Cognitive Neuropsychology - Science topic

I have some EDA data from a colleague's project that I want to analyze. Looking into the data, I discovered that the sampling rate is relatively low - it is only 2 Hz. However, the literature I read suggested that the sampling rate should be at least 200 Hz. So, it seems the sampling rate is not high enough for analyzing the phasic components of EDA. Still, as I am completely new in the field of EDA, I would like to ask for your opinion:

Can I still conduct meaningful analysis of phasic SCRs?

Can you link some modern works in this area? How Neuropsychoanalysis changed psychology? What are its methods? Why its better than traditional ways?

Hello,

I would love to receive some recommendations from experts in regards to the topic, whether there are valid findings in research on biological markers for anxiety disorders. I am trying to gain some stable insight and be able to argue in favor of the notion, that no anxiety disorder "comes from a malfunction/sickness of the brain".

Thank you in advance!

Best

Ivo

I need to device an experiment with the n-Back Pointing task without any hardware complement; e.g., no tablet to execute the reaching movements or computer touch screen to select the presumed correct items. The paradigm should be consistent with an ambulatory setting, as a traditional neuropsychological test.

Thanks in advance.

What is the method to compare the performances on two different cognitive tests (that measure different cognitive functions) of the same or different group(s)?

As two cognitive tests are inherently different from each other and many a times, have different parameters.

It will be helpful if anyone can direct me to some useful references.

Thank you

UCLA and Yale University are conducting a Survey on Postoperative Practices in Evaluating and Treating Patients with Brain Tumors in North America.

We are asking neurosurgeons, (neuro)psychologists, speech-language therapists, and occupational therapists, physiotherapists, or psychotherapists to participate in the survey.

Our goal is to understand common practices, disseminate standards of care, and gather information on post-operative outcomes in patients with brain tumors. We will publish the results from this survey in an open-access journal.

The survey can be accessed here:

BECOME A CO-AUTHOR:

If you are interested in collaborating with us by helping us gather responses from more medical professionals from any of the fields listed above, please email use this email: MPolczynska@mednet.ucla.edu.

Thank you very much for your help!

Monika Polczynska

What is the method to compare the performances on two different cognitive tests (that measure different cognitive functions) of the same or different group(s)?

As two cognitive tests are inherently different from each other and many a times, have different parameters.

It will be helpful if anyone can direct me to some useful references.

Thank you.

Intruction-based learning refers to the ability to learn from the instruction rapidly. Many recent studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of this fundemental processes. Currently, we are interested in doing a systmatic review on this topic. Please leave your email address if you are interested.

Some have advocated the use of the "ULLmeter" as a trustworthy measurement of stress - however, I have serious doubts as to whether the method used in validation is in fact a validation of stress - and not just common arousal. 

I have found one article published in Scandinavian Journal of Clinical & Laboratory Investigation

Vol. 69, No. 6, October 2009, 713–721

The article can be found here: http://www.ullcare.com/doc/pdf/Ballegaard%20(2009)%20A%20simpel%20and%20objective%20marker%20for%20stress.pdf

Thank you so much in advance for your always enlightened answers!

Hello,

We are working on a review regarding the relationship between language and the mutiple-demand network. You will be responsible for addressing the reviewer's criticisms. Please leave your email address if you are interested.

Best,

W

I am planning to conduct a study where the verbal responses of the participants will be recorded while sitting and also while standing. I want to use software that can precisely record the responses (i.e. converting speech to text) along with the reaction time of the responses or it can at least give accurate timestamps of the responses. Please suggest any reliable software or platform that can be used for this purpose.

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For MMSE (Mini Mental State Exam), illiterate people are unable to answer questions requiring them to read and follow instructions, such as the question asking them to follow instructions to close their eyes. Individuals who are paralysed are also unable to complete the tasks of taking the paper in their right hand, folding it in half and putting it on the floor. For such cases, how should we interpret their results? Should those items be excluded entirely (i.e their score is upon 29 instead of 30) and be scaled to be upon 30?

Hi, I am a german university student (business administration and psychology) and I am going to write my bachelor thesis.

I would like to research a correlation between stress and the language. For the following points I need your help:

- differently option for stress induction

- or unsolvable tasks for stress induction

- or questionnaire for stress induction

I know about the trier social stress test and the socially evaluative cold water stress test, so I need other options. The best way for me is, to have a computeraided stress test.

I hope you can help me and make my student life a little easier :-).

Best regards,

Timo Köhler

How to measure the emotional words of different languges by using visual-half field test.

In the attachment there is a paper by Zhu, where the author tries to distinguish the concept of intention from that of volition. I found this paper interesting but at the same time not very convincing. I did not find any biological grounding to this idea. What is your opinion about this topic?

I am planning to do an experiment on gamma wave binaural beats of 40 Hz. I have downloaded this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQXNCwfqRjo from youtube. I was wondering if anybody could help me with the information regarding -

how to make sure about the video of 40 Hz?

and how to find the exact frequency of right and left side of auditory stimuli?

Would really appreciate your help. Thank you.

Hi,

I would be thankful for any piece of literature introducing short, accessible and uncomputerised psychological tests for executive functioning and visual-motor processing. I am most interested in assessment of spatial and hierarchical planning.

Thank you

Not all of the neuron circuits in the brain are active from the beginning.

I want to keep the phase information intact for my analysis. Which filtering method should I use in that case? Does the filtering methods change depending on the frequency bands you want to use for time frequency analysis? If so, how?

Hi all,

I'm hoping to repeat brief auditory and visual reaction time tests on healthy participants on at least four occasions, over the course of three weeks. Some articles have suggested repeating the tests twice before recording baseline results to minimise the impact of practice effects, but I was wondering if anyone had other suggestions, or founds any particular tests helpful?

Many thanks in advance!

I've been started to study about CHAOS, and my main major is EEG signal processing.

I'm working on a bigger project that is about detecting and classifying emotion, attention or memorization in EEG signals.

My main question is that, if you friends can help me find an articles in this concept; which relates "Chaos" with "Emotion or attention or memorization"?

Best recommendations would be articles with rich and available data-sets on internet.Preferably for last three years.

Even a single "key word" or "article name" will help me, although much better to have article it self. 

Don't spare your thought from me. even single words could be help full.

To what extent do you believe that psychogenic amnesia is distinct from organic amnesia? What would be the differences and similarities between psychogenic amnesia and organic amnesia? 

These estimates should preferably be in terms of internal-consistency or split-half reliability. We would be interested in obtaining reliability estimates for all subtests, i.e., Information, Comprehension, Arithmetic, Digit Span, Similarities,  Vocabulary, Picture Arrangement, Picture Completion, Block Design, Object Assembly, and Digit Symbol, and for all IQ scores (verbal IQ, performance IQ, and full scale IQ).

Thanks to everybody who considers this question.

These estimates should preferably be in terms of internal-consistency or split-half reliability. However, given that the WCST/MCST does not possess an adequate item structure, re-test reliabilities are probably what one could get.

We would be interested in obtaining reliability estimates for a) the number of categories and b) for measures of perseverative behavior.

Thanks to everybody who considers this question.

I intend to carry out Spatial Navigation evaluations in the elderly with low level of education.

Thank you!

I am wondering if research on hutchinson gilford progeria syndrome can somehow broaden our understanding on the process of ageing from a cognitive and neuropsychological perspective. 

Interoception was recently found to be relayed in posterolateral thalamic nuclei, the posterior and basal part ventromedial nuclei (Craig, 2002, 2003; https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4a19/6479f6756661c7ee6e0399e7fb9843d2866e.pdf). Where are this two nuclei in conventional human thalamic pictures? (e.g. on the attached figures)

I am looking for articles about visual attention tasks, such as: "Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP)", "Choice Reaction Time (CRT)" , "Reaction Time (RTI)" using EEG or MEG.

temporal lobe, wernicke area, neuropsychological assessment 

I am currently writin a literature review on several tools for assessing prospective memory. Would you have the normative data (sample characteristics, reliability, validity, sensitivity, specificity, etc.) of the RBMT-III and the CAMPROMPT (Wilson et al., 2008;2005) ? 

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

Geoffrey.

This measure is based on the EC301 used to assess number processing in adults. It has been used to study number processing in children in Greece, Brazil, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. I have not found if the measure has been used with English speaking children. 

I'm wondering about the relationship between FA and other scalars (AD, MD, RD) in DTI. To my understanding, FA is a summary measure of microstructural changes, while the other scalars are more specific measures of white matter microstructure. Is it possible that one can observe no differences between two groups in FA, but significant differences in the other scalars?

In my study, I compared FA values between two groups, and found no significant differences. Should I then analyze the other scalars as well, or should there not be any differences in these values as well?

All help appreciated!

We are studying the neurobiological basis of ethnic variations in responses to similar life events.

Hi 

I'm new to cognitive research. I'll be glad if someone guide me through this and give me some information about this topic.

I am writing a review of executive function measures, so it would be helpful to have resources that clearly outline its theories.

I would like to use skin conductance responses to indicate when a participant has seen something that is very salient to them and grabs their attention during unconstrained viewing of real, natural stimuli. This would involve using eye-tracking in combination with measuring SCR, and seeing what the participant was looking at when a SCR was evoked. However I am new to the SCR method and am not sure if this approach is feasible or is valid from a theoretical standpoint. Any advice or links to relevant papers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim Uttley

Hi,

I am having problem in analyzing EEG/ERP data in Brain Analyzer 2 starting from vision pycorder. In particular, the ICA and and simple ocular correction analysis (Gratton and Cole) cause me more artifacts and noise than a clean data. Has anyone else encountered such issue by using pycorder?

Thanks

If we are performing any cognitive task and simultaneously recording EEG signals then how can both be correlated together using nonlinear signal processing?

How to present priming in the research model?

I presented it as a construct but interrogators said that priming is not a construct but a process. How to present this as moderating variable in the research diagram then?

Model pic is attached

In my experiment participants played a horror video-game, while EEG, heart rate and skin conductance measures were taken. According to Davidson's approach-withdrawal model, the frontal EEG alpha asymmetry* (FEA) value

should increase in a fear inducing situation - in my experiment anticipation of fear was proven by heart rate and skin conductance values.

Although, FEA showed no significant correlation with heart rate or skin conductance values, a phenomena was observed right after the fearful stimuli: a significant FEA drop (towards approach tendency). As the frontal areas could only tell not the anticipated emotion, but how the subject handles the given emotion, I would suspect that the moment of fear regulation is captured - when the participants calmed themselves down. That would explain the asymmetry change indicating approach tendency. Also, video was recorded of the participants' face during gameplay; around FEA drops participants tend to (subtly) smile.

Still I'm not sure how to interpret this phenomena and if there's a neurobiological explanation for it.

*(calculated by subtracting the right hemisphere alpha power from the left hemisphere alpha power)

Are you familiar with centers that replaced fMRI with rTMS for clinical language mapping? I wonder how common the trend might be in surgical planning. Thank you!

I am a bilingual professional working as an assistant psychologist in a memory service. I have found several research articles about administering the Boston Naming Test to bilingual patients, but none about bilingual professionals administering it. 

Thanks for your help,

Alessandra

I am using memory tasks, attention tasks etc. in my study. Is there any pseudorandomized code?

The right parietal lobe is the area most commonly associated with neglect. Studies find lesions in IPL and angular gyrus is responsible for orientating 3D space; not because it interprets space, but because it may control attention shifts in space. How can this explanation be challenged? 

Is there a validated german translation of the "vestibular disorder activities of daily living scale" (VADL)?   Thank you

I am looking for articles that address the neurobiological effects of verbal and emotional abuse on adults in coercive controlling relationships.

I am doing a analytical paper on this assessment and need several articles please

The task is for a project that will study associations between executive functions and emotion regulation in older, midlife, and younger adults.

Is there a recent study that might allow us to clearly state that when measuring working memory capacity (WMC) by a complex span task, it is actually a measure of executive attention control ? Since to perform a complex span task, one must control and focus his attention in order to retain information and maintain relevant ones for immediate recall. I've already read McCabe, et al., 2010, which is a good start. But i'm looking for more recent studies related to my question. 

Thanks,

I am in the process of writing an article bringing together research from around the world on the ACFS. I have many articles from Spain, and others, such as Germany and The Netherlands, plus several theses. If you think there is a possibility I am not aware of your research (e.g, it hasn't been published), PLEASE send it to me.Thanks!

for example, having a score of 130 on either the verbal comprehension or the perceptual organization ?

As we trundle along through our life's pursuits, there are causal forces at work that determine our future thoughts and actions.

Given some of the work that highlights the central role of exploratory movement for perception (that we act to detect information about the environment), it is possible that these constraints from the past determine solely our behavioral patterns, which in turn constrain the aspects of the environment that we perceive.

The case can also be made that past experience determines our interpretations of sensory stimulation and thus the actions engaged to select those sensations (following along the lines of Helmholtz' theory of unconscious inference). Of course both of these hypotheses may also be false!

Does past experience affect

1. Our cognition (thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc.)

2. Our actions (which in turn determine the aspects of the environment we attend)

3. Both our actions and cognition

(a). Independent of each other

(b). Interdependently or cyclically

4. ...something else

I am looking for an Eye Tracking device to conduct cognitive experiments. Easy to understand the interpretation language is the first prerequisite. It would be a nice help if some one can send me any web link with price and shipment procedure. I would like to buy this device for my Dhaka University Memory Research Unit (DUMRU), Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

We're looking for some norms for older individuals on the digit span task. Although there seem to be a lot of sources that report norms, very few report how accurate the participants were at the various different serial positions. We're especially interested in recency effects, so this information is crucial.

Anyone know of anything?

Thanks

We are looking for an adult-face-database that has been used and validated in a child-sample (aged 6-12). Ekman has been used lots & lots but we are looking for a coloured database (probably Radboud Faces) that we could use with our child-sample. Is anyone aware of validation data from children (for rating adult faces) or of any developmental studies that have used the Radboud faces? Thanks very much!

Higher-order thoughts as necessary and sufficient condition of consciousness

As per (Rosenthal, 2005), “[HOTs] do not transfer the property of being conscious from themselves to their targets; indeed, they don’t induce any changes whatever in those targets” [p.185 …] A mental state’s being conscious is not strictly speaking a relational property of that state. A state’s being conscious consists in its being a state one is conscious of oneself as being in. Still, it’s convenient to speak loosely of the property of a state’s being conscious as relational so as to stress that it is in any case not an intrinsic property of mental states” (p.211).

As per (Wilberg, 2010), “a mental state is conscious if and only if it is accompanied by the [suitable] HOT that one is in that state [p.618 …]. It seems that the [suitable] HOT must represent, at least roughly accurately, the individuating features of that state. [p.619 …] Consciousness as a property of token mental states [p.625]”.

As per (Berger, 2014), “Rosenthal’s version of HOT [higher-order thought] theory, according to which a suitable HOT  is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness … consciousness is best understood as a property of individuals, not a property of states. […] Rosenthal’s higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory of consciousness, which holds that one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT (see, e.g., (Rosenthal, 2005)). [p1…] Consciousness is, as Rosenthal often emphasizes (e.g., 2009, p. 166), a matter of how one’s mental life appears to one. But appearance and reality can in general diverge. [p2…] Although many theorists do assume that consciousness is a property of states, this assumption is questionable. Indeed, Rosenthal himself has been explicit that consciousness is not a property conveyed by HOTs to first-order states (2005, p. 185). […] The fundamental motivation for HOT theory is the claim that one is in a conscious state only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state. Rosenthal has called this fact about consciousness the “Transitivity Principle” (TP) because it explains what is for one to be in a conscious state in terms of one’s transitive [transitional, intermediate] awareness of being in that state (2005, pp. 3–4). It is clear, however, that the TP offers a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for consciousness. […] According to HOT theory, suitable HOTs are the states in virtue of which there are these subjective impressions. A suitable HOT is an occurrent intentional state that asserts the content that I am in some state. […] Since a targetless HOT does not accurately represent any state, there is no state to exhibit consciousness. In such a case, one only seems to be in a conscious state. Hence Wilberg proposes his No Consciousness Account of targetless HOTs. On Wilberg’s view [(Wilberg, 2010)], HOTs are necessary, but not sufficient, for consciousness. […] But because Wilberg maintains that a state’s being conscious involves its acquiring the property of consciousness, he denies that the subjective appearance of being in a certain state is sufficient for consciousness. On Wilberg’s view, one is in a conscious state if and only if it appears to one that one is in a state via a suitable HOT and, in addition, one is in that state. So while consciousness does concern mental appearance, Wilberg maintains that it is a ‘matter of (rough) correspondence between appearance and reality’ (2010, p. 630). […] If one reports seeing a red apple, such a report signals that it appears to one that one sees a red apple—and all there is to a conscious state, we think, is the subjective appearance that one is in some state. Since appearances in general need not correspond to reality, it is implicit in our folk conception of consciousness that consciousness is a matter of mental appearance, whether or not those appearances are accurate. […] To accurately capture our ordinary conception of consciousness, then, HOT theory should maintain that a suitable HOT is not only necessary but also sufficient for consciousness—and this is the version of HOT theory that Rosenthal defends. On Wilberg’s No Consciousness version of HOT theory, by contrast, the mere subjective appearance of a state is insufficient for consciousness. For Wilberg, if one has a targetless HOT that one sees a red apple, seems to see a red apple, and on that basis reports that one sees a red apple, one’s report does not indicate that one consciously sees the apple. In severing the connection between verbal reports and consciousness, Wilberg’s view violates a feature central to both our commonsense and experimental approaches to consciousness. […] There is thus independent reason to think that consciousness is not a property of existing first-order states conveyed to them by HOTs. […] Again, all that matters for consciousness is a suitable impression that one is in a state. According to HOT theory, HOTs are the states in virtue of which one has the subjective impression that one’s mental life is some way. And HOTs are, of course, states of individuals. It is thus compatible with the folk conception of consciousness that consciousness is not a property of states, but a property of individuals—namely, the property of being aware of oneself as being in a state. […] So though it is acceptable shorthand to say that one is in a conscious state only if one is aware of that state, it is more accurate to say that one is in a conscious state only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state. This way of casting the TP yields a version of HOT theory according to which one is in a conscious state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT. This explains why the content of a suitable HOT is that I am in a particular state, not merely that there is such a state. […] On Rosenthal’s view, by contrast, what a HOT makes one aware of is, strictly speaking, oneself. So if one has a suitable HOT, one’s HOT always renders one aware of something that exists—namely, oneself.13 If one has a HOT, then one exists; as Descartes said, a thought requires a thinker […] Sometimes one is aware of oneself as being in a state that exists (when one’s HOT is accurate) and sometimes one is aware of oneself as being in a state that does not exist (when one’s HOT is targetless). […] One way to unpack Rosenthal’s claim would be to hold that when one has a suitable HOT, one exhibits the property of being-in-a-conscious-state, wherein this is understood to be the property of an individual who is suitably aware of being in some state.15 [if HOT theory holds that consciousness is a property of an individual’s representing itself, then the theory is not really a higher-order theory of consciousness at all … HOTs render individuals aware of themselves as being in states. …] What [consciousness] might seem to be a property of a state is actually a property of an individual’s representing itself as being in a state. […] Conscious states are whatever states one is subjectively aware of oneself as being in. So there is, after all, a way in which we can comfortably describe consciousness as attaching to states, even in cases of targetless HOTs. If we do so, as Rosenthal proposes, we apply the property of consciousness to notional states. But this too is accommodated by HOT theory. We often apply properties to notional objects. And it is unclear what evidence could be brought to bear upon the decision between the view that consciousness is a property of notional states and the view that it is a property of actual individuals representing themselves as being in those notional states. […] What it is for one to be in a conscious state is for one to have the suitable appearance of a state, whether or not one is in that state. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or that it is only a matter of appearances. HOTs and the appearances that they reflect are real, though it is the individuals, and not the states, that are conscious.”

It seems that first we need to investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for HOT and then investigate if these conditions are the same as that for consciousness.^[1]

[1] Email discussion with Jacob Berger (Nov 2015):

Vimal (11/3/15): What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for HOT?

Berger (11/3/15): As Rosenthal conceives of it, HOT theory holds that a mental state is conscious if and only if one has a suitable HOT about it. Now, there is some debate about what 'suitable' means. Rosenthal claims, at least, that the HOT must arise in a way that does not seem to be the product of inference or observation. But there may be other conditions that need to be met. 

Vimal (11/3/15): You and Rosenthal seem to claim that HOT is the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. However Wilber seems to claim that HOT is the necessary but not sufficient conditions for consciousness. Your wrote, “the TP offers a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for consciousness”. 

“Rosenthal claims, at least, that the HOT must arise in a way that does not seem to be the product of inference or observation. But there may be other conditions that need to be met.”

From this it is not clear to me what the necessary and sufficient conditions for HOT are. What is the origin of thought and HOT?

My understanding about necessary and sufficient conditions is as follows: “The necessary conditions for consciousness are those conditions that must be satisfied in order to have consciousness, i.e., if any of them is missing then the entity is not conscious. The sufficient conditions for consciousness are conditions, if satisfied, guarantee that the entity is conscious.” (Vimal, 2015f).

Could you please elaborate it in detail as much as you can?

Berger (11/4/15): You're right that Rosenthal and I think that a suitable HOT is necessary and sufficient for consciousness, whereas Wilburg argues that such a HOT is only necessary.  I try to make the case for why Wilburg is mistaken in the paper I sent you.

As I say there, the TP (which is the motivation for HOT theory) only specifies a necessary condition for consciousness: namely, a mental state is conscious only if you're aware of it somehow.  But being aware of a mental state isn't sufficient for consciousness because, after all, I can become aware of a mental state of yours, but that need not--and indeed cannot--make it conscious.  

So Rosenthal tries to generate a theory of consciousness--HOT theory--that not only captures the TP, but also specifies what kind of awareness is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness.  And this is what we capture by saying that the HOT, in virtue of which a state is conscious, has to be "suitable."  

As Rosenthal argues (e.g., on p. 27 of that book), a mental state need not be conscious if we are aware of it in a way that seems to be mediated by inference or observation.  If you tell me that I'm happy, and I really am happy, my state of happiness still need not be conscious.  My state of happiness is conscious if and only if I'm aware of it *and* it doesn't seem to me that I'm aware of it because of  inference or observation.  That isn't to say that I am not in fact aware of it because of inference or observation, only that it doesn't seem that way to me.  So at least one part of what it is for a HOT to be suitable is for it not to seem to arise as a product of inference or observation.  In other words, you have to seem to be directly aware of it.

Does that help?

Vimal (11/5/15): [I] An individual (consists of body, brain and mind) has innumerable states including conscious, unconscious, and non-conscious states. Therefore, it is more precise to consider a specific state of an entity.

    [II] Let us interpret the HOT theory of consciousness in the least problematic extended dual-aspect monism framework (eDAM) (Vimal, 2008, 2010a, 2013, 2015a, 2015b), where a state of an entity has two inseparable aspects: 1pp-mental aspect and 3pp-physical aspect. [1pp: first person perspective and 3pp-third person perspective.]

     In the eDAM framework, the optimal definition (that has the least number of problems) of consciousness is: consciousness is the mental aspect of a state of a brain-mind system or a brain-process from the first person perspective; consciousness has two sub-aspects: conscious function and conscious experience (Vimal, 2010b).

As per (Berger, 2014), “Rosenthal’s higher-order thought (‘HOT’) theory of consciousness, which holds that one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT (see, e.g., (Rosenthal, 2005)).”

In the eDAM, a self is the subjective experience (SE) of a subject (from first person perspective) (Bruzzo & Vimal, 2007), which is different from the objective experience of the subject (from third person perspective). The former includes inner feeling of ‘I”-ness, whereas the latter is the experience of her/his own body as an object similar to that of any object.

Therefore, in the eDAM, Rosenthal’s HOT theory holds one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of ‘the subjective experience of the subject’ as being in that state via a suitable HOT.

In the eDAM framework, the suitable HOT entails the relationship between three kinds of signals: the self-related neural-network signal interacts with the result of the interaction/matching between stimulus-dependent feed forward (FF) signals and cognitive feedback (FB) signals. Here, stimulus could be either exogenous (external target stimuli) or endogenous (internal stimuli without external target, internal target could be internally generated target as in dreams, imaginations etc.). 

In the eDAM, the first-order state is the state related to “the interaction/matching between stimulus-dependent feed forward signals and cognitive feedback signals”, which is not conscious yet; it needs some entity to experience the matched specific experience; and that entity is the self. The self is the SE of the subject, which is the 1pp-mental aspect of the self-related state of the mind-brain system; the 3pp-physical aspect of this state is the self-related neural-network and its activities. Thus, a HOT theory is consistent with the eDAM framework.

To sum up, if suitable HOT is the necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness, then the necessary and sufficient conditions for the suitable HOT are the same as that for consciousness.

“The necessary conditions for access (reportable) consciousness are as follows: (1) the formation of neural-networks; (2) wakefulness; (3) reentrant interactions among neural populations; (4) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate consciousness; (5) integrated information (F) at or above threshold level; (6) working memory; (7) stimulus contrast at or above threshold; and (8) neural-network proto-experiences that are superposed potential subjective experiences (SEs) embedded in a neural-network as pre-cursors of SEs. The necessary conditions for phenomenal (non-reportable) consciousness are (1)-(3) and (5)-(8), i.e., the same as access consciousness except attention.” (Vimal, 2015a).

[III] Once we accept a suitable HOT then the eDAM addresses the difference between Rosenthal’s/your and (Wilberg, 2010)’s views and controversy related to external targetless HOTs. It seems that, for Wilberg, target means external stimulus only. Target needs to be precisely defined as it could be internal or external stimulus. This is because we can have experiences or HOT in our imagination (e.g., I can imagine red apple that will create a state) or in our dream for endogenous stimuli/targets even if there is no external target. A state related to this is can be thought of state for the endogenous/internal target without external target; this is what I understood by targetless HOT, where a target is an external stimulus. The state of the tip-of-tongue related to author’s name need to involve self to make the HOT as a suitable HOT. 

[IV] There are over 40 meanings assigned to the term ‘consciousness’, which were categorized in to two groups: functions and experiences as elaborated in (Vimal, 2009). Rosenthal and you seem to include experiences related to both internal and external targets for consciousness; whereas, Wilberg seems to use only external target in his definition of consciousness. Thus, different meanings are assigned to the term “consciousness” leading to further confusion.

Thus, Rosenthal and you seem to defend the view by implicitly using internal target also in consciousness, whereas Wilberg seems to use only external target and hence conclusions appear contradictory, although in reality there is no contradiction. Misunderstanding arose because of the lack of the precise definitions of target and consciousness and their use.

[V] To sum up, as long as self is involved in interactions, i.e., all three kinds of signals (self, FF and FB) interact, then the self should be able to experience the specific experience; otherwise, a first-order state will be created via the interaction/matching of FF and object related FB signals, but there is no entity (such as self) to experience it.  This explanation addresses the controversy between first-order and high-order frameworks.

What are your comments on the above view?

[VI] Query: [1] What are the origins of thoughts? Our thoughts could be due to intrinsic activities and/or because of extrinsic stimuli. Is this correct?

[2] Thoughts, HOTs, attention, memory are included in cognition. Cognition is a functional sub-aspect of consciousness, whereas our subjective experiences are the experiential sub-aspect of consciousness. If a suitable HOT (functional sub-aspect of consciousness) is necessary and sufficient condition for the experiential sub-aspect of consciousness, then this is consistent with the hypothesis of 1-1-1 correspondence between function, related experience, and related neural correlates. Do you agree?

Berger/Vimal (11/10/15)

[II]

Berger: I'm not sure if this is entailed by eDAM, but my version of HOT theory does not hold that the 1pp mental appearances of consciousness are distinct from the 3pp physical features of their brains.  I think mental appearances are just brain activity that a creature is aware of in the right kind of way.  So we have two perspectives, the 1pp and 3pp, on the same thing.  It may not seem like the same thing, but it is.

Vimal:  The eDAM also says that the information is precisely the same for both aspects/perspectives; in addition, they are inseparable, except HOT bases on problematic materialism (consciousness is generated by non-conscious matter such as brain) and eDAM bases on the least problematic dual-aspect monism.

          Berger (11/19/15): I obviously don't think that materialism is problematic--I think it's reasonable to think that consciousness can be generated by non-conscious matter.  This is especially clear if you grant a HOT model on which thoughts can occur nonconsciously (and so are unproblematically material) and that consciousness is just a product of certain kinds of thoughts.

          Vimal: There are over 40 meanings attributed to the term ‘consciousness’ as elaborated in (Vimal, 2009), which were identified and categorized according to whether they were principally about function (thoughts can be considered as functional aspect of consciousness) or about experience. If you attribute the product of certain kinds of thoughts as consciousness then perhaps there is not much problem. However, the experiential aspect of consciousness (what it is like to be …) is different and materialism has serious well-known explanatory gap problem as elaborated in (Vimal, 2010d, 2013).

[IV]

Berger: I agree that the term 'consciousness' is highly ambiguous.  And your idea that Wilberg and I are just talking past each other because we're using different notions of it is an interesting one.  But I'm not sure that's what's going on.  On my view, a conscious state is a state that it (suitably) seems to you that you're in--and I think Wilberg agrees.  And we both agree that, whenever it seems to you that you're in a state, there is something that exists--namely, the HOT in virtue of which it seems to you that way.  What we disagree about is whether or not the state that it seems to you you're in must exist for there to be consciousness.  I say it doesn't: You can be in a conscious state that doesn't exist--which is to say that it can seem to you that you're in a state that you're not in fact in.  Wilberg disagrees.  He thinks that if it seems to you that you're in a state, but you're not in that state, you're not in a conscious state.  I think he's wrong because consciousness isn't a property of the target state (the state you're aware of being in, but might not be in), but a property of you--to be in a conscious state is to be aware of yourself as being in a state.  So in that way we disagree about what the predicate 'conscious' applies to.  I say it applies to creatures; Wilberg says it applies to the target of a HOT.  Perhaps that's what you had in mind? As I say in the paper, though, we often do apply 'conscious' to the target states, and that's fine as far as it goes.  It's just that it is, in a way, misleading and a kind of loose talk.

Vimal: So difference is: you claim that consciousness is property of a creature to resolve the problem of targetless HOT; whereas, Wilberg claims that consciousness (C) is the property of a state (S) of the creature. Since a creature can have innumerable states, one of them may be conscious of seeing redness of ripe tomato, i.e., (S1, C1), second may be related to the taste of the sugar, i.e., (S2, C2), third may be listening to music, i.e., (S3, C3), etc. If you assign consciousness to the creature then it should be the same experience in all states of the same creature, which is obviously not true in this example. Therefore, a specific experience/consciousness should be assigned to a specific state.

Berger (11/19/15): That's a nice argument.  But I don't think it shows my view is problematic. I think that when we say that "a creature C is in a conscious state S" we mean that the creature has a certain property--namely, the property of being aware of itself as being in S.  But that means that the creature can be in many different kinds of conscious states at once--that is, the creature has many kinds of properties.  The creature might be aware of itself as being in state S, state S1, state S2, etc.  And being in those conscious states are all distinct properties of the creature.

Vimal: Yes, S is a unified state as the superposition of S1, S2, etc. Does Wilberg claim that micro-consciousness Ci is the property of ith state Si of the creature? If this is true, then macro-consciousness C is the property of unified macro-state S of the creature at that moment, which is the same as saying C is the property of the creature. Thus, there is no contradiction. Now, let ripe-tomato is missing, then (S1, C1) will be missing also. However, the creature can now imagine ripe-tomato from her memory; this will create S’1, with corresponding C’1. Again, I do not see any contradiction.

[VI]

[1] Berger: I think so.  Sometimes I am caused by extrinsic stimuli to have a thought.  An apple causes me to see the apple and that causes me to think that there's an apple.  But sometimes I can just "bring up" a thought myself endogenously.  I just sit here and think that Paris is in France.  How I do that, however, is something that is still unclear to me.

[2] I'm not sure I agree.  For one thing, I think much thinking (and cognition generally) occurs without being conscious.  According to HOT theory, a mental state is conscious iff one is aware of it via a HOT--but those HOTs need not be, and typically aren't, themselves conscious.  So cognition is not a functional sub-aspect of consciousness, it's the other way around.  And on my view, the expression 'subjective experience' just means conscious mental state.  So while I agree that you can't have a mental function without some neural activity (because mental functions just are neural activities), I don't think you have to have experience--some mental activity occurs without consciousness.  Indeed, that is what HOT theory is trying to account for: the difference between conscious mental states and mental states that occur outside of consciousness.  Does that help?

Vimal: Well, I guess, I was not clear. If you want to pick up a coffee, then function is picking up, experience is where the cup is, and the structure is all related anatomy and physical activities. In this example, structure : function (cognition) : experience (consciousness) :: 1:1:1 and this triad is inseparable for a specific time, specific space, and specific condition; otherwise, if there is any mismatch then you will not able to pick up the cup.

Berger (11/19/15): I agree that our cognition and experience is often wrapped up.  But one of the key motivations for HOT theory is that many kinds of mental activity, including thought, can occur without experience at all.  There are many commonsense and experimental examples of unconscious thinking and arguably even unconscious acting that do not require the creature to be aware of itself as thinking or acting.  If so, then experience isn't inseparable from action.  It often accompanies it, but it need not.  Or at least that's what I think.

Vimal: In that case experience is missing, but function (unconscious thinking) and related structure must remain intact. Missing does not mean separable; it means experience is latent because once you become conscious then experience, function, and structure return back to be inseparable. This example does not violate the doctrine of inseparability of aspects and sub-aspects.

 References:

Berger, J. (2014). Consciousness is not a property of states: A reply to Wilberg. Philosophical Psychology <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.771241>; <(penultimate draft: https://www.academia.edu/2465437/Consciousness_is_Not_a_Property_of_States_A_Reply_to_Wilberg>, 27(6), 829-842.

Bruzzo, A. A., & Vimal, R. L. P. (2007). Self: An adaptive pressure arising from self-organization, chaotic dynamics, and neural Darwinism. J Integr Neurosci <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2007-Bruzzo-Vimal-self-JIN-p541-566.pdf>, 6(4), 541-566.

Rosenthal, D. M. (2005). Consciousness and mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2008). Proto-experiences and Subjective Experiences: Classical and Quantum Concepts. J Integr Neurosci [Available at <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2008-Vimal-PE-SE-classical-quantum-JIN-0701-P49.pdf >; Latest update: <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2010-Vimal-PE-SE-classical-quantum-LVCR.pdf >], 7(1), 49-73.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2009). Meanings attributed to the term 'consciousness': an overview. J Consciousness Stud <Available: http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2009-Vimal-Meanings-LVCR-2-10.pdf >, 16(5), 9-27.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2010a). Matching and selection of a specific subjective experience: conjugate matching and subjective experience. J Integr Neurosci [<http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2013-Vimal-Matching-Selection-LVCR-3-1.pdf >], 9(2), 193-251.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2010b). On the Quest of Defining Consciousness. Mind Matter (Available: < http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2010-Vimal-DefineC-LVCR-3-2.pdf >), 8(1), 93-121.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2013). Emergence in Dual-Aspect Monism. In A. Pereira Jr. & D. Lehmann (Eds.), The Unity of Mind, Brain and World: Current Perspectives on a Science of Consciousness (pp. 149-181). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Longer version is available for comments: <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2012-Vimal-Emergence-UMBW-CUP.pdf >].

Vimal, R. L. P. (2015a). Necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness: Extended Dual-Aspect Monism framework. Vision Research Institute: Living Vision and Consciousness Research [Available: <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2015-Vimal-Necessary-sufficient-conditions-Conciousness-LVCR-7-1.pdf >] [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1587.9124], 7(1), 1-28.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2015b). Segregation and integration of information: extended Dual-Aspect Monism framework. Vision Research Institute: Living Vision and Consciousness Research [Available: <http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2015-Vimal-IIT-in-eDAM-LVCR-4-1.pdf >] [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1974.3445], 7(2), 1-39.

Wilberg, J. (2010). Consciousness and false HOTs. Philosophical Psychology, 23(5), 617-638.

Just for your information, the followings are copied from my current manuscript in preparation: “Necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness”

“The relation between attention and consciousness is controversial; there are 5 competing views/ hypotheses (De Brigard, 2010):

A. Attention is necessary but not sufficient for consciousness (Merikle & Joordens, 1997; Moran & Desimone, 1985; Rensink, O'Regan, & Clark, 1997).

B. Attention is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness (De Brigard & Prinz, 2010). As per (Prinz, 2011), “[reportable] consciousness arises when and only when we attend”. Here, consciousness is access or reportable (Block, 2005, 2007; Lamme, 2003) subjective experience (“there is something that it is like to be …” (Nagel, 1974)). And attention is not consciousness, rather attention makes perceptual representations available to working memory (Prinz, 2011), which is a ‘self-sealing’ definition of attention (Taylor, 2013).

C. Attention is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness, i.e., they are two different processes that sometime occur simultaneous but can occur separately under specific conditions (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; Koivisto, Revonsuo, & Salminen, 2005; Lamme, 2003; Watanabe et al., 2011).

D. Consciousness is necessary for attention based on commonsense psychology, but attention is not necessary for consciousness (Mole, 2008): “one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the things that one is conscious of” (p. 86). One could also argue that ‘experienced self’ is a part of the ‘stream of consciousness’, which provides the background for the central focus of attention (Stapp, 2005). Consciousness during dream may have degraded attention (Sarter & Bruno, 1999). (De Brigard, 2010) offers an argument against this hypothesis: “there isn’t such a thing as the view of commonsense psychology about the relation between attention and consciousness. In fact, I argue that people’s use of these terms—and, presumably, of their corresponding concepts—seems to be context-dependent.”

E. Consciousness is not necessary for attention (Kentridge & Heywood, 2001).

One could argue that these relationships between attention and consciousness depend on the contexts, stimulus conditions, and how the terms are defined. Here, we argue for the hypothesis-(I) with qualification. Our definition of the terms ‘consciousness’ is given in Section 1.1 and ‘attention’ in Section 2.1.4. Within the limits of these definitions, both exogenous and endogenous attentions are necessary but not sufficient for access consciousness (Kentridge, Heywood, & Weiskrantz, 2004). However, top-down endogenous selective attention is not necessary for phenomenal consciousness because they can be dissociated (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; van Boxtel et al., 2010). For example, subjects can be aware of the pop-out in visual search or the gist of a scene without or very little top-down selective attention; on the other hand, in aftereffect and priming, subjects can attend but are not aware of invisible objects (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007).

The examples of attention is necessary for consciousness are as follows: (i) Attending one visual stimulus may lead to temporary blindness to other unattended stimuli (Perry & Hodges, 2003). (ii) There seems to be no (report of) consciousness in the absence of attention (Lamme, 2003). Thus, ‘no attention means no (reportable) consciousness’ appears to be a valid statement.

This needs further elaboration and qualification to make it more precise. Attention could be top-down endogenous (such as fronto-parietal signal) or bottom-up (Itti & Koch, 2001) exogenous (such as thalamic reticular signal in selective attention?). As mentioned in Section 1.1, there are two types of consciousness (Block, 2005, 2007; Lamme, 2003):

(i) Phenomenal consciousness is not reportable, which presumably occurs during less than 50 msec stimulus presentation, where top-down endogenous(?) attention is not necessary. For example, Sperling type experiments (Sperling, 1960, 1971, 1983; Sperling, Budiansky, Spivak, & Johnson, 1971) and pop-out visual search, attention is either not needed or minimally needed. In other words, phenomenal consciousness can occur without top-down endogenous(?) attention; and top-down endogenous(?) attention can occur without phenomenal consciousness; for example, subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects.

(ii) Access consciousness is reportable, for which top-down endogenous(?) attention is necessary; it takes longer time than phenomenal consciousness.

Furthermore, there are consistent reports that exogenous (reflexive, automatic. Bottom-up) attention with peripheral cues interacts with conscious perception and hence it is necessary condition for consciousness. Most of the dissociations are for endogenous (top-down voluntary) attention with central cues. However, if phasic alerting or bottom-up activation is increased enough then endogenous attention modulates consciousness. This implies that endogenous attention is also necessary condition for consciousness under this context (Botta, Lupianez, & Chica, 2014). Exogenous attention has fast (quick rise at 150 ms) and transient response, and involves temporoparietal cortex and ventral frontal cortex region. Whereas, endogenous attention has slow (asymptote at about 300 ms) and sustained (several seconds) response, and involves dorsal posterior parietal and frontal cortex region.

Attention is not sufficient for consciousness because:

(i) There is evidence of attentional capture without consciousness. For example: (a) As per (McCormick, 1997), “exogenous cue presented below a subjective threshold of awareness captured attention automatically and without awareness.” (b) Distractors can capture attention but subjects are not aware of them (Theeuwes, Kramer, Hahn, & Irwin, 1998).

(ii) Other conditions such as wakefulness, reentry, working memory and so on are also needed for consciousness”

I am seeking research on any areas that would give false positive results for Bipolar Affect Disorder (BPAD). I have not been successful finding current studies. I am curious if Thyroid evidence would impact results?

Also, knowing that Chromosome 18, with parental linkage has impact, has anyone completed research on parental/patient (nuclear family) testing for significance? I did find one study regarding this latter topic. Thank you. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1801428/

I'm working in my doctoral thesis and I will use a neurophenomenological approach in order to shed light about how dual systems theory of decision making (i.e Kahneman and Tversy) are interrelated and controlled.

My background is on engineer but I am very interested in take a mixed complementary approach that include cognitive tasks and measurement, neurological data gathering (by EEG use), and phenomenological interviews in order to deal with the issue from  multiple and concurrent approaches. I lack of any experience using phenomenological research but I understand that is not an easy task, then I am wondering if this great research community could provide some help to me

Brain degeneration in dementia is closely linked with behavioural disturbances.

Would that be possible to directly modulate brain waves and subsequently have some impact on behaviour??  

I'm designing an n-back task and I'd like to change the level of n based on performance. Is there a consensus on how to calculate accuracy?

I have seen this equation  "hit+correct rejection/(targets + non targets)", but also this "hits/hits+false alarms", but I found no theoretical basis on which to choose. 

I could use the d' from Signal detection theory but I don't know how to change difficulty based on the variation of d'. 

Thank you for your help!

Tarik

Has anyone had problems of synchrony between an eye-tracking system and the stimulus delivery software sending log messages to the eye-tracking system logs? And if so, what the possible sources of the problem could be, how to avoid the problem, and how to deal with it?

We have an MR-compatible eye tracker from MR Technologies hooked onto Arrington Research's ViewPoint EyeTracker software on one PC. On a different but connected PC, Neurobehavioral Systems Presentation software controls stimulus delivery. I have Presentation communicate to the eye tracking software's logs when my video stimulus starts and ends because I was told it was more reliable to manually start the eye tracking system rather than trying to control it through commands triggered from Presentation. As far as I understand, the eye-tracking system logs a line of data every 33ms even when there's tracking loss. I expect that I should have the same number of eye-tracking data lines between my video log markers -- so if my videos are 33 fps, I assume I should have the same number of eye data points as frames for a given video -- is that correct?

However, the eye-tracking data corresponding to a video is on the order of up to 3 seconds (1-80 data points) longer than the video. For example, for a random video and according to the Presentation log files for some random 2 subjects:

video X: 102 frames (25fps) = 4.1 sec length of video (according to Presentation log files and video)

sub1: 182 lines eye data @ 30fps = 6 sec of data marked as recorded during the  length of video

sub2: 166 lines eye data @ 30fps = 5.5 sec

I am very hesitant to assume that the "video start" log marker I had Presentation send to the eye-tracker system log files really corresponds to when the video started (and then take only as much eye data as video length, ignoring the "video end" log marker -- or could this be a safe assumption?

Thanks in advance for any help and explanations!