Mixing memory and desire: How memory reactivation supports deliberative decision-making.

Outlines about ancient Paleolithic artifacts and early Homo (2-1 Ma) skeletons precede considerations about cognitive versatility and developmental limitations of evolving brains. The adaptive behavior included technical skilfulness, reflected by artifact diversity, and manual dexterity requiring backward “haptic” touch memory, needed for habitual automatic, accurate handiwork, and forward “prospective” memory about foreseeably usable tools. Observational learning transmits skill insecurely, endangering persistence of evolutionary advantages. Their genetic or epigenetic underpinning enabled cerebral enlargement, affecting regions for different kinds of memory, imitation, language, and tool-use. Fundamental matters include imitative behavior and prefrontal and parietal mirror-neuron circuits, inferior parietal lobule tool-using specificity, long-term procedural memory and temporal lobe hippocampal-parahippocampal cortex, and working memory and neuronal haptic responses in prefrontal and parietal cortex. All underpin human capacities, whereby haptic working memory and propensity for habitual procedural memory evolved alongside explicit and implicit mental perspectives blending past and present behavioral memories into alternative behavioral concepts underlying Paleolithic diversity.

Moral dilemmas engender conflicts between two traditions: consequentialism, which evaluates actions based on their outcomes, and deontology, which evaluates actions themselves. These strikingly resemble two distinct decision-making architectures: a model-based system that selects actions based on inferences about their consequences; and a model-free system that selects actions based on their reinforcement history. Here, I consider how these systems, along with a Pavlovian system that responds reflexively to rewards and punishments, can illuminate puzzles in moral psychology.

Purpose: The aim of the article is to present the use of selected techniques of cognitive neuroscience (EEG, GSR, HR) to study the effectiveness of social advertising in the context of promoting a healthy lifestyle. The respondents' reactions (emotions, remembering, interest) to individual fragments of the advertisement will be analyzed. The results of neural and psychophysiological measurements will be compared with the survey participants' answers provided in the survey (after the study with EEG, GSR, etc.). Design/Methodology/Approach: The cognitive neuroscience methods, allow building knowledge about human and its behavior at the level of internal psychophysiological and cognitive processes before they are integrated and verbalized in the form of an opinion or judgment on a given topic. Findings: The developments of cognitive neuroscience technique have made this discipline applicable to more and more new areas of research. These possibilities are mainly the outcome of the development in techniques for measuring brain activity and their combinations with other technologies, eg biometric measurements. They allow to correlate various mental functions with physiological sensations. Practical implications: One of the applications is to study the impact of social health-promoting advertisements (healthy lifestyle, vaccinations, etc.) on recipients. A well-conducted social campaign with the proper design of an information message (advertisement) can directly transform it into shaping healthy life habits among people. Originality/Value: The research will allow the verification of the idea proposed by the researcher to promote healthy life habits among people.

Memory integration: neural mechanisms and implications for behavior

The major tenets of Piagetian theory, such as adaptation and constructionism, are compatible with a cross-cultural approach to the study of cognitive development, but there have been significant methodological and theoretical advances over the past 40 years. Piagetian theory directly influenced three phases of cross-cultural research, ranging from absolutist to relativist. As researchers incorporated the study of contexts of development, particularly cross-cultural contexts, new methods expanded the available toolbox of approaches. Recent directions in historical research, narrative and discourse research, and cognitive developmental neuroscience have helped to shed light on processes and mechanisms of developmental change and their relationship to culture.

Introduction: Adaptive behavior refers to the collection of skills and behaviors that individuals use to function independently in their daily lives, it encompasses the ability to meet personal needs and deal with the natural and social demands of one's environment. This includes a wide range of skills, such as communication, self-care, socialization, and practical skills needed to navigate one's environment. This is useful in providing references to support Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) initiatives, especially to improve access to quality education for children with disabilities. Objective: This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of research on adaptive behavior for children with disabilities from 2014 to 2024. It focuses on identifying patterns, trends, and gaps in the literature to understand the evolution and current state of the field. Theorical Framework: Adaptive behavior is often categorized into different domains, reflecting the various areas of functioning that are essential for independent living and social integration. The three primary domains of adaptive behavior commonly recognized in the literature are conceptual, practical and social domain. Method: The study employs advanced bibliometric techniques, including keyword co-occurrence and citation analysis, to explore the interconnectedness of topics and to forecast future directions in research. It underscores the critical need for reliable and inclusive assessment tools, comprehensive multi-informant evaluations, and interventions that can be integrated into educational settings to support the independence and social integration of children with disabilities. Results and Discussion: The findings of the study through article co-occurrence mapping analysis, four clusters representing adaptive behavior were identified, that is red cluster (psychological and social dimensions), green cluster (developmental and cognitive aspects of disability), blue cluster (adaptive functioning and behavioral outcomes) and yellow cluster (behavioral and diagnostic) portrays an interconnected landscape of research topics, where psychological, developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic themes converge, reflecting the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of research in disabilities. Research Implications: This study contributes practical implications, improving interventions, informing policies, and enhancing community understanding and support for individuals with varying needs in adaptive behavior. This holistic impact underscores the importance of such research in driving both theoretical and practical advancements in the field. Originality/Value: The exploration of adaptive behavior in children with disabilities has emerged as a critical area of study, integrating multifaceted approaches from diagnosis to intervention. The comprehensive review presented in this article not only captures the varied dimensions of adaptive behavior but also underscores the intricate interplay between intellectual, developmental, and social facets of disabilities in children.

Spontaneous thinking is a ubiquitous aspect of our mental life and has increasingly become a hot topic of research in cognitive neuroscience. To date, functional neuroimaging studies of spontaneous thought have revealed general brain recruitment centered on a combination of default mode network and executive regions. Despite recent findings about general brain recruitment, very little is known about how these regions are recruited dynamically over time. The current research addresses this gap in the literature by using EEG to investigate the fine-grained temporal dynamics of brain activity underlying spontaneous thoughts. We employed the first-person reports of experienced meditators to index the onset of spontaneous thoughts, and examined brain electrical activity preceding indications of spontaneous thought onset. An independent component analysis-based source localization procedure recovered sources very similar to those previously found with fMRI (Ellamil et al. in NeuroImage 136:186–196, 2016). In addition, phase synchrony analyses revealed a temporal trajectory that begins with default network midline and salience network connectivity, followed by the incorporation of language and executive regions during the period from thought generation to appraisal.

This volume focuses on the role of interoception for mental life and lived experience, from the perspectives of neurosciences, psychological sciences, and philosophy. Interoception is the body-to-brain axis of signals originating from the internal body and visceral organs (such as gastrointestinal, respiratory, hormonal, and circulatory systems), and plays a unique role in ensuring homeostasis. This volume goes beyond the traditional role of interoception for homeostasis and offers a state-of-the-art overview of and new insights into the role of interoception for mental life, awareness, subjectivity, affect, and cognition. Structured across three parts, this multidisciplinary volume highlights the role that interoceptive signals and awareness thereof play in our mental life (Part I), considers deficits in interoceptive processing and awareness in various mental health conditions but also the equally important role of interoception for well-being (Part II), and approaches interoception from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, representing a highly novel departure for philosophy of mind and subjectivity (Part III). The chapters share a common concern for what it means to experience oneself, for the crucial role of emotions, and for issues of health and well-being, discussed on the joint basis of our bodily existence and interoception. The research presented here will hopefully accelerate the much-anticipated coming of age of interoceptive research in psychology, cognitive neurosciences, and philosophy.

As the Cosmology and Fundamental Physics (CFP) panel is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of the early universe, the microwave background, the reionization and galaxy formation up to virialization of protogalaxies, large scale structure, the intergalactic medium, the determination of cosmological parameters, dark matter, dark energy, tests of gravity, astronomically determined physical constants, and high energy physics using astronomical messengers. Central to the progress in these areas are the corresponding advances in laboratory astrophysics which are required for fully realizing the CFP scientific opportunities within the decade 2010-2020. Laboratory astrophysics comprises both theoretical and experimental studies of the underlying physics which produce the observed astrophysical processes. The 5 areas of laboratory astrophysics which we have identified as relevant to the CFP panel are atomic, molecular, plasma, nuclear, and particle physics. Here, Section 2 describes some of the new scientific opportunities and compelling scientific themes which will be enabled by advances in laboratory astrophysics. In Section 3, we provide the scientific context for these opportunities. Section 4 briefly discusses some of the experimental and theoretical advances in laboratory astrophysics required to realize the CFP scientific opportunities of the next decade. As requested in the Call for White Papers, Section 5 presents four central questions and one area with unusual discovery potential. Lastly, we give a short postlude in Section 6.

A consolidated approach to the study of the mental representation of word meanings has consisted in contrasting different domains of knowledge, broadly reflecting the abstract-concrete dichotomy. More fine-grained semantic distinctions have emerged in neuropsychological and cognitive neuroscience work, reflecting semantic category specificity, but almost exclusively within the concrete domain. Theoretical advances, particularly within the area of embodied cognition, have more recently put forward the idea that distributed neural representations tied to the kinds of experience maintained with the concepts' referents might distinguish conceptual meanings with a high degree of specificity, including those within the abstract domain. Here we report the results of two psycholinguistic rating studies incorporating such theoretical advances with two main objectives: first, to provide empirical evidence of fine-grained distinctions within both the abstract and the concrete semantic domains with respect to relevant psycholinguistic dimensions; second, to develop a carefully controlled linguistic stimulus set that may be used for auditory as well as visual neuroimaging studies focusing on the parametrization of the semantic space beyond the abstract-concrete dichotomy. Ninety-six participants rated a set of 210 sentences across pre-selected concrete (mouth, hand, or leg action-related) and abstract (mental state-, emotion-, mathematics-related) categories, with respect either to different semantic domain-related scales (rating study 1), or to concreteness, familiarity, and context availability (rating study 2). Inferential statistics and correspondence analyses highlighted distinguishing semantic and psycholinguistic traits for each of the pre-selected categories, indicating that a simple abstract-concrete dichotomy is not sufficient to account for the entire semantic variability within either domains.

Creative thinking is arguably the pinnacle of cerebral functionality. Like no other mental faculty, it has been omnipotent in transforming human civilizations. Probing the neural basis of this most extraordinary capacity, however, has been doggedly frustrated. Despite a flurry of activity in cognitive neuroscience, recent reviews have shown that there is no coherent picture emerging from the neuroimaging work. Based on this, we take a different route and apply two well established paradigms to the problem. First is the evolutionary framework that, despite being part and parcel of creativity research, has no informed experimental work in cognitive neuroscience. Second is the emerging prediction framework that recognizes predictive representations as an integrating principle of all cognition. We show here how the prediction imperative revealingly synthesizes a host of new insights into the way brains process variation-selection thought trials and present a new neural mechanism for the partial sightedness in human creativity. Our ability to run offline simulations of expected future environments and action outcomes can account for some of the characteristic properties of cultural evolutionary algorithms running in brains, such as degrees of sightedness, the formation of scaffolds to jump over unviable intermediate forms, or how fitness criteria are set for a selection process that is necessarily hypothetical. Prospective processing in the brain also sheds light on how human creating and designing - as opposed to biological creativity - can be accompanied by intentions and foresight. This paper raises questions about the nature of creative thought that, as far as we know, have never been asked before.

If community disaster resilience is to mature into a robust and lasting area of research, methodologically facilitated dialogue between empirical observations and theory is necessary. However, methodological and empirical research has outpaced community disaster resilience theory. To address this gap, a theoretical framework called WISC is presented. WISC is named after four constructs of the framework: well-being, identity, services, and capitals. WISC relates the two concepts of community and infrastructure, broadly defined, to the four constructs it is named after. The 4 constructs are respectively defined by 29 variables. The broadest interpretation of WISC is that infrastructure supports and facilitates components of community within human settlements. Infrastructure is represented as combinations of capitals and services; community is represented by connections of identity and well-being. Ultimately, well-being of a community is dependent on that community's collective capital. But these two constructs are mediated by the intervening constructs of identity and services. WISC goes beyond existing frameworks by addressing essential elements of theory building that have been overlooked in the literature, while synthesizing other frameworks and areas of knowledge. WISC provides a powerful foundation for posing and evaluating hypotheses, improving data collection efforts, and, most importantly, enabling critical theory building.

Memorizing involves many processes that are not fully known. This research area is just as exciting for contemporary scientists as well as it was for the ones in antiquity, considering the crucial importance of memory in human life and personality. In the last decades important steps in the knowledge of the memorization process were made by cognitive neuroscience. The paper focuses on the analysis of this process with references to its early known beginning. The study first analyses this topic in Plato's work and continues with opinions of other scientists/philosophers. Analogies between earlier and current theories, including dynamic aspects of the store, retain and recall of information, drive us to a personal point of view referring to the interpretation of Plato's book, The Republic; therefore, new directions of investigation referring to the entities and processes from human body can occur in the next future.

Consider Ralph. Ralph is strolling along the beach where he sees a man wearing a brown hat, black sunglasses and a trench coat. He has seen this man several times before in town and his strange and secretive behaviour has made Ralph suspicious. Since the man, let’s call him Ortcutt, always tries to cover his face and turns around all the time to see if he is being followed etc., Ralph has come to believe that Ortcutt might be a spy. Since Ralph finds this exciting, he follows him. Now, Ortcutt is in fact a spy and when he turns around and notices Ralph, he starts walking faster, takes his cell phone out of his pocket and makes all kinds of wild gestures while talking to someone. Ralph, in turn, comes to believe that the man in the brown hat believes that Ralph has recognized him as a spy and that his cover has been blown. Only now does it occur to Ralph that it might not have been such a good idea to show so much interest in the man and he runs away. How does Ralph acquire this belief about what Ortcutt might be thinking? This question is an instance of the more general question of how we understand others, how we come to know what they believe and desire or intend to do, what they feel and perceive. Typically, when we think about what others are (or might be) thinking, we represent them as having mental states (processes or events) like beliefs, desires, emotions and so on. This mental capacity of ours is sometimes called mentalizing or mindreading and it has been among the most-discussed topics in recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This research area has been transformed profoundly by recent developments in the cognitive neurosciences and developmental psychology. In the last decade, there has been an intensive investigation into the neural mechanisms underlying the capacities associated with mindreading and we have also learned a lot about some of the relevant capacities displayed by young children at various ages. Thus, research in this field has become essentially interdisciplinary. But despite the scientific progress in the empirical disciplines, there is still no consensus about how we should best understand and conceptualize these capacities subsumed under the name of mindreading. What exactly do we do when we try to make sense of other people by ascribing mental states like beliefs and desires to them?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not human longevity is approaching its limits. The debate and its outcome are important since they might affect public policy. We review the evidence presented by both schools. We add our empirical observation that there exist multiple longevity phenotypes, each of which arises from the alteration of fundamental aging processes. The current debate only considers two of the three known mammalian longevity phenotypes. The overlooked phenotype is the delayed onset of senescence phenotype, which can be induced by various interventions, including pharmaceuticals. The existence of multiple phenotypes means that an overview of potential life expectancy outcomes for a species should be based on the analysis of all longevity phenotypes likely to occur in that species.