1) NEUROIMAGING AND PSYCHOLOGY

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Why is task-related fMRI considered correlational?

It identifies associations between brain activity and task conditions, not causation.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Does activation prove a region is necessary for a cognitive function?

No. Necessity requires evidence from damage, lesions or disruption using TMS.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results What did Bird et al. (2020) illustrate about medial PFC and ToM?

A patient showed no apparent social-cognition deficit despite medial PFC damage, challenging necessity.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results How can researchers test whether a brain region is necessary?

Examine lesions or dysfunction, or disrupt activity experimentally using TMS.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results How can researchers test whether a brain region is necessary?

No. Activation alone does not show that a region can produce the function by itself

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Why is there no simple one-to-one brain-region/function mapping?

Regions contribute to multiple processes, and cognitive functions often involve interacting regions.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Why inspect the underlying signal, not just the activation map?ast?

The same contrast can arise from different patterns of activation and deactivation

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results What is reverse inference?

Inferring a mental process from brain activation alone

• e.g. concluding amygdala activity means anxiety.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Why is reverse inference logically problematic?

Many mental states engage the same region, so activation does not uniquely identify a process.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results What is forward inference in task-related fMRI?

Manipulate a cognitive condition and test whether brain activity changes with that manipulation

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results What is the key assumption behind strong forward inference?

The contrast isolates the target process, with other relevant factors controlled.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results Why can reverse inference involve affirming the consequent?

If X activates region Z, observing Z does not prove X occurred; other processes may activate Z.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results When is inference from a brain region more selective?

When a region responds reliably and selectively to a process, such as V1 to visual input.

Understand the dos and don’ts of interpreting task-related fMRI results What is the main danger of interpreting activation maps alone?

Researchers may invent a cognitive explanation without sufficient evidence that the process occurred.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is the central problem of cognitive neuroscience?

Linking neural descriptions to psychological descriptions, which refer to fundamentally different things.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What are the two languages used in cognitive neuroscience?

Neural terms

• hippocampus

• theta oscillations

Cognitive terms

• memory

• attention

• creativity

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What helps connect neural activity with cognitive functions?

Representations and operations performed on those representations.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is cognitive ontology?

The challenge of defining and organising the psychological processes or components that researchers claim to study.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is the problem with mapping loosely defined cognitive functions?

If constructs like memory or attention lack precise definitions, their neural mapping becomes difficult to interpret.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is cognitive psychology's information-processing view?

The mind represents info and performs operations on those representations to produce intelligent behaviour

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is a mental representation?

An internal code that stands in for something in the world, such as an object's shape.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? Why does the brain need internal representations?

It does not access the external world directly; it constructs representations from incoming sensory information.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What is a cognitive operation or computation?

A process performed on a representation, such as mentally transforming a represented shape.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What are the two components of cognitive modelling?

• Representations specify what information is encoded

• operations specify how that information is processed.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What does fMRI contribute to brain mapping?

It helps localise brain regions whose signals vary with cognitive tasks or conditions.

What are we mapping when we do brain mapping? What does fMRI contribute to brain mapping?

It clarifies what information is represented and what operations produce cognitive performance.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases How has MVPA connected cognitive psychology and neuroscience?

It reveals information in distributed patterns of neural activity, helping investigate internal representations.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases How are mental representations thought to be neurally grounded?

In distributed patterns of activity across populations of neurons and voxels.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases What is isomorphism between the world and neural activity?

Similarities in the external world correspond systematically to similarities in neural activity patterns.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases What neural pattern would similar external stimuli produce?

What neural pattern would similar external stimuli produce?

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases How does MVPA differ from mapping average activation?

MVPA analyses patterns across voxels to identify represented information, not just overall signal magnitude.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases How are AI word vectors analogous to neural representations?

Both can encode relationships through the geometry or similarity of distributed numerical patterns.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases What did Tang et al. (2023) investigate?

They mapped AI-derived word vectors to BOLD responses and decoded semantic content from perceived speech.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases What does successful semantic decoding from speech-related BOLD suggest?

Brain activity contains systematic information about the semantic content of perceived speech.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases Does decoding prove that a brain region uniquely represents meaning?

No. It demonstrates predictive information, not uniqueness, necessity or causation.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases How do representations and operations jointly explain cognition?

Representations encode information; operations transform or manipulate it to support cognitive functions.

Understand how operations and representations explain cognitive functions and their neural bases What is the overall goal of brain mapping?

Relate neural signals to cognitive processes while using models to specify the information and operations involved.