Complex Cognitive Systems Research Articles

What does pain signify? A hypothesis concerning pain, the immune system and unconscious pain experience under general anesthesia

In this paper, I present a case-study that initiates a discussion about the meaning of pain. The case-study concerns a person who was under deep sedation during colonoscopy. The person did not experience pain from a first-person perspective, although pain was evident to the medical team from a second-person perspective. The divergence of pain perspectives raises an interesting quandary. If the body communicates pain while pain consciousness is blocked by the sedation procedure, our conclusion should be that the intersubjective aspect of pain precedes the “subjective,” first-person experience of pain. This conclusion is not consistent with the common representational conception of pain that places the intrasubjective point of view prior to the intersubjective point of view. The solution I offer to this quandary is the quasi-paradoxical idea that pain can be experienced unconsciously through the immune system. Following this suggestion, I hypothesize that post-traumatic stress disorders following general anesthesia may result from this unconscious pain experience. If this idea is scientifically grounded, then physicians should: (1) consider ways of blocking the unconscious pain experience produced by the immune system without interfering with the immune response, and (2) study pain as a complex cognitive and unconscious system by drawing an analogy with the immune system, which follows similar logic.

The Cognitive Engineering of Everyday Activities

Cognitive engineers study complex systems in context Yet the same phenomena they observe in professional environments are also apparent in the everyday activities of people. In this paper, a case study is used to illustrate how the principles and theories employed to study complex cognitive systems are just as applicable for routine activities. The case study involves four people traveling from three different locations, meeting at an airport, and proceeding to a business meeting with a fifth person. Although the plan failed, the events surrounding the trip provide an opportunity to discuss cognitive engineering concepts such as planning and execution, replanning, coordination, and internal representations, The paper suggests that applying cognitive engineering methods to the study of everyday activities may provide valuable insights into more complex systems.

Macrocognition

If we engineer complex cognitive systems on the basis of mistaken or inappropriate view's of cognition, we can wind up designing systems that degrade performance rather than improve it. The results stemming from the application of any cognitive systems engineering methodology will be incomplete unless they include a description of the cognition that is needed to accomplish the work. The concept of macrocognition is a way of describing cognitive work as it naturally occurs.

From contextual inquiry to designable futures: what do we need to get there?

Human-centered systems result when software engineers or developers give attention to the orientations, expectations, and understandings of the people who will be part of the sociotechnical system. Human factors researchers often take certain agendas, terms, and theories for granted or rely on them out of habit. This paper takes a special look at contextual enquiry as a putatively (and indeed potentially) superior way of giving end users a serious say in the procurement process of complex cognitive systems.

Merleau-Ponty in Dialogue with the Cogitive Sciences in Light of Recent Imitation Research

Recent revival of interest in pursuing a constructive dialogue between phenomenologists and cognitive scientists testifies, if need be, that the methodologies based on first person approaches, i.e., rigorous and trained reflection on experience, and objective or third person approaches, based on external observation, can be correlated. The question of how exactly this correlation is to be achieved has received a number of responses.1 One view, neurophenomenology, proposed by F. Varela, stipulates that the disciplines based on first and third person methodologies should enter in a relation of mutual constraint and enlightenment.2 This relation is especially productive in cases of conflict between views espoused by phenomenologists and natural scientists, in that it allows the disciplines to throw a critical light on each other and also to stimulate their respective developments. Another view, heteropheonomenology, defended by Dennett, claims that first-person reports should be transformed into raw data for science, i.e., for third person analysis.3 This view has received critical reception from the phenomenological camp, to the effect that it is a naive and possibly un-scientific strategy which does not integrate but ultimately effaces the first person perspective of phenomenological analysis from objective study.4 In the heterophenomenological framework, the scientist who interprets the subjective reports in view of turning them into data is herself not trained in the phenomenological method and relies on her own first-person experience and/or upon unbracketed preexisting beliefs which tend to be derived from the so-called folk psychology. Finally, there have recently been developments towards having a phenomenologically enlightened experimental science or front-loaded phenomenology. In this perspective, phenomenological contributions should be used directly in conducting empirical research. The novelty of this perspective lies in that it moves from the unidirectional influence of the natural sciences on phenomenology, as evidenced notably in the work of Merleau-Ponty as well as Sartre, to a bi-directional relation between the two disciplines, where phenomenology itself has a say in how natural science progresses. In this essay, I propose to examine recent studies on neonate imitation in light of this complex dialogue between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. The contention that I will defend is that imitation studies provide a concrete example of how to conduct the dialogue of mutual constraint and enlightenment between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. This claim will critically bear on Dennett's heterophenomenological proposal; it will also permit me to hypothesize about front loading phenomenology into experimental research on imitation. Experimental research into infantile imitation of facial and manual gestures of adults has been conducted over the last thirty years by a team of researchers in many parts of the world. In the United States, imitation has been most extensively studied by Andrew Meltzoff and his associates. They have conclusively demonstrated that infants are able to imitate simple facial gestures of adults, such as tongue protrusion and mouth opening, literally from birth on.5 The infants do not imitate in a reflex like fashion, i.e., they do not automatically produce a fully fledged copy of what they see the adult perform. They initially experiment with the relevant body part (e.g., the tongue) to gradually arrive at the gesture matching the one displayed by the adult. Infantile imitation cannot therefore be explained in terms of a simple releasing mechanism but seems to mobilize a more complex cognitive system.6 This conclusion is further substantiated by the fact that infants not only imitate what they see the adult do on-line, but can also imitate from memory. For example, in a specially designed experiment to test delayed imitation, infants observed two facial gestures of mouth opening and tongue protrusion; they were prevented from mimicking the facial display by having a pacifier inserted in their mouth during the experiment. …

Cytokines and cognition--the case for a head-to-toe inflammatory paradigm.

The brain is not only immunologically active of its own accord, but also has complex peripheral immune interactions. Given the central role of cytokines in neuroimmmunoendocrine processes, it is hypothesized that these molecules influence cognition via diverse mechanisms. Peripheral cytokines penetrate the blood-brain barrier directly via active transport mechanisms or indirectly via vagal nerve stimulation. Peripheral administration of certain cytokines as biological response modifiers produces adverse cognitive effects in animals and humans. There is abundant evidence that inflammatory mechanisms within the central nervous system (CNS) contribute to cognitive impairment via cytokine-mediated interactions between neurons and glial cells. Cytokines mediate cellular mechanisms subserving cognition (e.g., cholinergic and dopaminergic pathways) and can modulate neuronal and glial cell function to facilitate neuronal regeneration or neurodegeneration. As such, there is a growing appreciation of the role of cytokine-mediated inflammatory processes in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. Consistent with their involvement as mediators of bidirectional communication between the CNS and the peripheral immune system, cytokines play a key role in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation seen in stress and depression. In addition, complex cognitive systems such as those that underlie religious beliefs, can modulate the effects of stress on the immune system. Indirect means by which peripheral or central cytokine dysregulation could affect cognition include impaired sleep regulation, micronutrient deficiency induced by appetite suppression, and an array of endocrine interactions. Given the multiple levels at which cytokines are capable of influencing cognition it is plausible that peripheral cytokine dysregulation with advancing age interacts with cognitive aging.

Speech processing activates visual cortex in congenitally blind humans.

Neurophysiological recordings and neuroimaging data in blind and deaf animals and humans suggest that perceptual functions may be organized differently after sensory deprivation. It has been argued that neural plasticity contributes to compensatory performance in blind humans, such as faster speech processing. The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map language-related brain activity in congenitally blind adults. Participants listened to sentences, with either an easy or a more difficult syntactic structure, which were either semantically meaningful or meaningless. Results show that blind adults not only activate classical left-hemispheric perisylvian language areas during speech comprehension, as did a group of sighted adults, but that they additionally display an activation in the homologueous right-hemispheric structures and in extrastriate and striate cortex. Both the perisylvian and occipital activity varied as a function of syntactic difficulty and semantic content. The results demonstrate that the cerebral organization of complex cognitive systems such as the language system is significantly shaped by the input available.

Cognitive correlates of 1H MRSI-detected hippocampal abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy.

To examine associations between 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (1H MRSI)-detected hippocampal creatine to N-acetylaspartate (Cr/NAA) ratios and neuropsychological measures sensitive to mesial temporal lobe function. The measurement of 1H MRSI-detected hippocampal metabolites has proved effective in determining extent and lateralization of neuronal damage. However, relationships between 1H MRSI-detected hippocampal metabolic abnormalities and specific areas of cognitive functioning have received limited attention compared to other studies using MRI volumetry or cerebral blood flow techniques. We analyzed right and left hippocampal Cr/NAA ratios in 46 adult mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients (32 left, 14 right) by 1H MRSI at high magnetic field (4.1 T). We examined the relationship between the right and left Cr/NAA hippocampal ratios to measures of verbal and visual memory, intelligence, attention, visuoperception, and confrontation naming. Measures of episodic verbal memory (n = 33) and visual confrontation naming (n = 46) were selectively associated with left hippocampal metabolic function (p<0.004), whereas neuronal function of the right hippocampal region was strongly associated with performance on a measure of facial recognition (n = 46; p<0.02). This study shows that specific areas of cognitive function are related to hippocampal neuronal metabolic abnormalities as detected by spectroscopic imaging. The current study indicates that 1H MRSI offers a complimentary technique to structural imaging studies in the study of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and may enhance understanding of the role of hippocampal function in complex cognitive systems.

Use of the Critical Decision Method to Elicit Expert Knowledge: A Case Study in the Methodology of Cognitive Task Analysis

The Critical Decision Method (CDM) is an approach to cognitive task analysis. The method involves multiple-pass event retrospection guided by probe questions. The CDM has been used in the elicitation of expert knowledge in diverse domains and for applications including system development and instructional design. The CDM research illustrates the sorts of knowledge representation products that can arise from cognitive task analysis (e.g., Situation Assessment Records, time lines, decision requirements). The research also shows how one can approach methodological issues surrounding cognitive task analysis, including questions about data quality and method reliability, efficiency, and utility. As cognitive task analysis is used more widely in the elicitation, preservation, and dissemination of expert knowledge and is used more widely as the basis for the design of complex cognitive systems, and as projects move into even more field applications and real-world settings, the issues we discuss become increasingly critical.

Short-term memory in persons with intellectual disabilities and Down's syndrome.

The present study was designed to investigate verbal and spatial short-term memory abilities in persons with Down's syndrome (DS) and intellectual disability (ID) of different aetiology. For this purpose, we compared performances of DS (n = 15; mean mental age = 5.2 years; SD = 1.2 years; mean chronological age = 16.6 years; SD = 2.9 years) and ID subjects (n = 14; mean mental age = 5.8 years; SD = 2.1 years; mean chronological age = 16.4 years; SD = 2.5 years) with those of normally developed subjects matched for mental age (n = 24) on tasks of forward and backward immediate recall of verbal and spatial sequences. Our results are discussed in the light of the Working Memory model developed by Baddeley (1986, 1990). Altogether, our data documents a deficit of verbal and spatial backward spans in persons with DS. The deficit seems to be specific for this particular aetiology group, confirming the hypothesis that ID is not a uniform condition, characterized by an undifferentiated delay of the cognitive development, but rather that it is characterized by a deficit in a complex cognitive system in which some cognitive abilities can be disrupted more than others (Detterman 1987; Vicari et al. 1992).

Disorders of learning and memory in focal cerebral tissue lesions

Memory and learning in man depend on complex cognitive systems, and thus on efficient associative information stores in different neocortical areas of our brain. In addition, phylogenetically older, "limbic" brain structures are needed, in order to manage these huge accociative stores in our telencephalon. This "operating system" manages memory and learning capabilities considering the "milieu interne", and especially biological and individual priorities. Our contribution attempts to sketch the anatomical outlines of this limbic operating system. Two interdependent neuronal networks may be of pivotal importance: 1. a medial limbic loop with Papez circuit as the main structure, and 2. a basolateral limbic loop including the amygdala, the subcallosal area (and the septum verum?) as well as the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus. Based on the anatomical evidence of (largely) selective, i.e. focal brain lesions the likelihood for all these relay stations as memory-related structures is discussed. Our working hypothesis assumes that combined, bilateral lesions of both limbic neuronal networks make severe, global and lasting deficits in memory and learning performance fairly likely. The lesion of only one of these limbic loops seems to cause modality-specific deficits. Unilateral lesions of the retrocommissural hippocampal formation may also account for lasting amnesia.

Changing Perspectives in Cognitive Neuropsychology

Abstract Neuropsychology, the study of behavioral and mental disorders resulting from brain damage, seeks to integrate observable mental and motor functions with knowledge of nervous system structure and function. The first part of this paper deals with the empirical and theoretical contributions that arise from the study of classical clinical syndromes, from cognitive psychology based on information processing, and from the computationally-based study of complex cognitive systems such as language. The second part of this paper deals with two areas of neuropsychological research, memory mechanisms and motor behavior, that exemplify some of the methodological and conceptual problems that arise in trying to bridge animal and human studies, or psychological and physiological levels of analysis. Suggestions are made for how greater progress can be made by considering fundamental processes, and, by focusing on levels of abstraction useful to both the psychologist and the biologist. The last part of the paper b...