Marcel Just

As science and technology rapidly progress, it becomes increasingly important to understand how individuals comprehend expository technical texts that explain these advances. This study examined differences in individual readers’ technical comprehension performance and differences among texts, using functional brain imaging to measure regional brain activity while students read passages on technical topics and then took a comprehension test. Better comprehension of the technical passages was related to higher activation in regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus, left superior parietal lobe, bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and bilateral hippocampus. These areas are associated with the construction of a mental model of the passage and with the integration of new and prior knowledge in memory. Poorer comprehension of the passages was related to greater activation of the ventromedial prefrontal …

The authors are retracting this article after concerns were raised about the validity of their machine learning method in a Matters Arising 1. While revising their response to these concerns, the authors confirmed that their method was indeed flawed, which affects the conclusions of the article. Specifically, the stepwise classification method used in the article overestimated the classification accuracy of who is a suicidal ideator because the features of the classifier were tuned to that particular dataset. The authors aim to demonstrate the predictive value of machine learning applied to fMRI data for the classification of suicidal ideators using new data and analyses in an independent future publication. All authors agree to this retraction.

Recent research suggests there is a neural organization for representing abstract concepts that is common across English speakers. To investigate the possible role of language on the representation of abstract concepts, multivariate pattern analytic (MVPA) techniques were applied to fMRI data to compare the neural representations of 28 individual abstract concepts between native English and Mandarin speakers. Factor analyses of the activation patterns of the 28 abstract concepts from both languages characterized this commonality in terms of a set of four underlying neurosemantic dimensions, indicating the degree to which a concept is verbally represented, internal to the person, contains social content, and is rule‐based. These common semantic dimensions (factors) underlying the 28 concepts provided a sufficient basis for reliably identifying the individual abstract concepts from their neural signature in the …

Cognitive neuroscience methods can identify the fMRI-measured neural representation of familiar individual concepts, such as apple, and decompose them into meaningful neural and semantic components. This approach was applied here to determine the neural representations and underlying dimensions of representation of far more abstract physics concepts related to matter and energy, such as fermion and dark matter, in the brains of 10 Carnegie Mellon physics faculty members who thought about the main properties of each of the concepts. One novel dimension coded the measurability vs. immeasurability of a concept. Another novel dimension of representation evoked particularly by post-classical concepts was associated with four types of cognitive processes, each linked to particular brain regions: (1) Reasoning about intangibles, taking into account their separation from direct experience and …

MATTERS ARISING NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR each participant (labelled ‘number of starting voxels’ in Fig. 1 in Dukart et al.) have to be considered as candidates. In addition, the number of participants that have to overlap at a voxel for it to be included in the common representation (labelled ‘number of participants contributing to each voxel’in Fig. 1 in Dukart et al.) has to be considered at the same time. The values of 1,000 voxels per participant (1,200 for the groups consisting of 16 participants during cross-validation) and at least four participants contributing to a voxel were appropriate for both participant groups to obtain about 20 clusters composed of stable voxels. The interdependence of these two parameters makes it not sensible to vary them independently, as Dukart et al. did.The fifth parameter, maximum cluster radius, was used to reduce the probability that too large a cluster of voxels could contain …

Publisher Correction: The neuroscience of advanced scientific concepts - PMC Back to Top Skip to main content NIH NLM Logo Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation Search PMC Full-Text Archive Search in PMC Advanced Search User Guide Journal List NPJ Sci Learn v.6; 2021 PMC8655077 Other Formats PDF (400K) Actions Cite Collections Share Permalink Copy RESOURCES Similar articles Cited by other articles Links to NCBI Databases Journal List NPJ Sci Learn v.6; 2021 PMC8655077 As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Learn more: PMC Disclaimer | PMC Copyright Notice Logo of npjscilearn NPJ Sci Learn. 2021; 6: 37. Published online 2021 Dec 8. doi: 10.1038/s41539-021-00114-7 PMCID: …

Although declarative concepts (e.g., apple) have been shown to be identifiable from their functional MRI (fMRI) signatures, the correspondence has yet to be established for executing a complex procedure such as tying a knot. In this study, 7 participants were trained to tie seven knots. Their neural representations of these seven procedures were assessed with fMRI as they imagined tying each knot. A subset of the trained participants physically tied each knot in a later fMRI session. Findings demonstrated that procedural knowledge of tying a particular knot can be reliably identified from its fMRI signature, and such procedural signatures were found here in frontal, parietal, motor, and cerebellar regions. In addition, a classifier trained on mental tying signatures was able to reliably identify when participants were planning to tie knots before they physically tied them, which suggests that the mental-tying and physical …

The abstractness of concepts is sometimes defined indirectly as lacking concreteness, this view provides little insight into their cognitive or neural basis. Multivariate pattern analytic techniques applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging data were used to characterize the neural representations of 28 individual abstract concepts. A classifier trained on the concepts’ neural signatures reliably decoded their neural representations in an independent subset of data for each participant. There was considerable commonality of the neural representations across participants as indicated by the accurate classification of each participant’s concepts based on the neural signatures obtained in other participants. Group-level factor analysis revealed 3 semantic dimensions underlying the 28 concepts, suggesting a brain-based ontology for this set of abstract concepts. The 3 dimensions corresponded to 1) the degree …