Marcel Kinsbourne

• MD
• Managing Director at New School

We examined the relationship between cognitive style, empathy, and willingness to help. In Study 1 (N = 186), we measured preference for visuospatial or verbal cognitive style using the ZenQ (Zenhausern, 1978), and empathy using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983). In Study 2 (N = 76), we experimentally elicited verbal or visual cognit...

Objective: In the chordate and vertebrate central nervous system, sensory and motor nerve tracts cross from one side to the other as they connect the brain with sensory receptors and motor neurons. These “decussations,” crossings in the form of an X, relate each side of the brain to the opposite side of the body. The protochordates derive from an i...

With conspicuous stimulus displays lining the walls of a Y maze, rats learned an oblique discrimination with relative ease and a sameness-difference judgment of obliques with moderate difficulty. It appears that difficulty in learning a conventional oblique discrimination is attributable to attention or memory rather than perceptual limitations.

This chapter focuses on the neuropsychology of attention. In species such as humans, which are generously equipped with sense receptors, the environment offers so many concurrent opportunities for information processing that rigorous selection is required to safeguard the individual from being immobilized into helplessness by a flood of competing r...

Abstract— Even with the recent exponential growth in neuroscience research, relatively little attention has been given to cultural influences on brain maturation. In the case of psychological processes that are culturally variable, work in cultural developmental neuroscience is vital in determining the degree of generality that can be attributed to...

False claims are a key feature of confabulation, delusion, and anosognosia. In this paper we consider the role of motivational factors in such claims. We review motivational accounts of each symptom and consider the evidence adduced in support of these accounts. In our view the evidence is strongly suggestive of a role for motivational factors in e...

This article proposes an approach to the brain's role in communication that treats the brain as the vehicle of a multi-scale embodiment of anticipation. Instead of conceptualizing anticipation as something a brain is able to do when circumstances seem to require it, this study proposes that anticipation is continuous and ongoing because to anticipa...

Lateral asymmetry prevails at levels of organization that range from subatomic particles to the human body and brain.

Although Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are generally assumed to be lifelong, we review evidence that between 3% and 25% of children reportedly lose their ASD diagnosis and enter the normal range of cognitive, adaptive and social skills. Predictors of recovery include relatively high intelligence, receptive language, verbal and motor imitation, an...

The cerebral hemispheres of the adult brain, though they look alike, are dissimilar in function. Some of the most striking functional differences are found in the realm of language. We enumerate various facets of brain and behavioral asymmetry that are observed early in human development and are potential precursors of language lateralization. We a...

Multiple theories of Attention-Deficit/Hyper-activity Disorder (ADHD) have been proposed, but one that has stood the test of time is the dopamine deficit theory. We review the narrow literature from recent brain imaging and molecular genetic studies that has improved our understanding of the role of dopamine in manifestation of symptoms of ADHD, pe...

Fundamental dimensions of behavior include approach, withdrawal, domination, submission, indicating and dearousing maneuvers. Generically, approach involves flexion at many joints, withdrawal involves extension. Dominating involves moving upwards, submitting involves moving downwards. Indicating involves pointing. Repetitive meaningless motions con...

Erdelyi distinguishes between cognitive and emotional forms of repression, but argues that they use the same general mechanism. His discussion of experimental memory findings, on the one hand, and clinical examples, on the other, does indeed indicate considerable overlap. As an in-between level of evidence, research findings on emotion in neuroscie...

According to the dominant focus model, the differential activation of the thalamocortical network is a sufficient condition for the diversity of states of consciousness to occur, and coherent patterns of interactive forebrain activation peaks are sufficient to generate specific conscious figures against ground. These minimal assumptions are consona...

An extensive literature credits the right hemisphere with dominance for processing emotion. Conflicting literature finds left hemisphere dominance for positive emotions. This conflict may be resolved by attending to processing stage. A divided output (bimanual) reaction time paradigm in which response hand was varied for emotion (angry; happy) in E...

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) often experience, describe and exhibit unusual patterns of sensation and attention. These anomalies have been hypothesized to result from overarousal and consequent overfocused attention. Parents of individuals with ASD rated items in three domains, ‘sensory overreactivity’, ‘sensory underreactivi...

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is relatively smaller, and the corpus callosum (CC) larger, in adults with Tourette syndrome (TS). The authors explored the possible roles of the PFC and the CC in mediating interhemispheric interference and coordination in TS adults. They measured performance on M. Kinsbourne and J. Cook's (1971) verbal-manual interfere...

The chapter gives full detail about how self-reflective consciousness emerges during the development of the child. The chapter stresses the importance of language. Episodic memory is thought to depend on self-narrative that is itself dependent upon sophisticated language abilities that do not display themselves until at least late toddlerhood. The...

In an uncertain world, people and other animals make their living by predicting which of alternative courses of action is likely to yield the best return. For humans the return might take many forms, such as material, financial, social, or esthetic, but the underlying currency involved for any species is “inclusive fitness,” the rate at which an an...

We report on an adult with opsoclonus-myoclonus-ataxia syndrome experiencing widely spaced neurological relapses, who was followed for 41 years. His responses to treatment are described.

Acquired epileptiform aphasia (AEA) is characterized by deterioration in language in childhood associated with seizures or epileptiform electroencephalographic abnormalities. Despite an extensive literature, discrepancies and contradictions surround its definition and nosological boundaries. This paper reviews current conceptions of AEA and highlig...

It is customary to acquire behavior ratings of children with ADHD from parents and teachers, but comparable informants are typically not available for adults. Self-rating is substituted. The present study presents self-ratings of ADHD and control adults on a 43-item scale. The groups differed significantly on all but 4 descriptors, and 3 sufficed t...

Many adults with ADHD respond to stimulant therapy, but controlled medication assessments have not been reported. We administered an effortful working memory task in four half-day sessions, double blind, at methylphenidate levels of 0, 5, 10 and 20 mg. Dose-response curves were established individually. Fifteen of 17 patients displayed a favorable...

: It is customary to acquire behavior ratings of children with ADHD from parents and teachers, but comparable informants are typically not available for adults. Self-rating is substituted. The present study presents self-ratings of ADHD and control adults on a 43-item scale. The groups differed significantly on all but 4 descriptors, and 3 sufficed...

Among the neurosciences, neuropsychology, the study of the brain basis of mental processes, comes closest to addressing critical questions of broad interest, such as the following: What kind of a device is the brain, how is it organized, by what means does it instantiate consciousness, and is it self-directed or subject to superordinate control or...

I dispute that consciousness is generated by “core circuitry”in the forebrain, with predominance of motor areas, as Cotterillproposes in “Enchanted Looms”and other theorists do also. Ipropose instead that conscious contents are the momentary modeof action of the integrated cortical field, expressed as a point vector (“dominant focus”), to which, in...

We studied time estimation in patients with frontal damage (F) and alcoholic Korsakoff (K) patients in order to differentiate between the contributions of working memory and episodic memory to temporal cognition. In Experiment 1, F and K patients estimated time intervals between 10 and 120 s less accurately than matched normal and alcoholic control...

TransitionAt Millenium’s end we are in transition between models of the brain. Theclassical, static model of unidirectional information flow through a verticallyorganized network has repeatedly been recognized as simplistic and unphysi-ological. I propose that a foundation exists for it to be replaced in the newmillenium by a dynamic model based on...

In 2 dichotic listening experiments, 96 normal right-handed adults attended selectively to the left and right ear and divided their attention equally between both ears. Participants listened for specified targets and reported the ear of entry. The material consisted of pairs of consonant-vowel syllables in Experiment 1 and pairs of rhyming consonan...

In each of two dichotic listening experiments, 48 normal right-handed adults were instructed to attend selectively to the left and right ears and to divide attention equally between ears. Participants listened for specified targets and reported the ear of entry when the target was heard. Stimuli consisted of lists of digit names in Experiment I and...

Although language function is overwhelmingly left lateralized, significant recovery from aphasia is possible even after the left language territory is extensively damaged Some of this recovery is mediated by a transfer of language representation from the lesioned left to the intact right hemisphere. This phenomenon qualifies the view that language...

The cornerstone of any psychiatric evaluation, the mental status exam, requires an assessment of insight -- a term commonly employed by clinicians to describe a patient’s awareness (or lack thereof) of having a mental disorder. However, the relationship between the accuracy of self-knowledge and mental health is complex, and as a result the term “i...

The sequences of cognitive development to be considered in this discussion culminate in an endpoint of lateralization in the mature human nervous system that in its broad definition is no longer in dispute. In the right-handed majority, language-related processes are left lateralized in almost every case. The right hemisphere does contribute toward...

Thirteen patients with left neglect performed line bisection under four conditions: no cue, visual cueing involving the report of a digit placed at the left end of the line, circling the left-end digit, and digit circling plus tracing of the line with the right index finger from its left end to its midpoint before bisection. Digit circling plus fin...

Psychiatric patients solved syllogisms while recovering from transitory ictal suppression of one hemisphere by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The premises were familiar or unfamiliar, true or false. While the right hemisphere was suppressed, syllogisms were usually solved by theoretical, deductive reasoning even when the factual answer was known...

Dichotic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables were presented to 96 right-handed children between the ages of 8 and 12 years. Children were assigned either to a "code" condition that entailed translating the CVCs into English words or to a "bird" condition in which the CVCs had to be matched to cartoons of birds. A differential ear asymmetry fo...

Language lateralization was investigated in 16 adults with severe mental retardation, half of whom had Down syndrome and half other conditions. Down syndrome and non‐Down syndrome participants were matched for language ability using a brief test of general communication, naming, recitation and repetition abilities. Both perceptual (dichotic) and ex...

Glicksohn and Salter both raise good questions that force us to clarify our position. We agree with much of their commentary, with a few caveats. Glicksohn wrongly assumes that later drafts must be “more advanced” and Salter speaks of “recruitment into consciousness,” which invites (but does not require) a Cartesian interpretation. Their suggestion...

As Gray insists, his comparator model proposes a brute correlation only – of consciousness with septohippocampal output. I suggest that the comparator straddles a feedback loop that boosts the activation of novel representations, thus helping them feature in present or recollected experience. Such a role in organizing conscious contents would trans...

We considered the hypothesis that the richness of callosal interhemispheric connections has a role in determining the degree of behavioural laterality and time-sharing ability in dual-task performance. Behavioural laterality as measured by dichotic word listening, line bisection and turning bias tests correlated inversely with the midsagittal cross...

Much of contemporary laterality research has been motivated by a need to increase the accuracy with which individuals can be classified as left- or right-hemisphere dominant for speech and language. Efforts to improve the classification accuracy of laterality methods have led not only to the refinement of laterality methods but also to the discover...

A clinic-referred population of 116 children with attentional problems was classified by DSM-III [attention deficit disorder (ADD)] with respect to inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. The sample proved to subdivide into three groups: inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive (HII), n = 60; inattentive and impulsive (II), n = 26; and inattent...

This study used questionnaire data to examine immune disorders and nonrighthandedness in the families of children enrolled in a learning disabilities school and children attending regular classrooms in public schools. Groups were organized according to their performance on a standardized test of reading comprehension to avoid overlap. In total, 468...

Unilateral neglect is not a unitary disorder, nor does it reflect injury to a single modular structure or element of a distributed neural network. Rather, neglect characterises a set of syndromes that share a characteristic (laterally biased) pattern of malfunction. Specifically, neglect syndromes arise on account of a basic design characteristic o...

This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. Although scientific opinion favors a genetic origin for most cases of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, this explanation does not necessarily exclude alternative causes or precipitating factors, such as common dietary components to which some persons are thought to be abnormall...

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. --T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" In a second there is also time enough, we might add. In his dichotomizing fervor, Bogen fails to realize that our argument is neutral with respect to the number of consciousnesses that inhabit the normal or the spl...

The idea that there is a localized module or limited capacity mechanism in the brain that subserves consciousness is wrong. Awareness is a product of the activity of widely distributed neuronal assemblies that represent diverse aspects of experience. Central to a representation's entry into consciousness is its integration into the currently domina...