An official website of the United States government
Cognitive processes do not occur by pure insertion and instead depend on the full complement of co-occurring mental processes, including perceptual and motor functions. As such, there is limited ecological validity to human neuroimaging experiments that use highly controlled tasks to isolate mental processes of interest. However, a growing literature shows how dynamic, interactive tasks have allowed researchers to study cognition as it more naturally occurs. Collective analysis across such neuroimaging experiments may answer broader questions regarding how naturalistic cognition is biologically distributed throughout the brain. We applied an unbiased, data-driven, meta-analytic approach that uses k-means clustering to identify core brain networks engaged across the naturalistic functional neuroimaging literature. Functional decoding allowed us to, then, delineate how information is distributed between these networks throughout the execution of dynamical cognition in realistic settings. This analysis revealed six recurrent patterns of brain activation, representing sensory, domain-specific, and attentional neural networks that support the cognitive demands of naturalistic paradigms. Although gaps in the literature remain, these results suggest that naturalistic fMRI paradigms recruit a common set of networks that allow both separate processing of different streams of information and integration of relevant information to enable flexible cognition and complex behavior.
more »
« less
Beyond Cognitive Templates: Re-Examining Template Metaphors Used for Animal Recognition and Navigation
Synopsis The term “cognitive template” originated from work in human-based cognitive science to describe a literal, stored, neural representation used in recognition tasks. As the study of cognition has expanded to nonhuman animals, the term has diffused to describe a wider range of animal cognitive tools and strategies that guide action through the recognition of and discrimination between external states. One potential reason for this nonstandardized meaning and variable employment is that researchers interested in the broad range of animal recognition tasks enjoy the simplicity of the cognitive template concept and have allowed it to become shorthand for many dissimilar or unknown neural processes without deep scrutiny of how this metaphor might comport with underlying neurophysiology. We review the functional evidence for cognitive templates in fields such as perception, navigation, communication, and learning, highlighting any neural correlates identified by these studies. We find that the concept of cognitive templates has facilitated valuable exploration at the interface between animal behavior and cognition, but the quest for a literal template has failed to attain mechanistic support at the level of neurophysiology. This may be the result of a misled search for a single physical locus for the “template” itself. We argue that recognition and discrimination processes are best treated as emergent and, as such, may not be physically localized within single structures of the brain. Rather, current evidence suggests that such tasks are accomplished through synergies between multiple distributed processes in animal nervous systems. We thus advocate for researchers to move toward a more ecological, process-oriented conception, especially when discussing the neural underpinnings of recognition-based cognitive tasks.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10310673
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Integrative and Comparative Biology
- Volume:
- 61
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1540-7063
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Cognitive abilities can vary dramatically among species. The relative importance of social and ecological challenges in shaping cognitive evolution has been the subject of a long-running and recently renewed debate, but little work has sought to understand the selective dynamics underlying the evolution of cognitive abilities. Here, we investigate recent selection related to cognition in the paper waspPolistes fuscatus—a wasp that has uniquely evolved visual individual recognition abilities. We generate high quality de novo genome assemblies and population genomic resources for multiple species of paper wasps and use a population genomic framework to interrogate the probable mode and tempo of cognitive evolution. Recent, strong, hard selective sweeps inP. fuscatuscontain loci annotated with functions in long-term memory formation, mushroom body development, and visual processing, traits which have recently evolved in association with individual recognition. The homologous pathways are not under selection in closely related wasps that lack individual recognition. Indeed, the prevalence of candidate cognition loci within the strongest selective sweeps suggests that the evolution of cognitive abilities has been among the strongest selection pressures inP. fuscatus’ recent evolutionary history. Detailed analyses of selective sweeps containing candidate cognition loci reveal multiple cases of hard selective sweeps within the last few thousand years on de novo mutations, mainly in noncoding regions. These data provide unprecedented insight into some of the processes by which cognition evolves.more » « less
-
Attention filters sensory inputs to enhance task-relevant information. It is guided by an “attentional template” that represents the stimulus features that are currently relevant. To understand how the brain learns and uses templates, we trained monkeys to perform a visual search task that required them to repeatedly learn new attentional templates. Neural recordings found that templates were represented across the prefrontal and parietal cortex in a structured manner, such that perceptually neighboring templates had similar neural representations. When the task changed, a new attentional template was learned by incrementally shifting the template toward rewarded features. Finally, we found that attentional templates transformed stimulus features into a common value representation that allowed the same decision-making mechanisms to deploy attention, regardless of the identity of the template. Altogether, our results provide insight into the neural mechanisms by which the brain learns to control attention and how attention can be flexibly deployed across tasks.more » « less
-
Social interactions are mediated by recognition systems, meaning that the cognitive abilities or phenotypic diversity that facilitate recognition may be common targets of social selection. Recognition occurs when a receiver compares the phenotypes produced by a sender with a template. Coevolution between sender and receiver traits has been empirically reported in multiple species and sensory modalities, though the dynamics and relative exaggeration of traits from senders versus receivers have received little attention. Here, we present a coevolutionary dynamic model that examines the conditions under which senders and receivers should invest effort in facilitating individual recognition. The model predicts coevolution of sender and receiver traits, with the equilibrium investment dependent on the relative costs of signal production versus cognition. In order for recognition to evolve, initial sender and receiver trait values must be above a threshold, suggesting that recognition requires some degree of pre-existing diversity and cognitive abilities. The analysis of selection gradients demonstrates that the strength of selection on sender signals and receiver cognition is strongest when the trait values are furthest from the optima. The model provides new insights into the expected strength and dynamics of selection during the origin and elaboration of individual recognition, an important feature of social cognition in many taxa. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Signal detection theory in recognition systems: from evolving models to experimental tests’.more » « less
-
Abstract Individual differences in behavior are the raw material upon which natural selection acts, but despite increasing recognition of the value of considering individual differences in the behavior of wild animals to test evolutionary hypotheses, this approach has only recently become popular for testing cognitive abilities. In order for the intraspecific approach with wild animals to be useful for testing evolutionary hypotheses about cognition, researchers must provide evidence that measures of cognitive ability obtained from wild subjects reflect stable, general traits. Here, we used a multi-access box paradigm to investigate the intra-individual reliability of innovative problem-solving ability across time and contexts in wild spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta). We also asked whether estimates of reliability were affected by factors such as age-sex class, the length of the interval between tests, or the number of times subjects were tested. We found significant contextual and temporal reliability for problem-solving. However, problem-solving was not reliable for adult subjects, when trials were separated by more than 17 days, or when fewer than seven trials were conducted per subject. In general, the estimates of reliability for problem-solving were comparable to estimates from the literature for other animal behaviors, which suggests that problem-solving is a stable, general trait in wild spotted hyenas.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icab040
