Towards A New Cognitive Neuroscience Modeling Natural Brain Dynamics

Decades of brain imaging experiments have revealed important insights into the architecture of the human brain and the detailed anatomic basis for the neural dynamics supporting human cognition. However, technical restrictions of traditional brain imaging approaches including functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) severely limit participants’ movements during experiments. As a consequence, our knowledge of the neural basis of human cognition is rooted in a dissociation of human cognition from what is arguably its foremost, and certainly its evolutionarily most determinant function, organizing our behavior so as to optimize its consequences in our complex, multi-scale, and ever-changing environment. The concept of natural cognition, therefore, should not be separated from our fundamental experience and role as embodied agents acting in a complex, partly unpredictable world. To gain new insights into the brain dynamics supporting natural cognition, we must overcome restrictions of traditional brain imaging technology. First, the sensors used must be lightweight and mobile to allow monitoring of brain activity during free participant movements. New hardware technology for electroencephalography (EEG) and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) allows recording electrical and hemodynamic brain activity while participants are freely moving. New data-driven analysis approaches must allow separation of signals arriving at the sensors from the brain and from non-brain sources (neck muscles, eyes, heart, the electrical environment, etc.). Independent component analysis (ICA) and related blind source separation methods allow separation of brain activity from non-brain activity from data recorded during experimental paradigms that stimulate natural cognition. Imaging the precisely timed, distributed brain dynamics that support all forms of our motivated actions and interactions in both laboratory and real-world settings requires new modes of data capture and of data processing. Synchronously recording participants’ motor behavior, brain activity, and other physiology, as well as their physical environment and external events may be termed mobile brain/body imaging ('MoBI'). Joint multi-stream analysis of recorded MoBI data is a major conceptual, mathematical, and data processing challenge. This Research Topic is one result of the first international MoBI meeting in Delmenhorst Germany in September 2013. During an intense workshop researchers from all over the world presented their projects and discussed new technological developments and challenges of this new imaging approach. Several of the presentations are compiled in this Research Topic that we hope may inspire new research using the MoBI paradigm to investigate natural cognition by recording and analyzing the brain dynamics and behavior of participants performing a wide range of naturally motivated actions and interactions.

Experimental evidence in humans and other mammalians indicates that complex neurodynamics is crucial for the emergence of higher-level intelligence. Dynamical neural systems with encoding in limit cycle and non-convergent attractors have gained increasing popularity in the past decade. The role of synchronization, desynchronization, and intermittent synchronization on cognition has been studied extensively by various authors, in particular by authors contributing to the present volume. This book addresses dynamical aspects of brain functions and cognition.

Two recent innovations, the emergence of formal cognitive models and the addition of cognitive neuroscience data to the traditional behavioral data, have resulted in the birth of a new, interdisciplinary field of study: model-based cognitive neuroscience. Despite the increasing scientific interest in model-based cognitive neuroscience, few active researchers and even fewer students have a good knowledge of the two constituent disciplines. The main goal of this edited collection is to promote the integration of cognitive modeling and cognitive neuroscience. Experts in the field will provide tutorial-style chapters that explain particular techniques and highlight their usefulness through concrete examples and numerous case studies. The book will also include a thorough list of references pointing the reader towards additional literature and online resources.

The fifth edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that reflects recent advances in the field. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The fifth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition—the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field. Many of the developments in cognitive neuroscience have been shaped by the introduction of novel tools and methodologies, and a new section is devoted to methods that promise to guide the field into the future—from sophisticated models of causality in brain function to the application of network theory to massive data sets. Another new section treats neuroscience and society, considering some of the moral and political quandaries posed by current neuroscientific methods. Other sections describe, among other things, new research that draws on developmental imaging to study the changing structure and function of the brain over the lifespan; progress in establishing increasingly precise models of memory; research that confirms the study of emotion and social cognition as a core area in cognitive neuroscience; and new findings that cast doubt on the so-called neural correlates of consciousness.

This volume brings together new papers advancing contemporary debates in foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues in cognitive neuroscience. The different perspectives presented in each chapter have previously been discussed between the authors, as the volume builds on the experience of Neural Mechanisms (NM) Online – webinar series on the philosophy of neuroscience organized by the editors of this volume. The contributed chapters pertain to five core areas in current philosophy of neuroscience. It surveys the novel forms of explanation (and prediction) developed in cognitive neuroscience, and looks at new concepts, methods and techniques used in the field. The book also highlights the metaphysical challenges raised by recent neuroscience and demonstrates the relation between neuroscience and mechanistic philosophy. Finally, the book dives into the issue of neural computations and representations. Assembling contributions from leading philosophers of neuroscience, this work draws upon the expertise of both established scholars and promising early career researchers.

Most brain related activity has focussed on specialized interests within individual disciplines. Recent multidisciplinary activity has provided the impetus to break down these boundaries and encourage a freer exchange of information across disciplines. This text reflects these developments. It spans the landscape of brain science to provide core information from 12 disciplines (including evolution, philosophy, anatomy, chemistry, computer science, brain dynamics, psychology, neurology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and brain imaging). In outlining how and why it is now possible to realistically model aspects of the brain's dynamics from such a wide range of intellectual endeavors, this book will prove itself useful to undergraduates, postgraduates and all those seeking a contemporary perspective and evaluation of the current status and future directions in the brain sciences.

"This book describes a new theoretical approach--Dynamic Field Theory (DFT)--that explains how people think and act"--