Cognition in Action
Week 2 - Unconscious influences on behaviour
Consciousness
We are only aware of a small portion of what happens in our minds.
Automatic → no attention required, no capacity limit, inflexible
Controlled → focus of attention, limited capacity and flexible
Priming
Stimulus → Response without awareness and intention
“Congitive” priming → context activates stored conceptual or perceptual memory trance. Slightly faster reaction times/biased responses to stimuli that relate to activated trace. Not dependent on explicit awareness
Perceptual Priming → facilitated perception for repeated stimuli
Mechanisms of cognitive priming → activation of memory representation; influences decsions/behaviour dependent on that representation
Other automatic behaviours → habits, conditioning, procedural learning
Neural basis of implicit memory → dissociable neural correlates of implicit and explicit memory
“Social” Priming → context activates some stored concept. Implicitly modulates attitudes and complex behaviour. Not dependent or explicit awareness.
Criticisms:
Large effects not plausible
Effects on behaviour not adaptive
Lack of clear mechanisms
Inadequate checks of consciousness
Evidence in support based on questionable research practices resulting in statistical “flukes”
Decision making
Implicit decision making: popular, multitud of paradigms, measures and topics
Unconscious though theory
Dijksterhuis, 2004, (Experiment 1): Participants given information about four hypothetical apartments, described by 12 positive/negative features. One apartments made more desirable than others (predominantly positive features), a second one made undesirable (predominantly negative features). The two remaining apartments were more neutral. suggested this advantage was specifically for complex vs. simple decisions
Conflicts with standard view in cognitive science (e.g. Tversky & Kahneman, 1970s)
Shaky evidence?:
However, some argue the evidence for unconscious influences on decisions is weak (Newell & Shanks, 2014)
Unreliable evidence (noisy data, publication bias)
Poor measures of conscious awareness (see e.g. Stockart et al., 2025)
Failure to consider alternative explanations
Counterargument – important/complex decisions are based on conscious processing and typically under voluntary control
Sleep and cognitive processing
Sleep is an unconscious state, people cycle between REM and slow wave sleep stages (associated with different cogntivie processes). Even when sleeping the brain continues processing recent experiences
Sleep x memory → memory reactivation during sleep is critical
Sleep x learning → people can even learn new associations during sleep
Conscious processing
Conscious thoughts and memories underlie our voluntary behaviour.
Malleability of memory → conscious memory isn’t a perfect record due to multiple reasons (inc biased encoding, forgetting, distortions)
Misinformation effects (Loftus & Palmer, 1974)
Explicit memory-informed behaviour not quite as rational and free as we might think, may have larger effects on behaviour than implicit biases.
Choice blindness: after swapping participants choices, they still justify them.
Critical reading
Peer reviewed journals have been critically evaluated and deemed good enough for publication. Different journals have different rigor ad expectations for good enough. BUT PEER REVIEW ISN’T PERFECT
Replicability crisis
Bad design: small samples, low power leads to “random” findings due to biased effect size estimates and confounds etc
Questionable research practices: p-hacking, selective reporting and HARKing
Perverse incentives: publication bias, publish or perish
Slide adapted from Kate Button talk: “Teaching reproducibility in undergraduates” (June 2020)
Week 3 - Sense of Agency
Intro
Binding - distinct regions/networks in the brain must effectively communicate and integrate to provide a feeling of agency
Feeling of Agency:
Usually use some form of binding task
Low level experience (perceptual motor) of being the agent of an action
Judgement of agency:
Simply ask a participant whether they felt in control of an action and the subsequent outcome
Higher-order experience (interpretation) of agency
Agency → humans have capacity to make choices and act on them in an intentional wat
Sense of Agency → subjective feeling of controlling events through one’s willed behaviour
Agency
Libet experiments
Identified brain activity 100s of milliseconds before participants reported consciously deciding to initiate a movement
Questioned free will
Led to further experiments looking at sense of agency and what has an influence on this phenomena
What does agency determine
Predictive/Prospective factors
Factors before the observed action
Stems from internal motor commands associated with generating movements.
If this matches actual outcome we feel sense of agency
Postdictive/Retrospective factors
Factors after the observed action, based on 3 conditions
Exclusivity → one's action is the only potential cause of the event
Priority → one has prior thoughts or plans about the action
Consitency → when the occurred action matches the action that was planned
Interaction between the two
Integrated Cue theory/ Optimal Cue Theory
Sense of agency does not emerge from anything directly related to the actual causation of the action
Sensory attenuation → prediction-outcome match = reduced sensory brain response and experience
Intentional binding → refers to temporal estimation between the action and the outcome. Differnce between judging onset of tone with and without preceding action
judgement error = actual time - percieved time
The judgement error is greater when the tone is preceded by an action
Action and effect are perceived closer in time after voluntary that involuntary actions
Willful action leads to greater sense of agency
Predicitive mechanisms:
Temporal prediction – the ability to predict the point in time a sensory event will occur
Temporal control – using one’s action to control the point in time a stimulus will occur
Identity prediction – being able to predict the precise stimulus that will appear
Motor prediction – predict the identity of a sensory event based on an action
Postdictive factors (Takahata, et al (2012))
Assessed the influence of positive, negative, or neutral monetary outcomes
Negative outcomes resulted in less binding between action and sensory feedback
Self-serving bias, whereby we want to distance negative outcomes
Week 4 - Gravity
What is the internal Modelof Gravity
Gravity - Downwards acceleration caused by the mass of the earth
Terrestrial gravity = acceleration of 9.8m/s2 = 1g
Gravity is constant, unchaning and ubiquitous
The human body has no specialised recpetors to detect gravity (unlike other senses)
Vision - stable visual refernces give us an indication of the direction of gravity. Our perception of verticality can be biased by visual cues
The direction of objecy motion can indicate gravity → evidence that the brain accounts for graviy when viewing free-falling objects
Vestibular - v. labyriths deep inside the inner ear, Detect angular rotation and linear acceleration of the head.
Huge network of brain regions process vestibular inputs
Vestibular system interacts with multiple senses
Unlike all other senses, we have no conscious experience of vestibular signals
Vestibular cues continually signal the position of the head
Vestibular-gravitational inputes to the internal model include the detection of head positin with respect to gravity. Tilt of the head also influences the contribution of other gravity-related sensory signals due to increased otolith noise
Proprioception → As it takes increased effort to move limbs against gravity, proprioception must take into account force of gravity on the limb to plan effective movements
Body:
Somatsensory information important in verticality perception
Patient with somatosensory loss had completely the opposite pattern to controls when perceiving the vertical
Signals from the kidneys might signal gravity
Patients who had lost a kidney were more variable in judging their posture with respect to gravity
May also be receptors in the stomach
Reduced variability in verticality judgements when the stomach is full vs empty
Prior Knowledge → through experience, we build expectation about gravity
Downwards acceleration
From 7 months old, children expect objects to accelerate downwards – upwards acceleration is seen as surprising
Head is usually upright
“The way to feel better is to “lose up,” to convince your visual system that “up” is wherever you point your head and “down” is where your feet are. When you can do that, and go headfirst or earlobe-first wherever you want, then you're getting adapted to zero-g.” – Marsha Ivins
Neuroanatomy → regions sensitive to grav. acceleration all across the brain. Lots of overlap between vest and vis areas
Vestibular nuclei/posterior vermis in cerebellum encode head tilt and visual scene information
Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ) might be important for encoding gravity for object interception
Damage to regions in the parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC) can result in tilts of the visual vertical
How does the Internal Model of Gravity influence perception/cognition
Verticality → what is “up” in a grav gield
Static visual cues can bias verticality (rod and frame)
Moving visual cues can also bias verticality (dynamic visual vertical)
Vestibular influences (GVS) → biased visual vertical and haptic vertical, but not postural vertical
Aubert/Entgegengesetzt → exact cause of these effects is still debated, but likely due to a combo of altered vestibular, somatosensory, proprioceptive inputs and the idea that the head is usually upright
Interception → very precise at intercepting objects that fall according to earth gravity. Anticipate the effect of gravity when objects fall as if weightless. Also mis-time objects which accelerate as if gravity is reversed. Suggests we use the internal model of gravity to guide objects interception
Object motion duration → we are more precise in estimating the motion durarion of objects that fall downwards according to gravity vs upwards against gravity = gravitational advantage. D = v1 - v2/g
Object weight perception → an objects weight is given its mass * gravity
Perceived weight was lighter after viewing Mars vs Earth VR
Proportional reduction was equivalent to one-third of Earth gravity!
More evidence that we flexibly build an internal model of gravity from sensory signals
This model is applied to physical objects
The brain and body in zero G
800 poeple have been into space, majority in low earth orbit (inc space stations). Only 28 beyond (24 from 1972-2026, 4 more this year). Longest mission 437.75 (trips to mars between 15-34 months).
Many space agency astronauts/cosmonauts (highly trained and fit, rigourous selection).But a emerging interest in space tourism (anyone with money).
Debate over the importance of space travel (many issues on earth). but soliving issues on earth and using resources for space travel for space travel not mutually exclusive and space missions feed into everyday advancements. Manned space missions are vital for conitnual scientific and tech developments, so studying humans in 0g trvael importants to ensure health
Fluid shifts → fluid shifts awat from legs and up, towards the head cuases increased intracrenal pressure, causes optic nerve compression, flattening of the back of the eyeall and optic disc swelling
Skeletal changes → 52% of astronauts report back pain (space adaptation back pain). bone density decreases ~1-2% each month in weightlessness
Brain structure changes
Space adaptation syndrome - motion sickness symptoms in the first few days of spaceflight. Also report cold-like symptoms (maybe due to fluid shifts). Visuo-vestibular caused by vestibular unloading. After a few dyas, brain and body adapt to 0g and symptoms resolve, returning can evoke similar symptoms
Psychological challenges - visual reorientation illusion and inversion illusion
Emotional challenges in weightlessness → missions can be high-pressured, high-stress environments (thoughts that astr. might have altered immune reponse due to stress.
Isolation and seperation from loved ones, alternations in sleep schedules and potential for clashes between crew members. Long-duration missions might also entail comm delays and overview effect
Cognitive changes → NASA twin study investigated cog changes
Studying weightlessness on Earth
Several studies on astronauts/cosmonauts in space, but for most researches this is no possile. We have spaceflight analogues
Parabolic flight
Centrifuge
Head-down Bed Rest
Lab manipulations
Analogues don’t encompass everything in the same way as spaceflight, but they can target diff aspects of microgravity and diff inouts to the internal model of gravity
Parabolic flight → run by NASA, ESA, AirZeroG. Experiments must be brief as you only have ~20s in each phase. Around 30 parabolas per flight 10 slots for your experiements (10 × 20 sec = 3.3 mins of testing time). Huge adv of real weightlessness, but dis of reduced time - experiments can take years to collects a few subject
Verticality → at low level of grav, subjective visual vertical set to the body axis. At higher levels of gravity, subjective visual vertical set to the grav vertical. Suggests a threshold of Gravity before it is used as a reference! ~0.3g?
Rubber hand illusion → weightlessness thought to decrease reliability of porprioceptive cues → increased reliance on vision → increased RHI. Suggests proprioception needs gravity to precisely report the position of the limbs
Centrifuge → can be used to simulate hyper and hypogravity. Position of the body and the spread of the rotation create diff g-forces at the head. Participants have to undergo med exams before participating
during initial exposure to hypograv, participants underestimated how much they were tilted. After repeated exposure and with visual feedback, particiapnts became more accurate. Suggests recalibration of sensory signals with prolonged exposure to hypogravity
head-down best rest → used to simulate fluid shifts and potentially vestivular unloading in 0g. usually done over long periods of time (30-60 days). Can also result in loss of muscle mass/bone density similar to spaceflight
70 days HDBR
Measured grey matter volume changes and sensorimotor performance
Decrease in the ability to use vestibular cues to maintain standing balance
Decreases in GM volume in frontal regions, increase in parietal regions
Suggests neuroplastic changes associated with exposure to hypogravity, resulting in altered sensorimotor performance
Other lab based
Head tilt:
Tilting the head results in tilt-dependent noise in the vestibular system
Increased noise in a sensory system = decreased reliability = down-weighting of these cues = altered inputs to the internal model
Behaviour control:
Random Number Generation
More randomness/Less redundancy = Exploration
Less randomness/More redundancy = Exploitation
Upright = normal gravitational signals
Supine = greater noise in the vestibular system = altered inputs into the Internal Model of Gravity
Altered gravity pushes people into more routine behaviours
Water immersion:
In the water, body weight is supported
Fewer somatosensory signals for gravity
Head-out or whole-body immersion → different vestibular effects
Dry Immersion
Verticaity:
Subjective Visual Vertical and Subjective Horizontal Body Position assessed on land or underwater
SVV deviated towards the direction of the body – Aubert effect
No difference between underwater or on land measurements
SHP differed depending on condition → physical tilt perceived as more tilted than it actually is
Suggests that gravity-related somatosensory information is needed for accurate tilt perception
Week 5 - Peripersonal Space: A body boundary
PPS - a body space representations
Brain represents space to percieve and interact with external stimuli in the environment. Space representations implies a reference frame (fixed origin and a seies od coordinate axes relative to which spatial locations and stimuli are expressed). The brain constructs multiple representations of space (each given reference frame), depending on the source of sensory stim and the nature of interaction betweej the individual and the environment.
Body (or given body part) onsistues the origin of most spatial representations. Info from diff sensory systems signalling the position of external stimuli in the enviro is combined with info about the ody part to which specified set of reference frames is referred.
Eye centred
Eye looks straight ahead, the image of the tree falls in the centre of the retina
When eye looks up or down, the image of the tree is shifted to a diff location
Retina signals the location of stimuli in an eye-centred frame of reference
Head centred:
3 Spaces exist:
Personal space: body surface
Peripersonal space: space close to the body (within reach)
Extrapersonal space: space far from the body
Presented through neuropsychological evidence in humans:
Depiction of the overlapping lesioned sites for the 3 patients studied. Personal neglect:
The patient lies with his upper limb positioned at the sides of his trunk; examiner clearly pointing to the patient’s right hand, orders with this hand touvh your other hand
Score
0 - patient promptly reachers for the target
1 - The target is reached with hesitation and search.
2 - The search is interrupted before the target is reached.
3 - No movement towards the target is performed.
and experimental lesions in monkeys