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Thoughts on thoughts
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- February 8, 2012
- 01:13 AM
- 33 views
Deaf hearing
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
A recent paper examined a patient with deaf-hearing, analogous to blind-sight, where there can be detection of a signal without conscious awareness of it. (citation below) For example, a person with blind-sight may avoid an obstacle without awareness of it; and, a deaf-hearing person may be startled and orient towards a noise without consciously hearing [...]... Read more »
Cavinato, M., Rigon, J., Volpato, C., Semenza, C., & Piccione, F. (2012) Preservation of Auditory P300-Like Potentials in Cortical Deafness. PLoS ONE, 7(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029909
- January 30, 2012
- 01:40 AM
- 102 views
Are there two types of cognition?
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
J. Evans’ 2008 paper reviews a number of proposed dual-processing descriptions of cognition. (see citation). He finds some stable divisions in the theories but a number of conflicting ones also. Calling the dual processing system 1 and system 2 appears to him to give a mistaken impression of how cognition works; he feels that [...]... Read more »
J. Evans. (2008) Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgement, and Social Cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 255-278. info:/
- January 21, 2012
- 01:44 AM
- 119 views
Two sides of synchrony
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
Humans often engage in synchrony (as do mating birds and other animals). We sing, chant, dance, march together. We have special work songs to coordinate movement. Synchrony is enjoyable. It also takes some of our autonomy and gives it to the others that we are in sync with. This can be good and bad depending [...]... Read more »
Wiltermuth, S., & Heath, C. (2009) Synchrony and Cooperation. Psychological Science, 20(1), 1-5. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02253.x
Ondobaka, S., de Lange, F., Newman-Norlund, R., Wiemers, M., & Bekkering, H. (2011) Interplay Between Action and Movement Intentions During Social Interaction. Psychological Science, 23(1), 30-35. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611424163
Wiltermuth, S. (2012) Synchronous activity boosts compliance with requests to aggress. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 453-456. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.007
- January 12, 2012
- 05:55 AM
- 120 views
A look at the dogma
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
The authors of a new paper (citation below) have doubts about some well known ‘facts’ in neuroscience. I have to admit I assumed that the numbers were backed by evidence. I may have used these numbers in posts and so I feel bound to share the doubts with readers. Here is the abstract:
Owing to methodological [...]... Read more »
Lent, R., Azevedo, F., Andrade-Moraes, C., & Pinto, A. (2012) How many neurons do you have? Some dogmas of quantitative neuroscience under revision. European Journal of Neuroscience, 35(1), 1-9. DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07923.x
- January 3, 2012
- 06:22 AM
- 135 views
Possible functions of conciousness 10 - being oneself
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
Now we come to the most confusing part of possibilities of how consciousness may be useful – self. Of course consciousness does not give us our unique existence. The continuity of the organization of our physical bodies from conception to death is what defines our existence as organisms. Our awareness of our existence is just [...]... Read more »
V.S. Ramachandran and W. Hirstein. (1997) Three Laws of Qualia: What Neurology Tells Us about the Biological functions of Consciousness, Qualia and the Self. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(5-6), 429-458. info:/
- December 25, 2011
- 12:33 AM
- 168 views
Possible functions of consciousness 9 - marking agency
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
We have various ways of moving. Here are four obvious ways and there may be more. First, a spinal cord reflex happens without the involvement of the brain at all. We have no forewarning of it or way to stop it, but we can block it ahead of time by a sort of steeling against [...]... Read more »
LIBET, B., GLEASON, C., WRIGHT, E., & PEARL, D. (1983) TIME OF CONSCIOUS INTENTION TO ACT IN RELATION TO ONSET OF CEREBRAL ACTIVITY (READINESS-POTENTIAL). Brain, 106(3), 623-642. DOI: 10.1093/brain/106.3.623
Wegner, D., & Wheatley, T. (1999) Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54(7), 480-492. DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.54.7.480
Desmurget, M., Reilly, K., Richard, N., Szathmari, A., Mottolese, C., & Sirigu, A. (2009) Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans. Science, 324(5928), 811-813. DOI: 10.1126/science.1169896
- December 16, 2011
- 02:25 AM
- 475 views
Fusiform Face Area again
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
In a previous post (here) I remarked on a pair of papers that I had not be able to read in full but only had the abstracts. A kind reader, G. Marchetti (http://www.mind-consciousness-language.com), has let me see these papers (citations below). I am relieved that I did not make any ‘oopses’ in understanding the abstracts. [...]... Read more »
Tong, M., Joyce, C., & Cottrell, G. (2008) Why is the fusiform face area recruited for novel categories of expertise? A neurocomputational investigation. Brain Research, 14-24. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2007.06.079
Bilalić M, Langner R, Ulrich R, & Grodd W. (2011) Many faces of expertise: fusiform face area in chess experts and novices. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31(28), 10206-14. PMID: 21752997
- December 8, 2011
- 04:27 AM
- 239 views
All that jazz
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
Do people have a different shade of consciousness when improvising jazz? I picture a jazz musician standing with his eyes closed, in a sort of trance, completely lost from the world, flowing zen-like with the spontaneous music, expressing his own sense of beauty in the thread he weaves into the fabric of the group. Limb [...]... Read more »
Limb, C., & Braun, A. (2008) Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation. PLoS ONE, 3(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001679
- November 28, 2011
- 01:45 AM
- 197 views
Why synesthesia?
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
Synesthesia is a condition where attributes associated with one sense (say colour with sight) can be experienced in another inappropriate sense (say colour with the perception of musical notes). There are many kinds, and rare ones are still being discovered. There is no longer any question that these are ‘real’ perceptions and not hoaxes. Synesthesia [...]... Read more »
Brang, D., & Ramachandran, V. (2011) Survival of the Synesthesia Gene: Why Do People Hear Colors and Taste Words?. PLoS Biology, 9(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001205
- November 19, 2011
- 06:23 AM
- 243 views
How similar and how different are our brains?
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
We all wonder how similar our individual thoughts are. We are fairly sure that our brains are not identical, not like the little worm C. elegans with its 302 neurons and all the synapses mapped. But we are also fairly sure that we have great similarity in the architecture of our brains; we all have [...]... Read more »
Clithero, J., Smith, D., Carter, R., & Huettel, S. (2011) Within- and cross-participant classifiers reveal different neural coding of information. NeuroImage, 56(2), 699-708. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.03.057
- November 10, 2011
- 06:30 AM
- 309 views
Primitive brain
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
I have this picture that appeals to me but for which I have never had an evidence. It is not something I believe or even suspect may possibly be true, more an outside chance but interesting.
Think of the brain stem-part of the brain. In some early organism it was all the brain there was [...]... Read more »
Pasupathy, A., & Miller, E. (2005) Different time courses of learning-related activity in the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Nature, 433(7028), 873-876. DOI: 10.1038/nature03287
- November 1, 2011
- 02:18 AM
- 360 views
hypnosis may be real but rare
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
A recent paper (citation below) has investigated a particular person who is very easy to hypnotize. The authors make an argument for single case studies at the beginning of an investigation. I found this interesting because I usually feel disappointment in single case studies. This defense seemed to make sense.
We propose that the research field [...]... Read more »
Kallio, S., Hyönä, J., Revonsuo, A., Sikka, P., & Nummenmaa, L. (2011) The Existence of a Hypnotic State Revealed by Eye Movements. PLoS ONE, 6(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026374
- October 23, 2011
- 08:40 AM
- 190 views
An interesting old paper
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
An paper has surfaced on Sandygautam Cognitive Daily (thanks to @mocost tweet) called ‘Why can’t you tickle yourself?’ by Blakemore, Wolpert and Frith, published 11 years ago. (cited below). Here is the abstract:
It is well known that you cannot tickle yourself. Here, we discuss the proposal that such attenuation of self-produced tactile stimulation is due [...]... Read more »
Blakemore SJ, Wolpert D, & Frith C. (2000) Why can't you tickle yourself?. Neuroreport, 11(11). PMID: 10943682
- October 14, 2011
- 02:09 AM
- 251 views
Neuro-feedback
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
A recent paper by Zotev and group (citation below) has added another neurofeedback result to the several already on record. The subjects were instructed to contemplate happy memories and attempt to increased the BOLD signal from their left amygdala while real time feedback of the BOLD activity was relayed to them. Effective controls (sham feedback [...]... Read more »
Zotev, V., Krueger, F., Phillips, R., Alvarez, R., Simmons, W., Bellgowan, P., Drevets, W., & Bodurka, J. (2011) Self-Regulation of Amygdala Activation Using Real-Time fMRI Neurofeedback. PLoS ONE, 6(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024522
- September 28, 2011
- 01:44 AM
- 370 views
Not exactly mind-reading
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
I don’t pretend to understand the computations that have been used in this study, only the general idea. The results are both a lot more and also a lot less than they appear. This is a group that have been able to fairly accurately identify a black and white photo that a subject in a [...]... Read more »
Nishimoto, S., Vu, A., Naselaris, T., Benjamini, Y., Yu, B., & Gallant, J. (2011) Reconstructing Visual Experiences from Brain Activity Evoked by Natural Movies. Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.08.031
- September 19, 2011
- 05:09 AM
- 227 views
Here we go again
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
Sometime soon I will have to stop rising to what is said about free will. I started this posting in response to K. Smith’s article (see citation below) because the article seemed a way to confuse rather than to clarify. I almost finished when I read the sensible blog by Bjoern Brembs (here) with which [...]... Read more »
Smith, K. (2011) Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will. Nature, 477(7362), 23-25. DOI: 10.1038/477023a
- September 10, 2011
- 04:22 AM
- 284 views
Slowing perception down
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
According to one way of understanding perception, it would not be surprising if perception was completed before conscious awareness could contain the percept. Why is it important to examine this? So that experiment methods of assessing conscious awareness are valid. Gregori-Grgic, Balderi and de’Sperati look at this question (see citation below) by slowing the processes [...]... Read more »
Gregori-Grgič, R., Balderi, M., & de'Sperati, C. (2011) Delayed Perceptual Awareness in Rapid Perceptual Decisions. PLoS ONE, 6(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017079
- September 1, 2011
- 02:05 AM
- 320 views
Is and ought
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
There is a piece of wisdom, an ‘is’ can not make an ‘ought’. But also the opposite is true, an ‘ought’ can not make an ‘is’. Just because we feel we ought to have a rational moral sense, does not mean we do have. Just because utilitarianism (least total harm/greatest total benefit) is considered by [...]... Read more »
Bartels, D., & Pizarro, D. (2011) The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Cognition, 121(1), 154-161. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.05.010
- August 23, 2011
- 03:30 AM
- 340 views
Using unconscious information
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
The phenomenon of ‘conflict adaptation’ is a cognitive control function that has been thought to only apply when conscious information is used, that is, information that can be held for some time in working memory. Conflict adaptation happens in priming experiments: when a prime corresponds to the target, the target is more quickly and accurately [...]... Read more »
van Gaal, S., Lamme, V., & Ridderinkhof, K. (2010) Unconsciously Triggered Conflict Adaptation. PLoS ONE, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011508
- August 14, 2011
- 06:37 AM
- 526 views
Another look at LIDA
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
One of the interesting things about the Madl, Baars, Franklin LIDA model is the number of memory stores that it envisages. I have thought of consciousness as the ‘leading edge of memory’, at least of episodic memory. Hence my interest in the model’s use of memory.
Let us walk through their cognitive cycle to see [...]... Read more »
Madl, T., Baars, B., & Franklin, S. (2011) The Timing of the Cognitive Cycle. PLoS ONE, 6(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014803
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