Individual Representation in a Community of Knowledge
Publication date: Available online 30 August 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Nathaniel Rabb, Philip M. Fernbach, Steven A. SlomanAn individual’s knowledge is collective in at least two senses: it often comes from other people’s testimony, and its deployment in reasoning and action requires accuracy underwritten by other people’s knowledge. What must one know to participate in a collective knowledge system? Here, we marshal evidence that individuals retain detailed causal information for a few domains and coarse causal models embedding markers indicating that these details are available elsewhere (o...
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - September 1, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Awake Reactivation of Prior Experiences Consolidates Memories and Biases Cognition
Publication date: Available online 22 August 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Arielle Tambini, Lila DavachiAfter experiences are encoded into memory, post-encoding reactivation mechanisms have been proposed to mediate long-term memory stabilization and transformation. Spontaneous reactivation of hippocampal representations, together with hippocampal–cortical interactions, are leading candidate mechanisms for promoting systems-level memory strengthening and reorganization. While the replay of spatial representations has been extensively studied in rodents, here we review recent fMRI work that provides ev...
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - August 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Ontogenetic Origins of Human Integer Representations
Publication date: Available online 19 August 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Susan Carey, David BarnerDo children learn number words by associating them with perceptual magnitudes? Recent studies argue that approximate numerical magnitudes play a foundational role in the development of integer concepts. Against this, we argue that approximate number representations fail both empirically and in principle to provide the content required of integer concepts. Instead, we suggest that children’s understanding of integer concepts proceeds in two phases. In the first phase, children learn small exact number w...
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - August 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Misestimation of Uncertainty in Affective Disorders
Publication date: Available online 17 August 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Erdem Pulcu, Michael BrowningOur knowledge about the state of the world is often incomplete, making it difficult to select the best course of action. One strategy that can be used to improve our ability to make decisions is to identify the causes of our ignorance (i.e., why an unexpected event might have occurred) and use estimates of the uncertainty induced by these causes to guide our learning. Here, we explain the logic behind this process and describe the evidence that human learners use estimates of uncertainty to sculpt th...
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - August 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Default Mode Network’s Role in Discrete Emotion
Publication date: Available online 16 August 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Ajay B. Satpute, Kristen A. LindquistEmotions are often assumed to manifest in subcortical limbic and brainstem structures. While these areas are clearly important for representing affect (e.g., valence and arousal), we propose that the default mode network (DMN) is additionally important for constructing discrete emotional experiences (of anger, fear, disgust, etc.). Findings from neuroimaging studies, invasive electrical stimulation studies, and lesion studies support this proposal. Importantly, our framework builds on a const...
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - August 17, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
