Terra Cognita: From Functional Neuroimaging to the Map of the Mind

Author: Lloyd D.

Source: Brain and Mind, Volume 1, Number 1, April 2000 , pp. 93-116(24)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

For more than a century the paradigm inspiring cognitive neuroscience has been modular and localist. Contemporary research in functional brain imaging generally relies on methods favorable to localizing particular functions in one or more specific brain regions. Meanwhile, connectionist cognitive scientists have celebrated the computational powers of distributed processing, and pioneered methods for interpreting distributed representations. This paper takes a connectionist approach to functional neuroimaging. A tabulation of 35 PET (positron emission tomography) experiments strongly indicates distributed function for at least the `medium sized' anatomical units, the cortical Brodmann areas. More important, when these PET experiments were interpreted as distributed representations, multidimensional scaling revealed a `brain activation space' with a salient structure organized primarily by the sensory modality of the stimulus, and secondarily by the type of motor response. These results suggest that current analytical techniques in functional neuroimaging should be augmented by distributed processing analyses, and that these analyses may lead to many discoveries about the structure of `inner space.'

Keywords: parallel distributed processing; functional brain imaging; multidimensional scaling

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy and Program in Neuroscience, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, U.S.A., e-mail:dan.lloyd@trincoll.edu

Publication date: 2000-04-01