Inductive Inferences and the Frontal Lobes

Investigating higher-order cognitive functions in temporal lobe epilepsy: cognitive estimation

Cognitive estimation, an ability to attribute measurements to concrete things, is relevant to adaptive behavior. This study evaluated cognitive estimation in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with the goal of verifying its relationship to temporal lobe damage and age of seizure onset. One hundred and eight patients with drug-resistant TLE and 51 healthy controls were evaluated using the Cognitive Estimation Task (CET), which requires simple and complex estimations providing the Total and Bizarreness scores. Different tests assessed reasoning, attention, executive, visuospatial, and lexical-semantic abilities. Patients with right TLE had earlier age of seizure onset than patients with left TLE and lower education than controls. Compared with controls, both patient groups obtained worse CET Total and Bizarreness scores, but only patients with right TLE were significantly impaired. Patients with seizure onset before age 12 showed worse scores than patients with later seizure onset irrespective of the side of TLE. The CET Total and Bizarreness scores were predicted by age of seizure onset and semantic fluency; the Bizarreness score also related to education, chronological age, and visual attention. Results highlight the complexity of the cognitive pattern associated with TLE. Cognitive estimation deficit primarily reflects early age of seizure onset and semantic difficulties. An involvement of visual mental operations mediated by the right hemisphere may accentuate the deficit, while cognitive reserve may play a protective role.

The emergence of consequential thought: evidence from neuroscience

The ability to think counterfactually about the consequence of one's actions represents one of the hallmarks of the development of complex reasoning skills. The legal system places a great emphasis on this type of reasoning ability as it directly relates to the degree to which individuals may be judged liable for their actions. In the present paper, we review both behavioural and neuroscientific data exploring the role that counterfactual thinking plays in reasoning about the consequences of one's actions, especially as it pertains to the developing mind of the adolescent. On the basis of assimilation of both behavioural and neuroscientific data, we propose a brain-based model that provides a theoretical framework for understanding the emergence of counterfactual reasoning ability in the developing mind.

Functional imaging and neuropsychology findings: how can they be linked?

It is argued that in poorly understood domains functional imaging and neuropsychology findings on cognitive processes can be related only through functional models of normal cognition. The psychological concept of "resource" can, however, be simply extrapolated to functional imaging. It is then argued that double dissociations can have analogous inferential power for extrapolation to models of normal cognition in functional imaging as in neuropsychology. The argument is illustrated by the example of the control processes involved in functional episodic memory imaging of experiments.