Showing papers in "Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2017"

TL;DR: It is proposed that the propensity to produce persistent activity is a general feature of cortical networks and may have to shift focus from asking where working memory can be observed in the brain to how a range of specialized brain areas together transform sensory information into a delayed behavioral response.

TL;DR: A conceptual framework on human attachments is presented, integrating insights from animal research with neuroimaging studies, and may open perspectives on the 'situated' brain and initiate dialog between science and humanities, arts, and clinical wisdom.

TL;DR: The vmPFC and hippocampus may compete or synchronize to optimize schema-related learning depending on the specific operationalization of schema memory, which highlights the need for more precise definitions of memory schemas.

TL;DR: This work examines how two key concepts that have been suggested as general computational principles of cerebellar function- prediction and error-based learning- might be relevant in the operation of cognitive cerebro-cerebellar loops.

TL;DR: It is shown here that there are numerous instances in which neural oscillations are nonsinusoidal, and approaches to characterize nonsinusoid features and account for them in traditional spectral analysis are highlighted.

TL;DR: Progress on reconsolidation updating studies is reviewed, highlighting their translational exploitation and addressing recent challenges to the reconsolidations field.

TL;DR: It is argued here that the simulation of candidate models is necessary to falsify models and therefore support the specific claims about cognitive function made by the vast majority of model-based studies.

TL;DR: An updated model of working memory is suggested, in which prioritization acts in multiple steps: first orienting towards and selecting a memory, and then reconfiguring its representational state in the service of upcoming task demands.

TL;DR: Recent concepts relate oscillations at different frequencies to the routing of information flow in the brain and the signaling of predictions and prediction errors to pain, and promise insights into how flexible routing of Information flow coordinates diverse processes that merge into the experience of pain.

TL;DR: The model clarifies why the impact of emotion is wide-ranging, and how emotion is interlocked with perception, cognition, motivation, and action.

TL;DR: This work examines emotion perception through a wider lens by comparing facial with vocal and tactile processing, and shows that audition and touch do not simply duplicate visual mechanisms.

TL;DR: Accumulating evidence is synthesized to reveal how maintaining segregated brain systems renders the human brain network functionally specialized, adaptable to task demands, and largely resilient following focal brain damage.

TL;DR: Compassion is distinct from empathy in its neural instantiation and its behavioral consequences and is a better prod to moral action, particularly in the modern world the authors live in.

TL;DR: The various ways that hyperconnectivity operates to benefit a neural network following injury while simultaneously negotiating the trade-off between metabolic cost and communication efficiency are described.

TL;DR: A Meta-Reasoning framework is developed, used here to review existing findings, consider their consequences, and frame questions for future research.

TL;DR: A generative framework for computationally modeling the connectome over the human life span is proposed and initial findings that across the life span, the human connectome gradually shifts from an 'anatomically driven' organization to one that is more 'topological' are highlighted.

TL;DR: By modulating neural activity and behavior, DecNef and FCNef have substantially advanced both basic and clinical research.

TL;DR: It is shown that not only do many studies support the PFC model of cognitive control development, but also that more specific models of PFC development can be formulated, according to the functional roles of subregions and by taking into account the distinctions within ventral-dorsal and lateral-medial PFC.

TL;DR: The available evidence shows that prefrontal and parietal regions, rather than sensory areas, play more significant roles in VWM storage.

TL;DR: It is proposed that the hippocampus supports the online memory demands necessary to guide visual exploration and orchestrates memory-guided exploration that unfolds over time to build coherent memories.

TL;DR: It is hypothesized that information that has been recently perceived or remembered can bias current processing and is a generally adaptive aspect of brain function that leads to occasionally maladaptive outcomes.

TL;DR: It is argued that processing difficulties, rather than limitations in false-belief understanding, account for young children's failure at traditional tasks and thus forms an integral part of social cognition from early in life.

TL;DR: This work proposes that cognitive computations relying on the dFPN can be pinned down to a core function underlying offline motor planning: action emulation, which creates a dynamic representation of abstract movement kinematics, sustains the internal manipulation of this representation, and ensures its maintenance over short time periods.

TL;DR: Crowdsourcing data collection from research participants recruited from online labor markets is now common in cognitive science and who is in the crowd and who can be reached by the average laboratory is reviewed.

TL;DR: It is shown that there is no evidence for intention-independent action, and that attempts to use the criterion of reward sensitivity and rationality to differentiate between intentional and automatic action are conceptually unsound.

TL;DR: This work synthesizes the emerging evidence that 'foraging cognition' - skills used to exploit food resources, including spatial memory, decision-making, and inhibitory control - varies adaptively across primates, providing a new framework for the evolution of human cognition.

TL;DR: It is proposed that retrieval acts as a rapid consolidation event, supporting the creation of adaptive hippocampal-neocortical representations via the 'online' reactivation of associative information.

TL;DR: The hypothesis that many intuitive physical inferences are based on a mental physics engine that is analogous in many ways to the machine physics engines used in building interactive video games is explored.

TL;DR: Recent evidence that metaphoric language can facilitate communication and shape thinking even though it is literally false is reviewed, showing the conditions under which metaphors are most influential.

TL;DR: This Opinion article outlines an alternative approach proposing that gaze control in natural scenes can be characterized as the result of knowledge-driven prediction and provides a theoretical framework for bridging gaze control and other related areas of perception and cognition at both computational and neurobiological levels of analysis.