Trends in cognitive sciences
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Oct 2015
ReviewFrontostriatal Gating of Tinnitus and Chronic Pain.
Tinnitus and chronic pain are sensory-perceptual disorders associated with negative affect and high impact on well-being and behavior. It is now becoming increasingly clear that higher cognitive and affective brain systems are centrally involved in the pathology of both disorders. ⋯ If this frontostriatal system is compromised, long-lasting disturbances are the result. Parallels in both systems are striking and mutually informative, and progress in understanding central gating mechanisms might provide a new impetus to the therapy of tinnitus and chronic pain.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Feb 2015
ReviewAnesthesia and neuroimaging: investigating the neural correlates of unconsciousness.
In the past 15 years, rapid technological development in the field of neuroimaging has led to a resurgence of interest in the study of consciousness. However, the neural bases of consciousness and the boundaries of unconscious processing remain poorly understood. ⋯ In this review we summarize findings from functional neuroimaging studies that have used anesthetic drugs to study cognition at different levels of conscious awareness. We relate the results to those of psychophysical studies of cognition and explore their potential usefulness in interpreting clinical findings from studies of non-responsive patients.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Feb 2015
The publication and reproducibility challenges of shared data.
The amount of shared data available for re-analysis has greatly increased in the last few years. Here we discuss some of the challenges raised by the analysis of these shared datasets and propose some strategies to address these issues.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Feb 2015
ReviewPredictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding.
Music has always played a central role in human culture. The question of how musical sounds can have such profound emotional and rewarding effects has been a topic of interest throughout generations. ⋯ We summarize how complex cognitive abilities and cortical processes integrate with fundamental subcortical reward and motivation systems in the brain to give rise to musical pleasure. This work builds on previous theoretical models that emphasize the role of prediction in music appreciation by integrating these ideas with recent neuroscientific evidence.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Apr 2014
ReviewSupra-personal cognitive control and metacognition.
The human mind is extraordinary in its ability not merely to respond to events as they unfold but also to adapt its own operation in pursuit of its agenda. This 'cognitive control' can be achieved through simple interactions among sensorimotor processes, and through interactions in which one sensorimotor process represents a property of another in an implicit, unconscious way. So why does the human mind also represent properties of cognitive processes in an explicit way, enabling us to think and say 'I'm sure' or 'I'm doubtful'? We suggest that 'system 2 metacognition' is for supra-personal cognitive control. It allows metacognitive information to be broadcast, and thereby to coordinate the sensorimotor systems of two or more agents involved in a shared task.