In spite of having deficits in various areas of social cognition, especially in mindreading, Machiavellian individuals are typically very successful in different tasks, including solving social dilemmas. We assume that a profound examination of neural structures associated with decision-making processes is needed to learn more about…

Cognitive deficits in fibromyalgia may be specifically related to controlled processes, such as those measured by working memory or executive function tasks. This hypothesis was tested here by measuring controlled temporal preparation (temporal orienting) during a response inhibition (go no-go) task. Temporal orienting effects (faster reaction…

The aim of the present study was to examine executive dysfunctioning and decreased processing speed as potential mediators of age-related differences in episodic memory. We compared the performances of young and elderly adults in a free-recall task. Participants were also given tests to measure executive functions and perceptual processing speed…

Modern cognitive neuroscientific theories and empirical evidence suggest that brain structures involved in movement may be related to action-related semantic knowledge. To test this hypothesis, we examined the naming of environmental sounds in patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), two…

Both emotional reactivity and categorization have long been studied within the framework of hemispheric asymmetry. However, little attempt has been made to integrate both research areas using any form of neuropsychological research, despite behavioral data suggesting a consistent relationship between affective and categorization processes. The…

Two experiments are reported that examine the possibility that exercise selectively influences different types of cognition. To our knowledge, these experiments represent the first attempt to study higher-cognitive processes during exercise. Theoretical thinking was guided by the transient hypofrontality hypothesis. In both experiments, athletes…

The existence of a rostrocaudal gradient of medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation during memory encoding has historically received support from positron emission tomography studies, but less so from functional MRI (FMRI) studies. More recently, FMRI studies have demonstrated that characteristics of the stimuli can affect the location of activation…

Eighteen healthy young adults underwent event-related (ER) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain while performing a visual category learning task. The specific category learning task required subjects to extract the rules that guide classification of quasi-random patterns of dots into categories. Following each classification…

Right hemispheric dominance in unconscious emotional processing has been suggested, but remains controversial. This issue was investigated using the subliminal affective priming paradigm combined with unilateral visual presentation in 40 normal subjects. In either left or right visual fields, angry facial expressions, happy facial expressions, or…

The weak central coherence (WCC) account of autism characterizes the learning style of individuals with this condition as favoring localized and fragmented (to the detriment of global and integrative) processing of information. This pattern of learning is thought to lead to deficits in aspects of perception (e.g., face processing), cognition, and…