Contemporary Cognitive Neuroscience Research Articles

Educators as agents of breadth-biased learning: using social reconstructionism as rationale for embracing media multitasking and enhancing teaching practices in higher education.

This perspective article contends that media multitasking has significant implications on cognitive control processes, particularly in how information is processed and utilized. Contrary to viewing media multitasking as inherently negative, the article argues that it contributes to the evolving nature of cognitive processing, without necessarily improving or degrading it. The discussion draws on theoretical frameworks from contemporary cognitive neuroscience to contextualize these arguments. The article provides a nuanced perspective on media multitasking, acknowledging its enduring presence and exploring its influence on cognitive processes, while also proposing strategies for educators to navigate its implications in educational settings.

Fairness: from the guts to the brain – a critical examination by Atlantic fellows of the Global Brain Health Institute

In January 2023, the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at UCSF hosted an online salon to discuss the relationship between fairness and brain health equity. We aimed to address two primary questions: first, how is fairness perceived by the public, and how does it manifest in societal constructs like equity and justice? Second, what are the neurobiological foundations of fairness, and how do they impact brain health? Drawing from interdisciplinary fields such as philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, the salon served as a platform for participants to share diverse perspectives on fairness. Fairness is a multifaceted concept encompassing equity, justice, empathy, opportunity, non-discrimination, and the Golden Rule, but by delving into its evolutionary origins, we can verify its deep-rooted presence in both human and animal behaviors. Real-world experiments, such as Frans de Waal’s capuchin monkey study, have proven enlightening, elucidating many mechanisms that have shaped our neurobiological responses to fairness. Contemporary cognitive neuroscience research further emphasizes the role of neuroanatomical areas and neurotransmitters in encoding fairness-related processes. We also discussed the critical interconnection between fairness and healthcare equity, particularly its implications for brain health. These values are instrumental in promoting social justice and improving health outcomes. In our polarized social landscape, there are rising concerns about a potential decrease in fairness and prosocial behaviors due to isolated social bubbles. We stress the urgency for interventions that enhance perspective-taking, reasoning, and empathy. Overall, fairness is vital to fostering an equitable society and its subsequent influence on brain health outcomes.

Impaired disengagement from worry: Dissociating the impacts of valence and internally-directed attention

Worry is a repetitive, negative thought process that is widely experienced as difficult to control. Despite the adverse effects of uncontrollable worry on academic and other role functioning, the mechanisms by which worry becomes uncontrollable remain poorly understood. Previous experimental work has historically emphasized valence (negative versus positive or neutral). However, contemporary cognitive neuroscience also distinguishes between internally-directed attention (e.g., to thoughts) and externally-directed attention (e.g., to perceptual stimuli). To date, no studies have experimentally examined potential dissociable contributions of valence versus attentional direction to impaired disengagement from worry. In a 2 (negative or neutral valence) x 2 (internal or external attention) between-subjects, experimental and prospective design (https://osf.io/vdyfn/), participants (N = 200) completed alternating blocks of a randomly-assigned attention manipulation and validated sustained attention task. Participants also rated trait worry and distress during the experimental session (T1) and a naturalistic stressor (the week before finals; T2). There was a main effect, such that internally-directed attention impaired sustained attention (increased commission errors). Worry (internal x negative) also impaired sustained attention (faster and less accurate responding) in planned group contrasts. Trait worry did not moderate these effects. Sustained attention at T1 did not predict distress or worry during the T2 stressor. These findings augment the literature on the attentional consequences of worry and replicate and extend previous findings of altered speed-accuracy tradeoffs following experimentally-induced worry. We also find evidence for impaired disengagement from internally-directed (versus externally-directed) attention, which may help to explain impaired disengagement from related forms of perseverative thought (e.g., rumination).

Atypical neural topographies underpin dysfunctional pattern separation in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Episodic memory is the ability to remember events from our past accurately. The process of pattern separation is hypothesized to underpin this ability and is defined as the capacity to orthogonalize memory traces, to maximize the features that make them unique. Contemporary cognitive neuroscience suggests that pattern separation entails complex interactions between the hippocampus and neocortex, where specific hippocampal subregions shape neural reinstatement in the neocortex. To test this hypothesis, the current work studied both healthy controls and patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who presented with hippocampal structural anomalies. We measured neural activity in all participants using functional MRI while they retrieved memorized items or lure items, which shared features with the target. Behaviourally, patients with temporal lobe epilepsy were less able to exclude lures than controls and showed a reduction in pattern separation. To assess the hypothesized relationship between neural patterns in the hippocampus and neocortex, we identified the topographic gradients of intrinsic connectivity along neocortical and hippocampal subfield surfaces and determined the topographic profile of the neural activity accompanying pattern separation. In healthy controls, pattern separation followed a graded topography of neural activity, both along the hippocampal long axis (and peaked in anterior segments that are more heavily engaged in transmodal processing) and along the neocortical hierarchy running from unimodal to transmodal regions (peaking in transmodal default mode regions). In patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, however, this concordance between task-based functional activations and topographic gradients was markedly reduced. Furthermore, person-specific measures of concordance between task-related activity and connectivity gradients in patients and controls were related to inter-individual differences in behavioural measures of pattern separation and episodic memory, highlighting the functional relevance of the observed topographic motifs. Our work is consistent with an emerging understanding that successful discrimination between memories with similar features entails a shift in the locus of neural activity away from sensory systems, a pattern that is mirrored along the hippocampal long axis and with respect to neocortical hierarchies. More broadly, our study establishes topographic profiling using intrinsic connectivity gradients, capturing the functional underpinnings of episodic memory processes in a manner that is sensitive to their reorganization in pathology.

Is it Permissible to Teach Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation in a Critical Thinking Course?

Abstract: In this essay I set out the case for why mindfulness meditation should be included in critical thinking education, especially with respect to educating people about how to argue with one another. In 1, I introduce to distinct mind sets, the critical mind and the meditative mind, and show that they are in apparent tension with one another. Then by examining the Delphi Report on Critical Thinking I show how they are not in tension. I close 1 by examining some recent work by Mark Battersby and Jeffery Maynes on expanding out critical thinking education to be inclusive of cognitive science and decision making. I argue that their arguments for expanding critical thinking education ultimately lead to considering the relevance of meditation in critical thinking. In 2, I examine work on critical thinking by Harvey Siegel and Sharon Bailin in order to draw out different conceptions of critical thinking both from a theoretical point of view as well as a pedagogical point of view. In 3, I present criteria for selecting a form of meditation that should be taught in critical thinking courses; I argue that mindfulness meditation deriving from the Buddhist tradition satisfies the relevant criteria. I then present research from contemporary cognitive neuroscience and psychology about the benefits of mindfulness meditation as it relates to the prospects of including it in critical thinking. In 4, I consider a recent study by Noone and Hogan (2018) that suggests that mindfulness meditation does not improve a person’s ability to think critically. I argue that while the study is important, there are substantial reasons for thinking that further studies should be done, as the authors themselves conclude. In 5, I move on to the issue of how meditation can be useful for improving performance in one important area of critical thinking: mitigating stereotype threat. My focus here is on examining the hypothesis that stereotype threat effects performance in critical thinking, and that negative impacts from stereotype threat can be mitigated by meditation. In 6, I summarize my argument for including meditation into critical thinking education, and close by discussing three important objections.

Towards a neurocognitive approach to dance movement therapy for mental health: A systematic review.

Dance movement therapy (DMT) has become an increasingly recognized and used treatment, though primarily used to target psychological and physical well-being in individuals with physical, medical or neurological illnesses. To contribute to the relative lack of literature within the field of DMT for clinical mental health disorders, using a narrative synthesis, we review the scope of recent, controlled studies of DMT in samples with different psychiatric disorders including depression, schizophrenia, autism and somatoform disorder. A systematic search of electronic databases (PubMed, Science Direct, World of Science and Clinicaltrials.gov) was conducted to identify studies examining the effects of DMT in psychiatric populations. Fifteen studies were eligible for inclusion. After reviewing the principal results of the studies, we highlight strengths and weaknesses of this treatment approach and examine the potential efficacy of using bodily movements as a tool to reduce symptoms. We conclude by placing DMT within the context of contemporary cognitive neuroscience research, drawing out implications of such an orientation for future research and discussing potential mechanisms by which DMT might reduce psychiatric symptoms. DMT has clear potential as a treatment for a range of conditions and symptoms, and thus, further research on its utility is warranted.

La Revanche de Gall.

Discusses a poem by Thomas Hood (1799-1845), "Craniology," which is a paradigmatic example of parodying psychological faculties for being material things. Franz Joseph Gall's (1758 -1828) term for organology was schädellehre, a German compound from schädel (skull, cranium, or pate) and lehre (teaching or doctrine). Craniology was used by some of Gall's followers, but mostly his critics; phrenology was coined in 1815 by Thomas Forster. In "Craniology," his Horatian-exemplar poem, Hood ridicules Gall's materialism. The present author notes Gall's idea that there were both intellectual and emotional faculties, which resonates well with contemporary cognitive neuroscience models of the mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

An historical perspective on Endel Tulving's episodic-semantic distinction

The distinction between episodic and semantic memory, proposed by Endel Tulving in 1972, remains a key concept in contemporary Cognitive Neuroscience. Here we review how this distinction evolved in Tulving's writings over the years. Crucially, from 1972 onward, he argued that the two forms of memory were inter-dependent and that their interaction was an essential feature of normal episodic memory function. Moreover, later elaborations of the theory clearly proposed that these interactions formed the basis of normal declarative memory functioning. A later but crucial aspect of Tulving's contribution was his stress on the importance of subjective experience, which, according to him, “should be the ultimate object of interest, the central aspect of remembering that is to be explained and understood”. We relate these and his numerous other ideas to current perspectives about the organization and function of human memory.

Individual variation in patterns of task focused, and detailed, thought are uniquely associated within the architecture of the medial temporal lobe

Understanding the neural processes that support different patterns of ongoing thought is an important goal of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Early accounts assumed the default mode network (DMN) was especially important for conscious attention to task-irrelevant/personally relevant materials. However, simple task-negative accounts of the DMN are incompatible with more recent evidence that neural patterns within the system can be related to ongoing processing during active task states. To better characterise the contribution of the DMN to ongoing thought, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between the structural organisation of the brain, as indexed by cortical thickness, and patterns of experience, identified using experience sampling in the cognitive laboratory. In a sample of 181 healthy individuals (mean age 20 years, 117 females) we identified an association between cortical thickness in the anterior parahippocampus and patterns of task focused thought, as well as an adjacent posterior region in which cortical thickness was associated with experiences with higher levels of subjective detail. Both regions fell within regions of medial temporal lobe associated with the DMN, yet varied in their functional connectivity: the time series of signals in the ‘on-task’ region were more correlated with systems important for external task-relevant processing (as determined by meta-analysis) including the dorsal and ventral attention, and fronto-parietal networks. In contrast, connectivity within the region linked to subjective ‘detail’ was more correlated with the medial core of the DMN (posterior cingulate and the medial pre-frontal cortex) and regions of primary visual cortex. These results provide cross-sectional evidence that confirms a role of the DMN in how detailed experiences are and so provide further evidence that the role of this system in experience is not simply task-irrelevant. Our results also highlight processes within the medial temporal lobe, and their interactions with other regions of cortex, as important in determining multiple aspects of how human cognition unfolds.

Productive theory-ladenness in fMRI

Several developments for diverse scientific goals, mostly in physics and physiology, had to take place, which eventually gave us fMRI as one of the central research paradigms of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. This technique stands on solid foundations established by the physics of magnetic resonance and the physiology of hemodynamics and is complimented by computational and statistical techniques. I argue, and support using concrete examples, that these foundations give rise to a productive theory-ladenness in fMRI, which enables researchers to identify and control for the types of methodological and inferential errors. Consequently, this makes it possible for researchers to represent and investigate cognitive phenomena in terms of hemodynamic data and for experimental knowledge to grow independently of large scale theories of cognition.

On the relevance of cognitive neuroscience for community of inquiry

Community of inquiry is most often seen as a dialogical procedure for the cooperative development of reasonable approaches to knowledge and meaning. This reflects a deep commitment to normatively based reasoning that is pervasive in a wide range of approaches to critical thinking and argument, where the underlying theory of reasoning is logic driven, whether formal or informal. The commitment to normative reasoning is deeply historical reflecting the fundamental distinction between reason and emotion. Despite the deep roots of the distinction and its canonization in current educational thought, contemporary cognitive neuroscience presents a fundamental challenge to the viability of the distinction and thus to any effort that sees education for reasonable judgment to be based on the remediation of cognition in isolation from its roots in the emotions. Cognitive neuroscience looks at the deep connections between emotion and memory, information retrieval, and resistance to refutation. This conforms with earlier studies in experimental psychology, which showed resistance to changing beliefs in the face of evidence, including evidence based on personal experience. This paper will look at the recent research including speculations from neurological modeling that shows the depth of connection between, emotions, memory and reasoning. It will draw implications for dialogic thinking within a community of inquiry including systematic self-reflection as an essential aspect of critical thinking.

No evidence for confounding orientation-dependent fixational eye movements under baseline conditions

Decoding has become a standard analysis technique for contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Already more than a decade ago, it was shown that orientation information could be decoded from functional magnetic resonance imaging voxel time series. However, the underlying neural mechanism driving the decodable information is still under debate. Here, we investigated whether eye movements and pupil dilation during attempted fixation and passive viewing of visually presented square-wave grating stimuli could explain orientation decoding. We hypothesized that there are confounding orientation-dependent fixational eye movements (e.g., microsaccades), which systematically alter brain activity, and hence can be the source of decodable information. We repeated one of the original orientation decoding studies, but recorded eye movements instead of brain activity. We found no evidence that stimulus orientation can be decoded from eye movements under baseline conditions, but cannot rule out the potential confounding effect of eye movements under different conditions. With this study, we emphasize the importance, and show the implications of such potential confounding eye movements for decoding studies and cognitive neuroscience in general.

Patterns of thought: Population variation in the associations between large-scale network organisation and self-reported experiences at rest

Contemporary cognitive neuroscience recognises unconstrained processing varies across individuals, describing variation in meaningful attributes, such as intelligence. It may also have links to patterns of on-going experience. This study examined whether dimensions of population variation in different modes of unconstrained processing can be described by the associations between patterns of neural activity and self-reports of experience during the same period. We selected 258 individuals from a publicly available data set who had measures of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, and self-reports of experience during the scan. We used machine learning to determine patterns of association between the neural and self-reported data, finding variation along four dimensions. ‘Purposeful’ experiences were associated with lower connectivity - in particular default mode and limbic networks were less correlated with attention and sensorimotor networks. ‘Emotional’ experiences were associated with higher connectivity, especially between limbic and ventral attention networks. Experiences focused on themes of ‘personal importance’ were associated with reduced functional connectivity within attention and control systems. Finally, visual experiences were associated with stronger connectivity between visual and other networks, in particular the limbic system. Some of these patterns had contrasting links with cognitive function as assessed in a separate laboratory session - purposeful thinking was linked to greater intelligence and better abstract reasoning, while a focus on personal importance had the opposite relationship. Together these findings are consistent with an emerging literature on unconstrained states and also underlines that these states are heterogeneous, with distinct modes of population variation reflecting the interplay of different large-scale networks.

Dreaming of the Earth

At this point in history when the earth's basic natural systems are at risk, dreams about this are occurring. Contemporary dream studies and cognitive neuroscience validate that REM dreaming serves an evolved survival function in all mammals; current dreams about the earth can be viewed in this light. I draw on Jung for two ideas: his contention that dreams can bring messages from the unitary soul of humanity, the trunk from which we grew; and his definition of archetypes as roots the psyche has sunk into the earth and into life. To illustrate this, I offer dreams selected from recent public programs, four from Jung's memoir, two of my own, and two striking historic examples—from Harriet Tubman and the 18th-century scientist-philosopher Georg Lichtenberg. In a few examples, earth imagery depicts a natural dynamic in the psyche of the dreamer; but in most, the dreaming mind turns toward the dynamic processes of the earth itself—their disturbance and their renewal. The closing dreams illustrate a new myth emerging: the participation mystique of the dreamer in the alchemical revivification of spirit and matter. My hope is that by having this material on our collective map, people will be able to recognize such dreams and welcome their guidance.

Psycho-biological factors associated with underground spaces: What can the new era of cognitive neuroscience offer to their study?

Working in underground spaces appears to be a possible solution for urban areas with lack of space or areas characterised by extremes of temperature. Besides pure engineering questions, it is also critical to understand the relationship between the architectural specificities of underground spaces and human behaviour and performance. Research to date has provided preliminary evidence on this question. Yet, during the last decade, contemporary cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology and behavioural science have made impressive progress in the measurement, monitoring and understanding of human cognition and behaviour. These novel approaches offer advanced tools to study the human brain, body and mind; other disciplines (economics, political science, ergonomics and, recently, architecture) have successfully adopted these methods. The aim of the present paper is to introduce these concepts to the research community who studies the effects of underground work and offer practical examples of how these methods can be employed to understand crucial problems related to “underground psychology”. These new conceptual tools enable reliable isolation of various cognitive functions in a quantifiable way; identification of individual differences in responses to the environment; uncovering of underlying motivational factors; and establishment of a more mechanistic explanation of human behaviour. Cognitive neuroscience inspired methods offer a new exciting, comprehensive, more objective, and systematic examination of human behaviour in underground spaces and open new possibilities for identification of effective interventional strategies to improve the design of modern underground environments.

Book Review: Memory: A History

Book Review: Memory: A History

Functional connectivity change across multiple cortical networks relates to episodic memory changes in aging

A major task of contemporary cognitive neuroscience of aging is to explain why episodic memory declines. Change in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) could be a mechanism accounting for reduced function. We addressed this through 3 studies. In study 1, 119 healthy participants (20–83 years) were followed for 3.5 years with verbal recall testing and magnetic resonance imaging. Independent of atrophy, recall change was related to change in rsFC in anatomically widespread areas. Striking age-effects were observed in that a positive relationship between rsFC and memory characterized older participants while a negative relationship was seen among the younger and middle-aged. This suggests that cognitive consequences of rsFC change are not stable across age. In study 2 and 3, the age-dependent differences in rsFC-memory relationship were replicated by use of a simulation model (study 2) and by a cross-sectional experimental recognition memory task (study 3). In conclusion, memory changes were related to altered rsFC in an age-dependent manner, and future research needs to detail the mechanisms behind age-varying relationships.

Luria’s classification of aphasias and its theoretical basis

Background: Every qualified neuropsychologist knows about Luria’s contribution to neuropsychology and aphasiology in general, but many of them believe his ideas to be out of date.Aims: The purpose of this article is to investigate Alexander Luria’s methodology of classification of aphasias and to describe the forms of aphasias that he distinguished.Main contribution: The article shows that the classification of aphasias was based on a profound theoretical research performed by Luria together with the founder of cultural-historical psychology, Lev Vygotsky. Their theoretical views including systemic, dynamic, evolutionary, and socio-cultural approaches to the analysis of functioning and disintegration of higher mental functions are congenial to the contemporary cognitive neuroscience. The descriptions of Luria’s classic forms of aphasia are updated using more recent data from Russian aphasiologists. The article provides the comparison of Russian and Western classifications of aphasias.Conclusions: Understanding the main ideas of the Vygotskian–Lurian neuropsychology, and particularly of Luria’s classification of aphasias, may be useful for the contemporary cognitive neuroscience and for the rehabilitation of patients with aphasia.

The feeling of agency hypothesis: a critique

A dominant view in contemporary cognitive neuroscience is that low-level, comparator-based mechanisms of motor control produce a distinctive experience often called the feeling of agency (the FoA-hypothesis). An opposing view is that comparator-based motor control is largely non-conscious and not associated with any particular type of distinctive phenomenology (the simple hypothesis). In this paper, I critically evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence researchers commonly take to support FoA-hypothesis. The aim of this paper is not only to scrutinize the FoA-hypothesis and data supposed to support it; it is equally to argue that experimentalists supporting the FoA-hypothesis fail to establish that the experimental outcomes are more probable given the FoA-hypothesis than given the simpler hypothesis.

The influence of handedness on hemispheric representation of tools: A survey

An important debate exists in contemporary cognitive neuroscience about the innate or experience-dependent origin of the brain representation of conceptual categories. The ‘domains of knowledge’ hypothesis maintains that innate factors subsume the categorical organization at the brain level of animals, plant life and artefacts. On the other hand, the ‘sensory-motor model of conceptual knowledge’ and the embodied cognition theory attribute this categorical organization to experience-dependent factors. I tried to clarify this issue by surveying the influence that handedness could have on the lateralization of tools representation in the inferior fronto-parietal and posterior middle temporal cortices of the left hemisphere. The underlying assumption was that, if this lateralization results from innate mechanisms, then handedness should not influence this hemispheric asymmetry. If, on the other hand, this lateralization is due to the motor and somatosensory experiences made with the right dominant hand during the manipulation of tools and other artefacts, then this asymmetry should be inverted or strongly attenuated in left-handers. Results of the review strongly suggest that manual experience acquired during tool manipulation can influence the hemispheric representation of tools and other artefacts. They also suggest, however, that handedness-related embodiment is not fixed, but influenced by personal motor experiences (such as those made by left-handers who have been forced to use their right hand) and by social visual experiences (such as the fact that, living in a right-handed world, left-handers see more people in their environment who use the right rather than the left hand) during tool manipulation.