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Guy A. Orban
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2017) 29 (6): 1002–1021.
Published: 01 June 2017
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Abstract
View articletitled, Observing Others Speak or Sing Activates Spt and Neighboring Parietal Cortex
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for article titled, Observing Others Speak or Sing Activates Spt and Neighboring Parietal Cortex
To obtain further evidence that action observation can serve as a proxy for action execution and planning in posterior parietal cortex, we scanned participants while they were (1) observing two classes of action: vocal communication and oral manipulation, which share the same effector but differ in nature, and (2) rehearsing and listening to nonsense sentences to localize area Spt, thought to be involved in audio-motor transformation during speech. Using this localizer, we found that Spt is specifically activated by vocal communication, indicating that Spt is not only involved in planning speech but also in observing vocal communication actions. In addition, we observed that Spt is distinct from the parietal region most specialized for observing vocal communication, revealed by an interaction contrast and located in PFm. The latter region, unlike Spt, processes the visual and auditory signals related to other's vocal communication independently. Our findings are consistent with the view that several small regions in the temporoparietal cortex near the ventral part of the supramarginal/angular gyrus border are involved in the planning of vocal communication actions and are also concerned with observation of these actions, though involvements in those two aspects are unequal.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2004) 16 (9): 1505–1516.
Published: 01 November 2004
Abstract
View articletitled, Visual Activation in Prefrontal Cortex is Stronger in Monkeys than in Humans
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for article titled, Visual Activation in Prefrontal Cortex is Stronger in Monkeys than in Humans
The prefrontal cortex supports many cognitive abilities, which humans share to some degree with monkeys. The specialized functions of the prefrontal cortex depend both on the nature of its inputs from other brain regions and on distinctive aspects of local processing. We used functional MRI to compare prefrontal activity between monkey and human subjects when they viewed identical images of objects, either intact or scrambled. Visual object-related activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex was observed in both species, but was stronger in monkeys than in humans, both in magnitude (factors 2–3) and in spatial extent (fivefold or more as a percentage of prefrontal volume). This difference was observed for two different stimulus sets, at two field strengths, and over a range of tasks. These results suggest that there may be more volitional control over visual processing in humans than in monkeys.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2004) 16 (4): 665–682.
Published: 01 May 2004
Abstract
View articletitled, Attention to 3-D Shape, 3-D Motion, and Texture in 3-D Structure from Motion Displays
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for article titled, Attention to 3-D Shape, 3-D Motion, and Texture in 3-D Structure from Motion Displays
We used fMRI to directly compare the neural substrates of three-dimensional (3-D) shape and motion processing for realistic textured objects rotating in depth. Subjects made judgments about several different attributes of these objects, including 3-D shape, the 3-D motion, and the scale of surface texture. For all of these tasks, we equated visual input, motor output, and task difficulty, and we controlled for differences in spatial attention. Judgments about 3-D shape from motion involve both parietal and occipito-temporal regions. The processing of 3-D shape is associated with the analysis of 3-D motion in parietal regions and the analysis of surface texture in occipito-temporal regions, which is consistent with the different behavioral roles that are typically attributed to the dorsal and ventral processing streams.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2003) 15 (1): 47–56.
Published: 01 January 2003
Abstract
View articletitled, Parietal Representation of Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Magnitude
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for article titled, Parietal Representation of Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Magnitude
The close behavioral parallels between the processing of quantitative information conveyed by symbolic and non-symbolic stimuli led to the hypothesis that there exists a common cerebral representation of quantity (Dehaene, Dehaene-Lambertz, & Cohen, 1998). The neural basis underlying the encoding of number magnitude has been localized to regions in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) by brain-imaging studies. However, it has never been demonstrated that these same regions are also involved in the quantitative processing of nonsymbolic stimuli. Using functional brain imaging, we explicitly tested the hypothesis of a common substrate. Angles, lines, and two-digit numbers were presented pairwise, one to the left and one to the right of the fixation point. In the three comparison tasks, participants ( n = 18) pressed the key on the side of the largest quantity. In the three control tasks, they indicated the side on which dimming occurred. A conjunction analysis between the three subtractions (comparison task-control task) revealed a site in left IPS that is specifically responsive when two stimuli have to be compared quantitatively, irrespective of stimulus format. The results confirm the hypothesis that quantity is represented by a common mechanism for both symbolic and nonsymbolic stimuli in IPS. In addition, the interaction between task and type of stimulus identified a region anterior to the conjunction site, not specific for quantitative processing, but reflecting general processes loaded by number processing.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2002) 14 (6): 965–969.
Published: 15 August 2002
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2002) 14 (4): 646–658.
Published: 15 May 2002
Abstract
View articletitled, The Quantitative Nature of a Visual Task Differentiates between Ventral and Dorsal Stream
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for article titled, The Quantitative Nature of a Visual Task Differentiates between Ventral and Dorsal Stream
The aim of the present positron emission tomography (PET) study was to investigate how visual processing in dorsal and ventral streams depends on the quantitative nature of the task. In the same—different task, participants identified the presence of an orientation difference between two gratings, presented centrally in succession. In the quantification task, participants estimated the magnitude of the difference and compared it to a fixed standard. Detection of dimming of the fixation point was used as a control task. Visual input, motor responses, and performance were equated across tasks. Subtracting same— different from quantification yielded significant activation in the left superior parietal lobule and left ventral premotor cortex, consistent with results obtained in number-processing tasks. The reverse subtraction yielded activation in the right inferior temporal gyrus, in agreement with earlier results. These results demonstrate that a single attribute can be processed either in the ventral or dorsal stream, depending on the cognitive operations required by the tasks.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2001) 13 (6): 813–828.
Published: 15 August 2001
Abstract
View articletitled, The Neural Substrate of Orientation Working Memory
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for article titled, The Neural Substrate of Orientation Working Memory
We have used positron emission tomography (PET) to identify the neural substrate of two major cognitive components of working memory (WM), maintenance and manipulation of a single elementary visual attribute, i.e., the orientation of a grating presented in central vision. This approach allowed us to equate difficulty across tasks and prevented subjects from using verbal strategies or vestibular cues. Maintenance of orientations involved a distributed fronto-parietal network, that is, left and right lateral superior frontal sulcus (SFSl), bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), bilateral precuneus, and right superior parietal lobe (SPL). A more medial superior frontal sulcus region (SFSm) was identified as being instrumental in the manipulative operation of updating orientations retained in the WM. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that orientation WM relies on a coordinated interaction between frontal and parietal regions. In general, the current findings confirm the distinction between maintenance and manipulative processes, highlight the functional heterogeneity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and suggest a more dynamic view of WM as a process requiring the coordinated interaction of anatomically distinct brain areas.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2000) 12 (Supplement 2): 61–75.
Published: 01 November 2000
Abstract
View articletitled, Attention Mechanisms in Visual Search—An fMRI Study
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for article titled, Attention Mechanisms in Visual Search—An fMRI Study
The human visual system is usually confronted with many different objects at a time, with only some of them reaching consciousness. Reaction-time studies have revealed two different strategies by which objects are selected for further processing: an automatic, efficient search process, and a conscious, so-called inefficient search [Treisman, A. (1991). Search, similarity, and integration of features between and within dimensions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17 , 652-676; Treisman, A., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12 , 97-136; Wolfe, J. M. (1996). Visual search. In H. Pashler (Ed.), Attention. London: University College London Press]. Two different theories have been proposed to account for these search processes. Parallel theories presume that both types of search are treated by a single mechanism that is modulated by attentional and computational demands. Serial theories, in contrast, propose that parallel processing may underlie efficient search, but inefficient searching requires an additional serial mechanism, an attentional “spotlight” (Treisman, A., 1991) that successively shifts attention to different locations in the visual field. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we show that the cerebral networks involved in efficient and inefficient search overlap almost completely. Only the superior frontal region, known to be involved in working memory [Courtney, S. M., Petit, L., Maisog, J. M., Ungerleider, L. G., & Haxby, J. V. (1998). An area specialized for spatial working memory in human frontal cortex. Science, 279 , 1347-1351], and distinct from the frontal eye fields, that control spatial shifts of attention, was specifically involved in inefficient search. Activity modulations correlated with subjects' behavior best in the extrastriate cortical areas, where the amount of activity depended on the number of distracting elements in the display. Such a correlation was not observed in the parietal and frontal regions, usually assumed as being involved in spatial attention processing. These results can be interpreted in two ways: the most likely is that visual search does not require serial processing, otherwise we must assume the existence of a serial searchlight that operates in the extrastriate cortex but differs from the visuospatial shifts of attention involving the parietal and frontal regions.