How the mind works: It's the information stupid!
Not that I'm calling anyone stupid. That's a reference, of course, to Clinton campaign manager James Carville's "It's the economy, stupid." It's a call to refocus the emphasis. Here we're talking cognitive science and the relation between computational theories and embodied theories of the mind and the need to refocus our emphasis on information processing. I contend that embodied theories are, under the hood, computational (i.e., information processing) theories and that the embodied folks are mischaracterizing computational theories. Or at the very least they using one such theory (~Fodorian philosophy)...
Source: Talking Brains - November 4, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Embodied or Symbolic? Who cares!
I still don't understand the hype over embodied cognition. It's too abstract a concept for me, I guess. I need more grounding in the real world. (Am I getting it?) So let's consider a real world example of neural computation. For the record, this is partially excerpted/paraphrased from a discussion in The Myth of Mirror Neurons. Sound localization in the barn owl is fairly well-understood in neurocomputational terms. Inputs from the two ears converge in the brainstem's nucleus laminaris with a "delay line" architecture as in the figure: Given this arrangement, the ne...
Source: Talking Brains - October 24, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
2 open-rank tenure-track faculty positions in speech and hearing science at arizona state university
The Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Arizona State University, Tempe Campus, invites applicants with expertise in communication disorders and related disciplines to apply for two open-rank tenure-track faculty positions starting August, 2015. For the first position, we are seeking candidates whose areas of expertise will complement and augment our current research strengths in psychoacoustics, cochlear implants, auditory neurophysiology and pediatrics. Candidates with research interests in the areas of aging, amplification, auditory disorders, electrophysiology, and/or auditory physiology are encouraged to apply...
Source: Talking Brains - October 24, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Lamar Smith's attack on NSF a thinly veiled attempt to suppress environmental education
It's no secret that Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the Science, Space and Technology committee, has been waging a war on the National Science Foundation. See here, here, here and here. In a 2013 piece in USA Today, Smith, writing with Eric Cantor stated:While the NSF spends most of its funds well, we have recently seen far too many questionable grants, especially in the social, behavioral and economic sciences. A link to a more complete list of the suspect grants on which Smith requested information can be found here. It's interesting that among the questionable grants, a sizable fraction of them conce...
Source: Talking Brains - October 14, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Postdoctoral Fellowship: The Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University
invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health beginning July 1, 2015. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or have permanent resident status. This will be a two-year appointment. Individuals may seek training in any of the following inter-related areas: (1) speech and voice production, development, and disorders; (2) language structure, development, and disorders; (3) auditory perception, neural plasticity, and sensory aids; (4) cognitive neuroscience approaches to hearing, language processing, and communication disor...
Source: Talking Brains - October 9, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Dear crowd: please crowd-solve the question "What can be or should be the relation between linguistics and neuroscience?"
Dave Embick and I just wrote a paper (for LCN) in which we speculate further about the possible relations between linguistics and neuroscience (as in Poeppel, D. and Embick, D. (2005). The relation between linguistics and neuroscience. In A. Cutler (ed.), Twenty-First Century Psycholinguistics: Four Cornerstones. Lawrence Erlbaum; and Poeppel, D. (2012). The maps problem and the mapping problem: Two challenges for a cognitive neuroscience of speech and language. Cogn Neuropsychol, 29(1-2):34-55. PDFs available on my site.) In particular, we discuss what we might aspire to, i.e. what the endgame might look like - or sho...
Source: Talking Brains - October 5, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: David Poeppel Source Type: blogs
Broca’s area doesn’t care what you do (syntactically): it cares how you do it (actively)
Guest post by William Matchin:There are a few topics on this blog on the polemical spectrum that don’t happen to involve mirror neurons; one of them is the topic of Broca’s area and its putative role in syntax (see previous posts hereand here). Our recent paper published in Brain and Language – (Matchin, Sprouse & Hickok, 2014) - addresses this issue.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X14001278The hypotheses regarding syntax and Broca’s area were never ludicrous - the neuropsychological data suggesting a close link between Broca’s area and the grammar are quite striking, as well as compe...
Source: Talking Brains - October 2, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Professor or Reader in Human Neuroscience Royal Holloway, University of London - Department of Psychology
Location:EghamSalary:£49,462 to £112,365 includes London AllowanceHours:Full TimeContract:PermanentPlaced on:15th September 2014Closes:29th October 2014Job Ref:0914-186Full Time - permanent roleProfessorial salary is in the range £60,791 to £112,365 per annum inclusive of London Allowance,dependent on assessment through the College Professorial Pay Banding Scheme.Reader salary is in the range £49,462 to £56,975 per annum inclusive of London AllowanceApplications are invited for a permanent post at Professorial or Reader level in the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.&n...
Source: Talking Brains - September 26, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Two post docs in Philly
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Noninvasive Brain Stimulation in Neurorehabilitation and Aphasia Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation (LCNS), University of PennsylvaniaA postdoctoral fellowship is available in the Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation (LCNS) under the direction of Roy Hamilton, MD, MS, a behavioral neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The central thrust of work in the LCNS is to use electrical and magnetic noninvasive brain stimulation to explore the characteristics and limits of functional plasticity in the intact and injured adult human brain. The principle NIH-grant...
Source: Talking Brains - September 26, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Mirror neurons do not resonate with actions: two pieces of single-unit evidence
Gergley Csibra (2007) noticed a fundamental flaw in the logic of the mirror neuron theory of action understanding:[there is] a tension between two conflicting claims about action mirroring implied by the direct-matching hypothesis: the claim that action mirroring reflects low-level resonance mechanisms, and the claim that it reflects high-level action understanding. The tension arises from the fact that the more it seems that mirroring is nothing else but faithful duplication of observed actions, the less evidence it provides for action understanding; and the more mirroring represents high-level interpretation of the obser...
Source: Talking Brains - September 24, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
The right theory of mirror neuron function. Guess who said it.
A quote on mirror neuron function. I think it is spot on, as discussed in The Myth of Mirror Neurons. Who said it? (It wasn't me.)One of the fundamental functions of the premotor cortex is that of retrieving appropriate motor acts in response to sensory stimuli. Evidence has been provided that action retrieval can occur in response to two-dimensional patterns, color, and size and shape of three-dimensional objects. The present data indicate that in addition to these physical factors, retrieval can also occur in response to the meaning of the gestures made by other individuals. If one considers the rich social i...
Source: Talking Brains - September 16, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Aphasia and the brain: from syndromes to symptoms to computations
For the first 100 years of modern aphasia research (~since the 1860s) the focus was mainly on syndromes: motor (Broca's) aphasia, sensory (Wernicke's) aphasia, conduction aphasia, and so on. Things changed after the Cognitive... er, make that the Information Processing Revolution (see discussion here or here) when symptoms came more into focus. The symptom approach was an important advance and is still dominant, as the popular method, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM), highlights. But mapping symptoms isn't the goal. What we are really after are the computations that underlie the sy...
Source: Talking Brains - September 16, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, R.I. 02912
The Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences (CLPS) invites applications for atenure-track Assistant Professor position in cognitive neuroscience beginning July 1, 2015. Allcandidates utilizing methodological approaches such as neuroimaging to address basic questions in anyarea of cognitive neuroscience will be considered. Exceptional candidates whose research addressestopics relevant to psychiatric disorders are particularly encouraged to apply. This appointment will bemade in conjunction with the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (DPHB) and theinterdepartmental Brown Institute for Brain S...
Source: Talking Brains - August 21, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Post-Doc position, Sleep and Cognition Lab, UC Riverside
The Sleep and Cognition (SaC) Lab of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside has an open position for a postdoc researcher. This researcher will be investigating mechanisms of memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval by using event-related potential (ERP/EEG) during waking and sleep. Successful candidates should have experience in memory research and EEG methodologies, as well as programming skills. Experience in sleep research is not essential. Position is available immediately. Researchers must possess a doctoral degree. The University of California offers excellent benefits. Salary i...
Source: Talking Brains - August 20, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Mirror neurons may have been inadvertently trained into laboratory macaques
Even though there is a growing consensus that mirror neurons are not the basis of action understanding (or language, theory of mind, autism, etc.), the question remains, What are mirror neurons doing? There are now a couple of good theories. One is the idea promoted by Cecelia Heyes that observation of self-action results in an association between executed and observed actions, which is then generalized to others' actions. Another is the view proposed by Michael Arbib that mirror neurons start out as part of a motor control circuit, providing visual feedback on ongoing actions and then later get recru...
Source: Talking Brains - August 19, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
