Earl Miller is quoted in a Time article about the dangers of multitasking:
You Asked: Are My Devices Messing With My Brain? Time (May 13, 2015)
http://time.com/3855911/phone-addiction-digital-distraction/
““Every time you switch your focus from one thing to another, there’s something called a switch-cost,” says Dr. Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Your brain stumbles a bit, and it requires time to get back to where it was before it was distracted.” ““You’re not able to think as deeply on something when you’re being distracted every few minutes,” Miller adds. “And thinking deeply is where real insights come from.”
Botvinick and Cohen provide a very nice overview of where computational modeling of executive control has been and where it is going.
Huffington Post article about the evils of multitasking.
You’re Not Busy, You Just Think You Are: 7 Ways To Find More Time The Huffington Post UK | By Georgia James Posted: 13/06/2014 15:00 BST
(with quotes from Earl Miller)
Peelen and Kastner extend studies of attention in the lab (using simple, neutral displays) to the real world (complex, meaningful scenes). They discuss interactions between what and where templates shaped by object familiarity, scene context, and memory
Everybody knows that we can only hold a limited number of things in mind simultaneously. Is this capacity limit due to a limited number of “slots” in working memory or due a limited resource pool that is divided among the items held in mind? We found evidence for both (Buschman et al, 2011). Now, Roggeman et al use computational modeling to provide further evidence for a hybrid model for capacity limits of working memory.
Further reading:
Buschman,T.J., Siegel, M., Roy, J.E. and Miller, E.K. (2011) Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108(27):11252-5. View PDF »
Christian Ruff pays tribute to the late, great, Jon Driver by reviewing neural mechanisms of top-down control of attention and memory.
A review in Science of Sue Corkin’s book on the famous neuropsychology patient H.M., who could no longer form memories after his hippocampus was removed.
Permanent Present Tense The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M. by Suzanne Corkin Basic Books, New York, 2013. 400 pp. $28.99, C$32. ISBN 9780465031597. Allen Lane, London. £20. ISBN 9781846142710.
Dave Eagleman spells it out for us.
Pinto et al, despite enough statistical power, fail to see any correlation between performance of a top-down attention task (search) and a bottom-up attention task (singleton capture). They argue that top-down and bottom-up attention systems operate independently.
They cite our work, which suggests that top-down vs bottom up attention signals originate from prefrontal vs parietal cortex:
Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860-1862 The Scientist’s “Hot Paper” for October 2009. View PDF »
Radiologists looking for lung nodules miss the a gorilla inserted into the images. Even experts doing their job are subject to inattentional blindness.
Drew et al
Cowell and Cottrell trained a computational model on images used in fMRI studies of object and face processing. They used multivariate pattern analysis and were able to replicate evidence for a specialized face area even though the model had no specialized processing for faces. The authors suggest that fMRI evidence for a specialized face area should be interpreted with caution.
Excellent review of an important topic: Working memory capacity. The limitation in working memory capacity is the most objective, easily measured, and tractable property of conscious thought..
Luck and Vogel (2013)
Miller Lab work cited:
Siegel, M., Warden, M.R., and Miller, E.K. (2009) Phase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 21341-21346. View PDF »
Peter Lakatos and Charlie Schroeder have conducted elegant work showing that the brain entrains its rhythms to attended sensory inputs. Here, Lakatos et al show that normal human subjects show increased rhythmic entrainment with increasing task demands, By contrast, schizophrenic patients are less able to match their brain rhythms to attended stimuli, even when the task is highly demanding.
Miller Lab work cited:
Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860-1862 The Scientist’s “Hot Paper” for October 2009. View PDF »
Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386-396. View PDF »
Your prefrontal cortex becomes less resistant to stress as you age. McEwen and Morrison tell you all about it.
Boot et al show that it is important for psychology studies to have active controls. To exclude placebo effects, the control should include the expectation of change without the actual manipulation.
Miller Lab alumnus, Andreas Nieder, finds that abstract decisions divorced from motor plans are distributed across frontal areas, even those traditionally thought of as motor areas. In fact, they are more strongly encoded in the presupplementary motor area than the prefrontal cortex.
Merten and Nieder 2013
Miller Lab work cited:
Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 291:312-316. View PDF »
Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167-202. Designated a Current Classic by Thomson Scientific as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior. View PDF »
Miller, E.K. (2000) The prefrontal cortex and cognitive control. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1:59-65.
Wallis, J.D., Anderson, K.C., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Single neurons in the prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. Nature, 411:953-956. View PDF »
Pannunzi et al propose a model of visual category learning in which bottom-up sensory inputs to the inferior temporal cortex are sculpted by top-down inputs from the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC improves signal to noise by enhancing the category-relevant features of the stimuli.
Miller Lab work cited:
Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 291:312-316. View PDF »
Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K (2003) A comparison of primate prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices during visual categorization. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(12):5235-5246. View PDF »
Meyers, E.M., Freedman, D.J., Kreiman, G., Miller, E.K., and Poggio, T. (2008) Dynamic population coding of category information in the inferior temporal cortex and prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology. 100:1407-1419. View PDF »
Muhammad, R., Wallis, J.D., and Miller, E.K. (2006) A comparison of abstract rules in the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, the inferior temporal cortex and the striatum. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18: 974-989. View PDF »
Seger, C.A. and Miller, E.K. (2010) Category learning in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, Vol. 33: 203-219. View PDF »
A nice cautionary discussion of how to interpret the results of multiple-way ANOVAs that yield unexpected interactions.
Bishop Blog
In this week’s NY Times, Susana Martinez-Conde reminds us that our visual system works by detecting change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/vision-is-all-about-change.html
The human prefrontal cortex may not be special in terms of its size relative to other primates, but it is still a pretty special.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/05/16/gorillas-agree-human-frontal-cortex-is-nothing-special/?utm_source=feedly
Want to know what it does? Here’s a start:
Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167-202. Designated a Current Classic by Thomson Scientific as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior. View PDF »
Personally, my favorite is the 3rd prize winner: Look at Boston as if you are a giant with eyes 200 yards apart.
http://illusionoftheyear.com/