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Attaining the recesses of the cognitive space

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Abstract

Existing neuropsychological tests of executive function often manifest a difficulty pinpointing cognitive deficits when these are intermittent and come in the form of omissions. We discuss the hypothesis that two partially interrelated reasons for this failure stem from relative inability of neuropsychological tests to explore the cognitive space and to explicitly take into account strategic and opportunistic resource allocation decisions, and to address the temporal aspects of both behaviour and task-related brain function in data analysis. Criteria for tasks suitable for neuropsychological assessment of executive function, as well as appropriate ways to analyse and interpret observed behavioural data are suggested. It is proposed that experimental tasks should be devised which emphasize typical rather than optimal performance, and that analyses should quantify path-dependent fluctuations in performance levels rather than averaged behaviour. Some implications for experimental neuropsychology are illustrated for the case of planning and problem-solving abilities and with particular reference to cognitive impairment in closed-head injury.

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Notes

  1. In a system with redundancy components are duplicated allowing the implementation of alternative functional channels when subparts of the system break down. Degeneracy refers to the ability of structurally different elements to carry out the same function (Tononi et al. 1999; Edelman and Gally, 2001).

  2. A system is controllable if a set of appropriate control signals can drive it from an arbitrary initial condition to any final condition in finite time. The control signal achieving such a goal may not be unique.

  3. When considering objects or phenomena with multiple scales, it is important to see how a given property of such entities varies as one observes it at different scales, e.g. at different spatial or temporal scales. The scaling properties characterise how these properties vary as the observation scale is varied.

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  1. Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, Section of Physiology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    David Papo

  2. Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Ferrara, Italy

    David Papo

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Papo, D. Attaining the recesses of the cognitive space. Cogn Neurodyn 16, 767–778 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-021-09755-1

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