Trends in Cognitive Sciences

The feature-binding problem is an ill-posed problem.

Publication Date: 2012 May 15 PMID: 22595013
Authors: Di Lollo, V.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

The binding problem arises when visual features (colour, orientation), said to be coded in independent brain modules, are to be integrated into unitary percepts. I argue that binding is an ill-posed problem, because those modules are now known to code jointly for multiple features, rendering the feature-binding issue moot. A hierarchical reentrant system explains the emergence of coherent visual objects from primitive features. An initial feed-forward sweep activates many high-level perceptual hypotheses, which descend to lower levels, where they correlate themselves with the ongoing activity. Low correlations are discarded, whereas the hypothesis that yields the highest correlation is confirmed and leads to conscious awareness. In this system, there is no separate binding process that actively assigns features to objects.

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The binding problem lives on: comment on Di Lollo.

Publication Date: 2012 May 11 PMID: 22579974
Authors: Wolfe, J. M.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

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Response to Wolfe: feature-binding and object perception.

Publication Date: 2012 May 12 PMID: 22579973
Authors: Di Lollo, V.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

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Assuming too much from 'familiar' brain potentials.

Publication Date: 2012 May 9 PMID: 22578306
Authors: Paller, K. A. - Lucas, H. D. - Voss, J. L.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

Familiarity is sometimes associated with midfrontal old/new (FN400) signals, but investigators assume too much by inferring familiarity whenever they identify these signals. We describe how Rosburg and colleagues (2011) made this assumption, yielding potentially faulty conclusions about the recognition heuristic. We provide an alternative interpretation emphasizing implicit processing that can underlie decision-making.

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Response to Paller et al.: the role of familiarity in making inferences about unknown quantities.

Publication Date: 2012 May 4 PMID: 22561595
Authors: Mecklinger, A. - Frings, C. - Rosburg, T.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

The recognition heuristic is a decision strategy that relies on explicit recognition memory. We argue that conceptual implicit memory cannot account for our findings (Rosburg et al., 2011) and is also too limited to account for the midfrontal old/new effect (FN400), which, in our view, is a multiply determined familiarity-related brain signal.

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Erratum: Computational psychiatry: [Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16 (2012), 72-80].

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22554815
Authors: Montague, P. R. - Dolan, R. J. - Friston, K. J. - Dayan, P.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

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Cortical asymmetries in speech perception: what's wrong, what's right and what's left?

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22521208
Authors: McGettigan, C. - Scott, S. K.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

Over the past 30 years hemispheric asymmetries in speech perception have been construed within a domain-general framework, according to which preferential processing of speech is due to left-lateralized, non-linguistic acoustic sensitivities. A prominent version of this argument holds that the left temporal lobe selectively processes rapid/temporal information in sound. Acoustically, this is a poor characterization of speech and there has been little empirical support for a left-hemisphere selectivity for these cues. In sharp contrast, the right temporal lobe is demonstrably sensitive to specific acoustic properties. We suggest that acoustic accounts of speech sensitivities need to be informed by the nature of the speech signal and that a simple domain-general vs. domain-specific dichotomy may be incorrect.

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Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22516239
Authors: Proulx, T. - Inzlicht, M. - Harmon-Jones, E.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

It has been repeatedly shown that, when people have experiences that are inconsistent with their expectations, they engage in a variety of compensatory efforts. Although there have been many superficially different accounts for these behaviors, a potentially unifying inconsistency compensation perspective is currently coalescing. Following from a common prediction error/conflict monitoring mechanism, any given inconsistency is understood as evoking a common syndrome of aversive arousal. In turn, this aversive arousal is understood to motivate palliative efforts, which manifest as the analogous compensation behaviors reported within different psychological literatures. Based on this perspective, compensation efforts following both 'high-level' (e.g., attitudinal dissonance) and 'low-level' (e.g., Stroop task color/word mismatches) inconsistencies can now be understood in terms of a common motivational account.

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The cortical language circuit: from auditory perception to sentence comprehension.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22516238
Authors: Friederici, A. D.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

Over the years, a large body of work on the brain basis of language comprehension has accumulated, paving the way for the formulation of a comprehensive model. The model proposed here describes the functional neuroanatomy of the different processing steps from auditory perception to comprehension as located in different gray matter brain regions. It also specifies the information flow between these regions, taking into account white matter fiber tract connections. Bottom-up, input-driven processes proceeding from the auditory cortex to the anterior superior temporal cortex and from there to the prefrontal cortex, as well as top-down, controlled and predictive processes from the prefrontal cortex back to the temporal cortex are proposed to constitute the cortical language circuit.

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Explaining brain size variation: from social to cultural brain.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22513173
Authors: van Schaik, C. P. - Isler, K. - Burkart, J. M.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

Although the social brain hypothesis has found near-universal acceptance as the best explanation for the evolution of extensive variation in brain size among mammals, it faces two problems. First, it cannot account for grade shifts, where species or complete lineages have a very different brain size than expected based on their social organization. Second, it cannot account for the observation that species with high socio-cognitive abilities also excel in general cognition. These problems may be related. For birds and mammals, we propose to integrate the social brain hypothesis into a broader framework we call cultural intelligence, which stresses the importance of the high costs of brain tissue, general behavioral flexibility and the role of social learning in acquiring cognitive skills.

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Decomposing the brain: components and modes, networks and nodes.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22487186
Authors: Calhoun, V. D. - Eichele, T. - Adali, T. - Allen, E. A.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

Smith and colleagues recently presented a temporal independent component analysis (tICA) decomposition of resting-state functional MRI data. Compared to the widely used spatial ICA (sICA), tICA better allows for a brain region to engage in multiple, independent interactions with other regions and will potentially offer new insights into brain function.

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The improbable simplicity of the fusiform face area.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22481071
Authors: Weiner, K. S. - Grill-Spector, K.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

The fusiform face area (FFA) is described as an easily identifiable module on the fusiform gyrus. However, the organization of face-selective regions in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) is more complex than this prevailing view. We highlight methodological factors contributing to these complexities and the extensive variability in how the FFA is identified. We suggest a series of constraints to aid researchers when defining any functionally specialized region with a pleasing realization: anatomy matters.

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Response to Milner et al.: Grasping uses vision and haptic feedback.

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22445077
Authors: Schenk, T.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

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Does grasping in patient D.F. depend on vision?

Publication Date: 2012 May PMID: 22425666
Authors: Milner, A. D. - Ganel, T. - Goodale, M. A.
Journal: Trends Cogn Sci

A recently published study of grasping in patient D.F. challenges the well-known dissociation between vision-for-perception and vision-for-action, suggesting instead that D.F.'s preserved grip scaling depends entirely on haptic feedback. We argue that the results of the study are in fact fully consistent with the perception-action account.

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