NKU Cognitive Neuroscience

Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have conducted the most comprehensive brain mapping to date of the cognitive abilities measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the most widely used intelligence test in the world. The results offer new insight into how the various factors that comprise an "intelligence quotient" (IQ) score depend on particular regions of the brain.

How embodied metaphors, rooted in our physical understanding of abstract concepts, shape our view of the world. (Scientific American)

Powerpoint with audio lecture

a biased mind can handle uncertainty more efficiently and robustly than an unbiased mind relying on more resource-intensive and general-purpose processing strategies (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

I will raise some questions about Tye's argument. I will not challenge his claims about how Burgean intuitions apply to phenomenal concepts. Nor will I deny that those claims create problems for the phenomenal concept strategy, as it is usually formulated. Instead, I will suggest that there is a viable fallback position available to the phenomenal concept strategist: a revised strategy. (BrainPains)

Furlong and Opfer do a nice set of experiments showing that we can be lured into making decisions by numbers that seem bigger than they really are. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

One of the mysteries of gambling is that even when we should know we're going to lose, we somehow think we're going to win. Dr. Luke Clark, from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, may have discovered one of the reasons why. Using MRI, he studied brain activity in people gambling, looking particularly at "near misses" in which a loss seems close to a win. He found that the brain activated the same reward system that is activated in a real win, despite the fact that people report that these near misses are unpleasant. (CBC Radio | Quirks & Quarks | February 21, 2009)

In our legal system, judges and juries have to assign responsibility for crimes and decide on appropriate punishments. A new imaging study reveals which area of the brain plays a key role in these cognitive processes. (Scientific American)

Tired of all that mushy nonsense that comes with Valentine's Day - the schmaltzy cards, the heart-shaped box of chocolates, the earnest whispers and secret nothings? It's about time someone took a cold, harsh look at love and expose it for what it really is: chemistry. That's right, forget about magic - when you boil it down, love is nothing more than a molecular stew, sloshing around inside our skulls. Researchers have begun to identify these compounds and understand exactly what they do.

Now the area of the brain which controls jealousy has been found, scientists have ­announced. (Mail Online)

another interesting study from the group at Wellcome Center group at University College associated with Ray Dolan - cognitive neuroscience that is directly relevant to our current economic and political reality: (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

Of course, it should be noted that there may be alternate architectures that incorporate forward models satisfying criteria for being sensory. However, the core idea of a forward model does not alone satisfy such criteria. It is also worth noting that the characterization of imagery as the willful reactivation of input systems threatens to make the imagery account collapse into a kind of non-sensory view. This is so if a crucial part of a state's being imagery is its activation of a control signal. (Brain Hammer)

Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, a recent book by philosopher Andy Clark is reviewed by Melvyn Goodale in Nature, and I pass on some clips from his review, because Clark's views exactly mirror the sentiments expressed in my Biology of Mind Book. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You'll regret it if you don't. (Jerry Fodor review of Clark)

Is there wisdom to be found in repugnance? Or is disgust 'the nastiest of all emotions', offering nothing but support to prejudice? Dan Jones looks at the repellant side of human nature.

Dan Jones writes an interesting essay in a recent issue of Science (PDF here) on how work in evolutionary theory, moral philosophy, and neuroscience casts doubt on the idea that disgust embodies a deep-seated wisdom. Instead it provides an emerging portrait of an evolutionarily constrained emotion that is a poor guide to ethical action. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

How, and for whom, does disgust influence moral judgment? In 4 experiments participants made moral judgments while experiencing extraneous feelings of disgust. Disgust was induced in Experiment 1 by exposure to a bad smell, in Experiment 2 by working in a disgusting room, in Experiment 3 by recalling a physically disgusting experience, and in Experiment 4 through a video induction. In each case, the results showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls. Experiment 4 found that disgust had a different effect on moral judgment than did sadness. In addition, Experiments 2-4 showed that the role of disgust in severity of moral judgments depends on participants' sensitivity to their own bodily sensations. Taken together, these data indicate the importance - and specificity - of gut feelings in moral judgments.

Our understanding of disgust and morality is in its infancy, yet technological advances in neurobiology, an increasing willingness to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue, to take religion seriously as a dimension of human nature and experience, and growing knowledge of cultural differences, have created a climate within which a breakthrough in our understanding of morality could soon occur. (Heather Looy :: Global Spiral)

The Disgust Scale is a self-report personality scale that was developed by Jonathan Haidt, Clark McCauley, and Paul Rozin as a general tool for the study of disgust. It is used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust, and to examine the relationships among different kinds of disgust. This page contains information on the emotion of disgust and on the Disgust Scale. Please feel free to print any of the papers on this page, and to use the Disgust Scale for research, education, or other non-commercial purposes. If you obtain any interesting findings with the Disgust Scale, we would appreciate hearing about them, and we would be happy to post a link to you or your work on this page.