137 research outputs found

    Triadic (ecological, neural, cognitive) niche construction: a scenario of human brain evolution extrapolating tool use and language from the control of reaching actions

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    Hominin evolution has involved a continuous process of addition of new kinds of cognitive capacity, including those relating to manufacture and use of tools and to the establishment of linguistic faculties. The dramatic expansion of the brain that accompanied additions of new functional areas would have supported such continuous evolution. Extended brain functions would have driven rapid and drastic changes in the hominin ecological niche, which in turn demanded further brain resources to adapt to it. In this way, humans have constructed a novel niche in each of the ecological, cognitive and neural domains, whose interactions accelerated their individual evolution through a process of triadic niche construction. Human higher cognitive activity can therefore be viewed holistically as one component in a terrestrial ecosystem. The brain's functional characteristics seem to play a key role in this triadic interaction. We advance a speculative argument about the origins of its neurobiological mechanisms, as an extension (with wider scope) of the evolutionary principles of adaptive function in the animal nervous system. The brain mechanisms that subserve tool use may bridge the gap between gesture and language—the site of such integration seems to be the parietal and extending opercular cortices

    Larger capacity for unconscious versus conscious episodic memory

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    Episodic memory is the memory for experienced events. A peak competence of episodic memory is the mental combination of events to infer commonalities. Inferring commonalities may proceed with and without consciousness of events. Yet what distinguishes conscious from unconscious inference? This question inspired nine experiments that featured strongly and weakly masked cartoon clips presented for unconscious and conscious inference. Each clip featured a scene with a visually impenetrable hiding place. Five animals crossed the scene one-by-one consecutively. One animal trajectory represented one event. The animals moved through the hiding place, where they might linger or not. The participants' task was to observe the animals' entrances and exits to maintain a mental record of which animals hid simultaneously. We manipulated information load to explore capacity limits. Memory of inferences was tested immediately, 3.5 or 6 min following encoding. The participants retrieved inferences well when encoding was conscious. When encoding was unconscious, the participants needed to respond intuitively. Only habitually intuitive decision makers exhibited a significant delayed retrieval of inferences drawn unconsciously. Their unconscious retrieval performance did not drop significantly with increasing information load, while conscious retrieval performance dropped significantly. A working memory network, including hippocampus, was activated during both conscious and unconscious inference and correlated with retrieval success. An episodic retrieval network, including hippocampus, was activated during both conscious and unconscious retrieval of inferences and correlated with retrieval success. Only conscious encoding/retrieval recruited additional brain regions outside these networks. Hence, levels of consciousness influenced the memories' behavioral impact, memory capacity, and the neural representational code

    Structuring time: The hippocampus constructs sequence memories that generalize temporal relations across experiences

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    The hippocampal-entorhinal region supports memory for episodic details, such as temporal relations of sequential events, and mnemonic constructions combining experiences for inferential reasoning. However, it is unclear whether hippocampal event memories reflect temporal relations derived from mnemonic constructions, event order, or elapsing time, and whether these sequence representations generalize temporal relations across similar sequences. Here, participants mnemonically constructed times of events from multiple sequences using infrequent cues and their experience of passing time. After learning, event representations in the anterior hippocampus reflected temporal relations based on constructed times. Temporal relations were generalized across sequences, revealing distinct representational formats for events from the same or different sequences. Structural knowledge about time patterns, abstracted from different sequences, biased the construction of specific event times. These findings demonstrate that mnemonic construction and the generalization of relational knowledge combine in the hippocampus, consistent with the simulation of scenarios from episodic details and structural knowledge

    Seven Computations of the Social Brain

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    The social environment presents the human brain with the most complex of information processing demands. The computations that the brain must perform occur in parallel, combine social and nonsocial cues, produce verbal and non-verbal signals, and involve multiple cognitive systems; including memory, attention, emotion, learning. This occurs dynamically and at timescales ranging from milliseconds to years. Here, we propose that during social interactions, seven core operations interact to underwrite coherent social functioning; these operations accumulate evidence efficiently – from multiple modalities – when inferring what to do next. We deconstruct the social brain and outline the key components entailed for successful human social interaction. These include (1) social perception; (2) social inferences, such as mentalizing; (3) social learning; (4) social signaling through verbal and non-verbal cues; (5) social drives (e.g., how to increase one’s status); (6) determining the social identity of agents, including oneself; and (7) minimizing uncertainty within the current social context by integrating sensory signals and inferences. We argue that while it is important to examine these distinct aspects of social inference, to understand the true nature of the human social brain, we must also explain how the brain integrates information from the social world

    Stratégies d'apprentissage et mémoire à long terme d'associations mot-objet chez le jeune enfant et le chien

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    Nous faisons tous l'expérience de nous souvenirs d'informations ou d'épisodes de vie vécus il y a fort longtemps. Mais qu'en est-il pour nos jeunes enfants et pour les espèces animales éloignées de nous ? Les enfants et les animaux forment-ils également des souvenirs qui peuvent demeurer intacts durant de longues périodes ? Et si tel est le cas, la formation de leurs souvenirs dépend-elle des mêmes règles que celles actuellement établies chez l'Homme adulte ? Cette thèse s'est intéressée à ces questions dans un contexte d'apprentissage associatif bimodal complexe: le concept mot-objet; chez le jeune enfant et le chien domestique. Pour ces deux modèles d'étude, nous avons exploré certains paramètres susceptibles de faciliter l'encodage et le stockage en mémoire de ce type d'information. Nous avons notamment cherché à savoir si le nombre de présentations de nouvelles associations mot-objets lors de l'apprentissage avait un effet sur la rétention du nom de ces objets après un délai, et avons tenté de déterminer le nombre minimal de présentations nécessaire pour induire une trace mnésique. Enfin, nous avons exploré l'efficacité de deux stratégies d'apprentissage sur la mémorisation de nouveaux noms d'objets et démontrons que l'efficacité des stratégies utilisées chez l'Homme évolue au cours du développement de l'enfant et ne semblent pas s'appliquer aux chiens. En bref, nos résultats apportent des éclaircissements quant à certains principes qui sous-tendent la formation de mémoires sensorielles chez un organisme en développement ainsi que chez une espèce animale non primate, et nous permettent d'émettre des hypothèses quant aux mécanismes cérébraux sous-jacents.All of us occasionally remember information or personal events that occurred a long time ago. But what about young children and distantly related animal species? Do young children and animals also form memories that can last in time? And if so, does memory formation rely on the same principles than those established in human adults? This thesis intended to examine these questions in the context of an associative learning concept involving complex bimodal stimuli: the word-object concept; both in young children and domestic dogs. For these two models, we explored some parameters susceptible to facilitate the encoding and storage of this type of information in memory. In particular, we attempted to determine if the number of presentations of novel word-object associations during learning influenced the retention of the name of these objects after a delay. We also aimed to establish the minimal number of presentations of the pairs required to induce a memory trace. Finally, we examined the efficacy of two learning strategies on the ability to remember the names of novel objects and demonstrated that the efficacy of the strategies implemented in humans evolves during development and seems not to apply to dogs. In brief, our results enlightened some principles underlying the formation of sensory memories in an early-developing brain system as well as in a non-primate species, and allow us to make assumptions about the underlying brain mechanisms

    Attention in the Brain Under Conditions of Sub-Optimal Alertness: Neurobiological Effects and Individual Differences

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    Sleep deprivation (SD) is a prevalent problem in modern society, and one that can have serious adverse consequences for health and safety. Critically, even short periods of SD can lead to relatively large decrements in attention, which may in turn cause an individual to neglect important environmental stimuli. In this thesis, I report the results of three experiments designed to investigate the neural bases of attentional declines under conditions of sleep loss and mental fatigue. In two experiments using arterial spin labeled fMRI, a technique that enables the quantification of absolute levels of cerebral blood flow (CBF), it was found that CBF patterns in the resting brain differed significantly based on arousal levels (Study #1) and prior cognitive workload (Study #2). These findings are a departure from prior neuroimaging studies, which have typically taken neural activity during non-task periods as static and inseparable baseline. In a test of sustained attention, performance declines were observed both following SD (Study #1) and when performing the task for an extended period of time while well-rested (Study #2). These decrements were primarily mediated by hypoactivation in a fronto-parietal attentional circuit. Furthermore, resting baseline levels of cerebral blood flow in the thalamus and prefrontal cortex before the start of the task were predictive of interindividual differences in subsequent performance decline (Study #2). In Study #3, an experiment using standard BOLD fMRI, it was found that performance declines in a test of selective attention following SD were accompanied by reduced functional connectivity between top-down control areas and regions of ventral visual cortex, as well as reductions in activation to targets in object-selective areas. Taken together, these results further our understanding of the neural basis of attention under conditions when this system is taxed beyond its normal limits

    Paranoid Thinking, Suspicion, and Risk for Aggression: A Neurodevelopmental Perspective

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    This article represents an effort to extend our understanding of paranoia or suspicion and its development by integrating findings across clinical, developmental, and neuroscience literatures. We first define “paranoia” or paranoid thought and examine its prevalence across typically and atypically developing individuals and theoretical perspectives regarding its development and maintenance.We then briefly summarize current ideas regarding the neural correlates of adaptive, appropriately trusting interpersonal perception, social cognition, and behavior across development. Our focus shifts subsequently to examining in normative and atypical developmental contexts the neural correlates of several component cognitive processes thought to contribute to paranoid thinking: (a) attention bias for threat, (b) jumping to conclusions biases, and (c) hostile intent attribution biases. Where possible, we also present data regarding independent links between these cognitive processes and aggressive behavior. By examining data regarding the behavioral and neural correlates of varied cognitive processes that are likely components of a paranoid thinking style, we hope to advance both theoretical and empirical research in this domain
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