS is potentially more effective than dopaminergic medications for improving dexterity. The disparities in efficacy for bradykinesia and dexterity between DBS and dopaminergic medication hint at the potential mechanisms of STN-DBS. We speculate that DBS follows at least 2 different mechanisms for improving parkinsonian symptoms: 1) the dopaminergic system, primarily for the improvement of bradykinesia and 2) the nondopaminergic system, for the improvement of dexterity. This hypothesis requires further verification and investigation.

Investigation on the relationship between oxidative stress and cognitive neuropsychology status in patients with MS

Salmonella enterica serovar Gallinarum biovar Pullorum (S. Pullorum) is the cause of pullorum disease, characterized by white diarrhea, which leads to high mortality in poultry. In this study, we aimed to assess the genetic diversity of 655 S. Pullorum strains from 1962 to 2015 in China, Europe, and South America. A sequence typing scheme based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) was used to reveal the genetic relationships among these strains in this study. Overall, a total of 20 Pullorum sequence types (PSTs) of CRISPR were identified in the 655 isolates with PST7 (74%, 486/655) and PST3 (13%, 86/655) to be the most two frequent PSTs belonging to two different lineages, which confirmed the genetic conservation of S. Pullorum strains isolated from six provinces and two direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing and Shanghai) in China. However, the identification of seven new PSTs distributed in strains isolated since 2001 implied that genetic variation continues to develop in S. Pullorum. Interestingly, the whole-genome single-nucleotide polymorphism typing (WGST) of 96 strains out of the 655 isolates divided them into four lineages based on SNP analysis of core genomic sequence and exhibit good correspondence with the CRISPR subtyping method. Notably, 22 out of 26 isolates from Europe and South America were distributed in five distinctive PSTs (with no Chinese strains). Additionally, CRISPR data of spacers and their arrangement exhibit subtle but distinct specificity between different strains, and the dynamic adaptive nature of CRISPR loci provides critical insights into the evolution of S. Pullorum as the bacteria are influenced by their environment.

Face and Word Recognition Can Be Selectively Affected by Brain Injury or Developmental Disorders.

Face and word recognition have traditionally been thought to rely on highly specialised and relatively independent cognitive processes. Some of the strongest evidence for this has come from patients with seemingly category-specific visual perceptual deficits such as pure prosopagnosia, a selective face recognition deficit, and pure alexia, a selective word recognition deficit. Together, the patterns of impaired reading with preserved face recognition and impaired face recognition with preserved reading constitute a double dissociation. The existence of these selective deficits has been questioned over the past decade. It has been suggested that studies describing patients with these pure deficits have failed to measure the supposedly preserved functions using sensitive enough measures, and that if tested using sensitive measurements, all patients with deficits in one visual category would also have deficits in the other. The implications of this would be immense, with most textbooks in cognitive neuropsychology requiring drastic revisions. In order to evaluate the evidence for dissociations, we review studies that specifically investigate whether face or word recognition can be selectively affected by acquired brain injury or developmental disorders. We only include studies published since 2004, as comprehensive reviews of earlier studies are available. Most of the studies assess the supposedly preserved functions using sensitive measurements. We found convincing evidence that reading can be preserved in acquired and developmental prosopagnosia and also evidence (though weaker) that face recognition can be preserved in acquired or developmental dyslexia, suggesting that face and word recognition are at least in part supported by independent processes.

Individual differences in cognitive neuropsychology

Professor Bob Stelmack from the University of Ottawa (I was a graduate student at U of O when he started his career there) stressed both as a teacher and a researcher the importance of individual differences. In neuropsychology, this is often evidenced by the problems of variability of performance within a supposedly well-defined homogeneous group. This review presents examples from my research in traumatic brain injury and the effects of frontal lobe focal pathology to illustrate how an emphasis on individual differences had to be applied to advance the understanding of specific brain-behaviour relations and the role of the frontal lobes in human behaviour. This focus is equally relevant in organizing a larger scale research structure integrating diverse sources of information (e.g., genetic to behavioural) and basic and clinical science to improve diagnoses and treatment – the push to more individualized care.

The Pinocchio effect and the Cold Stress Test: Lies and thermography.

We applied the use of thermography to cognitive neuropsychology, particularly as an objective marker of subjective experiences, in the context of lying. We conducted three experiments: (a) An important lie was invented by the participants in 3 min, and it was recounted by phone to a significant person while they were recorded by the thermographic camera, obtaining a face and hands map of the lie. (b) A similar methodology was carried out, but adding the Cold Stress Test (CST) of the dominant hand during the phone call, obtaining a second physiologic marker (the percentage of thermal recovery) to detect the lie. Further, it established a control condition where it generated anxiety in the participants using IAPS images with negative valence and high arousal, which were described by phone to a loved one. We obtained results that showed significant correlations between changes in body temperature and mental set. Of particular interest was the temperature of the nose and hand, which tended to decrease during lying (Experiment 1). The participants also showed a lower recovery of the temperature after the CST when they were lying (Experiment 2). (c) Experiment 3 is a replication of Experiment 2 but with a different type of lie (a more ecological task) in a different scenario (following the ACID interview, with the use of the phone eliminated and participants motivated to lie well). The main pattern of results was replicated. We obtained an accuracy of 85% in detection of deception with 25% of false alarms.

Interfaces da flexibilidade cognitiva e da aprendizagem em fóruns de discussão

This work aims to present a systematic review of the literature on Cognitive Flexibility as the ability to inhibit a response, change an opinion or attitude by another more appropriate. This feature of human behavior is present in the learning theory developed by Spiro and colleagues, as well as in the executive functions cognitive neuropsychology. The activities prepared for discussion forums based on these principles can provide the conceptual basis for teachers to stimulate coping cases or problem situations, in order to promote the flexibility of thinking, active learning and the role of students, based on a body of knowledge already seized earlier. We used as a source of search 12 databases, resulting in a total of 224 documents founded, of which 56 were selected as relevant to the present study, after application of the exclusion criteria. Cognitive Flexibility was appointed as a learning theory able to develop the ability of flexible thinking and cognitive constructs that promote the knowledge of the students, helping them to better understand the social conventions and technological interference that combine verbal and non-verbal texts with various mathematical, graphic, diagrammatic and schematic expressions, as well as the apprehension of resolute way of a case or problem situation.

The Future of Cognitive Neuroscience? Reverse Inference in Focus

AbstractThis article presents and discusses one of the most prominent inferential strategies currently employed in cognitive neuropsychology, namely, reverse inference. Simply put, this is the practice of inferring, in the context of experimental tasks, the engagement of cognitive processes from locations or patterns of neural activation. This technique is notoriously controversial because, critics argue, it presupposes the problematic assumption that neural areas are functionally selective. We proceed as follows. We begin by introducing the basic structure of traditional “location‐based” reverse inference (§1) and discuss the influential lack of selectivity objection (§2). Next, we rehearse various ways of responding to this challenge and provide some reasons for cautious optimism (§3). The second part of the essay presents a more recent development: “pattern‐decoding reverse inference” (§4). This inferential strategy, we maintain, provides an even more convincing response to the lack of selectivity charge. Due to this and other methodological advantages, it is now a prominent component in the toolbox of cognitive neuropsychology (§5). Finally, we conclude by drawing some implications for philosophy of science and philosophy of mind (§6).

The value of cognitive neuropsychology: The case of vision research

ABSTRACTCognitive neuropsychological evidence is widely viewed as inherently flawed or weak, despite well-reasoned arguments to the contrary by many theorists. Rather than attempting yet another defence of cognitive neuropsychology on logical grounds, we point out through examples that in practice, cognitive neuropsychological evidence is widely accepted as valid and important, and has had a major impact on cognitive theory and research. Objections offered in the abstract rarely arise in the context of actual studies. We develop these points through examples from the domain of vision, discussing cerebral achromatopsia and akinetopsia, selective impairment and sparing of face recognition, perception–action dissociations, and blindsight.

Single-case cognitive neuropsychology in the age of big data

ABSTRACTHistorically, single-case studies of brain-damaged individuals have contributed substantially to our understanding of cognitive processes. However, the role of single-case cognitive neuropsychology has diminished with the proliferation of techniques that measure neural activity in humans. Instead, large-scale informatics approaches in which data are gathered from hundreds of neuroimaging studies have become popular. It has been claimed that utilizing these informatics approaches can address problems found in single imaging studies. We first discuss reasons for why cognitive neuropsychology is thought to be in decline. Next, we note how these informatics approaches, while having benefits, are not particularly suited for understanding functional architectures. We propose that the single-case cognitive neuropsychological approach, which is focused on developing models of cognitive processing, addresses several of the weaknesses inherent in informatics approaches. Furthermore, we discuss how using neural data from brain-damaged individuals provides data that can inform both cognitive and neural models of cognitive processing.

The assumptions of cognitive neuropsychology: Reflections on Caramazza (1984, 1986)

ABSTRACTApproximately 30 years ago, Caramazza (1984. The logic of neuropsychological research and the problem of patient classification in aphasia. Brain and Language, 21, 9–20; 1986. On drawing inferences about the structure of normal cognitive systems from the analysis of patterns of impaired performance. Brain and Language, 5, 41–66) proposed that cognitive neuropsychology needs to make four assumptions in order for its inferences from pathological performance to the structure of intact cognitive systems to be justifiable. These assumptions were: fractionation, modularity, transparency and universality. Analysis of the current status of these assumptions leads me to conclude that all four remain defensible today.