bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The representing brain: Neural correlates of motor intention and imagery
Authors: Jeannerod M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThis paper concerns how motor actions are neurally represented and coded. Action planning and motor preparation can be studied using a specific type of representational activity, motor imagery. A close functional equivalence between motor imagery and motor preparation is suggested by the positive effects of imagining movements on motor learning, the similarity between the neural structures involved, and the similar physiological correlates observed in both imaging and preparing. The content of motor representations can be inferred from motor images at a macroscopic level, based on global aspects of the action (the duration and amount of effort involved) and the motor rules and constraints which predict the spatial path and kinematics of movements. A more microscopic neural account calls for a representation of object-oriented action. Object attributes are processed in different neural pathways depending on the kind of task the subject is performing. During object-oriented action, a pragmatic representation is activated in which object affordances are transformed into specific motor schemas (independently of other tasks such as object recognition). Animal as well as human clinical data implicate the posterior parietal and premotor cortical areas in schema instantiation. A mechanism is proposed that is able to encode the desired goal of the action and is applicable to different levels of representational organization.
Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences
Authors: Wilson David Sloan , Sober Elliott 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to grow during the 1970s and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced emphasis on genes as “replicators” which is in fact irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and other higher-level entities can be “vehicles” of selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important force in nature and what seem to be competing theories, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units.The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to “organs” of group-level “organisms.” Human behavior not only reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the balance through the construction of social structures that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level. These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important even among large groups of unrelated individuals.
Précis ofBeyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science
Authors: Karmiloff-Smith Annette 
Published: February 2010

AbstractBeyond modularityattempts a synthesis of Fodor's anticonstructivist nativism and Piaget's antinativist constructivism. Contra Fodor, I argue that: (1) the study of cognitive development is essential to cognitive science, (2) the module/central processing dichotomy is too rigid, and (3) the mind does not begin with prespecified modules; rather, development involves a gradual process of “modularization.” Contra Piaget, I argue that: (1) development rarely involves stagelike domain-general change and (2) domainspecific predispositions give development a small but significant kickstart by focusing the infant's attention on proprietary inputs. Development does not stop at efficient learning. A fundamental aspect of human development (“representational redescription”) is the hypothesized process by which information that isina cognitive system becomes progressively explicit knowledgetothat system. Development thus involves two complementary processes of progressive modularization and progressive “explicitation.” Empirical findings on the child as linguist, physicist, mathematician, psychologist, and notator are discussed in support of the theoretical framework. Each chapter concentrates first on the initial state of the infant mind/brain and on subsequent domain-specific learning in infancy and early childhood. It then goes on to explore data on older children's problem solving and theory building, with particular focus on evolving cognitive flexibility. Emphasis is placed throughout on the status of representations underlying different capacities and on the multiple levels at which knowledge is stored and accessible. Finally, consideration is given to the need for more formal developmental models, and a comparison is made between representational redescription and connectionist simulations of development. In conclusion, I consider what is special about human cognition by speculating on the status of representations underlying the structure of behavior in other species.
Gene replacement therapy in the central nervous system: Viral vector-mediated therapy of global neurodegenerative disease
Authors: Neuwelt Edward A. , Pagel Michael A. , Geller Alfred , Muldoon Leslie L. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThis target article describes the current state of global gene replacement in the brain using viral vectors and assesses possible solutions to some of the many problems inherent in gene therapy of the central nervous system (CNS). Gene replacement therapy in the CNS is a potential means of producing a stable expression of normal human proteins in deficient cells and thus curing certain genetically inherited enzyme deficiencies and metabolic diseases as well as cancers. The two major issues to be addressed in CNS gene replacement are the delivery of genetic material to the brain and the expression of recombinant genetic material in target cells within the CNS. Focal inoculation of recombinant virions or other genetic vectors has limitations in global CNS disease. A new approach is the blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption technique developed in this laboratory, in which hypertonic mannitol transiently shrinks the BBB endothelium, allowing passage of high molecular weight compounds and even viruses. Gene therapy of the CNS will require a viral vector system that allows long-term, nontoxic gene expression in neurons or glial cells. Retroviral vectors have limitations in CNS gene replacement, although they are suitable for expressing recombinant genes in intracerebral grafts, or toxic genes in brain tumors. Using mutant neurotropic viruses with reduced neurotoxicity (such as defective herpes simplex virus type I [HSV-1], the HSV-1 amplicon vector system we have developed, or adenovirus mutants) has potential for direct treatment of neurons. Injecting these vectors into rodent brains can lead to stable expression of foreign genetic material in postmitotic neuronal cells. We discuss our BBB disruption delivery technique, our defective HSV-1 amplicon vector system, and our feline model for the neuronal lysosomal storage disorder Gm2-gangliosidosis (Sandhoff disease), which may prove to be a useful model system for CNS gene therapy.
Some practical and theoretical issues concerning fetal brain tissue grafts as therapy for brain dysfunctions
Authors: Stein Donald G. , Glasier Marylou M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractGrafts of embryonic neural tissue into the brains of adult patients are currently being used to treat Parkinson's disease and are under serious consideration as therapy for a variety of other degenerative and traumatic disorders. This target article evaluates the use of transplants to promote recovery from brain injury and highlights the kinds of questions and problems that must be addressed before this form of therapy is routinely applied. It has been argued that neural transplantation can promote functional recovery through the replacement of damaged nerve cells, the reestablishment of specific nerve pathways lost as a result of injury, the release of specific neurotransmitters, or the production of factors that promote neuronal growth. The latter two mechanisms, which need not rely on anatomical connections to the host brain, are open to examination for nonsurgical, less intrusive therapeutic use. Certain subjective judgments used to select patients who will receive grafts and in assessment of the outcome of graft therapy make it difficult to evaluate the procedure. In addition, little long-term assessment of transplant efficacy and effect has been done in nonhuman primates. Carefully controlled human studies, with multiple testing paradigms, are also needed to establish the efficacy of transplant therapy.
Immunobiology of neural transplants and functional incorporation of grafted dopamine neurons
Authors: Blount Jeffrey B. , Kondoh Takeshi , Pundt Lisa L. , Conrad John , Jansen Elizabeth M. , Low Walter C. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn contrast to the views put forth by Stein & Glasier, we support the use of inbred strains of rodents in studies of the immunobiology of neural transplants. Inbred strains demonstrate homology of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Virtually all experimental work in transplantation immunology is performed using inbred strains, yet very few published studies of immune rejection in intracerebral grafts have used inbred animals.
Multiple potential mechanisms of graft action is not a new idea
Authors: Dunnett Stephen B. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIt is well established that neural grafts can exert functional effects on the host animal by a multiplicity of different mechanisms – by diffuse release of trophic molecules, neurohormones, and deficient neurotransmitters, as well as by growth and reformation of neural circuits. Our challenge is to understand how these different mechanisms complement each other.
Transplantation, plasticity, and the aging host
Authors: Felten David L. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractNeural transplantation as a recovery strategy for neuro-degenerative diseases in humans has used mainly grafting following acute denervation strategies in young adult hosts. Our work in aged mice and rats demonstrates an age-related increase in susceptibility to oxidative damage from neurotoxins, a remarkably poor recovery of C57BL/6 mice from MPTP insult with transplantation and growth factors, even at 12 months of age, and diminished plasticity of host neurons. We believe that extrapolation of data from young adult animal models to aged humans without thorough investigation of transplantation and host response inagedrecipients is scientifically and ethically inappropriate.
Thinking about repairing thinking
Authors: Ridley R. M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe work of Sinden et al. suggests that it may be possible to produce improvement in the “highest” areas of brain function by transplanting brain tissue. What appears to be the limiting factor is not the complexity of the mental process under consideration but the discreteness of the lesion which causes the impairment and the appropriateness and accuracy of placement of the grafted tissue.
Neural grafting in human disease versus animal models: Cautionary notes
Authors: Steece-Collier Kathy 
Published: February 2010

AbstractOver the past two decades, research on neural transplantation in animal models of neurodegeneration has provided provocative in sights into the therapeutic use of grafted tissue for various neurological diseases. Although great strides have been made and functional benefits gained in these animal models, much information is still needed with regard to transplantation in human patients. Several factors are unique to human disease, for example, age of the recipient, duration of disease, and drug interaction with grafted cells; these need to be explored before grafting can be considered a safe and effective therapeutic tool.
Will brain tissue grafts become an important therapy to restore visual function in cerebrally blind patients?
Authors: Werth Reinhard 
Published: February 2010

AbstractGrafting embryonic brain tissue into the brain of patients with visual field loss due to cerebral lesions may become a method to restore visual function. This method is not without risk, however, and will only be considered in cases of complete blindness after bilateral occipital lesions, when other, risk-free neuropsychological methods fail.
Grafts and the art of mind's reconstruction
Authors: Sinden John D. , Hodges Helen , Gray Jeffrey A. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe use of neural transplantation to alleviate cognitive deficits is still in its infancy. We have an inadequate understanding of the deficits induced by different types of brain damage and their homologies in animal models against which to assess graft-induced recovery, and of the ways in which graft growth and function are influenced by factors within the host brain and the environment in which the host is operating. Further, use of fetal tissue may only be a transitory phase in the search for appropriate donor sources. Nevertheless, findings from our laboratory and elsewhere have made aprima faciecase for successful cognitive reconstruction by graft methods.
Conceptual problems in the act-versus-pattern analysis of self-control
Authors: Kanekar Suresh 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe primary argument against Rachlin's act-versus-pattern analysis of self-control is that it is wrong to think of a temptation as a solitary act while the alternative is conceived of as an element of a pattern. Either both are solitary acts or both are members of patterns, however different the patterns may be in their complexity and abstractness.
The future of an illusion: Self and its control
Authors: Killeen Peter R. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractRachlin introduces a new theory before exhausting its predecessor. His earlier model of future-discounting may be developed by integrating over the duration of extended rewards and punishers. The difference in value of an event within a pattern over the event in isolation derives from the deprivation provided by the pattern; yet the pattern attracts because acute rewards are more potent than incremental deprivations.
The cost of an interrupted response pattern
Authors: Zentall Thomas R. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractRachlin proposes that the mechanism underlying self-control involves the cost incurred in changing one's response pattern, but his account explains neither how the response pattern is originally established nor why a change in response pattern entails a cost. I suggest that response patterns occur because they tend to be effective (thus alternatives are more costly) and are maintained because the decision process itself is costly.
Complex behaviors: Evolution and the brain
Authors: Dingwall William O. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThree issues are addressed in this commentary. (1) Wilkins & Wakefield are commended for placing the complex behavior they discuss within an evolutionary matrix. (2) They err on a number of points in regard to their treatment of this complex behavior. These involve (a) their emphasis on the evolution of conceptual structure rather than language, (b) their equation of meaning with reference, (c) their minimalist view of learning theory, and (d) their separation of the evolution of speech from that of language. (3) They adopt a framework for neural preconditions that has been clearly discredited on both behavioral and neuroanatomical grounds. Finally, recent research involving modern neuroimaging techniques casts further doubt on the authors' postulated functions for the neural areas they discuss.
Solving the language origins puzzle: Collecting and assemblingallpertinent pieces
Authors: Gibson Kathleen R. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWilkins & Wakefield fall short of solving the language origin puzzle because they underestimate the cognitive and linguistic capacities of great apes. A focus on ape capacities leads to the recognition of varied levels of cognition and language and to a gradualistic model of language emergence in which early hominid language skills exceed those of the apes but fall far short of those of modern humans or later fossil hominid groups.
Language as a multimodal sensory enhancement system
Authors: Jacobs Bob , Horner John M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractSeveral claims made by Wilkins & Wakefield require qualification. First, the proposed delineation of the parietal-occipital-temporal junction (POT) is overly restrictive. Second, focusing exclusively on the evolutionary importance of manual manipulation oversimplifies interacting evolutionary preconditions for language. Finally, Wilkins and Wakefield's perspective adheres to a homocentric, formal, linguistic definition of language instead of viewing language as a multimodal sensory enhancement system unique to each species.
Issues in neo- and paleoneurology of language
Authors: Jerison Harry J. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWilkins and Wakefield's hypothesis that language is fundamentally a cognitive rather than cominunicational adaptation is reasonable, but there are flaws in their anatomical and fossil evidence. Their analysis of reorganization also needs clarification. Finally, the origin of language ability must have occurred with australopithecine rather than habiline adaptations on entry into the novel hominid adaptive zone.
Semiogenesis as a continuous, not a discrete, phenomenon
Authors: Liska Jo 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThis commentary confronts one of the central tenets advanced in Wilkins & Wakefield's target article: “language is unlikely to have evolved directly from communication-based precursors, nor is it likely to have been based on those structures that subserve communication.” By adopting a very narrow perspective on language, the authors have effectively limited discussion of earlier linguistic capabilities thought to be at least facilitative of, if not prerequisite to language defined as a “formal grammatical system.” An alternative conceptualization for describing semiogenesis is offered.
On a confusion about a function of consciousness
Authors: Block Ned 
Published: February 2010

AbstractConsciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different “consciousnesses.” Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example a form of reasoning about a function of “consciousness” based on the phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their correct “guesses.” They cannot harness this information in the service of action, however, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to guide action. But stimuli in the blind field arebothaccess-unconscious and phenomenally unconscious. The fallacy is: an obvious function of the machinery of accessconsciousness is illicitly transferred to phenomenal consciousness.
Perception-consciousness and action-consciousness?
Authors: Armstrong D. M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractBlock's distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness is accepted, and it is agreed that one may be found without the other, but his account of the distinction is challenged. Phenomenal consciousness is perceptual consciousness, and it is a matter of gaining information of a detailed, nonverbal sort about the subject's body and environment. Access consciousness is good, old-fashioned introspection.
Fallacies or analyses?
Authors: Church Jennifer 
Published: February 2010

AbstractTo demonstrate that a fallacy is committed, Block needs to convince us of two things: first, that theconceptof phenomenal consciousness is distinct from that of access consciousness, and second, that it picks out a different property from that of access consciousness. I raise doubt about both of these claims, suggesting that the concept of a phenomenal property is the concept of a property to which we have a special sort of access.
Access denied
Authors: Lloyd Dan 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe information processing that constitutes accessconsciousness is not sufficient to make a representational state conscious in any sense. Standard examples of computation without consciousness undermine A-consciousness, and Block's cases seem to derive their plausibility from a lurking phenomenal awareness. That is, people and other minded systems seem to have access-consciousness only insofar as the state accessed is a phenomenal one, or the state resulting from access is phenomenal, or both.
Feeling of knowing and phenomenal consciousness
Authors: Zalla Tiziana , Palma Adriano P. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn Feeling of Knowing cases, subjects have a form of consciousness about the presence of a content (such as an item of information) without having access to it. If this phenomenon can be correctly interpreted as having to do with consciousness, then there would be a P-conscious mental experience which is dissociated from access.
A stochastic optimality theory of preparedness and plasticity
Authors: Figueredo Aurelio José 
Published: February 2010

AbstractMany now consider “instinct” and “learning” opposite poles of a unidimensional continuum. An alternative model with two independently varying parameters predicts different selective pressures. Behavioral adaptation matches the organism's utilizations of stimuli and responses to their ecological validities: the mean validity over evolutionary time specifies the optimal initial potency of the prepared association; the variance specifies the optimal prepared plasticity.
Counterevidence from psychopharmacology, psychopathology, and psychobiology
Authors: Klein Donald F. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractDavey's discussion of phobias is criticized because of the lack of distinctions between the various classes of phobias. Psychopharmacological evidence indicates differing pathophysiologies. Clinical psychopharmacological distinctions are not congruent with either a strict phylogenetic preparedness model or with cognitive biases. Davey's critique of the laboratory bred animal studies seems far fetched. His hypothesis concerning the importance of historical significance is clearly ad hoc rather than based on comparative data.
Why are phobias irrational?
Authors: Lovibond Peter F. , Siddle David A. T. , Bond Nigel W. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWe endorse Davey's view that expectancy processes are intimately involved in fear reactions, but question his model on three grounds. First, the mechanism for generating expectancy bias to both ontogenetic and phylogenetic stimuli is not spelled out. Second, the selective association component is unnecessary. Third, the model fails to provide a clear explanation for the irrationality of phobic reactions.