Integrating cognitive psychology, neurology and neuroimaging

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Abstract

In the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in research effectively integrating cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, and behavioral neurology. This new work is typically conducting basic research into aspects of the human mind and brain. The present review features as examples of such integrations two series of studies by the author and his colleagues. One series, employing object recognition, mental motor imagery, and mental rotation paradigms, clarifies the nature of a cognitive process, imagined spatial transformations used in shape recognition. Among other implications, it suggests that when recognizing a hand's handedness, imagining one's body movement depends on cerebrally lateralized sensory-motor structures and deciding upon handedness depends on exact match shape confirmation. The other series, using cutaneous, tactile, and auditory pitch discrimination paradigms, elucidates the function of a brain structure, the cerebellum. It suggests that the cerebellum has non-motor sensory support functions upon which optimally fine sensory discriminations depend. In addition, six key issues for this integrative approach are reviewed. These include arguments for the value and greater use of: rigorous quantitative meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies; stereotactic coordinate-based data, as opposed to surface landmark-based data; standardized vocabularies capturing the elementary component operations of cognitive and behavioral tasks; functional hypotheses about brain areas that are consistent with underlying microcircuitry; an awareness that not all brain areas implicated by neuroimaging or neurology are necessarily directly involved in the associated cognitive or behavioral task; and systematic approaches to integrations of this kind.

Introduction

In 1990, comparatively few researchers were directly concerned with the relationships among cognitive psychology, behavioral neurology, and functional neuroimaging research. Ten years later there is now a striking expansion of attention to those interrelationships. The number of researchers with expert knowledge in, and contributions to, methodologies, data, and theory in all three domains are also steadily growing. Such researchers often identify themselves as cognitive neuroscientists (e.g., Gazzaniga, 2000).

Cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, and behavioral neurology each have widely accepted general characteristics that bear on their combination or integration, even if details vary in particular cases (e.g., Adams, Victor, & Ropper, 1997; Anderson, 1999; Boller & Grafman, 1997; Feinberg & Farah, 1996; Shallice, 1988; Toga, Mazziotta, & Frackowiak, 2000). Cognitive psychology experiments are useful in revealing behavioral variables, their inter-relationships, and methods of controlling cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes. They can also expose the components of task performance (i.e., the elementary operations) and reveal dissociations among behavioral processes (e.g., via experimental manipulations involving interference, priming, or load). Functional neuroimaging can reveal which areas of a healthy or injured brain are specifically activated by particular cognitive or behavioral tasks. Neurological studies can evaluate how damage to a brain area affects cognitive or behavioral processes and whether a cognitive or behavioral process requires the support of a specific brain area. Neurology and neuroimaging can show single and double dissociations between tasks, operations, and brain regions. Combined or integrated effectively, cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, and behavioral neurology can map elementary information processing operations onto specific brain areas and map sets of those operations/areas onto system-level models of specific psychological tasks.

The present review highlights research performed over the last decade which integrates experimental psychology, neurology, and neuroimaging. Each series of studies was designed to elucidate either the nature of a psychological process or the function of a brain structure. The first example of this approach illustrates its use in understanding the role of imagined spatial transformations in shape recognition. The second example illustrates the approach for the investigation of the function of the cerebellum. The studies discussed focus on object recognition, motor mental imagery, mental rotation and the perception of cutaneous, tactile, and auditory information. This research is principally that the author and his colleagues; space does not permit a full view of the relevant research areas, in which many others have made important contributions. In addition, this review focuses on research on humans, to the neglect of many, very significant findings with other animals. In addition, the concern here is with the investigation of basic scientific issues, rather than with clinical medical and rehabilitation applications, however promising and important such developments may be. In the final section of this review selected pivotal themes for this approach are discussed.

Section snippets

Cognitive psychology studies

Visual recognition of objects requires actively mapping visual sensations onto stored mental representations. Humans can recognize or discriminate the shapes of objects seen at various orientations in most instances (Biederman, 1987; Rock, 1973; Tarr, 1995; Ullman, 1996). If the shapes in question are sufficiently similar, such as an object and its mirror image, observers will reorient the objects or themselves by physical or mental means (Hinton & Parsons, 1988; Shepard & Cooper, 1982). This

Cognitive psychology studies of mental rotation

Studies of mental rotation (Parsons, submitted; Shepard, 1988; Shepard & Cooper, 1982) show that the rotated object is mentally represented at equally spaced intervening orientations, forming an approximately continuous rotation in three-dimensional space from its initial to its final orientation. The time required to complete the implicit rotation is often an approximately linear function of rotation angle. Investigation of this “mental rotation” process has produced psychophysical and

Current issues in integrating cognitive psychology, neuroimaging, and neurology

Two paramount goals of this approach are to map elementary information processing operations onto specific brain areas and to map sets of those operations/areas onto system-level models of specific psychological tasks. Achieving these goals under the present circumstances raises several key issues, some of which are discussed below.

Mapping elementary operations requires a convergence across paradigms and independent studies (also see Op de Beeck, Wagemans, & Vogels, 2001). No single task or

Conclusion

The foregoing review offers a glimpse of early integrations of data from cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, and behavioral neurology. These efforts illustrate the approach in the study of a cognitive process and in the study of a brain structure, with results in each case that may have potentially wide impact. Although there are a host of other noteworthy examples, there is yet no systematic or programmatic approach for such integrations. Our current reflections likely contain the

Acknowledgments

For their thoughtful discussions and expert assistance with the studies discussed in this paper, I owe a great debt of gratitude to James Bower, Peter Fox, and Michael Martinez. The work described in this article was supported by EJLB Foundation, NIH (NINDS) Grant NS3710901A1, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Human Brain Project, and the State of Texas.

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