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Chapter
Cognitive Control, Reward, and the Basal Ganglia
The action selection, or gating function of the basal ganglia is dependent upon the integrity of the dopaminergic reward system (see Volume I for an illustration of dopaminergic pathways [2]). At base, this is...
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Chapter
Why People Who Cannot Move Are Able to Think
The first clue in approaching an answer concerns the fact that for the brain, the only difference between planning or imagining an activity and engaging in the activity is the actual execution of that behavior...
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Chapter
The Exceptionality of Deafness
Deafness represents another area of exceptional presentation potentially important to the development of cognition. Deaf people can observe. However, to refresh the readers memory, in the above discussion of t...
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Chapter
Summary, Conclusions, and Future Direction
In kee** with Einstein’s quote used to introduce this volume, an attempt was made to understand EF by trying to simplify and identify its stimulus-based characteristics. EF represents an ambiguous issue. Amb...
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Chapter
The Motor Examination
Because of the nature of development, with its dependence on sensorimotor interaction, an assessment of motor functioning is critical to a meaningful evaluation of the cognitive control system. In this regard,...
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Chapter
Problem Solving: Practical Examples and Additional Properties
Under a variety of circumstances, breaking down a problem or reducing it to its stimulus-based properties might seem easy, and as a result, a solution can be found very quickly. For example, once it is underst...
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Chapter
Neuropsychological Constructs, Assumptions, and Executive Functioning: Revisiting Principles of Brain Organization
In the 1800s, Dr. Paul Broca observed that patients with expressive aphasia, which is sometimes termed motor aphasia, had lesions in the anterior frontal lobe. Dr. Wernicke later reported that certain patients...
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Chapter
Large Scale Brain Systems
The concept of large scale brain systems was reviewed in detail in Volume I of this series [2], which described a model of brain-behavior relationships using ADHD as proxy. Seven patterns of connectivity have ...
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Chapter
The Novelty-Routinization Principle of Brain Organization
The verbal–non-verbal dichotomy of left versus right hemispheric specialization of brain function is problematic for several reasons. To start with, it is not biologically consistent across different species o...
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Chapter
Movement, Thinking, Anticipation, and Banishing Executive Functioning
As stated in Volume I, the functional architecture of the vertebrate brain evolved to meet the needs of interactive behavior; it did not evolve for the specific purpose of thinking [104]. This evolutionary phe...
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Chapter
Abolishing the Executive and the Mind-Body Problem
Cognition is not separate from sensorimotor control; there is no duality between motor and “cognitive” functions. This was clearly implied in the examples of the automobile mechanic, the brain dissection works...
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Chapter
The Cerebro-Cerebellar Underpinning of Cognitive Control
During the course of evolution, the neocortex demonstrated a significant expansion. This increase in size actually reflects increased specialization. It is not really “size” that matters. Instead, within this ...
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Chapter
The Basal Ganglia Underpinning of Cognitive Control: The Fronto-Striatal System
The organization of the cortex includes widespread connections with the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are a group of subcortical nuclei that are bilaterally represented within the brain. These nuclei consis...
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Chapter
Basal Ganglia Dynamics, Cognition, and Social Behavior
The basal ganglia gate cognition the same way they select behavior, on the basis of activity within the direct and indirect pathways. For example, within the FPN, and the general cognitive control system, the ...
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Chapter
Neuropsychological Testing and Neuropsychological Evaluation: Is There a Difference Between These Approaches?
The ideal way to assess cognitive control is to evaluate the procedural learning that generates automaticity and to assess novel problem solving abilities. Procedural learning is simply not assessed in neurops...
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Chapter
The Traditional Neuropsychological Assessment Paradigm
Most neuropsychological tests are based upon a paradigm that is referred to as serial-order processing. There is a static view of cognition inherent in this model. Three processes are foundational to this para...
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Chapter
The Evaluation of Reward Preferences
Another reason that neuropsychological tests have limited applicability in the evaluation of EF concerns the emphasis on “thinking” mechanisms, without considering the implicit reward system. As things stand r...
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Chapter
Introduction
These first three quotations were used to open chapters 2, 7 and 8 of Subcortical Structures and Cognition: Implications for Neuropsychological Assessment [1]. They are reused here because they have special re...
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Chapter
The Problem Solving Metaphor, Neuropsychology, and Executive Functioning
So, how do these examples and principles apply to EF as it is currently conceptualized in neuropsychology? The understanding of EF is a critical problem. Clinical practitioners and the educators who train them...
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Chapter
Functional Domains, Unitary Constructs, and the Integrated Brain
The specific functional domains tested in neuropsychology include language, visuospatial functioning, attention, memory, executive functioning, and sometimes sensorimotor functioning. Sometimes domains are con...
