Foraging-and feeding-related behaviors across eumetazoans share similar molecular mechanisms, suggesting the early evolution of an optimal foraging behavior called area-restricted search (ARS), involving mechanisms of dopamine and glutamate in the modulation of behavioral focus. Similar mechanisms in the vertebrate basal ganglia control motor…

This paper examines the impact of auditory deprivation and sign language use on the enhancement of location memory and hemispheric specialization using two matching tasks. Forty-one deaf signers and non-signers and 51 hearing signers and non-signers were tested on location memory for shapes and objects (Study 1) and on categorical versus…

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate two competing hypotheses about the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in word generation. One proposes a domain-specific organization, with neural activation dependent on the type of information being processed, i.e., surface sound structure or semantic. The other proposes a…

Forty participants assigned artificial creatures to categories after explicit rule instruction or feedback alone. Stimuli were typical and atypical exemplars of 2 categories with independent prototypes, conflicting exemplars sharing features of both categories, and "Others" with only 1 or 2 features of the well-defined categories. Ten…

The author proposes a neural-network-based explanation of how a brain might acquire intuitive expertise. The explanation is intended merely to be suggestive and lacks many complexities found in even lower animal brains. Yet significantly, even this simplified brain model is capable of explaining the acquisition of simple skills without developing…

Evidence about memory for order information comes from a number of different methodologies: human cognition, patient studies, neuroimaging studies, and animal lesion and behavioral studies. The present article discusses (a) evidence that order and item memory are separable; (b) proposed mechanisms for order memory (interitem associations, direct…

One of the most exciting developments to emerge from the field in the past 20 years is the increasing attention to neurobiological responses to violence and trauma exposure. Although researchers have yet to identify a consensual pattern of neurobiological response to violence and trauma exposure, it does appear that some type of alteration in the…

The present study reports the evaluation results of the "Protecting You/Protecting Me" (PY/PM) alcohol use prevention and safety curriculum for third, fourth, and fifth graders when taught by high school peer leaders. The primary goal of the PY/PM prevention program, developed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), is to prevent injury…

According to Allchin (2003), Lawson (2002) tried to shoehorn the history of science into a preconceived philosophical category, the hypothetico-deductive method (HD).Lawson replied (2003) that discovery is based on HD because that's the way the brain works, and accused Allchin of shoehorning science into another method, blind search and induction.…

Geometric alterations to the boundaries of a virtual environment were used to investigate the representations underlying human spatial memory. Subjects encountered a cue object in a simple rectangular enclosure, with distant landmarks for orientation. After a brief delay, during which they were removed from the arena, subjects were returned to it…

Auditory comprehension is commonly measured with multiple choice tasks. The sensitivity of these tasks in identifying deficits, however, is limited by credit given for correct guesses by forced choice. In this study, we compare performance on the multiple choice task to an alternative word/picture verification task, in 122 subjects with acute left…

Numerous brain areas work in concert to subserve memory, with distinct memory functions relying differentially on distinct brain areas. For example, semantic memory relies heavily on posterior cortical regions, episodic memory on hippocampal regions, and working memory on prefrontal cortical regions. This article reviews relevant findings from…

Two little noticed cases in which William Macewen used symptoms of visual agnosia to plan brain surgery on the angular gyrus are reviewed and evaluated. Following a head injury, Macewen's first patient had an immediate and severe visual object agnosia that lasted for about 2 weeks. After that he gradually became homicidal and depressed and it was…

Mounting evidence concerning obsessive-compulsive disorders points to abnormal functioning of the orbitofrontal cortices. First, patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) perform poorly on tasks that rely on response suppression/motor inhibition functions mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex relative to both normal and clinical controls.…

Converging evidence from human lesion, animal lesion, and human functional neuroimaging studies implicates overlapping neural circuitry in ventral prefrontal cortex in decision-making and reversal learning. The ascending 5-HT and dopamine neurotransmitter systems have a modulatory role in both processes. There is accumulating evidence that…