Brain Mechanisms of Cognitive Skills

doi:10.1006/ccog.1997.0301

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 6, Issues 2–3, June 1997, Pages 267-290

https://doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1997.0301 Get rights and content

Abstract

This article examines the anatomy and circuitry of skills that, like reading, calculating, recognizing, or remembering, are common abilities of humans. While the anatomical areas active are unique to each skill there are features common to all tasks. For example, all skills produce activation of a small number of widely separated neural areas that appear necessary to perform the task. These neural areas relate to internal codes that may not be observed by any external behavior nor be reportable by the performer. There is considerable plasticity to the performance of skills. Task components can be given priority through attention, which serves to increase activation of the relevant brain areas. Attention can also cause reactivation of sensory areas driven by input, but usually only after a delay. The threshold for activation for any area may be temporarily reduced by prior activation (priming or practice). Skill components requiring attention tend to cause interference resulting in the dual tasks effects and unified focus of attention described in many cognitive studies. Practice may change the size or number of brain areas involved and alter the pathways used by the skill. By combining cognitive and anatomical analyses, a more general picture of the nature of skill emerges.

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^☆: M. S. Gazzaniga

¹: To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed. Fax: (541) 346-4911. E-mail:[email protected].

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Regular ArticleBrain Mechanisms of Cognitive Skills☆

Abstract

Cognition

Neuron

Neuroimage

Cognitive Psychology

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

Time course of activating brain areas in generating verbal associations

Psychological Science

Neuronal correlates of the higher-order semantic code in human prefrontal cortex in language tasks

International Journal of Psychophysiology

Dissociation of storage and rehearsal in verbal working memory: Evidence from positron emission tomography

Psychological Science

Working memory

The cognitive neurosciences

Priming reduces input activity in right posterior cortex during stem completion

Neuroreport

Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding

Psychological Review

Functional anatomical study of explicit and implicit memory retrieval tasks

Journal of Neuroscience

The development of face perception

The nature of expertise

Spatial selective attention affects early extrastriate but not striate components of the visual evoked potential

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect

Psychological Review

Selective and divided attention during visual discrimination of shape, color, and speed: Functional anatomy by positron emission tomography

Journal of Neuroscience

A neural basis for lexical retrieval

Nature

The organization of brain activations in number comparison: Event-related potentials and the additive-factors method

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Localization of a neural system for error detection and compensation

Psychological Science

Semantic encoding and retrieval in the left inferior prefrontal cortex: A functional MRI study of task difficulty and process specificity

Journal of Neuroscience

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Human Brain Mapping

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Psychonomic Bulletin and Review

Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players

Science

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Philosophical Transcripts of the Royal Society of London B

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Brain

Mapping human visual cortex with positron emission tomography

Nature

Processing speed, working memory, and fluid intelligence: Evidence for a developmental cascade

Psychological Science

Less skilled readers have less efficient suppression mechanisms

Psychological Science

The mechanisms of suppression: A component of general comprehension skill

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Combined spatial and temporal imaging of brain activity during visual selective attention in humans

Nature

Rapid conceptual identification of sequentially presented pictures

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Principles of psychology

Perceptual inhibition of expected inputs: The key that opens closed minds

Psychonomic Bulletin and Review

A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory

Psychological Review

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A locus in human extrastriate cortex for visual shape analysis

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Nature

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Identifying objects at different levels of hierarchy: A positron emission tomography study

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Regular Article
Brain Mechanisms of Cognitive Skills☆