scholarly journals Characterization of Sensory-Motor Behavior Under Cognitive Load Using a New Statistical Platform for Studies of Embodied Cognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jihye Ryu ◽  
Elizabeth B. Torres
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Sensory Motor

Empirical Musical Imagery beyond the “Mind’s Ear”

2019 ◽  
pp. 444-463
Author(s):  
Freya Bailes
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Auditory Imagery ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Musical Imagery ◽  
Motor Processing ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Auditory Experience ◽  
Kinesthetic Imagery

Freya Bailes deals with the topic of musical imagery, and she uses embodied cognition as a framework to argue that musical imagery is a multimodal experience. Existing empirical studies of musical imagery are reviewed and Bailes points to future directions for the study of musical imagery as an embodied-cognition phenomenon. Arguing that musical imagery can never be fully disembodied, Bailes moves beyond the idea of auditory imagery as merely a simulation of auditory experience by “the mind’s ear.” Instead, she outlines how imagining sounds involves kinesthetic imagery and she concludes that sound and music are always connected to sensory motor processing.

scholarly journals Functional Assessment of Stroke-Induced Regulation of miR-20a-3p and Its Role as a Neuroprotectant

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor E. Branyan ◽  
Amutha Selvamani ◽  
Min Jung Park ◽  
Kriti E. Korula ◽  
Kelby F. Kosel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Mitochondrial Dynamics ◽  
Infarct Volume ◽  
Neuron Specific Enolase ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Female Rats ◽  
Therapeutic Window ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Stroke Outcomes ◽  
Sensory Motor

AbstractMicroRNAs have gained popularity as a potential treatment for many diseases, including stroke. This study identifies and characterizes a specific member of the miR-17–92 cluster, miR-20a-3p, as a possible stroke therapeutic. A comprehensive microRNA screening showed that miR-20a-3p was significantly upregulated in astrocytes of adult female rats, which typically have better stroke outcomes, while it was profoundly downregulated in astrocytes of middle-aged females and adult and middle-aged males, groups that typically have more severe stroke outcomes. Assays using primary human astrocytes and neurons show that miR-20a-3p treatment alters mitochondrial dynamics in both cell types. To assess whether stroke outcomes could be improved by elevating astrocytic miR-20a-3p, we created a tetracycline (Tet)-induced recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) construct where miR-20a-3p was located downstream a glial fibrillary acidic protein promoter. Treatment with doxycycline induced miR-20-3p expression in astrocytes, reducing mortality and modestly improving sensory motor behavior. A second Tet-induced rAAV construct was created in which miR-20a-3p was located downstream of a neuron-specific enolase (NSE) promoter. These experiments demonstrate that neuronal expression of miR-20a-3p is vastly more neuroprotective than astrocytic expression, with animals receiving the miR-20a-3p vector showing reduced infarction and sensory motor improvement. Intravenous injections, which are a therapeutically tractable treatment route, with miR-20a-3p mimic 4 h after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) significantly improved stroke outcomes including infarct volume and sensory motor performance. Improvement was not observed when miR-20a-3p was given immediately or 24 h after MCAo, identifying a unique delayed therapeutic window. Overall, this study identifies a novel neuroprotective microRNA and characterizes several key pathways by which it can improve stroke outcomes.

scholarly journals Six Challenges for Embodiment Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 593-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Ostarek ◽  
Falk Huettig
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Perceptual Symbols ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Cognitive Revolution ◽  
Key Questions

Twenty years after Barsalou’s seminal perceptual-symbols article, embodied cognition, the notion that cognition involves simulations of sensory, motor, or affective states, has moved from an outlandish proposal to a mainstream position adopted by many researchers in the psychological and cognitive sciences (and neurosciences). Though it has generated productive work in the cognitive sciences as a whole, it has had a particularly strong impact on research into language comprehension. The view of a mental lexicon based on symbolic word representations, which are arbitrarily linked to sensory aspects of their referents, was generally accepted since the cognitive revolution in the 1950s. This has radically changed. Given the current status of embodiment as a main theory of cognition, it is somewhat surprising that a close look at the literature reveals that the debate about the nature of the processes involved in language comprehension is far from settled, and key questions remain unanswered. We present several suggestions for a productive way forward.

scholarly journals Multifaceted aspects of chunking enable robust algorithms

2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (8) ◽  
pp. 1849-1856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. Acuna ◽  
Nicholas F. Wymbs ◽  
Chelsea A. Reynolds ◽  
Nathalie Picard ◽  
Robert S. Turner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Physiological Data ◽  
Bayesian Algorithm ◽  
Robust Algorithms ◽  
Sequence Production ◽  
Standard Tool

Sequence production tasks are a standard tool to analyze motor learning, consolidation, and habituation. As sequences are learned, movements are typically grouped into subsets or chunks. For example, most Americans memorize telephone numbers in two chunks of three digits, and one chunk of four. Studies generally use response times or error rates to estimate how subjects chunk, and these estimates are often related to physiological data. Here we show that chunking is simultaneously reflected in reaction times, errors, and their correlations. This multimodal structure enables us to propose a Bayesian algorithm that better estimates chunks while avoiding overfitting. Our algorithm reveals previously unknown behavioral structure, such as an increased error correlations with training, and promises a useful tool for the characterization of many forms of sequential motor behavior.

scholarly journals Disembodying cognition

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjan Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Real World ◽  
Grounded Cognition ◽  
Perceptual Information ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Neuronal Ensembles ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Motor Information

AbstractThe idea that concepts are embodied by our motor and sensory systems is popular in current theorizing about cognition. Embodied cognition accounts come in different versions and are often contrasted with a purely symbolic amodal view of cognition. Simulation, or the hypothesis that concepts simulate the sensory and motor experience of real world encounters with instances of those concepts, has been prominent in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Here, with a focus on spatial thought and language, I review some of the evidence cited in support of simulation versions of embodied cognition accounts. While these data are extremely interesting and many of the experiments are elegant, knowing how to best interpret the results is often far from clear. I point out that a quick acceptance of embodied accounts runs the danger of ignoring alternate hypotheses and not scrutinizing neuroscience data critically. I also review recent work from my lab that raises questions about the nature of sensory motor grounding in spatial thought and language. In my view, the question of whether or not cognition is grounded is more fruitfully replaced by questions about gradations in this grounding. A focus on disembodying cognition, or on graded grounding, opens the way to think about how humans abstract. Within neuroscience, I propose that three functional anatomic axes help frame questions about the graded nature of grounded cognition. First, are questions of laterality differences. Do association cortices in both hemispheres instantiate the same kind of sensory or motor information? Second, are questions about ventral dorsal axes. Do neuronal ensembles along this axis shift from conceptual representations of objects to the relationships between objects? Third, are questions about gradients centripetally from sensory and motor cortices towards and within perisylvian cortices. How does sensory and perceptual information become more language-like and then get transformed into language proper?

Impairments in Prehension Produced by Early Postnatal Sensory Motor Cortex Activity Blockade

2000 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 895-906 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Martin ◽  
Laura Donarummo ◽  
Antony Hacking
Keyword(s):  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Lateral Position ◽  
Postnatal Life ◽  
Contralateral Limb ◽  
Early Postnatal Development ◽  
End Point ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Impaired Limb ◽  
The Right

This study examined the effects of blocking neural activity in sensory motor cortex during early postnatal development on prehension. We infused muscimol, either unilaterally or bilaterally, into the sensory motor cortex of cats to block activity continuously between postnatal weeks 3–7. After stopping infusion, we trained animals to reach and grasp a cube of meat and tested behavior thereafter. Animals that had not received muscimol infusion (unilateral saline infusion; age-matched) reached for the meat accurately with small end-point errors. They grasped the meat using coordinated digit flexion followed by forearm supination on 82.7% of trials. Performance using either limb did not differ significantly. In animals receiving unilateral muscimol infusion, reaching and grasping using the limb ipsilateral to the infusion were similar to controls. The limb contralateral to infusion showed significant increases in systematic and variable reaching end-point errors, often requiring subsequent corrective movements to contact the meat. Grasping occurred on only 14.8% of trials, replaced on most trials by raking without distal movements. Compensatory adjustments in reach length and angle, to maintain end-point accuracy as movements were started from a more lateral position, were less effective using the contralateral limb than ipsilateral limb. With bilateral inactivations, the form of reaching and grasping impairments was identical to that produced by unilateral inactivation, but the magnitude of the reaching impairments was less. We discuss these results in terms of the differential effects of unilateral and bilateral inactivation on corticospinal tract development. We also investigated the degree to which these prehension impairments after unilateral blockade reflect control by each hemisphere. In animals that had received unilateral blockade between postnatal weeks (PWs) 3 and 7, we silenced on-going activity (after PW 11) during task performance using continuous muscimol infusion. We inactivated the right (previously active) and then the left (previously silenced) sensory motor cortex. Inactivation of the ipsilateral (right) sensory motor cortex produced a further increase in systematic error and less frequent normal grasping. Reinactivation of the contralateral (left) cortex produced larger increases in reaching and grasping impairments than those produced by ipsilateral inactivation. This suggests that the impaired limb receives bilateral sensory motor cortex control but that control by the contralateral (initially silenced) cortex predominates. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that the normal development of skilled motor behavior requires activity in sensory motor cortex during early postnatal life.

Cognitive and Motor Loops of the Human Cerebro-cerebellar System

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 2663-2676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Salmi ◽  
Karen Johanne Pallesen ◽  
Tuomas Neuvonen ◽  
Elvira Brattico ◽  
Antti Korvenoja ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Diffusion Weighted Mri ◽  
Motor Functions ◽  
Diffusion Weighted ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Load Increase ◽  
Crus I

We applied fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI to study the segregation of cognitive and motor functions in the human cerebro-cerebellar system. Our fMRI results show that a load increase in a nonverbal auditory working memory task is associated with enhanced brain activity in the parietal, dorsal premotor, and lateral prefrontal cortices and in lobules VII–VIII of the posterior cerebellum, whereas a sensory-motor control task activated the motor/somatosensory, medial prefrontal, and posterior cingulate cortices and lobules V/VI of the anterior cerebellum. The load-dependent activity in the crus I/II had a specific relationship with cognitive performance: This activity correlated negatively with load-dependent increase in RTs. This correlation between brain activity and RTs was not observed in the sensory-motor task in the activated cerebellar regions. Furthermore, probabilistic tractography analysis of the diffusion-weighted MRI data suggests that the tracts between the cerebral and the cerebellar areas exhibiting cognitive load-dependent and sensory-motor activity are mainly projected via separated pontine (feed-forward tracts) and thalamic (feedback tracts) nuclei. The tractography results also indicate that the crus I/II in the posterior cerebellum is linked with the lateral prefrontal areas activated by cognitive load increase, whereas the anterior cerebellar lobe is not. The current results support the view that cognitive and motor functions are segregated in the cerebellum. On the basis of these results and theories of the function of the cerebellum, we suggest that the posterior cerebellar activity during a demanding cognitive task is involved with optimization of the response speed.

scholarly journals The typology of mechanisms of adaptation to the cognitive load on the variability of heart rate dynamics

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
I.G. Bodrov ◽  
A.Yu. Shishelova
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Tension Index ◽  
Higher Power ◽  
Heart Rate Dynamics ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Mechanisms Of Adaptation ◽  
Cognitive Activities ◽  
Regulatory Effects

While analyzing heart rate variability there were detected two types of visceral adaptation to cognitive activities: the first one is characterized by decrease of tension index (Baevskiy, 1984) and increase of heart rate variability at a cognitive load, along with increased power of regulatory effects on the heart rate; the second one is defined by higher heart rate variability, higher power of regulatory effects before the cognitive load and increase of the strain index during cognitive load in the absence of other significant changes. It is peculiar for people related to these types to possess different correlation relationships between the indices of sensory-motor reactions and heart rate variability.

scholarly journals Making Enactivism Even More Embodied

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

An enactivist approach to understanding the mind, in its fullest sense, is not just a matter of action-oriented processes; enactivism is about more than action and sensory–motor contingencies. To understand cognition as richly embodied this chapter considers factors involving affectivity and intersubjectivity. Empirical studies show that affectivity, in a wide sense that includes hunger, fatigue, pain, respiration, as well as emotion, has an effect on perception, attention, and judgment. Likewise, intersubjective factors, including the role of bodily postures, movements, gestures, gaze and facial expressions, and dynamical aspects of interaction, have similar effects. This richer conception of embodied cognition also holds implications for understanding how the brain works.

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