Cognitive Neuroscience Literature Research Articles

Choosing not to follow rules that will reduce the spread of COVID-19

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many authorities have implemented public health measures that place restrictions on individuals. Understanding how individuals respond to these new rules, particularly whether they are likely to follow or break them, is extremely important. Relational frame theory offers unique insights into rule-governed behavior, allowing researchers to develop functional-analytic interpretations of why a listener may understand a rule, have the required response established in their behavioral repertoire, and still choose not to follow the rule. Drawing from research on rule-following in accordance with relational frame theory and cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and health literature, this paper presents reasons why a rule may be understood but not followed, identifying important considerations for implementing public health measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, rule-givers should attend to their credibility, authority and ability to mediate consequences, rule plausibility, establishing adequate motivative augmental control, whether the behavior specified in the rule opposes habits, and whether the message incites counterpliance.

Electrogastrography for psychophysiological research: Practical considerations, analysis pipeline, and normative data in a large sample.

Electrogastrography (EGG) is the noninvasive electrophysiological technique used to record gastric electrical activity by means of cutaneous electrodes placed on the abdomen. EGG has been so far mostly used in clinical studies in gastroenterology, but it represents an attractive method to study brain‐viscera interactions in psychophysiology. Compared to the literature on electrocardiography for instance, where practical recommendations and normative data are abundant, the literature on EGG in humans remains scarce. The aim of this article is threefold. First, we review the existing literature on the physiological basis of the EGG, pathways of brain‐stomach interactions, and experimental findings in the cognitive neuroscience and psychophysiology literature. We then describe practical issues faced when recording the EGG in young healthy participants, from data acquisition to data analysis, and propose a semi‐automated analysis pipeline together with associated MATLAB code. The analysis pipeline aims at identifying a regular rhythm that can be safely attributed to the stomach, through multiple steps. Finally, we apply these recording and analysis procedures in a large sample (N = 117) of healthy young adult male and female participants in a moderate (<5 hr) to prolonged (>10 hr) fasting state to establish the normative distribution of several EGG parameters. Our results are overall congruent with the clinical gastroenterology literature, but suggest using an electrode coverage extending to lower abdominal locations than current clinical guidelines. Our results indicate a marginal difference in EGG peak frequency between male and female participants, and that the gastric rhythm becomes more irregular after prolonged fasting.

The radiation of autonoetic consciousness in cognitive neuroscience: A functional neuroanatomy perspective

One of Endel Tulving's most important contributions to memory research is the coupling of self-knowing consciousness (or “autonoesis”) with episodic memory. According to Tulving, autonoetic episodic memory enables the uniquely human neurocognitive operation of “mental time travel”, which is the ability to deliberately “project” oneself to a specific time and place to remember personally experienced events that occurred in the past and simulate personal happenings that may occur in the future. These ideas ignited an explosion of research in the years to follow, leading to the development of several related concepts and theories regarding the role of the human self in memory and prospection. In this paper, we first explore the expansion of the concept of autonoetic consciousness in the cognitive neuroscience literature as well as the formulation of derivative concepts and theories. Subsequently, we review such concepts and theories including episodic memory, mental time travel, episodic simulation, scene construction and self-projection. In view of Tulving's emphasis of the temporal and spatial context of the experience, we also review the cognitive operation involved in “travel” (or “projection”) in these domains as well as in the social domain. We describe the underlying brain networks and processes involved, their overlapping activations and involvement in giving rise to the experience. Meta-analysis of studies investigating the underlying functional neuroanatomy of these theories revealed main overlapping activations in sub-regions of the medial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, retrosplenial cortex, temporoparietal junction and medial temporal lobe. Dissection of these results enables to infer and quantify the interrelations in between the different theories as well as with respect to Tulving's original ideas.

Revisiting the relationship between the P3b and working memory updating

The P3b is an extensively studied neurophysiological phenomenon that is predominantly explained in the cognitive neuroscience literature as reflecting context updating, presumably in working memory (WM). Despite the prevalence and influence of the context updating hypothesis, direct empirical support for the role of WM updating in eliciting the P3b is still missing. The present study was designed to address the empirical gap in understanding the functional role of P3b in general, and specifically in relation to WM updating. A mass-univariate approach was used to test the unique contribution of WM updating, categorization, and stimulus probability to the P3b. The results indicated that the P3b is only modulated by the categorization process, a finding that challenges the WM updating hypothesis. Taken together these results, we suggest that the P3b reflects a WM guided target identification mechanism, which operates as part of a goal-directed learning strategy.

Parcellation of the Hippocampus Using Resting Functional Connectivity in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

We have previously shown that the connectivity of the hippocampus to other regions of the default mode network (DMN) is a strong indicator of memory ability in people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Recent work in the cognitive neuroscience literature has suggested that the anterior and posterior aspects of the hippocampus have distinct connections to the rest of the DMN and may support different memory operations. Further, structural analysis of epileptogenic hippocampi has found greater atrophy, characterized by mesial temporal sclerosis, in the anterior region of the hippocampus. Here, we used resting state FMRI data to parcellate the hippocampus according to its functional connectivity to the rest of the brain in people with left lateralized TLE (LTLE) and right lateralized TLE (RTLE), and in a group of neurologically healthy controls. We found similar anterior and posterior compartments in all groups. However, there was weaker connectivity of the epileptogenic hippocampus to multiple regions of the DMN. Both TLE groups showed reduced connectivity of the posterior hippocampus to key hubs of the DMN, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC). In the LTLE group, the anterior hippocampus also showed reduced connectivity to the DMN, and this effect was influenced by the presence of mesial temporal sclerosis. When we explored brain-behavior relationships, we found that reduced connectivity of the left anterior hippocampus to the DMN hubs related to poorer verbal memory ability in people with LTLE, and reduced connectivity of the right posterior hippocampus to the PCC related to poorer visual memory ability in those with RTLE. These findings may inform models regarding functional distinctions of the hippocampal anteroposterior axis.

Pushing the Envelope: Developments in Neural Entrainment to Speech and the Biological Underpinnings of Prosody Perception.

Prosodic cues in speech are indispensable for comprehending a speaker’s message, recognizing emphasis and emotion, parsing segmental units, and disambiguating syntactic structures. While it is commonly accepted that prosody provides a fundamental service to higher-level features of speech, the neural underpinnings of prosody processing are not clearly defined in the cognitive neuroscience literature. Many recent electrophysiological studies have examined speech comprehension by measuring neural entrainment to the speech amplitude envelope, using a variety of methods including phase-locking algorithms and stimulus reconstruction. Here we review recent evidence for neural tracking of the speech envelope and demonstrate the importance of prosodic contributions to the neural tracking of speech. Prosodic cues may offer a foundation for supporting neural synchronization to the speech envelope, which scaffolds linguistic processing. We argue that prosody has an inherent role in speech perception, and future research should fill the gap in our knowledge of how prosody contributes to speech envelope entrainment.

An fMRI Exploration of Information Processing in Electronic Networks of Practice

Online forums sponsored by electronic networks of practice have become an important source of information for individuals seeking solutions to problems online. However, not all information available in a forum is helpful or accurate, requiring knowledge seekers to evaluate and filter the solutions they encounter. Most forums offer contextual cues to help knowledge seekers make evaluation decisions, yet little is understood about the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms that underlie how information on these forums is filtered and evaluated. This paper draws on literature in cognitive neuroscience and NeuroIS to develop exploratory research questions about the role of both content and contextual cues in forum filtering tasks, the comparative and interactive effects of different types of contextual cues, and the neural functions associated with filtering processes. These questions are explored using an fMRI experimental study that captured forum information filtering behaviors and measured the neural correlates involved in evaluating both solution content and contextual cues. Results show that both content and contextual cues influence final filtering decisions, with community-based cues factoring more heavily than expert-based cues. Moreover, we observe distinct neural activation patterns when forum knowledge seekers encounter certain cue combinations. Based on our observations, we derive a theoretical model comprising testable research propositions about both behavioral and neural facets of forum information filtering.

A match does not make a sense: on the sufficiency of the comparator model for explaining the sense of agency.

The development of a sense of agency is indispensable for a cognitive entity (biological or artificial) to become a cognitive agent. In developmental psychology, researchers have taken inspiration from adult cognitive psychology and neuroscience literature and use the comparator model to assess the presence of a sense of agency in early infancy. Similarly, robotics researchers have taken components of the proposed mechanism in attempts to build a sense of agency into artificial systems. In this article, we identify an invalidating theoretical flaw in the reasoning underlying this conversion from adult studies to developmental science and cognitive systems research, rooted in an oversight in the conceptualization of the comparator model as currently used in experimental practice. In these experiments, the emphasis has been put solely on testing for a match between predicted and observed sensory consequences. We argue that the match by itself can exclusively generate a simple categorization or a representation of equality between predicted and observed sensory consequences, both of which are insufficient to generate the causal representations required for a sense of agency. Consequently, the comparator model, as it has been described in the context of the sense of agency and as it is commonly used in experimental designs, is insufficient to generate the sense of agency: infants and robots require more than developing the ability to match predicted and observed sensory consequences for a sense of agency. We conclude with outlining possible solutions and future directions for researchers in developmental science and artificial intelligence.

A Comparison of Predictive Spatial Augmented Reality Cues for Procedural Tasks.

Previous research has demonstrated that Augmented Reality can reduce a user's task response time and mental effort when completing a procedural task. This paper investigates techniques to improve user performance and reduce mental effort by providing projector-based Spatial Augmented Reality predictive cues for future responses. The objective of the two experiments conducted in this study was to isolate the performance and mental effort differences from several different annotation cueing techniques for simple (Experiment 1) and complex (Experiment 2) button-pressing tasks. Comporting with existing cognitive neuroscience literature on prediction, attentional orienting, and interference, we hypothesized that for both simple procedural tasks and complex search-based tasks, having a visual cue guiding to the next task's location would positively impact performance relative to a baseline, no-cue condition. Additionally, we predicted that direction-based cues would provide a more significant positive impact than target-based cues. The results indicated that providing a line to the next task was the most effective technique for improving the users' task time and mental effort in both the simple and complex tasks.

Working Memory Impairment Across Psychotic disorders.

Working memory (WM) has been a central focus of cognitive neuroscience research because WM is a resource that is involved in many different cognitive operations. The goal of this study was to evaluate the clinical utility of WM paradigms developed in the basic cognitive neuroscience literature, including methods designed to estimate storage capacity without contamination by lapses of attention. A total of 61 people with schizophrenia, 49 with schizoaffective disorder, 47 with bipolar disorder with psychosis, and 59 healthy volunteers were recruited. Participants received multiple WM tasks, including two versions each of a multiple Change Detection paradigm, a visual Change Localization paradigm, and a Running Span task. Healthy volunteers performed better than the combined patient group on the visual Change Localization and running span measures. The multiple Change Detection tasks provided mixed evidence about WM capacity reduction in the patient groups, but a mathematical model of performance suggested that the patient groups differed from controls in their rate of attention lapsing. The 3 patient groups performed similarly on the WM tasks. Capacity estimates from the Change Detection and Localization tasks showed significant correlations with functional capacity and functional outcome. The patient groups generally performed in a similarly impaired fashion across tasks, suggesting that WM impairment and attention lapsing are general features of psychotic disorders. Capacity estimates from the Change Localization and Detection tasks were related to functional capacity and outcome, suggesting that these methods may be useful in a clinical context.

Real World Problem-Solving.

Real world problem-solving (RWPS) is what we do every day. It requires flexibility, resilience, resourcefulness, and a certain degree of creativity. A crucial feature of RWPS is that it involves continuous interaction with the environment during the problem-solving process. In this process, the environment can be seen as not only a source of inspiration for new ideas but also as a tool to facilitate creative thinking. The cognitive neuroscience literature in creativity and problem-solving is extensive, but it has largely focused on neural networks that are active when subjects are not focused on the outside world, i.e., not using their environment. In this paper, I attempt to combine the relevant literature on creativity and problem-solving with the scattered and nascent work in perceptually-driven learning from the environment. I present my synthesis as a potential new theory for real world problem-solving and map out its hypothesized neural basis. I outline some testable predictions made by the model and provide some considerations and ideas for experimental paradigms that could be used to evaluate the model more thoroughly.

Cognitive and Affective Perspective-Taking: Evidence for Shared and Dissociable Anatomical Substrates.

Perspective-taking refers to the ability to recognize another person's point of view. Crucial to the development of interpersonal relationships and prosocial behavior, perspective-taking is closely linked to human empathy, and like empathy, perspective-taking is commonly subdivided into cognitive and affective components. While the two components of empathy have been frequently compared, the differences between cognitive and affective perspective-taking have been under-investigated in the cognitive neuroscience literature to date. Here, we define cognitive perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's thoughts or beliefs, and affective perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's feelings or emotions. In this paper, we review data from functional imaging studies in healthy adults as well as behavioral and structural imaging studies in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia in order to determine if there are distinct neural correlates for cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Data suggest that there are both shared and non-shared cognitive and anatomic substrates. For example, while both types of perspective-taking engage regions such as the temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and temporal poles, only affective perspective-taking engages regions within the limbic system and basal ganglia. Differences are also observed in prefrontal cortex: while affective perspective-taking engages ventromedial prefrontal cortex, cognitive perspective-taking engages dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To corroborate these findings, we also examine if cognitive and affective perspective-taking share the same relationship with executive functions. While it is clear that affective perspective-taking requires emotional substrates that are less prominent in cognitive perspective-taking, it remains unknown to what extent executive functions (including working memory, mental set switching, and inhibitory control) may contribute to each process. Overall results indicate that cognitive perspective-taking is dependent on executive functioning (particularly mental set switching), while affective perspective-taking is less so. We conclude with a critique of the current literature, with a focus on the different outcome measures used across studies and misconceptions due to imprecise terminology, as well as recommendations for future research.

Alpha band frequency differences between low-trait and high-trait anxious individuals.

Trait anxiety has been shown to cause significant impairments on attentional tasks. Current research has identified alpha band frequency differences between low-trait and high-trait anxious individuals. Here, we further investigated the underlying alpha band frequency differences between low-trait and high-trait anxious individuals during their resting state and the completion of an inhibition executive functioning task. Using human participants and quantitative electroencephalographic recordings, we measured alpha band frequency in individuals both high and low in trait anxiety during their resting state, and while they completed an Eriksen Flanker Task. Results indicated that high-trait anxious individuals exhibit a desynchronization in alpha band frequency from a resting state to when they complete the Eriksen Flanker Task. This suggests that high-trait anxious individuals maintain fewer attentional resources at rest and must martial resources for task performance as compared with low-trait anxious individuals, who appear to maintain stable cognitive resources between rest and task performance. These findings add to the cognitive neuroscience literature surrounding the role of alpha band frequency in low-trait and high-trait anxious individuals.

Oskar Pfister Award Winner Offers Hope to the Demoralized

Oskar Pfister Award Winner Offers Hope to the Demoralized

Selective Attention, Working Memory, and Executive Function as Potential Independent Sources of Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia demonstrate impairments in selective attention, working memory, and executive function. Given the overlap in these constructs, it is unclear if these represent distinct impairments or different manifestations of one higher-order impairment. To examine this question, we administered tasks from the basic cognitive neuroscience literature to measure visual selective attention, working memory capacity, and executive function in 126 people with schizophrenia and 122 healthy volunteers. Patients demonstrated deficits on all tasks with the exception of selective attention guided by strong bottom-up inputs. Although the measures of top-down control of selective attention, working memory, and executive function were all intercorrelated, several sources of evidence indicate that working memory and executive function are separate sources of variance. Specifically, both working memory and executive function independently contributed to the discrimination of group status and independently accounted for variance in overall general cognitive ability as assessed by the MATRICS battery. These two cognitive functions appear to be separable features of the cognitive impairments observed in schizophrenia.

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

Control without Controllers: Toward a Distributed Neuroscience of Executive Control.

Executive control refers to the regulation of cognition and behavior by mental processes and is a hallmark of higher cognition. Most approaches to understanding its mechanisms begin with the assumption that our brains have anatomically segregated and functionally specialized control modules. The modular approach is intuitive: Control is conceptually distinct from basic mental processing, so an organization that reifies that distinction makes sense. An alternative approach sees executive control as self-organizing principles of a distributed organization. In distributed systems, control and controlled processes are colocalized within large numbers of dispersed computational agents. Control then is often an emergent consequence of simple rules governing the interaction between agents. Because these systems are unfamiliar and unintuitive, here we review several well-understood examples of distributed control systems, group living insects and social animals, and emphasize their parallels with neural systems. We then reexamine the cognitive neuroscience literature on executive control for evidence that its neural control systems may be distributed.

Contemplation vs. intuition: a reinforcement learning perspective

In a search for a positive model of decision-making with observable primitives, we rely on the burgeoning literature in cognitive neuroscience to construct a three-element machine (agent). Its control unit initiates either impulsive or cognitive elements to solve a problem in a stationary Markov environment, the element chosen depends on whether the problem is mundane or novel, memory of past successes, and the strength of inhibition. Our predictions are based on a stationary asymptotic distribution of the memory, which, depending on the parameters, can generate different “characters”, e.g., an uptight dimwit, who could succeed more often with less inhibition, as well as a laid-back wise-guy, who could gain more with a stronger inhibition of impulsive (intuitive) responses. As one would expect, stronger inhibition and lower cognitive costs increase the frequency of decisions made by the cognitive element. More surprisingly, increasing the “carrot” and reducing the “stick” (being in a more supportive environment) enhance contemplative decisions (made by the cognitive unit) for an alert agent, i.e., the one who identifies novel problems frequently enough.

AXONAL DENSITY AND MYELIN INTEGRITY IN COGNITIVE DECLINE: A DIFFUSIONAL KURTOSIS IMAGING STUDY

Age-related changes in brain white matter have been associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. Here, with advanced biophysical modeling of Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging (DKI) data (Fig. 1), we test the hypothesis that cognitively intact older adults who demonstrate cognitive decline over 15 months (i.e. “Decliners”) already demonstrate a more pronounced loss of axonal density and myelin integrity at baseline compared to matched controls (i.e. “Controls”). 69 cognitively intact older adults underwent neuropsychological testing and MRI (Siemens 3T TIM Trio), with a subset (n=39) completing the same procedures at follow-up 14.8 ± 3.3 months later. Of these subjects, 6 demonstrated declines on cognitive testing, i.e. “Decliners” had ≦-0.5 z-score decline in memory and at least 1 other UDS test normed for age). 12 “Controls” were selected to match these “Decliners;” these groups did not differ on baseline neuropsychological performance or several other health variables (Table 1). DKI protocol: 2.5 mm3 voxels, 3 b-values (0, 1000, 2000 s/mm2), 64 directions, 1 average. DKI data were processed using Diffusional Kurtosis Estimator to derive metrics of axonal density (i.e. axonal water fraction [AWF]) and myelin integrity (i.e. extra-axonal diffusivity in the radial direction [De_radial]). Voxelwise analysis of AWF and De_radial were performed with tract-based spatial statistics in FSL (5,000 permutations and threshold-free cluster enhancement to correct for familywise error). Using FSL's randomise, we tested whether these groups differed in AWF and De_radial, covarying for age. Contrary to the expected “accelerated aging” effect of pronounced loss of axonal density (↓ AWF) and myelin integrity (↑ De_radial) in Decliners, we found higher AWF in Decliners versus Controls along the corpus callosum and in the right temporal lobe (p<0.05), and lower De_radial in Decliners versus Controls (p=0.07) in the genu of the corpus callosum (Fig. 2). These results suggest that individuals at greatest risk for cognitive decline may demonstrate greater axonal density for enhanced inter-hemispheric processing and compensatory scaffolding in the right temporal lobe. This finding is one of the first diffusion MRI-based studies to corroborate the well-established compensation theories of cognitive aging described in the fMRI and cognitive neuroscience literature. Panel A: The WM model assumes that in highly aligned WM tracts, diffusion occurs in non- exchanging compartments: the intra-axonal space (red) and the extra-axonal (blue) space. Panel B: Diffusion parallel to the direction of axons is measured by the metrics extra-axonal diffusivity, axial (De,||) and intra-axonal diffusivity (Daxon). Panel C: A cross-sectional image of a fiber bundle with myelinated axons. Panel D: Diffusion perpendicular to the axons is measured by the metric extra-axonal diffusivity, radial (De,⊥).

Conceptual advances in the cognitive neuroscience of learning: Implications for relational frame theory

Cognitive neuroscience has developed many approaches to the study of learning that might be useful to functionally oriented researchers, including those from a relational frame theory (RFT) perspective. We focus here on two examples. First, cognitive neuroscience often distinguishes between habit and goal-directed reinforcement learning, in which only the latter is sensitive to proximal changes in behavior-environment contingencies. This distinction is relevant to RFT’s original concerns about how rule-based processes can sometimes render an individual’s behavior maladaptive to changing circumstances. Second, the discovery of neurophysiological structures associated with fear extinction and generalization can potentially yield new insights for derived relational responding research. In particular, we review how such work not only informs new ways of modifying the functions transformed in derived relational responding, but also new ways of measuring derived relational responding itself. Overall, therefore, existing conceptual and methodological advances in the cognitive neuroscience literature addressing learning appear to generate functionally interesting predictions related to RFT that might not have surfaced from a traditional functional analysis of behavior.