Cognition and its

Computation

EL
PT
N
Historical Origin of Cognition Studies
 Origins of the human mind and cognition
• Humans – the only species that can reflect on its nature and
development
• Human mind is flexible, has the narrative ability, is imaginative,

EL
creative, subject to distortions and biases

PT
• Cognition or thoughts may be disordered

N
 Origins of the human mind and cognition
• How have the unique aspects of the human brain evolved from those
of mammals and primates?
• Has the mind and thought processes evolved and developed

EL
throughout our time on earth?

PT
• Are we primed to think in certain ways due to evolution?

N
• How does the mind become disturbed, and thoughts deviate if we
experience trauma or suffer from mental disturbance?
• Are our thoughts fundamentally prosocial or aggressive as a species?
Historical underpinnings of
cognition – paradigm shifts

EL
PT
N
Wikimedia commons
 EL
PT
N
The heart - seat of intellect, memory, emotions
and the spirit or soul of the individual

Wikimedia commons
 Aristotle:
• Heart - the seat of cognition and
perception
• The brain ‘cooled’ the passions of the
soul or heart

Galen (c. 130–200 A.D.), a Greek physician

• Rejected Aristotle’s belief that the heart

EL
was the seat of the soul or mind,

PT
• but he too believed that the soul or mind
consisted of “spirits” that emanated from

N
the heart; (spirits were considered like
water moving around the body)
• the brain made these spirits “noble.”

During the Renaissance, the soul and mind became localized, in the
head – perceptions memory other cognitive functions resided in
ventricles – the seat of the mind and the soul
 Renaissance thinkers

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

Detailed and accurate depictions of the ventricular
system of the brain - perception and cognition resided
in the ventricular cavities

EL
PT
René Descartes (1596–1650) Philosopher and
mathematician

N
Dualism- mind and body are distinct entities
that are independent and different in nature
Mind and body are distinct entities that are
independent and different in nature. Bodies
were like machines driven by biological
processes. But mind or the rational soul was
found only in humans.
Pineal gland is the seat of the rational soul
Wikimedia commons
 Modern thinkers
Thomas Willis (1621–1675)
Coined the termed Neurology – published The anatomy of the brain
and nerves (1664)
• Psychological functions of perception, movement, cognition, and memory
were all functions of the brain substance
• His observations were accompanied by detailed anatomical drawings by

EL
Christofer Wren (the Architect of St Paul’s Cathedral)

PT
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828)

N
• the brain is the organ of the “mind.”
• Postulated 35 mental faculties were located in
the cortex
• Development of various faculties caused a
change in the shape and size of areas of the
skull.
• These ideas gave rise to the field of
Phrenology
Later challenged by modern neuroscience
Wikimedia commons
 Timeline of events in modern neuroscience
The invention of the microscope at the beginning of the seventeenth century was a pivotal event for subsequent studies
of the microscopic structure of nerve tissue

1717 - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

used microscope to describe in details microbes and various nerve fibers.

EL
PT
1848 - Phineas Gage has his brain pierced by an iron rod.

N 1852 - Hermann Helmholtz

measured the speed of neural impulses in frogs.
 Timeline of events in modern neuroscience

1861 - Paul Broca described his work on the neural localization

of language

1889 - Cajal argued that nerve cells are separate

EL
elements, contrary to Golgi's nerve net hypothesis.

PT
N
Development of EEG (1920s), CT Functional magnetic resonance imaging at the
Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research
scan (1970s), PET & MRI (1980s), &
fMRI (1990s). Wikimedia commons
N
PT
EL
 Emergence of Behaviorism:
1900-1950

EL
PT
John Watson

N
B. F. Skinner: only
observable phenomena are
scientific

Wikimedia commons
 History of Cognition studies
in Psychology
• BEHAVIOURISM and LEARNING THEORY  dominated American
psychology for half a century
• Limitations: Could not describe the challenges associated with information
recall

EL
The Information Processing model portrays the mind as possessing a

PT
structure consisting of components for processing (storing, retrieving,
transforming, using) information and procedures for using the

N
components

Like Behaviorism, the Cognitive Information Processing model holds

that learning consists partially of the formation of associations between
new and stored information
• http://www.labr.net/2016/10/01/cognitive-information-processing-and-memory/
 How the nervous system controls behavior
The Hixon Symposium (1948)
• In September 1948 at CalTech, a group of Karl Lashley, Psychologist  "The
eminent scientists representing several
Problem of Serial Order in Behavior,"
disciplines under the chairmanship of H. W.
Bronsin met for a conference on Lashley identified some of the major
"Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior," components needed for a cognitive

EL
science
sponsored by the Hixon Fund
Lashley: Rather than behavior being

PT
• John von Neumann, mathematician 
showed a striking comparison between the
consequent upon environmental
electronic computer (then a new discovery) promptings, central brain processes

N
and the brain actually precede and dictate the ways in
which an organism carries out complex
behavior
• Warren McCulloch, mathematician and
neurophysiologist, talked about "Why the
Mind is in the Head" to discuss on how the
brain processes information - exploited
parallels between the nervous system and
"logical devices" in order to figure out why we
perceive the world the way we do
Intellectual ancestors of Cog Science
Gestalt
Psychology
Koffka Electrophysiological
Kohler mechanisms
PSYCHOLOGY

EL
Broca
NEUROSCIENCE
Geschwind

PT
ARTIFICAL
INTELLIGENCE LINGUISTICS

N
Development of Chomsky
computational
models of cognitive
performance
The emergence of Cognitive Science

Criticism of
Behaviorism

EL
Breakthroughs in Shift from
biological and Cognitive rudimentary

PT
neural sciences Science Philosophy

N
Political
scenario
 The political changes
War - stimulated scientific and technological activities
• demanded calculating machines that could "crunch“ large sets of
numbers very quickly. Computers soon became a reality.
Weiner coined CYBERNETICS (1948)

• Norbert Wiener, Mathematician - asked to devise more accurate anti- linkage of developments in
aircraft machinery. They designed a system for improving anti-aircraft understanding the human nervous

EL
fire in which feedback would play a critical role system, the electronic computer, and
• They created a self-steering device; Information from radar would be the operation of other machines

PT
employed to calculate adjustments to gun controls; after new shots • the functioning of the living organism
were fired, information about the results would be used to readjust the and the operation of the new
communication machines exhibited

N
gun controls
crucial parallels

Wiener and his associate, Julian Bigelow concluded that:

there were important analogies between the feedback aspects of Cybernetics represented a first attempt
engineering devices and the homeostatic processes by which the human
nervous system sustains purposive activity at a broad, multidisciplinary endeavor
to explain mental phenomena
 WWI & II:
Human/Machine
interactions

EL
PT
N
The war and scientific investigations

• Medical practitioners – to evaluate which tasks

could be carried out and which ones had been
compromised by injury to the nervous system
Important agents in Cognitive Science
• The study forThe war and
the selection of men fit to lead

EL
Mathematics and computation
combat units scientific The neuronal model

PT
The cybernetics synthesis
investigations The information theory
• Studies on Propaganda and Personnel selection

N
Neuropsychological syndromes
for combat units

Alan Turing and Kenneth Craik's interest in

computers in England, to Alexander Luria's research
with brain-injured patients in Russia during the war
 Turing (1950) suggested that one could program a machine
that it would be impossible to discriminate its answers from
those by a living human being - a notion immortalized as
the "Turing machine test."

“If an observer cannot distinguish the responses of a

programmed machine from those of a human being, the
Alan Turing machine is said to have passed the Turing test”

EL
Mathematics and (Turing 1963)

PT
Alan Turing
computation

N
The implications of these ideas were seized by scientists
interested in human thought:
if they could describe with precision the behavior or
thought processes of an organism, they might be able to
design a computing machine that operated in identical
fashion
 Hixon Symposium
Why the mind is in the Head
• The operations of a nerve cell and its connections with other
nerve cells (a so-called neural network) could be modeled in
terms of logic
McCulloch and Pitts
(1943) The • Nerves could be thought of as logical statements, and the all-or-
none property of nerves firing (or not firing) could be compared to

EL
Neuronal
The Neuronal Model
the operation of the propositional calculus (where a statement is
either true or false)

PT
Model • This model allowed one to think of a neuron as being activated

N
and then firing another neuron, in the same way that an element
or a proposition in a logical sequence can imply some other
proposition: thus, whether one is dealing with logic or neurons,
entity A plus entity B can imply entity C.

• The analogy between neurons and logic could be

thought of in electrical terms-as signals that
either pass, or fail to pass, through a circuit
 Information Theory
Claude Shannon, an electrical engineer at M.I.T:
• saw that the principles of logic (in terms of true and false propositions) can
be used to describe the two states (on and off) of electromechanical relay
switches
• Shannon provided an early suggestion that electrical circuits (of the kind in
a computer) could embody fundamental operations of thought

EL
• During the next ten years, working in part with Warren Weaver, Shannon
went on to develop the key notion of information theory:

PT
• information can be thought of simply as a single decision between
two equally plausible alternatives

N
 Neuropsychological Syndromes
• During WWI &II, research on aphasia (language deficit), agnosia (difficulty in
recognition), and other forms of mental pathology consequent upon injury to the
brain

• Considerable convergence across cultural and linguistic boundaries (New York,

Oxford, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow)

EL
Findings:

PT
• Aphasia assumed similar forms despite wide differences across languages
• More regularity seen in the organization of cognitive capacities in the nervous

N
system than by environmental influences
• The neuropsychological breakdown unexplained through simple stimulus-response
disruption
Eg: In certain forms of aphasia, the general sentence frame was preserved, but subjects
could not correctly slot individual words into the frame
In other aphasias, the sentence frame broke down, but individual content words
carried meaning
 Criticism against reflex-arc models of thought (Pavlov)
 W. Ross Ashby and a few others
Ashby's Design for a Brain (1952): "My aim is simply to copy the living brain. In particular
if the living brain fails in certain characteristic ways, then I want my artificial brain to fail
too. I have attempted to deduce what is necessary, what properties the nervous system
must have if it is to behave at once mechanistically and adaptively“

• Ashby's work intrigued young scholars George Miller, Marvin Minsky, Allen

EL
Newell, and Herbert Simon – architects of the cognitive revolution

PT
• In neuropsychology, Donald Hebb - the developing nervous system
responsible for many aspects of visual perception and also to illuminate

N
processes of learning and the growth and subsequent decline of intelligence
(Hebb 1949)

• In anthropology, Gregory Bateson introduced his notions about feedback

systems in social systems
Wikimedia commons
• New mathematical innovations, such as Markov processes and stochastic
models, quickly came to the attention of young workers in the social sciences
 Conception of Cog Sc
Symposium at MIT – 1956, Sept 11
IBM –
testing Hebb’s Theory
of Cell assemblies
using the then largest

EL
computer
Newell & Simon Noam Chomsky
Logic Machine Information theory

PT
for language
COGNITIVE grammar

N
Szikali
SCIENCE
Speed of G Miller
Perceptual Short Term
recognition Swets and Birdsall Memory
Signal Detection The magical
Theory in Perceptual number 7
recognition
 COGNITIVE SCIENCE –
INTERDISCIPLINARY ACTIVITIES

EL
PT
N
Cognitive science in 1978
Each line joining two disciplines represents interdisciplinary inquiry
 COGNITION RESEARCH TODAY
 Take a look, and you'll see, into your imagination
 Kyoto University : Using fMRI signals and Deep Neural Network AI, researchers decode and predict what a subject is seeing or
imagining
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170531094850.htm

 Click-on arm prosthesis controlled by patient's thoughts

 Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre: Last Friday, the first patient in the Netherlands received his click-on robotic arm. By
means of a new technique, this robotic arm is clicked directly onto the bone. A unique characteristic of this prosthesis is that it
can be controlled by the patient's own thoughts
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170425093016.htm

EL
 Controlling turtle motion with human thought

PT
 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology: Researchers have developed a technology that can remotely control an
animal's movement with human thought

N
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323085038.htm

 Can a brain-computer interface convert your thoughts to text?

 University of Bremen: Recent research shows brain-to-text device capable of decoding speech from brain signals. While this might
enhance the capabilities of already existing speech interfaces with devices, it could be a potential game-changer for those with
speech pathologies, and even more so for "locked-in" patients who lack any speech or motor function
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161025114035.htm

 Mind-controlled toys: The next generation of Christmas presents?

 University of Warwick: The next generation of toys could be controlled by the power of the mind, thanks to new research
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161215105247.htm
Cognition and
technology

EL
PT
N
 Studying Cognition
Nanometers

Micrometers
What does it mean to
understand
From

EL
cognition? Millimeters
molecules

PT
A theory is required to integrate
the elements Centimeters
to

N
Brain ingredients – (anatomical behaviour
units, its electrochemical signals
to generate higher cognitive Meters
phenomena

Behaviour
 • The study of Cognition has come a
long way from prehistoric times
• The study of cognition as we know
it today is the product of a time
when psychology, anthropology and
To linguistics were redefining
themselves and computer science

EL
To
summarize… and neuroscience as disciplines

PT
summarize… were coming into existence

N
• Several disciplines realized that the
solution to some of their problems
depended crucially on solving
problems traditionally allocated to
other disciplines
 The next cognitive revolution?
To augment human cognition

Strengths
HUMAN MACHINE

EL
Human expertise Digital Knowledge

Self Directed Goals Large scale Maths

PT
Individual
Pattern discovery
Common sense

N
Institutional
Value Judgment Statistical
Reasoning

Using Computer’s skills to help in daily living

- For decisions requiring a higher degree of
cognitive complexity
 EL
PT
N
Frontal Lobe and Cognition
 The Nervous System
• The brain is just one part of the nervous system includes the various sensory systems that gather
information from other parts of the body and the motor systems that control movement

• Considerable information processing often takes place outside the brain

EL
PT
N
 Organization of the brain
What can be seen externally

• The spinal cord, is protected by the • The central nervous system (CNS)
bony vertebrae refers to the brain and spinal
cord

EL
• Part of the brainstem, which is a
phylogenetically older area of the • The brain is continuous with the

PT
brain continuous with the spinal spinal cord through an opening in
cord the skull (foramen magnum).

• The hemispheres; in humans, much • The peripheral nervous system

N
of the brainstem is covered by the (PNS) consists of neurons and/or
two cerebral hemispheres nerves located outside of the
brain and spinal cord

The central and peripheral

nervous systems
Source : Standring, 2005
 Thinking about the Brain

• 1.2-1.5 kg of mass • The brain is not an independent agent residing in the skull

• Contains one hundred billion nerve cells (approx 20 billion in cortex • As the spinal cord, it extends the length of the backbone, and with
alone) – communicating with one another through one hundred trillion nerves convey information to and from every part of the body
connections
• Every breath, every movement, emotion, reflex is controlled directly

EL
• Each neuron has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons or indirectly by the nervous system

 It operates in the background of your every action, sensation, and thought

PT
 It allows you to reflect vividly on the past
 To make informed judgements about the present
 To plan rational courses of action into the future

N
 It generates conscious awareness – free to choose what one will do next

The most conceited entity in the planet !!!!

The most complex machine in the Universe
but…. who says so?
 Basic Brain Directions

EL
PT
N
https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/neuroscience/chapter/anatomical-terminology/

The dorsal direction is also

The terms rostral (towards the The terms dorsal and ventral The terms medial and lateral
called superior, the ventral
front or “head” end; anterior) and are used to refer to the top and are used in reference to the body
is also called inferior
caudal (towards the back or “tail” bottom (or underside) of the midline with medial towards, and
end; posterior) are used brain. lateral away from, the midline
The rostral, roughly the same
generally to refer to the front and
as frontal and caudal, is
back of the brain
sometimes called posterior
 Anatomical Planes

Sagittal

EL
PT
Horizontal

N
Frontal or coronal

Baars and Gage, 2010

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN

EL
PT
N https://in.pinterest.com/pin/613545149208084842/

7
The adult brain can be subdivided grossly along a rostral-caudal dimension into five
regions:
• The telencephalon is the rostral-most subdivision of the brain consisting of the two cerebral
hemispheres;

• The diencephalon includes the thalamus and the hypothalamus which is “below” the thalamus and
also composed of a number of individual areas, is responsible for the central control of homeostasis in
the body

• The mesencephalon or midbrain, lying between the diencephalon and the metencephalon; a number
of structures in this part of the brain are involved in reflexes.

EL
• The metencephalon (“between” brain) consists of two major structures, the cerebellum (the large
ball-shaped structure at the base of the brain), and the pons (bridge) which connects the

PT
cerebellum to the rest of the brain.

• The myelencephalon (long white marrow structure) is also referred to as the medulla or medulla
oblongata and is so-named because it contains many of the long pathways or tracts (axons or

N
processes of neurons traveling together in a bundle) in the brain, for example, axons projecting to the
spinal cord; it is the medulla which is continuous with the spinal cord at the foramen magnum.
• The forebrain refers to the rostral-most subdivisions of the brain, and includes the telencephalon and the diencephalon; the forebrain is the most
recently evolved area of the brain phylogenetically.

• The hindbrain consists of the caudal brain subdivisions and includes the metencephalon and the myelencephalon

• The brainstem is a collective term used to refer to the mesencephalon, metencephalon, and myelencephalon;

• Like the hindbrain, the brainstem is considered an older area phylogenetically

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN BRAIN

EL
Bilaterally symmetrical organisms organize

PT
movements through sensory information

N
9
Major Portions of Brain

EL
PT
N
 Mathematical Facial recognition,
The Forebrain reasoning, logic musical, geometrical

Left H Right H

EL
PT
N
Motor Control
Human brain is neuroplastic
Other areas can take up functionality 11
 Hemispheres
• Cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres

• Joined by a bundle of fibers called corpus callosum that

transmits messages from one side to the other

• Each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body

EL
• In general, the left hemisphere controls speech,

PT
comprehension, arithmetic, and writing

• The right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability,

N
artistic, and musical skills

• The left hemisphere is dominant in hand use and

language in about 92% of people

• Not all functions of the hemispheres are shared

 Cerebral Cortex
• The surface of the cerebrum is called the cortex

• The cortex contains 16 billion neurons (the

cerebellum has 70 billion = 86 billion total) that
are arranged in specific layers

EL
• The nerve cell bodies color the cortex grey-
brown giving it its name – gray matter

PT
• Beneath the cortex are long nerve fibers
(axons) that connect brain areas to each other

N
— called white matter

• The folding increases the brain’s surface area

allowing more neurons to fit inside the skull,
enabling higher functions

A lateral cross-section of the human brain

13
 Frontal lobe
•Personality, behavior,
emotions
Lobal Functions Occipital lobe
•Interprets vision (color, light,
movement)
•Judgment, planning,
problem solving
•Speech: speaking and
writing (Broca’s area)
•Body movement (motor
strip) • Sensory control
•Intelligence, concentration, • Orientation of space

EL
self awareness • Thinking
• Emotional Control

PT
• Color
• Movement

N
Parietal lobe Memory
•Interprets language, words Language
•Sense of touch, pain,
temperature (sensory strip)
•Interprets signals from
vision, hearing, motor, Temporal lobe
sensory and memory •Understanding language (Wernicke’s area)
•Spatial and visual perception •Memory
•Hearing
•Sequencing and organization
 CEREBELLUM

EL
PT
N
The outer portion contains neurons, and
the inner area communicates with the
cerebral cortex. Its function is to
• Body control
• Motor
memory
coordinate voluntary muscle movements
and to maintain posture, balance and
equilibrium
16
Deep structures of
the brain

EL
Hypothalamus:
Located in the floor of the third ventricle and is the master control of the
autonomic system

PT
Controls behaviors such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and sexual response
Regulates body temperature, blood pressure, emotions, and secretion of
hormones

N
Pituitary gland:
Lies in a small pocket of bone at the skull base
Connected to the hypothalamus of the brain by the pituitary stalk. Known as the
“master gland”
Controls other endocrine glands in the body
Secretes hormones that control sexual development, promote bone and muscle
growth, and respond to stress

19
 Deep structures of
the brain

EL
Pineal Gland:
Located behind the third ventricle

PT
Helps regulate the body’s internal clock and circadian rhythms by
secreting melatonin
Basal ganglia:

N
Includes the caudate, putamen and globus pallidus. These nuclei work
with the cerebellum to coordinate fine motions, such as fingertip
movements
Limbic system:
The seat of emotions
Included in this system are the cingulate gyri, hypothalamus, amygdala
(emotional reactions) and hippocampus (memory)

20
Projection tracts –
The carriers of
information

EL
• Projection fibers of the brain, -
a type of white matter tract that

PT
connects the cortex with other
areas in the CNS, e.g. deep nuclei,

N
brainstem, cerebellum or spine.
They may be efferent (motor) or
afferent tracts (sensory)

21
Ventricles and Cerebrospinal fluid

EL
• The brain has hollow fluid-filled cavities called ventricles

PT
• Inside the ventricles is a ribbon-like structure called the choroid
plexus that makes clear colorless cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)

N
• CSF flows within and around the brain and spinal cord to help
cushion it from injury

• This circulating fluid is constantly being absorbed and replenished

 Skull
• The purpose of the bony skull is to protect the brain from injury
• The skull is formed from 8 bones that fuse together along suture lines
• These bones include the frontal, parietal (2), temporal (2), sphenoid, occipital and ethmoid The face is
formed from 14 paired bones including the maxilla, zygoma, nasal, palatine, lacrimal, inferior nasal
conchae, mandible, and vomer

EL
Inside the skull are three distinct areas: anterior fossa, middle fossa, and posterior

PT
N
A view of the cranial nerves at the
base of the skull with the brain
removed. Cranial nerves originate from
the brainstem, exit the skull through
holes called foramina, and travel to the
parts of the body they innervate

23
Blood supply in
the brain

EL
• Blood is carried to the brain by two paired arteries, the
internal carotid arteries and the vertebral arteries

PT
• The internal carotid arteries supply most of the
cerebrum

N
• The common carotid artery courses up the neck and
divides into the internal and external carotid arteries

• The brain’s anterior circulation is fed by the internal

carotid arteries (ICA) and the posterior circulation is fed
by the vertebral arteries (VA)

24
 Human brain…in the last decades
Neurogenetics – Human Genome Project

Brain Mapping –

EL
•The Human Connectome Project
•The human Brain Project
•BRAIN Initiative: To plot the trillions of neural connections in mouse and human brains - to give insight into the underlying basis for sensory

PT
function, thought, memory and emotion—and will provide a new understanding of what in these circuits goes awry in psychiatric and
neurodegenerative diseases

The Malleable Brain – research on neuroplasticity of brain

N
New Roles for Glial Cells

Neural Implants

Decision Making – Daniel Kahneman

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/10-big-ideas-in-10-years-of-brain-science/ 25
“If the brain were so
simple we could
understand it, we
would be so simple

EL
we couldn't”

PT
Lyall Watson

N
FRONTAL LOBE

EL
AND

PT
COGNITION
N
Phineas gage and interest in the Frontal Lobe

EL
PT
N
John Harlow Phineas Gage

Source: Wikipedia commons

Changes in Phineas gage
Prior to accident : Post-accident:
hardworking, • Changed man,
energetic, transformed into a
motivated and surly, aggressive,
pleasant alcoholic Hannah Damasio
• unable to hold down a

EL
job

PT
• His acquaintances
described him as "no

N
longer Gage” after the
incident

Source: Wikipedia commons

 Historical evolution of frontal lobe studies

EL
PT
N
Constantin Von Economo
1876-1931 P Broca
1824-1880

A Luria
W Penfield 1902-1977
Source: Wikipedia commons
1891-1976
Anatomical structures of the frontal lobes

PFC

EL
PT
Subdivisions
of the frontal

N
lobe

Source: Wikipedia commons

Gazzaniga et al, 2002
 Prefrontal Cortex and Cognition

Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2002 - a

ventral fronto-parietal system is
involved with mirror movements
Involved in

EL
Working Memory
Baddeley, 2003
N F Dronkers in 1996 - Apraxia
patients showed that a cortical area

PT
beneath the frontal lobes was involved
in motor planning of speech

N Source: Wikipedia commons

Source: https://theaphasiacenter.com/2019/09/aphasia-and-apraxia/
 Prefrontal Cortex and Cognition
PFC Neural networks and cognitive processes
Executive functions: • Complex cognitive processes not localized to
brain regions in isolation, but properties of
neural networks
Executive functions are temporal organization of
• Gazzaley & D’Esposito, 2006
goal-directed actions in cognition, language and

EL
behavior.
• Inter-connections between PFC and all cortical

PT
and subcortical structures puts the PFC in a
Cognitive functions - Working memory, preparatory
unique neuroanatomical position to monitor
set and inhibitory control

N
and manipulate diverse cognitive and affective
processes
Barbas, 2000
Other components of executive control -
generation, inhibition, set shifting, concept
• Functional evidence for PFC networks and their
formation, temporal sequencing, insight,
role in control processes
interpersonal perspective taking (theory of mind),
and social and real-world executive performance
 Frontal lobe dysfunction
Cummings (1993):
 supplementary motor dysfunction, deficits in controlled
Five distinctive frontal– subcortical
movement and repetitive motor behaviors can be seen
systems:
(Gorno-Tempini et al, 2004)
(1) Supplementary motor area,
 eye movement injury, gaze control is diminished (Chou &
(2) Frontal eye fields
Lisberger, 2004);
(3) Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
 dorsolateral dysfunction, loss of executive control and
(4) Orbitofrontal cortex
neuropsychological deficits in working memory, problems

EL
(5) Anterior cingulate cortex
with planning (Boone et al., 1999);
 orbitofrontal dysfunction causes social deficits, including

PT
Lesions in these different frontal or
dis-inhibition with sparing of cognition (Damasio, 2003)
subcortical circuits lead to distinctive clinical
 cingulate lesions - amotivation (Tekin & Cummings, 2002)

N
syndromes

Psychiatric syndromes linked with frontal–subcortical circuits,

particularly depression, mania, and obsessive–compulsive disorder
 THE FRONTAL LOBE SYNDROME
• Difficulty holding information in mind
• Distractibility
• Poor organization and planning
• Emotional blunting and lability
• Perseveration (e.g., uncontrollable repetition of a particular response)
• Utilization behavior

EL
• Social inappropriateness
• Impairment in judgment, insight, and initiative

PT
(Mesulam, 2002)

N
The diversity in phenomenology is caused by the interaction among three factors:
(1) the variety of etiologies associated with PFC dysfunction
(2) the different anatomical localizations, neurochemical alterations, and progression rates
of these conditions
(3) the wide range of cognitive control processes mediated by the PFC
 Top down enhancement and suppression in
Frontal Lobe syndrome
Deficits of top-down enhancement:
• inability to attend to environmental stimuli Deficits in top-down suppression:
(sensory control) • increased distractibility

EL
• emotional lability and social disinhibition
• failure to maintain relevant information in • perseveration and utilization behavior

PT
mind
• difficulty in planning and organization

N
• emotional blunting and apathy (internal
state: affective control)
• deficits in initiating movements (motor
control)

Cummings, 2017