Category: Neurobiology/psychology
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De auto, de geit en de wiskunde
driedeuren.nl www.nieuwezijds.nl/boek/de-auto-de-geit-en-de-wiskunde Het is een klassiek wiskunderaadsel: het driedeurenprobleem. Je mag in een spelshow kiezen tussen drie deuren. Achter één deur staat een auto die je graag wil winnen, achter de andere twee een geit. Zodra je een deur kiest, maakt de presentator een van de twee andere open: daar staat een geit. En dan…
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a psychology of real-life decision-making
“Toward a psychology of real-life decision-making” Novel developments in biologging technology allow for precise measurement of individual-level behavior across time and space. Additionally, novel technologies allow researchers to quantify in detail the environments in which people are embedded when making decisions. Such devices, however, are only useful to cognitive scientists when integrated with formal theoretical…
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Cognitive maps – a medium for thought
“Cognitive maps as a medium for thought“ Cognitive maps and propositional representations (the ‘language of thought’) are different from each other but share some key characteristics, such as compositionality. To be useful for thinking, cognitive maps must interface with language of thought-like representations. This may involve the same operations that are used to convert cognitive…
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INTEROCEPTIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
“Life-inspired interoceptive artificial intelligence for autonomous and adaptive agents” and free to read Despite remarkable advances in artificial intelligence (AI), building agents that can autonomously pursue goals while adapting to continuously changing environments remains a fundamental challenge. Living organisms naturally exhibit such adaptive autonomy, offering a compelling source of inspiration for how artificial systems might…
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Brain rhythms – predictive processing perspective
“Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective” Findings from electroencephalography studies converge on the notion that depression involves disrupted updating of beliefs, wherein positive and corrective information carries too little weight to revise rigid expectations about the self and the world. Across a range of neural signals, the brains of individuals with depression register…
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To explore or exploit: Individual differences in preschool decision making
“To explore or exploit: Individual differences in preschool decision making” Adapting to novel situations requires balancing exploration versus exploitation. Examining patterns of explore/exploit in decision making provides a more ecologically valid measure of performance. Research indicates individual and developmental differences in explore/exploit strategies. Differences in strategy use have implications for social adjustment and development disorders.…
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Reframing neuroergonomics
“Reframing neuroergonomics in an evolutionary and active inference context” Everyday situations, such as feeling nauseous in virtual-reality environments or getting dizzy when reading as a car passenger, reveal how easily our senses can become confused when modern technology disrupts the innate relationship between the physical environment and human sensory systems. Such disruptions expose the vulnerability…
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Neurocognitive Dynamics: Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox
“Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox in neurocognitive dynamics of cognitive control” Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox present significant, yet underappreciated challenges in cognitive neuroscience. Leveraging brain imaging and behavioral data from over 4000 individuals and a Bayesian computational model of cognitive dynamics, we investigated brain-behavior relationships underlying cognitive control at both between-subjects and within-subjects levels. Strikingly, brain-behavior…
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The body does not keep the score
“The body does not keep the score: trauma, predictive coding, and the restoration of metastability” For nearly a decade, the idea that “the body keeps the score” has shaped public and clinical understanding of trauma. It is an enticing metaphor—implying that experience is literally inscribed in flesh, that the body bears the scars of what…
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Top-down attention shifts event boundaries
“Top-down attention shifts behavioral and neural event boundaries in narratives with overlapping event scripts” • Default mode regions represent schematic event scripts during narrative perception • Attending to an event script impacts behavioral event segmentation and memory • Neural dynamics in the mPFC reflect the event structure of an attended script Understanding and remembering the…
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The role of context in continuity and segmentation
“The role of context in continuity and segmentation” Human experience intertwines continuity, the seamless flow of events, with segmentation, the spontaneous partitioning of experience into discrete units. Despite their cognitive significance, it is unclear whether these processes operate independently or share a common mechanism. Here we explored this question by examining the link between serial…
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Athletes and other Animals
“Embodied decision making in athletes and other animals” Humans and other animals continuously make embodied decisions about ongoing or pending courses of action. Examples of embodied decisions include a hunting lioness’s decision of which gazelle to chase and a soccer player’s decision of which teammate to pass the ball to. The study of embodied decisions has recently…
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Affective State as a central component to environmental changes
“Considering affective state as a central component of the response of animals to environmental changes” Current environmental changes are often considered as negatively impacting the affective state of animals. Yet, the interplay betweenenvironmental conditions and affective state should rather be viewed as a reciprocal and dynamic relationship, as variation in affective state likely determines how…
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Music as a scientific metaphor for mind and brain
“Music as a scientific metaphor for mind and brain” Metaphors have long played multiple roles in conceptualizing the mind and brain, guiding the development and refinement of theoretical models and empirical questions. Early analogies (comparing the brain to hydraulic systems, telephone exchanges, factories, or libraries) offered shortcuts to understanding aspects of cognition, memory, and brain…
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Active Construction of Past Episodes
“The active construction of past episodes” Episodic memories – declarative memories of past events, characterized by rich spatiotemporal context – play a central role in guiding perception and behaviour. Here, we advance a model that integrates episodic memories within the active inference framework. We describe how episodic memories are incorporated into the generative models used…
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Linking fast and slow
“Linking fast and slow: The case for generative models” A pervasive challenge in neuroscience is testing whether neuronal connectivity changes over time due to specific causes, such as stimuli, events, or clinical interventions. Recent hardware innovations and falling data storage costs enable longer, more naturalistic neuronal recordings. The implicit opportunity for understanding the self-organised brain…
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Your brain on nature
“Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure” Increased alpha/theta oscillations and reduced amygdala activity consistently observed. Structural and functional brain changes associated with greenspace and immersive VR. A conceptual model integrates sensory, contextual, and individual moderating factors. The relationship between natural environments and human cognition has gathered increasing attention…
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Narcissism: Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity
“Narcissism Is Associated With Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity” Narcissism is associated with self-enhancement and social antagonism, yet its neural underpinnings, particularly in error processing, remain underexplored. Competing theoretical models, such as the mask model and the metacognitive model, offer conflicting hypotheses regarding how narcissism influences early neural responses to errors. We examine whether grandiose agentic…
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Active information sampling in health and disease
“Active information sampling in health and disease” Active information gathering is a fundamental cognitive process that enables organisms to navigate uncertainty and make adaptive decisions. This review has synthesised current knowledge on the behavioural, neural, and computational mechanisms underlying information sampling across health and disease. Several key themes have emerged from this analysis. Firstly, information…
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Boredom and curiosity – information
“Boredom and curiosity: the hunger and the appetite for information“ Boredom and curiosity are common everyday states that drive individuals to seek information. Due to their functional relatedness, it is not trivial to distinguish whether an action, for instance in the context of a behavioral experiment, is driven by boredom or curiosity. Are the two…
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Delusion as embodied emotion
“Delusion as embodied emotion: a qualitatively driven, multimethod study of first-episode psychosis in the UK” Delusions in psychosis involve complex and dynamic experiential, affective, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal alterations. Their pattern of emergence during the early stages of illness remains poorly understood and the origin of their thematic content unclear. Phenomenological accounts have emphasised alterations…
