Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences最新文献

Methodological advances have facilitated extensive revision of traditional views of thalamic and cholinergic contributions to cognition and behavior. Increasing attention to the integrative capabilities of the thalamus highlights its role beyond a simple sensory relay, recognizing its complex connectivity and role in orchestrating different phases of attention. Correspondingly, modern conceptualizations position the cholinergic system as key in integrating sensory information with attention and goals. These theoretical developments have occurred largely in parallel but have a large conceptual overlap. We review this overlap, including evidence from animal, patient, neuroimaging, and computational studies, and suggest that thalamo-cholinergic cognition plays a key role in coordinating stable and flexible attention.

We have briefly reviewed the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) method, which has been widely used as one of the noninvasive brain stimulation techniques in humans in the field of basic neuroscience or clinical neurology. Four topics are summarized. Basic mechanism of action: Which part of the brain is activated and how it is stimulated are discussed mainly based on the results of motor cortical stimulation in single-pulse TMS. Single-pulse and paired-pulse TMS: Motor cortical (M1) output function is studied with a single-pulse TMS. The M1 excitability changes produced by inputs from within M1 or from other parts of the brain are studied by a paired-pulse TMS. Repetitive TMS (rTMS): The long-term effects induced by rTMS, which continue after the intervention and sometimes are used as treatment, are summarized. Variability, safety, and others: These issues are summarized based on previous works.

In this paper, we introduce a new perspective where imagination is identified as the generativity of mental imagery and imaginings, or imaginative generativity (IG), characterized by a diverse array of multisensory formats, symbolic types, and mental activities (mental synthesis). Reviewing evidence spanning the evolution of cognition in hominids and some nonhuman species, we highlight the significance of IG in Paleolithic symbolism and findings from experimental studies in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience on perception and mental imagery. Our analysis also includes a synthesis of extensive bibliometric literature. We conclude that imaginative consciousness and its phenomenology rely on vivid representing, a cognitive optimization strategy to navigate the challenges of instability, ambiguity, and limitations in perception, memory and consciousness, crucial for survival and adaptation. Our review suggests that imagination, akin to phenotypic traits, plays a critical role in natural selection, highlighting the importance of including cognitive process variations within the framework of natural selection. Our perspective not only deepens the understanding of evolutionary development but also emphasizes the importance of mental simulation and foresight as key components of evolutionary fitness.

Cognitive flexibility exhibits dynamic changes throughout development, with different forms of flexibility showing dissociable developmental trajectories. In this review, we propose that an adolescent-specific mode of flexibility in the face of changing environmental contingencies supports the emergence of adolescent-to-adult gains in cognitive shifting efficiency. We first describe how cognitive shifting abilities monotonically improve from childhood to adulthood, accompanied by increases in brain state flexibility, neural variability, and excitatory/inhibitory balance. We next summarize evidence supporting the existence of a dopamine-driven adolescent peak in flexible behavior that results in reward seeking, undirected exploration, and environmental sampling. We propose a neurodevelopmental framework that relates these adolescent behaviors to the refinement of neural phenotypes relevant to mature cognitive flexibility - and thus highlight the importance of the adolescent period in fostering healthy neurocognitive trajectories.

This review provides an exploration of trance states, covering their phenomenology, neural mechanisms, and clinical uses. Trance states, present in diverse cultural contexts from shamanic practices to modern adaptations, have recently captured the interest of researchers and clinicians. Here, we delve into the phenomenological aspects of trance experiences, highlighting the most common features. Employing cutting-edge neuroscientific methods, we also report findings on the neural underpinnings of trance states. Furthermore, we look into the practical applications of such states in clinical settings. By bridging subjective experiences, neuroscience, and clinical relevance, this review enhances our understanding of trance states and their possible uses.

The ability to flexibly switch between task sets increases early and decreases late in life. This lifespan pattern differs between mixing costs, denoting performance decrements during task switching compared with single tasking, and switch costs, denoting performance decrements on trials after the task has switched relative to trials where the task repeats. Generally, mixing costs reach their lifespan minimum later and increase again earlier than switch costs. We propose that lifespan changes in cognitive flexibility are associated with neural processes implementing sustained and transient control processes that underlie mixing and switch costs, respectively. To better understand the lifespan development of sustained and transient control processes, future research needs to delineate longitudinal changes in functional connectivity patterns and task-set representations.

The claim that cognitive control is constrained by a general stability–flexibility tradeoff dimension has inspired research, ranging from modeling of basic control phenomena to cognitive implications for psychiatric conditions. Yet, the results with variants of the task-switching paradigm show (1) evidence of ‘anti-tradeoff’ patterns (co-occurrence of stability and flexibility), (2) that when tradeoffs do exist, they are often directly tied to highly specific memory representations, and (3) that there is little conclusive evidence of tradeoffs for naturally occurring variability within or between individuals. Instead of a general tradeoff dimension, we suggest conceptualizing cognitive task control in terms of navigating a cognitive map that represents competing states (tasks) with varying degrees of resolution (depending on top-down control), and where high-resolution encoding supports both stability and flexibility.

The brain is hierarchically organised across many levels, from the underlying anatomical connectivity to the resulting functional dynamics, which supports the necessary orchestration to ensure sufficient cognitive and behavioural flexibility. Here, we show how two emerging frameworks have been used to determine the brain’s functional hierarchy and its reconfiguration in different cognitive tasks. One study used direct estimation of the information flow across a whole experiment to reveal the common top hierarchical regions orchestrating brain dynamics across rest and seven cognitive tasks. Another study used complementary, indirect spatiotemporal measures defining hierarchy as the asymmetry in the directionality of information flow to identify a set of regions within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) that serve as the common, unifying drivers of brain dynamics during tasks. Overall, these studies are beginning to reveal the orchestration of whole-brain dynamics and how specific PFC regions are key to driving our cognitive and behavioural flexibility.

While many brain networks are specialised for processing specific types of information, a network of frontoparietal regions is engaged by a wide range of cognitive demands. Here, we review recent work highlighting the flexibility of information coding in these regions, including their potential to differentiate a variety of different types of information and their dynamic selectivity for information that is currently relevant. But does all decodable activity constitute behaviourally meaningful information in the brain? Examining the emerging methods, we find that a direct link to behaviour can be made for some, but not all, decodable information. The data suggest a flexible frontoparietal resource suitable for creating temporary arbitrary associations between the aspects of information needed for each task. However, a tighter field-wide focus on decoding–behaviour relationships is needed to specify how this gives rise to the astounding human capacity for flexible thought and action.

Cerebellar research has been guided by the idea that it subserves a single computational function — the ‘universal cerebellar transform’ — across different tasks. This idea is motivated by the uniform cerebellar circuit and our understanding of how it supports simple motor learning tasks. In this review, we examine findings for three motor domains (eyeblink conditioning, saccades, and reaching arm movements) that highlight inconsistencies in the nature of input and output signals across tasks and show that the cerebellum may even contribute in multiple different ways to a single task, challenging this classical view. Even though this review cannot offer a coherent picture of cerebellar function across tasks, we stress the importance of considering the possibility that the cerebellar circuit subserves multiple computational, rather than one universal, function.