Cognitive Neuroscience最新文献

In the present study, we investigated whether differences in spatial working memory (SWM) abilities - assessed through the Corsi block task (CBT) - impact the processes of mental rotation (MR) engaged during a classic letter rotation task. Based on the median split of their scores in the CBT, participants were divided into a higher and a lower SWM group. Behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded while participants completed the MR task and were compared across groups. Higher error rates were observed in individuals with lower than higher SWM scores, while no RT differences emerged. Systematic group differences were observed before and during the MR process of canonical letters. A delayed onset of the event-related potential (ERP) rotation-related negativity (RRN), a reliable psychophysiological marker for MR processes, was observed in the lower SWM group for all rotation angles, suggesting that a longer time is needed to generate a mental representation of familiar stimuli in individuals with lower SWM scores. Furthermore, a delayed RRN offset indicating the end of the MR process and longer RRN durations suggesting longer MR processes were found for letters with larger rotation angles (i.e. 120°, 150°) in individuals with lower SWM scores on canonical character trials. These observed group differences provided evidence for the debated issue of the interaction between SWM and MR, suggesting that SWM plays a role in both the initial phase to generate the mental representation of familiar objects and during the MR process, especially for larger angles.

Mougenot and Matheson outline a theoretical approach to cognitive neuroscience that combines the commitments of embodied cognition with a mechanistic approach to scientific explanation. They argue that this theoretical approach provides several general benefits, including enabling researchers to develop more robust theories and ontologies that do not require either neuroscientific reductionism or the complete autonomy of psychology from neuroscience. In this commentary, I argue that the sort of embodied cognitive neuroscience that they envision has a more specific benefit: it has the potential to help resolve internal tensions within 4E cognition.

Ecological and enactive approaches to embodied cognition endorse a concept of constitution that involves dynamical causality. I argue that this is a challenge for new mechanistic accounts which hold to a strict distinction between causality and constitution.

The review article Theoretical strategies for an embodied cognitive neuroscience proposes that the embodied cognition framework can be applied to develop mechanistic explanations for cognitive neuroscience phenomena. In our commentary we argue that any mechanistic explanation of such phenomena must be able to account for individual differences in cognition that are an inevitable consequence of the varied brain-body-environment experiences that comprise embodied cognition. We propose that, while mechanistic accounts may be able to model individual differences, the definition of mechanistic models may limit their application to the study of individual differences.

I aim to discuss which constitutive components are essential for explaining how the mind works. Rather than focusing on some specific components, I emphasize their diversity. Thus, I seek to complement the recent mechanistic proposal by underscoring that researchers should remain open-minded about which constitutive components should be investigated.

Mougenot and Matheson provide an interesting analysis on how some core ideas of the 'New Mechanists' - the proponents of a normative framework for scientific explanations based on the identification and description of mechanisms - might be relevant for the development of an embodied approach to cognitive neuroscience. Although we are highly sympathetic to such an approach, we struggle to identify the benefits of adopting the notion of mechanism for such enterprise.

Mougenot and Matheson propose that mechanistic models can explain behavior by describing the complex interactions among components of the brain, body, and environment as an integrated system, which aligns with embodied cognition. However, we suggest incorporating cognitive ontology theory and addressing degeneracy and neuronal reuse. We also recommend studying natural embodied cognition through artificial systems to develop a comprehensive mechanistic framework.

Mougenot and Matheson (2024) make a compelling case for the development of a mechanistic cognitive neuroscience that is embodied. However, their analysis of extant work under this header plays down important distinctions between 'minimal' and 'radical' embodiment. The former remains firmly neurocentric and therefore has limited potential to move the needle in understanding the functional contributions of neural dynamics to cognition in the context of wider organism-environment dynamics.

Cognitive neuroscience seeks to explain mind, brain, and behavior. But how do we generate explanations? In this integrative theoretical paper, we review the commitments of the 'New Mechanist' movement within the philosophy of science, focusing specifically on the role of mechanistic models in scientific explanation. We highlight how this approach differs from other explanatory approaches within the field, showing its unique contributions to the efforts of scientific explanation. We then argue that the commitments of the Embodied Cognition framework converge with the commitments of the New Mechanist movement in a way that provides a necessary explanatory strategy available to cognitive neuroscience. We then discuss a number of consequences of this convergence, including issues related to the inadequacy of statistical prediction, neuroscientific reduction, the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience, and psychological and neuroscientific ontology. We hope that our integrative thesis provides researchers with a theoretical strategy for an embodied cognitive neuroscience.

I argue that ideas and models about the mechanisms of neural computation and representation - including computational architecture, representational format, encoding schemes, learning methods, computation-representation coordination, and substrate-dependent aspects - must be tested by studying embodied neural systems. Thus, cognitive computational neuroscience - the study of neural computations over neural representations - must be an embodied research program.