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Hesitation phenomena: a dynamical perspective.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of this paper is to test if hesitation phenomena are periodically distributed in spoken language production. Twenty semi-spontaneous descriptions and narratives produced by five healthy male adults were examined in a multiple case study design. Speech was sampled at a 200 ms rate for time series generation. Fourier analysis indicated that all time series were statistically stationary, which means that speech did not become more or less fluent along each sample. Fourier analysis identified periodic cycles of hesitations in all speech samples. Therefore, hesitations were not randomly distributed in speech product...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 15, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Merlo S, Barbosa PA Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Web usability evaluation with screen reader users: implementation of the partial concurrent thinking aloud technique.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A verbal protocol technique, adopted for a web usability evaluation, requires that the users are able to perform a double task: surfing and talking. Nevertheless, when blind users surf by using a screen reader and talk about the way they interact with the computer, the evaluation is influenced by a structural interference: users are forced to think aloud and listen to the screen reader at the same time. The aim of this study is to build up a verbal protocol technique for samples of visual impaired users in order to overcome the limits of concurrent and retrospective protocols. The technique we improved, called partial ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 15, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Stefano F, Borsci S, Stamerra G Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Dynamic sensory-motor oscillation and cerebral development.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Drawing from Freud's Project, the author proposes a model of cerebral development whose sensory-motor structure is defined by a frontal-occipital oscillatory dynamic with a twofold function: the oscillation explains the formation and maintenance of mother-infant attunement in cerebral growth, while, at the same time, also explaining the functioning of the projective-introjective dynamic at the basis of psychoanalytic theory. The oscillatory dynamic, according to this perspective, operates as a "bridge" between two seminal theoretical models of developments-the psychoanalytic and the infant research model-which, in turn...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 15, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sasso G Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

The Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The work at the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition is summarized. PMID: 19915880 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 14, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Travis F Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Complex problem solving: a case for complex cognition?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailorshop and MicroDYN, are presented to illustrate the concept by means of their measurement devices. Also, the relation of complex cognition and emotion in the CPS context is discussed. The question if CPS requires complex cognition is answered with a tentative "yes." PMID:...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Funke J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Complex problem solving: another test case?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Attacks on classic complex problem solving focus on both their ecological validity and the difficulty to analyze such a complex interplay of system variables. But we argue that the domain of travel planning is in some sense a much more "natural" domain and at least partially able to deal with this kind of criticism. We first review the main existing scenarios and paradigms like Lohhausen, Tailorshop, and Moro and compare them to what we call the TRAVELPLAN problem. This problem contains a number of computationally well-investigated problems, which are worked out and can be described by so-called constrained satisfactio...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ragni M, Löffler CM Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

We favor formal models of heuristics rather than lists of loose dichotomies: a reply to Evans and Over.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In their comment on Marewski et al. (good judgments do not require complex cognition, 2009) Evans and Over (heuristic thinking and human intelligence: a commentary on Marewski, Gaissmaier and Gigerenzer, 2009) conjectured that heuristics can often lead to biases and are not error free. This is a most surprising critique. The computational models of heuristics we have tested allow for quantitative predictions of how many errors a given heuristic will make, and we and others have measured the amount of error by analysis, computer simulation, and experiment. This is clear progress over simply giving heuristics labels, suc...
Source: Cognitive Processing - November 5, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Marewski JN, Gaissmaier W, Gigerenzer G Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

An investigation of brain processes supporting meditation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Meditation is an ancient spiritual practice, which aims to still the fluctuations of the mind. We investigated meditation with fMRI in order to identify and characterise both the "neural switch" mechanism used in the voluntary shift from normal consciousness to meditation and the "threshold regulation mechanism" sustaining the meditative state. Thirty-one individuals with 1.5-25 years experience in meditation were scanned using a blocked on-off design with 45 s alternating epochs during the onset of respectively meditation and normal relaxation. Additionally, 21 subjects were scanned during 14.5 min of sustained medita...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 31, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Bærentsen KB, Stødkilde-Jørgensen H, Sommerlund B, Hartmann T, Damsgaard-Madsen J, Fosnæs M, Green AC Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

A self-referential default brain state: patterns of coherence, power, and eLORETA sources during eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation practice.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Activation of a default mode network (DMN) including frontal and parietal midline structures varies with cognitive load, being more active during low-load tasks and less active during high-load tasks requiring executive control. Meditation practices entail various degrees of cognitive control. Thus, DMN activation patterns could give insight into the nature of meditation practices. This 10-week random assignment study compared theta2, alpha1, alpha2, beta1, beta2 and gamma EEG coherence, power, and eLORETA cortical sources during eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice in 38 male and female college...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Travis F, Haaga DA, Hagelin J, Tanner M, Arenander A, Nidich S, Gaylord-King C, Grosswald S, Rainforth M, Schneider RH Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Background shifts affect explanatory style: how a pragmatic theory of explanation accounts for background effects in the generation of explanations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Cognitive scientists are interested in explanation because it provides a window into the cognition that underlies one's understanding of the world. We argue that the study of explanation has tended to focus on what makes an explanation "bona fide" as opposed to the processes involved in how the explanation is generated. In the current study, we asked participants to respond to the request for an explanation within a novel domain after we manipulated their initial exposure to the domain, and thus the background of the request. In two experiments, we found evidence that the background shaped participants' interpretations...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 27, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Chin-Parker S, Bradner A Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Heuristic thinking and human intelligence: a commentary on Marewski, Gaissmaier and Gigerenzer.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Marewski, Gaissmaier and Gigerenzer (2009) present a review of research on fast and frugal heuristics, arguing that complex problems are best solved by simple heuristics, rather than the application of knowledge and logical reasoning. We argue that the case for such heuristics is overrated. First, we point out that heuristics can often lead to biases as well as effective responding. Second, we show that the application of logical reasoning can be both necessary and relatively simple. Finally, we argue that the evidence for a logical reasoning system that co-exists with simpler heuristic forms of thinking is overwhelmin...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 15, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Evans JS, Over DE Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Good judgments do not require complex cognition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
What cognitive capabilities allow Homo sapiens to successfully bet on the stock market, to catch balls in baseball games, to accurately predict the outcomes of political elections, or to correctly decide whether a patient needs to be allocated to the coronary care unit? It is a widespread belief in psychology and beyond that complex judgment tasks require complex solutions. Countering this common intuition, in this article, we argue that in an uncertain world actually the opposite is true: Humans do not need complex cognitive strategies to make good inferences, estimations, and other judgments; rather, it is the very s...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 26, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Marewski JN, Gaissmaier W, Gigerenzer G Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

The 'I' and the 'Me' in self-referential awareness: a neurocognitive hypothesis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The nature of the 'self' and self-referential awareness has been one of the most debated issues in philosophy, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Understanding the neurocognitive bases of self-related representation and processing is also crucial to research on the neural correlates of consciousness. The distinction between an 'I', corresponding to a subjective sense of the self as a thinker and causal agent, and a 'Me', as the objective sense of the self with the unique and identifiable features constituting one's self-image or self-concept, suggested by William James, has been re-elaborated by authors from differ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tagini A, Raffone A Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Gender-related differences in moral judgments.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we investigated the role of gender, education (general education and health education) and religious belief (Catholic and non-Catholic) on moral choices by testing 50 men and 50 women with a moral judgment task. Whereas we found no differences between the two genders in utilitarian responses to non-moral dilemmas and to impersonal moral dilemmas, men gave significantly more utilitarian answers to personal moral (PM) dilemmas (i.e., those courses of action whose endorsement involves highly emotional decisions). Cultural factors such as education and religion had no effect on performance in the moral judgment ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - August 29, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Fumagalli M, Ferrucci R, Mameli F, Marceglia S, Mrakic-Sposta S, Zago S, Lucchiari C, Consonni D, Nordio F, Pravettoni G, Cappa S, Priori A Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Learning as a possible sign of non-reflective consciousness in persons with a diagnosis of vegetative state and pervasive motor impairment.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A diagnosis of vegetative state represents a serious predicament, which basically precludes/minimizes rehabilitation perspectives. Reliability of the assessment approach in these situations is of paramount importance, but not easy to achieve. In recent studies, a learning assessment procedure has been suggested as a supplement in the diagnostic process and assessed with eight patients. The procedure involves an ABABCB sequence in which A represents baseline phases with no stimulation available, B intervention phases with stimuli delivered contingently on target responses, and C a control condition. This condition invol...
Source: Cognitive Processing - August 19, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Bosco A, Lancioni GE, Belardinelli MO, Singh NN, O'Reilly MF, Sigafoos J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Theta activity and meditative states: spectral changes during concentrative meditation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of oscillatory changes during Sahaj Samadhi meditation (a concentrative form of meditation that is part of Sudarshan Kriya yoga). EEG was recorded during Sudarshan Kriya yoga meditation for meditators and relaxation for controls. Spectral and coherence analysis was performed for the whole duration as well as specific blocks extracted from the initial, middle, and end portions of Sahaj Samadhi meditation or relaxation. The generation of distinct meditative states of consciousness was marked by distinct changes in spectral powers especially enhanced theta band activity dur...
Source: Cognitive Processing - July 21, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Baijal S, Srinivasan N Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Comparison of activation level between true and false items in the DRM paradigm.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of the present study was to compare the activation levels of true and false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. For this purpose, we used a lexical decision task (LDT) that can be considered a relative pure measure of activation. Participants had to study a list of words that were semantically associated to a critical non-presented word (CI), and afterwards had to classify the actually studied words, the CI and new words in the LDT. Results indicated that the classification latency of the CI was the same as actually studied words and shorter than new words. The results might be interpreted ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - July 16, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Senese VP, Sergi I, Iachini T Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Special corner: Visual Categorization and Image Management Systems.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19568779 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 30, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Bonnardel V, Oakes M, Tait J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Effects of information type on children's interrogative suggestibility: is Theory-of-Mind involved?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This research was aimed at learning more about the different psychological mechanisms underlying children's suggestibility to leading questions, on the one hand, and children's suggestibility to negative feedback, on the other, by distinguishing between interview questions concerning different types of information. Results showed that, unlike the developmental pattern of children's suggestibility to leading questions, the developmental pattern of children's suggestibility to negative feedback differed depending on whether the interview questions concerned external facts (physical states and events) or internal facts (m...
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 30, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Hünefeldt T, Rossi-Arnaud C, Furia A Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

On the dimensionality of the System Usability Scale: a test of alternative measurement models.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The System Usability Scale (SUS), developed by Brooke (Usability evaluation in industry, Taylor & Francis, London, pp 189-194, 1996), had a great success among usability practitioners since it is a quick and easy to use measure for collecting users' usability evaluation of a system. Recently, Lewis and Sauro (Proceedings of the human computer interaction international conference (HCII 2009), San Diego CA, USA, 2009) have proposed a two-factor structure-Usability (8 items) and Learnability (2 items)-suggesting that practitioners might take advantage of these new factors to extract additional information from SUS dat...
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 29, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Borsci S, Federici S, Lauriola M Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

The tight coupling between category and causal learning.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The main goal of the present research was to demonstrate the interaction between category and causal induction in causal model learning. We used a two-phase learning procedure in which learners were presented with learning input referring to two interconnected causal relations forming a causal chain (Experiment 1) or a common-cause model (Experiments 2a, b). One of the three events (i.e., the intermediate event of the chain, or the common cause) was presented as a set of uncategorized exemplars. Although participants were not provided with any feedback about category labels, they tended to induce categories in the firs...
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 26, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Waldmann MR, Meder B, von Sydow M, Hagmayer Y Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Deontic reasoning reviewed: psychological questions, empirical findings, and current theories.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In conclusion, it is discussed why deontic reasoning-despite astonishing, early developing competencies-is still a complex cognitive activity. PMID: 19526259 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 12, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Beller S Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Closing-in behaviour in preschool children.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Many pre-school children show closing-in behaviour (CIB) in graphic copying tasks: a tendency to place their copy abnormally close to or even on top of the model. Similar phenomena have been studied in patients with dementia, though it is unclear whether the superficial similarities between CIB in development and dementia reflect common underlying cognitive mechanisms. The aim of the present study was to investigate the cognitive functions involved in CIB in pre-school children. Forty-one children (3-5 years) were assessed for CIB, and completed a neuropsychological battery targeting visuospatial abilities, short term ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - June 12, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ambron E, McIntosh RD, Della Sala S Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

A cortical framework for invariant object categorization and recognition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper we present a new model for invariant object categorization and recognition. It is based on explicit multi-scale features: lines, edges and keypoints are extracted from responses of simple, complex and end-stopped cells in cortical area V1, and keypoints are used to construct saliency maps for Focus-of-Attention. The model is a functional but dichotomous one, because keypoints are employed to model the "where" data stream, with dynamic routing of features from V1 to higher areas to obtain translation, rotation and size invariance, whereas lines and edges are employed in the "what" stream for object categor...
Source: Cognitive Processing - May 26, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Rodrigues J, Hans du Buf JM Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Is our brain hardwired to produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive God? A systematic review on the role of the brain in mediating religious experience.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
To figure out whether the main empirical question "Is our brain hardwired to believe in and produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive and experience God?" is answered, this paper presents systematic critical review of the positions, arguments and controversies of each side of the neuroscientific-theological debate and puts forward an integral view where the human is seen as a psycho-somatic entity consisting of the multiple levels and dimensions of human existence (physical, biological, psychological, and spiritual reality), allowing consciousness/mind/spirit and brain/body/matter to be seen as different sides...
Source: Cognitive Processing - May 26, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

The role of color diagnosticity in object recognition and representation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The role of color diagnosticity in object recognition and representation was assessed in three Experiments. In Experiment 1a, participants named pictured objects that were strongly associated with a particular color (e.g., pumpkin and orange). Stimuli were presented in a congruent color, incongruent color, or grayscale. Results indicated that congruent color facilitated naming time, incongruent color impeded naming time, and naming times for grayscale items were situated between the congruent and incongruent conditions. Experiment 1b replicated Experiment 1a using a verification task. Experiment 2 employed a picture re...
Source: Cognitive Processing - May 26, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Therriault DJ, Yaxley RH, Zwaan RA Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Supporting the self-regulatory resource: does conscious self-regulation incidentally prime nonconscious support processes?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Ego-depletion (depletion of self-regulatory strength) can impair conscious efforts at self-regulation. Research into nonconscious self-regulation has demonstrated that preconscious automaticity and implementation intentions can automatically carry out regulatory tasks during times of ego-depletion. However, preconscious automaticity can only emerge during well-practiced tasks while implementation intentions can only support tasks that have been explicitly planned. Thus, when it comes to supporting the conscious self-regulation of nonroutine and unplanned behaviour during times of ego-depletion these processes should be...
Source: Cognitive Processing - April 7, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dorris DC Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Stroop effects on redemption and semantic effects on confession: simultaneous automatic activation of embedded and carrier words.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study was aimed at assessing whether focusing attention on a task-relevant part of a word prevents processing of its meaning. Participants performed a color-naming task on a prime word followed by lexical decision on a probe. Primes were words, which could contain an embedded color word (e.g., "redemption") written in an incongruent color. Probes were either semantically related (e.g., "confession") or unrelated (e.g., "production") to the prime word. A Stroop effect emerged for color words appearing either in the initial or in the final position of the carrier word. A priming effect also emerged, with fast...
Source: Cognitive Processing - March 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Iani C, Job R, Padovani R, Nicoletti R Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Reasoning as simulation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The theory that human cognition proceeds through mental simulations, if true, would provide a parsimonious explanation of how the mechanisms of reasoning and problem solving integrate with and develop from mechanisms underlying forms of cognition that occur earlier in evolution and development. However, questions remain about whether simulation mechanisms are powerful enough to exhibit human-level reasoning and inference. In order to investigate this issue, we show that it is possible to characterize some of the most powerful modern artificial intelligence algorithms for logical and probabilistic inference as methods o...
Source: Cognitive Processing - March 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Cassimatis NL, Murugesan A, Bignoli PG Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Research on cognitive, social and cultural processes of written communication.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article compiles the investigations carried out by a Research Group of the University of Granada, Spain. Its different projects on writing's cognitive social and cultural processes have been supported by the Spanish Government. This line of research joined together linguistic, psychological, social and cultural contributions to the development of writing from the 1970s. Currently, this line of research develops in collaboration with other European Universities: (a) Interuniversity Centre for Research On Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems (ECONA), "La Sapienza" University of Rome (Italy); (b) Anadol...
Source: Cognitive Processing - February 21, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Arroyo González R, Salvador Mata F Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Multimodal encoding in a simplified model of intracellular calcium signaling.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19137343 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - January 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: De Pittà M, Volman V, Levine H, Ben-Jacob E Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Human factors in GIScience laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This report focuses upon basic research topics in spatial cognition, including: (1) perceptual and cognitive factors in map symbolization and design, (2) the creation of cognitively ergonomic route directions for next generation location based services (LBS), (3) You-Are-Here maps and the creation of a sense of place through map-like representations, (4) the conceptualization and representation of dynamic phenomena (i.e., geographic movement pattern), and (5) the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic conceptualization. PMID: 19137344 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - January 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Klippel A Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Neuroscience today, Florence 25-27 March 2007: foreword.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19137345 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - January 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Arecchi FT, Farini A, Meucci R, Sannita WG Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Neuronal functional diversity and collective behaviors: a scientific case.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A major issue in today's neuroscience is how the brain complex and highly flexible organization emerges from its individual components. Robustness of neuronal properties with weak linkages between regulatory processes are suggested to account for the adaptive, tunable, multistable dynamics, the coding schemes and the complexity of neuronal functional (sub)systems. Interneurons and neurotransmitter diversity, resonance phenomena due to properties of the cell or network, time/frequency-dependent activation of dedicated neuronal assemblies, code- and frequency-specific oscillations interact in determining the brain functi...
Source: Cognitive Processing - January 10, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sannita WG Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Special Corner: representational content and cognitive abilities.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19096888 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 19, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Lyre H Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Improving image annotation via useful representative feature selection.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper describes the automatic assignment of images into classes described by individual keywords provided with the Corel data set. Automatic image annotation technology aims to provide an efficient and effective searching environment for users to query their images more easily, but current image retrieval systems are still not very accurate when assigning images into a large number of keyword classes. Noisy features are the main problem, causing some keywords never to be assigned to their correct images. This paper focuses on improving image classification, first by selection of features to characterise each image...
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 13, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Lin WC, Oakes M, Tait J, Tsai CF Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

A theory of alpha/theta neurofeedback, creative performance enhancement, long distance functional connectivity and psychological integration.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Professionally significant enhancement of music and dance performance and mood has followed training with an EEG-neurofeedback protocol which increases the ratio of theta to alpha waves using auditory feedback with eyes closed. While originally the protocol was designed to induce hypnogogia, a state historically associated with creativity, the outcome was psychological integration, while subsequent applications focusing on raising the theta-alpha ratio, reduced depression and anxiety in alcoholism and resolved post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). In optimal performance studies we confirmed associations with creativit...
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 11, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Gruzelier J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Category learning from equivalence constraints.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Information for category learning may be provided as positive or negative equivalence constraints (PEC/NEC)-indicating that some exemplars belong to the same or different categories. To investigate categorization strategies, we studied category learning from each type of constraint separately, using a simple rule-based task. We found that participants use PECs differently than NECs, even when these provide the same amount of information. With informative PECs, categorization was rapid, reasonably accurate and uniform across participants. With informative NECs, performance was rapid and highly accurate for only some par...
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 3, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Hammer R, Hertz T, Hochstein S, Weinshall D Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Cueing the interpretation of a Necker Cube: a way to inspect fundamental cognitive processes.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The term perceptual bistability refers to all those conditions in which an observer looks at an ambiguous stimulus that can have two or more distinct but equally reliable interpretations. In this work, we investigate perception of Necker Cube in which bistability consists of the possibility to interpret the cube depth in two different ways. We manipulated the cube ambiguity by darkening one of the cube faces (cue) to provide a clear cube interpretation due to the occlusion depth index. When the position of the cue is stationary the cube perceived perspective is steady and driven by the cue position. However, when we al...
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 2, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Arrighi R, Arecchi FT, Farini A, Gheri C Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Control and synchronization of laser bursting and its implications in neuroscience.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present experimental and numerical evidence of control and synchronization of burst events in modulated CO(2) lasers. Bursts appear randomly in each laser as trains of large amplitude spikes intercalated by a small amplitude chaotic regime. Experimental data and model display the frequency locking of bursts in a suitable interval of coupling strengths. The analogy with neuronal bursting will also be discussed in view of the role of bursting synchronization in cognitive functions. PMID: 19048319 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - December 2, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Arecchi FT, Meucci R, Al Naimee K, Salvadori F Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Spatial navigation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 18956218 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 29, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Basso D Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

ACACIA: an agent-based program for simulating behavior to reach long-term goals.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present ACACIA, an agent-based program implemented in Java StarLogo 2.0 that simulates a two-dimensional microworld populated by agents, obstacles and goals. Our program simulates how agents can reach long-term goals by following sensorial-motor couplings (SMCs) that control how the agents interact with their environment and other agents through a process of local categorization. Thus, while acting in accordance with this set of SMCs, the agents reach their goals through the emergence of global behaviors. This agent-based simulation program would allow us to understand some psychological processes such as planning behav...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 28, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Beltran FS, Quera V, Zibetti E, Tijus C, Miñano M Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Identification of biological neurons using adaptive observers.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper is to investigate the use of adaptive observers for the modeling of biological neurons and networks. Assuming that a neuron can be modeled as a continuous-time nonlinear system, it is possible to determine its unknown parameters using adaptive observer, based on the concept of adaptive synchronization. The same technique can be extended for the identification of an entire biological neural network. Some conventional observer designs are studied in this paper and satisfactory results are obtained, yet with some restrictions. To further extend the applicability of adaptive observers for the modeling process, a...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 22, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Mao Y, Tang W, Liu Y, Kocarev L Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Spike synchronization of chaotic oscillators as a phase transition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We study how a locally coupled array of spiking chaotic systems synchronizes to an external driving in a short time. Synchronization means spike separation at adjacent sites much shorter than the average inter-spike interval; a local lack of synchronization is called a defect. The system displays sudden spontaneous defect disappearance at a critical coupling strength suggesting an existence of a phase transition. Below critical coupling, the system reaches order at a definite amplitude of an external input; this order persists for a fixed time slot. Thus, the array behaves as an excitable-like system, even though the s...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 21, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ciszak M, Montina A, Arecchi FT Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Brain and mind operational architectonics and man-made "machine" consciousness.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
To build a true conscious robot requires that a robot's "brain" be capable of supporting the phenomenal consciousness as human's brain enjoys. Operational Architectonics framework through exploration of the temporal structure of information flow and inter-area interactions within the network of functional neuronal populations [by examining topographic sharp transition processes in the scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) on the millisecond scale] reveals and describes the EEG architecture which is analogous to the architecture of the phenomenal world. This suggests that the task of creating the "machine" consciousness woul...
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 16, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA, Neves CF Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Mirror writing in pre-school children: a pilot study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report on mirror writing instances in a sample of 108 pre-school children. Results showed MW to be age-related but independent from handedness and left-right discrimination abilities. We propose an account of mirror writing as reflecting dissociation between acquired motor programmes for letter shape composition and unspecified spatial direction of hand movements. Before learning to write, the child's directional cognitive system is assumed to be dichotomous, thus inducing the production of randomly oriented asymmetrical letters. PMID: 18923857 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Processing)
Source: Cognitive Processing - October 16, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Cubelli R, Della Sala S Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Functional role theories of representation and content explanation: with a case study from spatial cognition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of this paper is to show that the widespread opinion, according to which functional role theories of representation fail to account for content explanations of human and animal behaviour, cannot be confirmed with respect to each type of functional role theory. Functional resemblance theories (as referred to by O'Brien and Opie in Representation in mind, Elsevier, 2004) allow for content explanations of successfully performed cognitive abilities as much as for explanations of systematic errors resulting from misrepresentation. How functional roles do their explanatory work in actual scientific research examples ...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 23, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Bartels A, May M Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

The role of representation in computation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Reformers urge that representation no longer earns its explanatory keep in cognitive science, and that it is time to discard this troublesome concept. In contrast, we hold that without representation cognitive science is utterly bereft of tools for explaining natural intelligence. In order to defend the latter position, we focus on the explanatory role of representation in computation. We examine how the methods of digital and analog computation are used to model a relatively simple target system, and show that representation plays an in-eliminable explanatory role in both cases. We conclude that, to the extent that bi...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 18, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: O'Brien G, Opie J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Syntactic structures in languages and biology.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Both natural languages and cell biology make use of one-dimensional encryption. Their investigation calls for syntactic deciphering of the text and semantic understanding of the resulting structures. Here we discuss recently published algorithms that allow for such searches: automatic distillation of structure (ADIOS) that is successful in discovering syntactic structures in linguistic texts and its motif extraction (MEX) component that can be used for uncovering motifs in DNA and protein sequences. The underlying principles of these syntactic algorithms and some of their results will be described. PMID: 17952479 [...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 1, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Horn D Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals

Formal modeling and analysis of cognitive agent behavior.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
From an external perspective, cognitive agent behavior can be described by specifying (temporal) correlations of a certain complexity between stimuli (input states) and (re)actions (output states) of the agent. From an internal perspective the agent's dynamics can be characterized by direct (causal) temporal relations between internal and mental states of the agent. The latter type of specifications can be represented in a relatively simple, executable format, which enables different types of analysis of the agent's behavior. In particular, simulations of the agent's behavior under different (environmental) circumstanc...
Source: Cognitive Processing - September 1, 2008 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sharpanskykh A, Treur J Tags: Cogn Process Source Type: journals