Fundamental Cognitive Function Research Articles

Music can reduce cognitive dissonance

AbstractThe fundamental cognitive functions of music in the brain have not been known and evolutionary reasons for musical abilities seem mysterious. A recent hypothesis suggested that a fundamental function of music has been to help mitigating cognitive dissonances. A cognitive dissonance is "a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions" simultaneously; it usually leads to devaluation of conflicting knowledge. Since every concept implies some degree of contradictions to other knowledge, unmitigated cognitive dissonances could prevent evolution of cognition. Thus music might be fundamental for the evolution of cognition. Here we provide experimental confirmation of this hypothesis using a classical paradigm known to induce a cognitive dissonance and devaluation of a dissonant object; in presence of music devaluation has not occurred.

Spatio-temporal pattern analysis of single-trial EEG signals recorded during visual object recognition

Object discrimination is a fundamental cognitive function for human brains. In this study, we utilized an analysis approach for single-trial electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze the spatio-temporal activation patterns of visual objects processing in human brains, and attempted to apply it to discriminate different visual objects. The spatial patterns were respectively extracted from scalp EEG and the reconstructed cortical sources, while the experiment participants were perceiving 4 different categories of visual objects (faces, buildings, cats and cars). By classifying the patterns extracted from single-trial EEG, the presented visual objects could be discriminated by a computer, and the classification accuracies may provide a quantitative index to evaluate the spatial differences of the brain activations related to different visual objects. Our results demonstrated that the spatial patterns on both the scalp and the sources levels resulted in higher classification accuracies than chance rate. We also examined the classification results using temporally non-overlapping time intervals of different event-related potential (ERP) components. The temporal changes of classification accuracies may reflect the temporal distribution of the discriminative information in the EEG responses. The present pattern extraction and classification methods may compose a computational model for single-trial EEG data analysis in investigations of the spatio-temporal activation patterns for object recognition. These spatio-temporal patterns in EEG may be useful to identifying the discriminative spatial areas and time stages to improve the accuracies and efficiencies of object discrimination. In addition, investigating and utilizing humans’ cognitive mechanisms of object recognition may improve computers’ processing efficiency of visual information.

Role of secondary motor cortex in withholding impulsive action: Inhibition or competition?

Role of secondary motor cortex in withholding impulsive action: Inhibition or competition?

Formal Descriptions of Cognitive Processes of Perceptions on Spatiality, Time, and Motion

Recent researches in both cognitive informatics and computational intelligence are interested in the human perceptual senses of spatiality, time, and motion, which are fundamental cognitive life functions according to the Layered Reference Model of the Brain (LRMB). This paper presents the cognitive process of human perceptual senses on spatiality, time, and motion. The sense of spatiality is investigated into the coordinate system, orientations, and cognitive maps, followed by the development of the mathematical model and the cognitive process of human spatial senses. The sense of time with the biological clocks, cognitive clocks, and their mathematical models are analyzed in order to explain the cognitive process of human time sense. On the basis of the formal models of senses of spatiality and time, the sense of motion is modeled as a complex sense incorporating both of spatiality and time. Then, the cognitive, mathematical, and process models of the sense of motion are rigorously established. This work provides a theoretical framework for the rigorous implementation of the intelligent behaviors of cognitive computers, autonomous agent systems, and robots in cognitive informatics and computational intelligence.

Reply to comment: Oman Chronostratigraphy: (Reply to comment by Erwan Le Guerroue, Ruben Rieu and Andrea Cozzi on "Geochronologic Constraints on the Chronostratigraphic Framework of the Neoproterozoic Huqf Supergroup, Sultanate of Oman", American Journal of Science, v. 307, p. 1097-1145)

<h3>Abstract</h3> Error detection in motor behavior is a fundamental cognitive function heavily relying on cortical information processing. Neural activity in the high-gamma frequency band (HGB) closely reflects such local cortical processing, but little is known about its role in error processing, particularly in the healthy human brain. Here we characterize the error-related response of the human brain based on data obtained with noninvasive EEG optimized for HGB mapping in 31 healthy subjects (15 females, 16 males), and additional intracranial EEG data from 9 epilepsy patients (4 females, 5 males). Our findings reveal a comprehensive picture of the global and local dynamics of error-related HGB activity in the human brain. On the global level as reflected in the noninvasive EEG, the error-related response started with an early component dominated by anterior brain regions, followed by a shift to parietal regions, and a subsequent phase characterized by sustained parietal HGB activity. This phase lasted for more than 1 s after the error onset. On the local level reflected in the intracranial EEG, a cascade of both transient and sustained error-related responses involved an even more extended network, spanning beyond frontal and parietal regions to the insula and the hippocampus. HGB mapping appeared especially well suited to investigate late, sustained components of the error response, possibly linked to downstream functional stages such as error-related learning and behavioral adaptation. Our findings establish the basic spatio-temporal properties of HGB activity as a neural correlate of error processing, complementing traditional error-related potential studies. <h3>Significance Statement</h3> There is great interest to understand how the human brain reacts to errors in goal-directed behavior. An important index of cortical and subcortical information processing is fast oscillatory brain activity, particularly in the high-gamma band (above 50 Hz). Here we show that it is possible to detect signatures of errors in event-related high-gamma responses with noninvasive techniques, characterize these responses comprehensively, and validate the EEG procedure for the detection of such signals. In addition, we demonstrate the added value of intracranial recordings pinpointing the fine-grained spatio-temporal patterns in error-related brain networks. We anticipate that the optimized noninvasive EEG techniques as described here will be helpful in many areas of cognitive neuroscience where fast oscillatory brain activity is of interest.

Visuospatial planning in the travelling salesperson problem: A connectionist account of normal and impaired performance

Planning is a fundamental cognitive function frequently employed in common daily activities. The Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP), in which participants decide what order between a number of locations optimizes total travel distance, is a paradigm that allows the study of planning and strategy choice. In the TSP, subjects adopt visuo-spatial heuristics to perform the task and operate a continuous monitoring to adapt their behaviour. We present a connectionist model of the TSP that simulates bottom-up and top-down influences observed in the execution of the task. The model accounts for the continuous monitoring observed in healthy participants, and, after a simulated lesion, it also accounts for the decrease of heuristic switching observed in frontal patients and in normal subjects under repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over frontal lobe.

An Integrated Microcircuit Model of Attentional Processing in the Neocortex

Selective attention is a fundamental cognitive function that uses top-down signals to orient and prioritize information processing in the brain. Single-cell recordings from behaving monkeys have revealed a number of attention-induced effects on sensory neurons, and have given rise to contrasting viewpoints about the neural underpinning of attentive processing. Moreover, there is evidence that attentional signals originate from the prefrontoparietal working memory network, but precisely how a source area of attention interacts with a sensory system remains unclear. To address these questions, we investigated a biophysically based network model of spiking neurons composed of a reciprocally connected loop of two (sensory and working memory) networks. We found that a wide variety of physiological phenomena induced by selective attention arise naturally in such a system. In particular, our work demonstrates a neural circuit that instantiates the "feature-similarity gain modulation principle," according to which the attentional gain effect on sensory neuronal responses is a graded function of the difference between the attended feature and the preferred feature of the neuron, independent of the stimulus. Furthermore, our model identifies key circuit mechanisms that underlie feature-similarity gain modulation, multiplicative scaling of tuning curve, and biased competition, and provide specific testable predictions. These results offer a synthetic account of the diverse attentional effects, suggesting a canonical neural circuit for feature-based attentional processing in the cortex.

Unique association between self-occlusion and double-touching towards binding vision and touch

Binding is one of the most fundamental cognitive functions, how to find the correspondence of sensations between different modalities such as vision and touch. Learning the multimodal representation of the body is supposed to be the first step toward binding since the morphological constraints on sensations during self-body-observation would make the binding problem tractable. In this paper, we address an issue of learning to match the foci of attention in vision and touch through self-body-observation. We propose the cross-anchoring Hebbian learning rule to uniquely associate double-touching and self-occlusion. Experiments with both the computer simulation and a real robot show the validity of the proposed method.

A Neural Representation of Categorization Uncertainty in the Human Brain

The ability to classify visual objects into discrete categories ("friend" versus "foe"; "edible" versus "poisonous") is essential for survival and is a fundamental cognitive function. The cortical substrates that mediate this function, however, have not been identified in humans. To identify brain regions involved in stimulus categorization, we developed a task in which subjects classified stimuli according to a variable categorical boundary. Psychophysical functions were used to define a decision variable, categorization uncertainty, which was systematically manipulated. Using event-related functional MRI, we discovered that activity in a fronto-striatal-thalamic network, consisting of the medial frontal gyrus, anterior insula, ventral striatum, and dorsomedial thalamus, was modulated by categorization uncertainty. We found this network to be distinct from the frontoparietal attention network, consisting of the frontal and parietal eye fields, where activity was not correlated with categorization uncertainty.

Temporal attention enhances early visual processing: A review and new evidence from event-related potentials

Two fundamental cognitive functions, selective attention and processing of time, have been simultaneously explored in recent studies of temporal orienting of attention. A temporal-orienting procedure may consist of a temporal analogue to the Posner's paradigm, such that symbolic cues indicate the most probable moment for target arrival. Behavioral measures suggest that performance is improved for events appearing at expected vs. unexpected moments. However, there is no agreement on the locus of stimulus processing at which temporal attention operates. Thus, it remains unclear whether early perceptual or just late motor processes can be modulated. This article reviews current ERP research on temporal orienting, with an emphasis on factors that might determine the modulation of temporal orienting at early stages of processing. We conclude that: First, late components (N2 and P300) are consistently modulated by temporal orienting, which suggests attentional preparation of decision and/or motor processes. Second, early components (e.g., N1) seem to be modulated only when the task is highly demanding in perceptual processing. Hence, we conducted an ERP experiment which aimed to observe a modulation of early visual processing by using a perceptually demanding task, such as letter discrimination. The results show, for the first time, that targets appearing at attended moments elicited a larger P1 component than unattended targets. Moreover, temporal attention modulated the amplitude and latency of N2 and P300 components. This suggests that temporal orienting of attention not only modulates late motor processing, but also early visual processing when perceptually demanding tasks are used.

Seeking the foundations of cognition in bacteria: From Schrödinger's negative entropy to latent information

We reexamine Schrödinger's reflections on the fundamental requirements for life in view of new observations about bacterial self-organization and the emerging understanding of gene-network regulation mechanisms and dynamics. Focusing on the energy, matter and thermodynamic imbalances provided by the environment, Schrödinger proposed his consumption of negative entropy requirement for life. We take the criteria further and propose that, besides “negative entropy”, organisms extract latent information embedded in the complexity of their environment. By latent information we refer to the non-arbitrary spatio-temporal patterns of regularities and variations that characterize the environmental dynamics. Hence it can be used to generate an internal condensed description (model or usable information) of the environment which guides the organisms functioning. Accordingly, we propose that Schrödinger's criterion of “consumption of negative entropy” is not sufficient and “consumption of latent information” is an additional fundamental requirement of Life. In other words, all organisms, including bacteria, the most primitive (fundamental) ones, must be able to sense the environment and perform internal information processing for thriving on latent information embedded in the complexity of their environment. We then propose that by acting together, bacteria can perform this most elementary cognitive function more efficiently as can be illustrated by their cooperative behavior (colonial or inter-cellular self-organization). As a member of a complex superorganism—the colony—each unit (bacteria) must possess the ability to sense and communicate with the other units comprising the collective and perform its task within a distribution of tasks. Bacterial communication thus entails collective sensing and cooperativity. The fundamental (primitive) elements of cognition in such systems include interpretation of (chemical) messages, distinction between internal and external information, and some self vs., non-self distinction (peers and cheaters). We outline how intra-cellular self-organization together with genome plasticity and membrane dynamics might, in principle, provide the intra-cellular mechanisms needed for these fundamental cognitive functions. In regard to intra-cellular processes, Schrödinger postulated that new physics is needed to explain the convertion of the genetically stored information into a functioning cell. At present, his ontogenetic dilemma is generally perceived to be solved and is attributed to a lack of knowledge when it was proposed. So it is widely accepted that there is no need for some unknown laws of physics to explain cellular ontogenetic development. We take a different view and in Schrödinger's foot steps suggest that yet unknown physics principles of self-organization in open systems are missing for understanding how to assemble the cell's component into an information-based functioning “machine”.

Étude du processus de catégorisation chez des patientes aux troubles des conduites alimentaires : une nouvelle approche cognitive de la psychopathologie

Resume Les patientes anorexiques et boulimiques ont un rapport aux aliments et a l’alimentation en general fortement perturbe, alors qu’elles possedent pour la plupart de bonnes connaissances dietetiques et nutritionnelles. Quelques travaux ont objective des dysfonctionnements cognitifs sans vraiment les preciser, c’est pourquoi nous avons souhaite explorer le processus cognitif de categorisation qui constitue une fonction principale de la structuration de notre univers mental. Deux experimentations successives nous ont permis de montrer que les processus de categorisation utilises par les patientes anorexiques et boulimiques sont fort differents de ceux de sujets temoins. Le deuxieme temps experimental nous permet de preciser que ces patientes privilegient fortement les caracteristiques fonctionnelles attribuees aux aliments, alors que les sujets temoins accordent une importance privilegiee aux caracteristiques structurales.

高齢者の認知機能の経時変化および認知機能と日常生活動作（ＡＤＬ）の関係についての調査研究

To describe fundamental cognitive function and change in the elderly and examine interaction between cognition and ADL. We investigated the mental and physical condition of 12,140 persons aged 65 years or over in 2000 and 2002 according to the Eligibility Survey Questionnaire for Long-term Care Insurance. The percentage correct and correlation coefficients of six items in the Questionnaire concerning "Understanding" : "Understands daily activities", "Answers date of birth and age", "Remembers what the subject did before interview", "Says own name", "Knows what season it is now", "Knows the place where the subject is" were determined. The interaction between these six items and ADL were also examined. The percentage correct of "name" was .89, "date of birth and age" .78, "place" .75, "season" .66, "daily activities" .59, "Remembers before interview" .58. The item with high percentages of correct answer in 2000 higher tended to remain high in 2002. Those who were not impaired physically but unable to understand cognitive items tended to require significantly more support for ADL such as "Dressing and undressing", and "Personal hygiene", "Taking medication". The percentage correct of each item was considered to be associated with a classical model of memory process: encoding, retention and retrieval. It seemed to require the whole memory process to "Understand daily activities" and "Remember before interview", since the contents were changeable. On the other hand, "name" and "date of birth and age" were relatively well preserved, since these items were encoded and stored in the early stage of life and retrieved repeatedly. "Place" and "Season" were between these two groups.

Preservation of Cognitive Function After Long-Term Tetraplegia

The claim of a significant relationship between pulmonary peak expiratory flow rate and cognitive decline in normal aging is bound to raise the question of whether accelerated cognitive decline would be an automatic consequence of long-term tetraplegia, with its significant effects on normal respiratory function. We present a case series of three persons with long-term tetraplegia (11, 15, and 21 yr) comparing their cognitive test results (short-term and working memory, the ability to inhibit interference, and cognitive processing speed) with scores for age-matched noninjured adults. Results showed that long-term tetraplegia, even with compromised respiration, does not inevitably lead to decline in fundamental cognitive functions relative to age-matched noninjured controls.

Differences in the functional neuroanatomy of inhibitory control across the adult life span.

Inhibitory control, the ability to suppress irrelevant or interfering stimuli, is a fundamental cognitive function that deteriorates during aging, but little is understood about the bases of decline. Thus, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study inhibitory control in healthy adults aged 18 to 78. Activation during "successful inhibition" occurred predominantly in right prefrontal and parietal regions and was more extensive, bilaterally and prefrontally, in the older groups. Presupplementary motor area was also more active in poorer inhibitory performers. Therefore, older adults activate areas that are comparable to those activated by young adults during inhibition, as well as additional regions. The results are consistent with a compensatory interpretation and extend the aging neuroimaging literature into the cognitive domain of inhibition.