Cognitive neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    As well as substantial changes in mood, geriatric depression is also characterized by executive dysfunction (ED). Morimoto et al.show that some sufferers of geriatric depression do not respond to conventional drugs, and that ED in these patients can be alleviated with computerized cognitive remediation therapy.

    • Sarah Shizuko Morimoto
    • , Bruce E. Wexler
    •  & George S. Alexopoulos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the genetic basis of cognitive traits could aid the development of numeracy and literacy skills in children. Here the authors show that reading and mathematics have a large overlapping genetic component and suggest that a child's learning environment has a key role in creating differences between them.

    • Oliver S. P. Davis
    • , Gavin Band
    •  & Chris C. A. Spencer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The right inferior frontal cortex has long been thought to house a neural module that inhibits dominant behaviours. Using brain imaging, Erika-Florence et al.demonstrate that this inhibition is in fact an emergent property of multiple neural networks that support broader classes of cognitive processes.

    • Michelle Erika-Florence
    • , Robert Leech
    •  & Adam Hampshire

  • Article |

    Visual attention is known to affect choice certainty, but exactly how is unclear. Here, the authors use electroencephalography in a visual motion discrimination task and identify neural correlates of choice certainty, which precede the decided action.

    • Leopold Zizlsperger
    • , Thomas Sauvigny
    •  & Thomas Haarmeier

  • Article |

    Communicative persistence is a key indicator of intentionality in humans. Here Roberts et al. show that two language-trained chimpanzees can dynamically and flexibly use persistent intentional communication to guide a naive experimenter to a food item hidden in a large outdoor enclosure.

    • Anna Ilona Roberts
    • , Sarah-Jane Vick
    •  & Charles R. Menzel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Disruption of glomerular activity maps in the olfactory bulb is believed to have little effect on odour-quality perception. Bracey et al. test this by disrupting olfactory bulb inputs and find that odour recognition relies on matching input patterns to templates from previously encountered odours.

    • Edward F. Bracey
    • , Bruno Pichler
    •  & Troy W. Margrie

  • Article |

    It is generally accepted that women possess innate behavioural predispositions to assess their babies’ cries. Gustaffson and colleagues compare mothers’ and fathers’ abilities to identify their babies’ cries, and find that fathers can be as good as mothers at recognizing the cries of their offspring, depending on their experience.

    • Erik Gustafsson
    • , Florence Levréro
    •  & Nicolas Mathevon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bilingual infants possess a unique ability to rapidly acquire the grammar of both of their native languages. Gervain and Werker find that bilingual infants achieve this by using characteristic prosodic cues associated with different word orders.

    • Judit Gervain
    •  & Janet F. Werker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural plasticity can be mediated by cognitive processes or sensory inputs to the brain. Cardin et al.use fMRI to study individuals who vary in hearing and sign language abilities, and find that sensory and cognitive experiences cause plasticity in anatomically and functionally distinguishable cortical areas.

    • Velia Cardin
    • , Eleni Orfanidou
    •  & Bencie Woll

  • Article |

    The ability to delay gratification in childhood correlates with the ability to exert self-control in adulthood. Berman and colleagues re-examine individuals that were studied 40 years ago and find that the individuals who are able to exert a high level of self-control have more efficient neural networks.

    • Marc G. Berman
    • , Grigori Yourganov
    •  & John Jonides

  • Article |

    Reading requires accurate and rapid distinction between similar visual stimuli. Thesen and colleagues use human intracranial electrophysiology and brain imaging to show that letter-selective responses, in an area of the brain immediately posterior to the visual word-form area, occur before word selection.

    • Thomas Thesen
    • , Carrie R. McDonald
    •  & Eric Halgren

  • Article |

    The pulvinar nucleus is involved in modulating visual information. Fischer and Whitney use brain imaging to study the pulvinar during visual attention, and find that the positions and orientations of attended objects are precisely encoded in the pulvinar, while information about ignored objects is gated out.

    • Jason Fischer
    •  & David Whitney

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Jurors can be influenced by mitigating circumstances when deciding on sentences for committed crimes. Yamadaet al. show that feelings of sympathy created by mitigating circumstances activate moral conflict regions of the brain that predict individual differences in the severity of the sentence.

    • Makiko Yamada
    • , Colin F. Camerer
    •  & Hidehiko Takahashi

  • Article |

    The exact speed of spoken word processing by our brain is still unknown. Using MEG to compare brain responses to words and pseudowords, MacGregoret al. show that lexical processing occurs 50 ms after acoustic information is presented, suggesting that our brain's access to word information is near-instantaneous.

    • Lucy J MacGregor
    • , Friedemann Pulvermüller
    •  & Yury Shtyrov

  • Article |

    Humans understand actions by making inferences about the person's intentions. Comparing humans with chimpanzees, this study shows that humans refer to the actors' faces more than chimpanzees do when observing goal-directed actions, indicating that humans view actions by integrating information from the actor.

    • Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi
    • , Céline Scola
    •  & Satoshi Hirata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reinforcement learning quantifies the change in behaviour in response to past experience. Using field goal attempt data from basketball, Neiman and Loewenstein demonstrate that even one failed or made attempt has an impact on subsequent attempts, showing that players overgeneralize from their most recent actions.

    • Tal Neiman
    •  & Yonatan Loewenstein

  • Article |

    The health benefits of massage therapy, like the reduction of stress, have so far only been shown in humans. This study uses modelling to demonstrate that, while visiting cleaner fish to have ectoparasites removed, the physical stimulation also acts to reduce stress in the coral reef fish,Ctenochaetus striatus.

    • Marta C. Soares
    • , Rui F. Oliveira
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article |

    Ampullary organs are involved in electroreception, but whether these are derived from placodes, thickened ectoderm, is unclear. In this study, the ampullary organs of the primitive ray-finned fish,Polyodon spathula, are shown to develop from lateral line placodes, suggesting that this is the ancestral state in bony fishes.

    • Melinda S. Modrell
    • , William E. Bemis
    •  & Clare V.H. Baker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In animals, cryptochrome proteins are thought to be the detectors of the Earth's magnetic field, but humans have not been shown to posess mangetosensing capabilities. Foleyet al. demonstrate that the human cryptochrome protein, CRY2, when expressed in Drosophila melanogastercan mediate magnetoreception in a light-dependent manner.

    • Lauren E. Foley
    • , Robert J. Gegear
    •  & Steven M. Reppert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many animals can do simple quantity discrimination, but they often perform poorly when food is used. Here, the authors show that monkeys are good at food quantity discrimination when they are not allowed to eat it, suggesting that the mental representation of the stimuli is more important than the physical quality.

    • Vanessa Schmitt
    •  & Julia Fischer

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