Attention is often dichotomized into controlled vs. automatic processing, where controlled processing is slow, flexible, and intentional, and automatic processing is fast, inflexible, and unintentional. In contrast to this strict dichotomy, there is mounting evidence for context-specific processes that are engaged rapidly yet are also flexible. In the present study we extend this idea to the domain of implicit learning to examine whether flexibility in automatic processes can be implemented through the reliance on contextual features. Across three experiments we show (...) that participants can learn implicitly two complementary sequences that are associated with distinct contexts, and that transfer of learning when the two contexts are randomly intermixed depends on the distinctiveness of the two contexts. Our results point to the role of context-specific processes in the acquisition and expression of implicit sequence knowledge, and also suggest that episodic details can be represented in sequence knowledge. (shrink)

The past 25 years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language, and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This introduction reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this topic: Is cognitive control to be understood as resulting from the (...) interaction of multiple distinct control processes, or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent? (shrink)

In 1895 in the Project for a Scientific Psychology Freud tried to integrate psychology and neurology in order to develop a neuroscientific psychology. Since 1880 Freud made no distinction between psychology and physiology. His papers from the end of the 1880s to1890 were very clear on this scientific overlap: as with many of its contemporaries, Freud thought about psychology essentially as the physiology of the brain. Years later he had to surrender, realizing a technological delay, not capable to pursue its (...) ambitious aim, and until that moment psychoanalysis would have to use its more suitable clinical method. Also, he seemed skeptical about the phrenology drift, typical of that time, in which any psychological function needed to be located in its neuroanatomical area. He could not see the progresses of neurosciences and its fruitful dialogue with psychoanalysis, occurred also thanks to the improvements in the field of neuroimaging, which has made possible a remarkable advance in the knowledge of the mind-brain system and a better observation of the psychoanalytical theories. After years of investigations, deriving from research and clinical work of the last century, the discovery of neural networks, together with the free energy principle, we are observing under a new light the psychodynamic neuroscience in its exploration of the mind-brain system. In this narrative review we summarize the important developments of the psychodynamic neuroscience, with particular regard to the free energy principle, the resting state networks, especially the Default Mode Network in its link with the Self; finally we suggest a discussion by approaching the concept of Alpha Function, proposed by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, trying to speculate about the connection with neuroscience. (shrink)

In their innovative study, Inzlicht and Al-Khindi (2012) demonstrated that participants who were allowed to misattribute their arousal and negative affect induced by errors to a placebo beverage had a reduced error-related negativity (ERN/Ne) compared to controls not being allowed to misattribute their arousal following errors. These results contribute to the ongoing debate that affect and motivation are interwoven with the cognitive processing of errors. Evidence that the misattribution of negative affect modulates the ERN/Ne is essential for understanding the mechanisms (...) behind ERN/Ne. Therefore, and because of the growing debate on reproducibility of empirical findings, we aimed at replicating the misattribution effects on the ERN/Ne in a go/nogo task. Students were randomly assigned to a misattribution group (n = 48) or a control group (n = 51). Participants of the misattribution group consumed a beverage said to have side effects that would increase their physiological arousal, so that they could misattribute the negative affect induced by errors to the beverage. Participants of the control group correctly believed that the beverage had no side effects. As Inzlicht and Al-Khindi (2012), we did not observe performance differences between both groups. However, ERN/Ne differences between misattribution and control group could not be replicated, although the statistical power of the replication study was high. Evidence regarding the replication of performance and the non-replication of ERN/Ne findings was confirmed by Bayesian statistics. (shrink)

According to the conflict monitoring hypothesis, conflict monitoring and inhibitory control in cognitive control mainly cause activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and control-related prefrontal cortex in many cognitive tasks. However, the role of brain regions in the default mode network in cognitive control during category induction tasks is unclear. To test the role of the ACC, PFC, and subregions of the DMN elicited by cognitive control during category induction, a modified category induction task was performed using simultaneous fMRI scanning. (...) The results showed that the left middle frontal gyrus and bilateral dorsal ACC/medial frontal gyrus were sensitive to whether conflict information appears, but not to the level of conflict. In addition, the bilateral ventral ACC, especially the right vACC, a part of the DMN, showed significant deactivation with an increase in cognitive effort depending on working memory. These findings not only offer further evidence for the important role of the dorsolateral PFC and dorsal ACC in cognitive control during categorization but also support the functional distinction of the dorsal/ventral ACC in the category induction task. (shrink)

Appraisal theories have described elaborate mechanisms underlying the elicitation of emotion at the psychological-cognitive level, but typically do not integrate neuroscientific concepts and findings. At the same time, theoretical developments in appraisal theory have been pretty much ignored by researchers studying the neuroscience of emotion. We feel that a stronger integration of these two literatures would be highly profitable for both sides. Here we outline a blueprint of the “appraising brain.” To this end, we review neuroimaging research investigating the processing (...) of major appraisal variables, and sketch a neuro-cognitive process model of appraisal with a special emphasis on the chronometry and the recursive aspect of emotional evaluation. We hope that this contribution will stimulate more hypothesis-driven research on the neuroscience of appraisal. (shrink)

For decades, technologies that ease information sharing (e.g., the wireless telegraph; Mckernon, 1925) have inspired concerns about the proliferation of misinformation. Today, these worries often c...

Cognitive control has long been one of the most active areas of computational modeling work in cognitive science. The focus on computational models as a medium for specifying and developing theory predates the PDP books, and cognitive control was not one of the areas on which they focused. However, the framework they provided has injected work on cognitive control with new energy and new ideas. On the occasion of the books' anniversary, we review computational modeling in the study of cognitive (...) control, with a focus on the influence that the PDP approach has brought to bear in this area. Rather than providing a comprehensive review, we offer a framework for thinking about past and future modeling efforts in this domain. We define control in terms of the optimal parameterization of task processing. From this vantage point, the development of control systems in the brain can be seen as responding to the structure of naturalistic tasks, through the filter of the brain systems with which control directly interfaces. This perspective lays open a set of fascinating but difficult research questions, which together define an important frontier for future computational research. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a developmental disorder associated with specific forms of emotional dysfunction and an increased risk for both frustration-based reactive aggression and goal-directed instrumental antisocial behavior. While the full behavioral manifestation of the disorder is under considerable social influence, the basis of this disorder appears to be genetic. At the neural level, individuals with psychopathy show atypical responding within the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Moreover, the roles of the amygdala in stimulus-reinforcement learning and responding to emotional expressions and vmPFC (...) in the representation of reinforcement expectancies are compromised. The implications of these functional impairments for responsibility are discussed. (shrink)

Simple specialization cannot account for brain functioning. Yet, we believe Anderson's reuse can be better explained by re-function. We suggest that functional demands shape brain changes and are the driving force behind reuse. For example, we suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is built as an infrastructure for multi-functions rather than as a module for reuse.

ABSTRACTNegative emotion influences cognitive control, and more specifically conflict adaptation. However, discrepant results have often been reported in the literature. In this study, we broke down negative emotion into integral and incidental components using a modern motivation-based framework, and assessed whether the former could change conflict adaptation. In the first experiment, we manipulated the duration of the inter-trial-interval to assess the actual time-scale of this effect. Integral negative emotion was induced by using loss-related feedback contingent on task performance, and measured (...) at the subjective and physiological levels. Results showed that conflict-driven adaptive control was enhanced when integral negative emotion was elicited, compared to a control condition without changes in defensive motivation. Importantly, this effect was only found when a short, as opposed to long ITI was used, suggesting that it had a short time scale. In the second experiment, we controlled for effe... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility effect for positive stimuli and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli, but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli (...) were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded appr... (shrink)