Attention/ Memory/Learning: double dissociation between ACC and PFC

I recently came across two studies both of which were pointing towards a double dissociation between ACC and PFC, in the realm of Working Memory Attentional processes in one case and the learning mechanisms (or acquisition and performance of a cognitive skill) in the other case.

In the first study by Kane and Engle, a stroop interference task was used to find the different attentional factors at work that determine the successful execution of the task. Using some clever experiments, it was demonstrated that two selective attentional mechanisms were involved- one that was related to goal maintenance and was active pre-stimulus presentation and the other that was active post-stimulus presentation and was related to inhibition of inappropriate bottom-up responses (the automatic response as per the linguistic color-denoting word in incongruent condition instead of as per the actual color of the word that was demanded by the task) and selection of relevant response from the competing responses.

As per the abstract of the study:

Individual differences in working-memory (WM) capacity predicted performance on the Stroop task in 5 experiments, indicating the importance of executive control and goal maintenance to selective attention. When the Stroop task encouraged goal neglect by including large numbers of congruent trials (RED presented in red), low WM individuals committed more errors than did high WM individuals on the rare incongruent trials (BLUE in red) that required maintaining access to the "ignore-the-word" goal for accurate responding. In contrast, in tasks with no or few congruent trials, or in high-congruency tasks that followed low-congruency tasks, WM predicted response-time interference. WM was related to latency, not accuracy, in contexts that reinforced the task goal and so minimized the difficulty of actively maintaining it. The data and a literature review suggest that Stroop interference is jointly determined by 2 mechanisms, goal maintenance and competition resolution, and that the dominance of each depends on WM capacity, as well as the task set induced by current and previous contexts.

As per this line of reasoning, errors in the stroop task are thought to result from failure to actively maintain a goal in mind and may thus be related to memory retrieval per se. On the other hand, reaction time slowing is thought to result from a post-stimulus attentional process - a failure to quickly bias competition towards the correct representation rather than the incorrect representation and might also be perceived as an attentional control mechanism- whereby attention is not diverted to irrelevant stimuli that are not consistent with the goal in WM.

Developing Intelligence presents some additional observations to bolster the argument:

• Across all subjects, the amount of RT facilitation (i.e., how much faster congruent trials are than neutral trials) correlates with error interference (i.e., how much more accurate neutral trials are than incongruent trials), suggesting that goal maintenance failure is behind both of these phenomena. In contrast, there is no correlation between the RT facilitation effect and RT interference, as would be expected if goal maintenance failure actually gives rise to all of these measures, nor is there a correlation between error & latency interference. The implication being that errors (and the related RT facilitation) are due to one process and response time latency/interference due to another process involved in attending to ambiguous (multiple response generating) stimuli.
• On high-congruency Stroop tasks, schizophrenics show increased errors on incongruent relative to congruent trials, and increased facilitation on congruent relative to neutral trials. The implication being that in schizophrenics only one of the attention mechanism is selectively dysfunctional - that related to goal maintenance. As presumably, schizophrenics do not show abnormal patterns of reaction times (except for increased RT facilitation on congruent trails governed by the lack of maintenance of goal - 'ignore-the-color') , thus, the second mechanism involving selection of competing responses is intact.
• ERP studies of Stroop tasks have identified a wave that may originate from anterior cingulate (ACC) and appears to correspond to response selection and competition processes; in contrast, the activity of a different wave up to 800 ms before stimulus presentation predicts correct performance on the next stimulus (and appears to originate from polar or dorsolateral frontal cortex [dlPFC]). The implication being that dissociated brain regions are involved in priming for the response (goal maintain ace) and selection of response ( conflict resolution - inhibition of inappropriate responses)
• Event-related fMRI shows a strong negative correlation between delay-period dlPFC activity and Stroop interference, whereas ACC activity is tied to the presentation of incongruent stimuli. The implication being that PFC activity is related to errors and thus the process of goal maintenance, while ACC activity is related to peculiarities arising from incongruence - that is when competing responses are available- and thus tied to the process of response selection (inhibition of inappropriate response).

A clinching observation that could seal the argument about two dissociated mechanisms would be observing a correlation between errors on incongruent trials under 0 congruence condition (where the effect of goal maintenance has been effectively factored out by forcing subjects to keep the goal in mind on every trial), or better to display the goal (the rule that you have to choose as per the color and not the linguistic word) while the stimuli are presented to ensure that the goal is maintained constantly, and observe the correlations between errors in preceding condition and response time latencies/interference in the normal stroop task. This correlation would ensure that there indeed is an independent attentional mechanism that is independent of goal maintenance and is dependent only on conflict resolution.

In the second study by Fincham and Anderson, a learning paradigm was used whereby some sports names were associated with some arithmetical rules (that were either implicitly learned or explicitly told) and in the trials the subjects were required to retrieve the rule and apply it. There were four conditions - a visible-rule and rule-retrieval condition (supposed to measure the effects of the rule retrieval process) and a reverse/ forward calculation condition (supposed to measure the effect of rule complexity condition - a forward-reverse application of rule introduces another control step).

The authors discovered that in the first experiment, where there were four different trial conditions, recall (rule-retrieval condition) had a significant effect on both latencies and errors, they also found (but glossed over) a minor effect found of direction (or complexity of rule application) on the errors and latency and found no recall by direction interaction. Thus, it is evident that recall (or rule retrieval) and direction (or rule complexity/manipulation) are two different factors affecting performance. However imaging studies were not that helpful. Instead of finding a selective ACC activation effect linked to direction (as per their proposal of ACC as an attentional control region) and a selective PFC activation effect linked to recall (as per their proposal of PFC as a region involved in retrieval), they found that both recall and direction had effects on ACC and PFC activations.

Their second experiment was done with the purpose of dissociating the recall (retrieval) and direction (control) components. However they confounded the study by simultaneously introducing two variables- an additional direction task supposedly requiring an additional control step and not affecting retrieval at all, and a practice variable supposedly only affecting recall (retrieval) and not affecting control (rule manipulation) at all. This however cannot be taken for granted. All 3 trials in this experiment were recall trials. They present results for initial trial, a forward direction trial after some practice and a reverse direction trial after some practice. In my opinion, they should also have provided a simple direction-neutral trial after some practice. Comparison between this and the initial trial (which were same in all respects accept for practice) would have enabled a conclusive association of practice with retrieval ease and with decrease in PFC activation.

Even if the two practice trials (reverse + forward combined) are taken as a substitute for that direction- neutral practice trial (which they unfortunately did not conduct), still one can only derive the decrease in PFC activation due to practice (or ease of retrieval) relationship as a conclusion of this study. The increase in ACC that they observed between the initial trial and the final trials (involving reverse/ forward direction manipulation) are the same results that they observed in experiment one (whereby forward and reverse manipulations in both recall/ explicit condition led to more errors/ latency/ ACC activation) . They prefer to explain this as implying that ACC activation was required because an additional control step was involved); a more parsimonious ( and more in line with the current views of the functions of ACC) explanations is that when the reverse/ forward direction condition is added , then the stimuli that is presented (and which also contains the cue as to in which direction the calculation needs to be done) leads to a stroop-like default automatic forward direction application of the rule and ACC activity is required to choose between the competing responses (if reverse direction cue is present than forward direction response needs to be inhibited). This would predict more RT and errors in the reverse condition (incongruent trials) as opposed to forward conditions (congruent trials). One can even have some control conditions whereby novel sports words (with a novel explicit rule with no directionality associated with it) are displayed in some trials and reactions times and errors measured on these. If the resulting results are same as in Stroop task, perhaps the same mechanisms are in work.

The greater activation in ACC could also be, paradoxically, due to practice. To rule this out, the initial trials having both forward and reverse direction conditions should be compared with later reveres and forward direction trials after practice. Only if no increase in ACC activity is found that can be attributed to practice alone, can the increase in ACC be attributed to the additional control step that was supposedly introduced in experiment 2. A possible scenario where practice could influence ACC activation (and post stimulus response selection mechanism) is where practice or learning could lead to greater salience of activated goal or a stronger top-down expectation resulting in a stronger inhibitory signal for any stimulus that doesn’t meet the top-down expectations. It is not unreasonable to suppose that strength of a rule (the probability with which that rule has been ingrained in memory) may directly reflect in the strength of the biasing that is a result of a top-down expectation of that rule application. In that case , ACC may paradoxically be more and more activated as a result of practice (as the response expectation associated with the stimulus increases in habit strength though learning) to bias the response selection more strongly in favor of the expected response (goal).

In summation, there seems much ground to believe that two attentional processes in working memory /learning and performance are involved – one ACC based and the other PFC based and that they are explained in terms of pre-stimulus goal maintenance and post-stimulus response selection / biasing.

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psychology, lies and videotapes

Ok. I have been tagged. So have to make up some nice sounding traits about myself that would endear me more to my readers :-)


New rules of this tag:
1. Name the person who tagged you.
2. Mention 9 things about you.
3. Tag 6 people.

I. I was tagged by Archana Bahuguna, an old time dear friend.

II. The nine things about me, in no particular order or importance, are:

1. Despite my scientific inclinations and a healthy skepticism, I have explored, and still keep dabbling in esoteric occult subjects like tarot and astrology. I confess to possessing a tarot deck and I used to do light-hearted predictions for my friends while in college (mostly fooling them by telling them what they wanted to hear :-) . At one time I seriously believed in Nostradamus's predictions of an impending third world war and wanted to do my bit to prevent the catastrophe!! Now, hopefully, I have become more reasonable and rigorously scientific-minded, but am still intrigued by the power of these occult sciences to hold ground through the years and thus the fascination still remains.
2. I am one of the silent types and make a poor conversationalist. Over the years I have realized that the best way to hide your foolishness is by keeping mum. Thus, I have to be literally prodded to engage in everyday small talk. The upside of this is that my friends presume that whenever I do manage to find something to say in a conversation, it would be bound to be profound or meaningful!!
3. I'm a financially naive/careless person. I have never managed (or attempted) to make money from money. I do earn well, but I rarely invest that money in money generating instruments like shares or properties. I rationalize this by assuring myself that this lack of financial savvy is due to my professed disregard and antipathy of the capitalist system (emphasizing capital's role over everything else) as the best possible system one could have. I also end up paying more taxes than could have been legally saved using tax-incentive schemes and rationalize this as doing my bit to help the underprivileged.
4. I like to take calculated risks. I like to explore the latent abilities that I either fear to possess or reasonably hope to develop; and to optimally balance my tangential interests and activities with a core moolah generating activity, so as to not end up with a feeling of missed opportunities or a wasted life/talent. Some might say that this is just a propensity towards listlessness and a misguided sense of heroism arising from starting life all over again, but that doesn’t deter me from trying my hands on something new and failing once more!!
5. I am the studious, non-athletic sort of person. I rarely work out and am too lazy/unmotivated to even go for a regular morning walk. Despite an acute realization of the tremendous ill-effect my lack of physical exertion may have on my physical well being, I somehow never manage to place the body over mind. All the free time is either spent in mental wanderings and pursuits, in passive entertainment or in playing with my eight month old kid - only the last providing some physical activity.
6. I like to think of myself as a spiritual person (whatever that means). I concur with Voltaire that if god does not exist, he has to be created. I strongly believe in evolution, but also believe in a higher purpose to life than mere survival, reproduction or increasing inclusive fitness. I believe Morality evolves, Choice evolves and as humans we have evolved to a stage where we have to take responsibility for ourselves as well as others. In this sense, I agree most strongly with the existential school of thought whereby we are responsible for giving essence (or meaning) to our existence. Here too, I am mostly spiritual in the analytical sense and like to focus on right actions as opposed to other experiential forms of enhancing spirituality like meditation or mindfulness.
7. I am fascinated by movies, literature, mythology, art, music and the myriad ways in which the memes/ archetypes originate, replicate and survive in popular culture and the collective unconscious. I prefer aesthetic over utilitarian concerns and believe in the make-believe power of fabricated reality to take care of many of the pressing utilitarian needs. To provide meaning to a person, in some cases, may be more important, than providing food.
8. I believe in the power of the ordinary, rather than the spectacle of the extraordinary. A culture that needs heroes is a potentially sick culture. A culture that doesn’t have room for those lagging behind, either due to differential abilities or circumstances, is a sick culture. A kind word or gesture, a caring in relationships, a sharing of resources (however limited) and a touching of someone else's life for betterment- all everyday acts one can easily indulge in- are equally, if not more, important than say making a once-in-lifetime dramatic new technological or scientific innovation that may be put to good use. One's goodness must reflect in everyday acts and the culture such that it values these everyday acts of heroism and goodness by the ordinary people.
9. I sometimes lie, mostly passively, by not volunteering adverse information about myself. I am not someone who values absolutely or is adamant about the absoluteness of Truth. I believe in creating a fabricated reality if that serves a good purpose. I prefer to lie as infrequently as possible, but as I am a creative writer and have often managed to create decent poetry or prose by generously mixing (autobiographical) fact with fiction, I don't mind putting a spin on presented information, or selectively presenting information that I want. (This does not apply to my scientific blogging - I do try to be objective and truthful there). So, take the above revelations about myself with a pinch of salt!!

Tagging 6 people is the most difficult part. I'm not sure how many of them are going to respond (as my blogosphere consists entirely of psychologists who do not generally blog about personal stuff), but let me try.

I tag the Neurophilosopher, Shelley at the Retrospectacle, Chris at Developing Intelligence, Jake at Pure Pedantry, The Neurocritic and Mary at The Thinking Meat.


Anyone else from the readers, is welcome to get tagged and do leave your URL back in the comments so that the tagging can be traced!

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The Blogger SAT challenge: Read my entry and tell me the score!

I recently took the blogger SAT challenge and though I thought I had done fairly well, came to know that I scored the median score of 3 as judged by the experts. This is way below the perfect 6 I received in Analytical writing section of GRE couple of years back.

So definitely, practice and preparation does matter a lot.

The blog also has a facility for readers to score the essay (and here 2 readers to date have been kind enough to give me a 6), so read on my entry and please give me some encouraging scores/ comments!

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Synapse vol 1, issue 8 now online

Another stimulating edition of the Synapse is available, this time hosted at the Mind Hacks and containing entries by some newcomers in the Synaptic world. Do check out and have a good time.

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Seventh edition of Encephalon available now

OmniBrain has just now published a brand new edition of Encephalon. The serious stories covered in the seventh edition are accompanied with light-hearted presentation and illustrations.

Have a good read!

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Chomsky Vs. Skinner : a role for behaviorist ideas in Language Acquisition

Chomsky, in a classical paper, discusses Skinner's book Verbal Behavior and the associated attempts of behaviorists to explain Language Acquisition as just another complex behavior learned entirely through behaviorist mechanisms of classical and operant conditioning.

Chomsky himself clarifies the difference between cognitive and behaviorist explanations as follows:

It is important to see clearly just what it is in Skinner's program and claims that makes them appear so bold and remarkable, It is not primarily the fact that he has set functional analysis as his problem, or that he limits himself to study of observables, i.e., input-output relations. What is so surprising is the particular limitations he has imposed on the way in which the observables of behavior are to be studied, and, above all, the particularly simple nature of the function which, he claims, describes the causation of behavior. One would naturally expect that prediction of the behavior of a complex organism (or machine) would require, in addition to information about external stimulation, knowledge of the internal structure of the organism, the ways in which it processes input information and organizes its own behavior. These characteristics of the organism are in general a complicated product of inborn structure, the genetically determined course of maturation, and past experience. ...... The differences that arise between those who affirm and those who deny the importance of the specific "contribution of the organism" to learning and performance concern the particular character and complexity of this function, and the kinds of observations and research necessary for arriving at a precise specification of it. If the contribution of the organism is complex, the only hope of predicting behavior even in a gross way will be through a very indirect program of research that begins by studying the detailed character of the behavior itself and the particular capacities of the organism involved.

It would be prudent for me to clarify at the outset, that I am a Cognitivist and definitely see the merits of Chomsky's arguments and the inadequacy of the potentially misguided attempts of Skinner and other behaviorists to apply the behaviorist concepts and results derived from animal studies to the study of semantics or how words get associated with a particular meaning and are used in particular contexts - either due to their prior association with a stimulus (stimulus control...something like classical conditioning in which the word 'red' gets associated with the property redness of an object and the internal visual response or qualia of redness that is produced automatically in response to the stimulus redness causes a conditioned association between "red' and the qualia redness) or because the word or sentence was reinforced variably through various mechanisms like self-reinforcement, reinforcement-by-way-of-praise etc.

I definitely do not concur with Skinner's arguments and definitions, and Chomsky show to some extent an understanding of the behaviorist concepts (especially in section II), but he also at times shows his profound lack of appreciation of finer subtleties of behaviorist concepts. For example:

In the book under review, response strength is defined as "probability of emission" (22). This definition provides a comforting impression of objectivity, which, however, is quickly dispelled when we look into the matter more closely. The term probability has some rather obscure meaning for Skinner in this book.9 We are told, on the one hand, that "our evidence for the contribution of each variable [to response strength] is based on observation of frequencies alone" (28). At the same time, it appears that frequency is a very misleading measure of strength, since, for example, the frequency of a response may be "primarily attributable to the frequency of occurrence of controlling variables" (27). It is not clear how the frequency of a response can be attributable to anything BUT the frequency of occurrence of its controlling variables if we accept Skinner's view that the behavior occurring in a given situation is "fully determined" by the relevant controlling variables.

Here Chomsky has mixed and made a mess of the two separate concepts and processes in behaviorism- classical and operant conditioning. In the above paragraph, the definition of response in terms of 'probability of occurrence' is in terms of operant conditioning - wherein responses are autonomously generated by an organism irrespective of any stimulus (leave aside the case of discriminating stimulus as of now) that is present - for e.g. a bar-press- and based on the reinforcing stimulus that is presented to the organism , post response, the response strength or probability that the response would occur, autonomously, in future , increases. This is mixed up with the earlier concept of stimulus control (or classical conditioning) wherein controlling variables (or conditioned stimulus) relevant to a situation lead to an utterance or verbal behavior. This determining of verbal behavior due to presence of a a conditioned stimulus (reflexive language) would be a different mechanism form that used in deliberative language , wherein, an utterance is produced voluntarily and in defiance of its surrounding stimuli, but the probability of that occurrence is in proportion to its history of reinforcement. By mixing the two concepts, Chomsky just manages to show his ignorance and lack of appreciation of the behaviorist concepts/ mechanisms.

But my gripe with Chomsky is more for the change in focus that he has managed to pull off, with the study of semantics taking a backseat to the study of grammar or syntax. In my limited comprehension, I am unable to appreciate, how concepts of Universal Grammar, however much relevant and innate, could be a substitute for a proper analysis of language acquisition in terms of an ability to not only mastered the grammar, but also the semantics. Grammar or Grammar acquisition, per se, does not inform much about the actual and most relevant aspects of language acquisition- viz. semantics and pragmatics.

Addressing semantics, would be a task for a later day (and perhaps for a more capable person than me), but today I would like to tentatively propose a role for behaviorist concepts of reinforcement or operant conditioning as relevant to the general ability to understand and produce language and also to the general difference in talkativeness (and listening-ness, if there exists such a concept) between different people


Language acquisition should be broken into two components - a language understanding (or hearing) component and another language production (or speaking) component. It is a fact that the first component related to language understanding develops prior to language production. Also, it should be kept in mind that language is essentially a two person activity, with the utterance of one acting as (reinforcing) stimulus for the other and the utterance of another acting as a response.

The Hearing (or language understanding) activity:

This language component is used for understanding the meaning of utterances (say spoken language as opposed to written or depicted using sign language) and is relatively independent of language production.

Response is parsing the spoken sentence into words and by analyzing the syntax and meaning of the words constructing a mental image of the intention, beliefs, knowledge and possible behavior of the person who spoke the sentence and integrate that knowledge with the representation and expectation of the world in general.

Reinforcing stimulus is observing the behavior of the person who spoke the sentence to be in accordance with that earlier constructed expectation and prediction (the hearing response). It is assumed that an external act (whether negative or positive) that is in accord with an internal expectation would be rewarding in the sense that it would satisfy and reduce the internal drive to know in general - and to know the future in particular. Alternately, it can be posited that the state of not knowing clearly about the future is a state of unbearable tension and the uncertainty associated with the world is a negative stimulus (property) associated with the world. By hearing and understanding a sentence uttered by someone else, some of this aversive stimulus (uncertainty) is removed and thus by negative reinforcement (removal of an aversive stimulus) any act of hearing (or understanding...or refining the predictions regarding the world) is inherently rewarding irrespective of whether the actual outcome is as per the constructed expectations. Positive reinforcement of having the expectation met would result in strengthening of the hearing response. This is a general strengthening of the hearing response (or the response of creating expectations from heard utterances) and is independent of the actual content of that expectation. Thus, if an effort to construe meaning from an utterance was followed by a positive reinforcement of having that meaning verified, then the propensity of construing meaning from utterances would increase in strength. It is posited that this behaviorist mechanism is one of the strong motivating factor that encourages a child to understand the language of its parents/ society.

Although as adults, parsing sentences into words and extracting meaning from it seems automatic to us, for a child extracting meaning from a string of syllables is a very effort full activity, and the fact that doing so leads to positive reinforcement would encourage the child to pay attention to the hearing and understanding activity and increase their habit strength. The alternate mechanism to such a behavioristically mediated hearing acquisition could be claiming that development of language understanding is under genetic control and is similar to imprinting or genetic unfolding. This claim is weakened by an ability of mature adults to learn a foreign language. Thus, if this mechanism uses imprinting alone, it should be possible only under a critical period of childhood and not amenable to acquisition in adulthood. the fact that children are able to learn second languages faster and better than adults and some evidence form study of feral children as to a critical period necessary for first language acquisition, point to a mixed role of genetic factors like imprinting and behaviorist factors like reinforcement of the 'predicting the world capability'.

The Speaking (or language production) activity:

This language component is used for production of meaningful utterances (say spoken language as opposed to written or depicted using sign language) and follows the relevant stage of language comprehension.

Response, in this case, would be constructing a valid, informative sentence by piecing together words that denote the shared meaning of objects and situations and uttering a valid meaningful sentence directed towards another listener. The intention for the utterance could be pedagogic (informing or teaching a fact to someone about whom you care), instrumental (using the person spoken to as a tool to achieve desired outcome), empathetic (sharing thoughts, feeling etc with the other person) or of some other kind.


Reinforcing stimulus, in this case would be observing the behavior of spoken-to person and discovering that the relevant information/ facts have been conveyed and understood properly. This reinforcing stimulus, can take the form of either observing the actual behavior, inline with the intended meaning of the utterance, or can be as subtle as deciphering the facial expressions of the listener for signs of understanding. In elongated verbal conversations, a verbal utterance by the listener, may serve as a reinforcing stimulus, and substitute for the outward behavior/ understanding expression (This for example is relevant in telephonic conversations and is one of the reasons children learn to speak on telephones later than they learn talking to adults face-to-face). The stimulus is reinforcing because it satisfies an earlier drive to control (use the other person as a tool for ones ends), the drive to share (the drive for belongings and intimacy) or the drive to inform (pedagogic drive).


Speaking, or constructing valid sentences by stringing syllables together, is again an effortful activity, and though as an adult it may seem effortless, strong motivations have to be present in childhood, for development of proper language production capabilities. The reinforcing stimulus, of having one’s intentions met, by observing the behaviour of the listener, provides the required incentive and mechanism whereby the habit strength of generating meaningful utterances is strengthened.

How to test for this theory:

It is clear from above discussion, that Hearing or language understanding predominantly relies on the drive for meaning or for predicting the world as its guiding mechanism, whereby the speaking or language production relies on other mechanisms involving drive for control , empathy and instruction.

I was recently introduced to Terror Management Theory (TMT) while reading a post by Mixing Memory on how TMT may influence Art Appreciation and I believe a similar study can be used for determining the ability of language understanding to provide meaning.

Specifically, if some subjects are primed with thoughts of death (as opposed to a neutral control topic) , then may exhibit a stringer drive for subsequent activities that give rise to a sense of meaning. This manipulation could be in the form of thinking of the September 11 attacks which increase mortality salience or by asking the participants to read the following instructions designed to increase their mortality salience:

Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you.

Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead.

The other half of the participants should be made to respond to similar instructions, but in reference to an upcoming exam rather than death.

Afterwards, both groups should be allowed an activity that involves language understanding (say listening to a meaningful audio radio program or conversation) and one that does not involve language understanding (say painting or sketching a drawing). The respondents should then be asked which activities (language comprehension related or visual painting related) they found more satisfying or meaningful. If those who had high mortality salience also showed a preponderant satisfaction by indulging in language comprehension related activities as opposed to control group and control task, then this would be a strong indicator of the importance of meaning formation in the motivation for language comprehension. A particular confound here is the second task ( as per the Mixing Memory task, Art may also serve as a Meaning generator and hence not be a suitable control task and should be replaced by a meaningless task like repetitive manual action task) and it should be ensured that this task does not involve Meaning generation. One control that seems appropriate is language production, as the mechanism underlying that is posited to be different from Meaning acquisition. Thus, the control activity could be related to language production (say allowing the participants to make an extempore speech on a topic for 20 minutes).

Finally, I would like to highlight a real life experiment. Those who participate in a ten day Vipassana Meditation camp are not allowed to speak for those ten days. As such, the amount they hear is also limited to some morning/ evening hymns (that may involve more music than language) and apart from that no other hearing or language understanding takes place. After the ten day speaking fast, when the participants talk to each other, one finds great meaning in the conversations. This may be a case of reduction of the meaning drive, after its prolonged starvation.

Also, the traits like loquaciousness may be explained partially in terms of the different underlying needs for control, empathy, instruction etc that give rise to the talking behavior, as well as the particular history of reinforcement that the subject has undergone, thus making that trait subject to both genetic and environmental influences.

To end on a lighter note, please note the Mixing Memory’s evaluation of such studies linking TMT and Art.

I've never really hung out in a social psychology laboratory, but here is how I picture a typical day in one. There are some social psychologists sitting around, drinking some sort of exotic tea, and free associating. One psychologist will say the name of a random social psychological theory, and another will then throw out the first thing that comes into his or her head. They'll write each of these down, and the associations will then become the basis for their next several research projects. OK, so that's probably not really what's going on, and I suppose there's a more scientific method to the social psychologist's madness, but occasionally I come across a study that makes me wonder. And the great thing about having a blog is that I get to write about it when I do. Today's example: terror management theory and modern art

I am, at present, camping in the filed of Social Psychology and thus take the privilege of suggesting a more bizarre study that could possibly prove what we may all intuitively know - that the motivation for hearing something is because we derive meaning from it! (Remember the cocktail party effect, wherein we are able to selectively listen to the conversation of interest- or one that is most meaningful to us). As the say, no research is that abstruse as to not get funded. So all you students out there, anyone care to conduct such a research (and prove me right)!

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A free Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience textbook and the Citizendium initiative

I have recently become quite interested in collaborative writing and was initially thinking of submitting a book proposal to the Psychology Press for their series on Cognitive Neuroscience. That option is still open and if someone wants to collaborate you are welcome to contact me (write to : sandygautam[AT]yahoo[DOT]com) !!

But what I have discovered is that there are other emerging models of collaborative publishing. Triggered by news regarding a Global Text Project, which aims to create 1000 online textbooks in due course of time, I came across Wikibooks. It seems Wikibooks already has a free Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience Textbook that one can contribute to and refine and is featured as the book for the month. Have just casually browsed through one of the chapters, but it seems an interesting idea and one to which we bloggers can lend our expertise. This should definitely help third world students who may lack the monetary resources to buy costly textbooks and may have to rely on online resources. However the 'chapters' are too sketchy and more of Wikepedia entries than a summary of relevant research (with citations) in that field.

That brings me to the Citezendium, a new Citizen's Compendium, which aims to do away with the deficiencies of the Wikepedia and encourage Academics to get involved with the collaborative encyclopedia initiative with special powers and responsibilities given to the experts over the normal contributing authors. Would definitely like to contribute there. hopefully, the readers of this blog will also find these collaborative initiatives interesting and contribute in their own small ways.

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The ghost spot within the brain

While the recent experiments with the Carmelite nuns have been unable to identify a definitive GOD spot in the brain, it seems that the pre-surgery electrical stimulation of the brain of an epileptic patient has shed light on a potential ghost spot.

When the Temporo-pareital junction (TPJ) was stimulated, the woman felt the presence of a shadow behind her that was taking the same posture as herself.

The woman described the shadow person as young, silent, and mirroring her position as she lay on her back. "He is behind me, almost at my body, but I do not feel it," she said, according to the doctors.

Next, the researchers stimulated the same spot in the woman's brain as she sat up with her arms wrapped around her knees.

Again, the woman sensed the shadow presence. This time she said the man was sitting behind her and had his arms around her.

Lastly, the woman sat up, holding a card in her right hand, for another brain test that involved stimulating the same brain area. She once more sensed the shadow person.

"He wants to take the card. He doesn't want me to read," the woman reportedly said.

This has interesting implications for Schizophrenia research and the Nature article does hint at that. Specifically, abnormal brain activity in the TPJ may give rise to a feeling of a shadowy person following the schizophrenic subject always. This sense of being watched may give rise to a host of related syndromes. This may give rise to a sense of paranoia, delusions of persecution , delusions of alien control (when hugging your knee it may seem the shadow was using its hand to force yours or the prior act of bending forward by the shadow may be implicated as causing oneself to bend forward) and other delusions like the alien hand syndrome. Interesting to note that the epileptic woman in question assigns bad motives to the shadow. ("he doesn't want me to take the card")

It would be interesting to investigate, what abnormalities, if any, in the TPJ are present in the Schizophrenics subjects.

Hat tip: Omni Brain

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