This study was aimed at revealing which cognitive processes are lateralized in visual categorizations of "humans" by pigeons. To this end, pigeons were trained to categorize pictures of humans and then tested binocularly or monocularly (left or right eye) on the learned categorization and for transfer to novel exemplars (Experiment 1). Subsequent…

Recent data have shown that parallel processing by the cerebral hemispheres can expand the capacity of visual working memory for spatial locations (J. F. Delvenne, 2005) and attentional tracking (G. A. Alvarez & P. Cavanagh, 2005). Evidence that parallel processing by the cerebral hemispheres can improve item identification has remained elusive.…

Most naming treatments in aphasia either assume a phonological or semantic emphasis or a combination thereof. However, it is unclear whether semantic or phonological treatments recruit the same or different cortical areas in chronic aphasia. Employing three persons with aphasia, two of whom were non-fluent, the present study compared changes in…

Cognitive control mechanisms permit memory to be accessed strategically, and so aid in bringing knowledge to mind that is relevant to current goals and actions. In this review, we consider the contribution of left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) to the cognitive control of memory. Reviewed evidence supports a two-process model of mnemonic…

Functional neuroimaging research has demonstrated that retrieving information about object-associated colors activates the left fusiform gyrus in posterior temporal cortex. Although regions near the fusiform have previously been implicated in color perception, it remains unclear whether color knowledge retrieval actually activates the color…

This article presents an interview with Dr. Barbara Clark, a Professor Emeritus of the Charter College of Education, California State University, Los Angeles. She was named California State University, Los Angeles Outstanding Professor of 1978-1979 and was nominated twice for the California State Universities and Colleges Trustees Award for…

Aging is associated with cognitive impairment, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We have recently reported that the ability of rats to learn a Y-maze conditional discrimination task depends on the function of the glutamate-nitric oxide-cGMP pathway in brain. The aims of the present work were to assess whether the ability of rats to…

Pavlovian fear conditioning is a robust and enduring form of emotional learning that provides an ideal model system for studying contextual regulation of memory retrieval. After extinction the expression of fear conditional responses (CRs) is context-specific: A conditional stimulus (CS) elicits greater conditional responding outside compared with…

Adult male Long-Evans rats were trained to run in a straight-alley maze for food reward and subsequently received hippocampus-dependent latent extinction training. Immediately following latent extinction, rats received peripheral injections of the NMDA receptor partial agonist D-cycloserine (DCS, 15 mg/kg), or saline. Twenty-four hours later, rats…

It has been suggested that spindle neurons, an evolutionarily unique type of neuron, might be involved in higher-order social, emotional, and cognitive functions. As such, it was hypothesized that these neurons may be particularly important to the pathophysiology of autism, a disease characterized in part by disruption of higher-order social and…

This paper provides a brief review of various uses of magnetic resonance perfusion imaging in the investigation of brain/language relationships. The reviewed studies illustrate how perfusion imaging can reveal areas of brain where dysfunction due to low blood flow is associated with specific language deficits, and where restoration of blood flow…

Upon stimulation, areas of the brain associated with specific cognitive processing tasks may undergo observable physiological changes, and measures of such changes have been used to create brain maps for visualization of stimulated areas in task-related brain "activation" studies. These perturbations usually continue throughout the period of the…

We report a patient (MT) with a highly specific alexia affecting the identification of letters and words but not numbers. He shows a corresponding deficit in writing: his letter writing is impaired while number writing and written calculation is spared. He has no aphasia, no visuo-perceptual or -constructional difficulties, or other cognitive…

Given that there are neural markers for the acquisition of a non-verbal skill, we review evidence of neural markers for the acquisition of vocabulary. Acquiring vocabulary is critical to learning one's native language and to learning other languages. Acquisition requires the ability to link an object concept (meaning) to sound. Is there a region…

The ubiquitous left-hemisphere advantage in visual word processing can be accounted for in different ways. Competing theories have been tested recently using cAsE-aLtErNaTiNg words to investigate boundary conditions for the typical effect. We briefly summarize this research and examine the disagreements and commonalities across the theoretical…