EditorialNew insights in categorical and coordinate processing of spatial relations
Section snippets
How did the hemispheric specializations for different spatial relation processing develop in the brain of humans and perhaps of other animals?
Kosslyn (1987) originally proposed a snowball mechanism, according to which, evolutionary pressures may favour unilateral control of some functions (action in particular), which in turn can influence the development in neighboring areas (or within the same hemisphere) of other functions, if these are closely-linked functionally to the original “seed”, even in cases where they may gain no direct benefit per se from being lateralized. Specifically, one primary developmental “seed” may be that the
Differences within and between objects
While intuitively the notion of spatial relation processing appears to apply to between objects relations within the whole field of vision, we also note that parts of complex objects and limbs of biological organisms can be specified by their positional codes within the object's configuration. This issue includes several papers focusing on within-object spatial relation processing (cf. Hugdahl et al.; Jellema & Perrett; Trojano et al.; Laeng, this issue). These studies suggest there may not be
Spatial relation processing across cognitive domains
While most of the research thus far has focused on perception of spatial relations, it should be mentioned that spatial relation processing extends into multiple domains beside perception; that is, imagery, working memory, long-term memory, action and verbal communication. It is likely that the precise characteristics of the relevant categorical and coordinate mechanisms could vary both in function and neuroanatomy with respect to the cognitive domain under scrutiny.
Table 1 presents a limited
Convergent neuroimaging techniques
The years following Kosslyn's original formulation of the categorical–coordinate hypothesis, the most used technique to test the presumed neural differentiation was the visual half field technique. While offering some support, visual half field studies have not always been successful, likely because they suffer inherent methodological limitations (cf. Jager & Postma, 2003); however, a metanalysis of all of the visual half field studies available at the time (Laeng, Chabris, & Kosslyn, 2003) has
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