Cognitive neuropsychology and functional imaging: a lost love?
The symposium starts at 3.00 p.m.
Summary description of the symposium
Ten years ago the symposium “Pros and cons of neuroimaging in understanding the nature of cognitive functions” held at the EWCN ended up with mixed feelings and discrepant views on the mutual relevance of the two domains, imaging and cognition. One decade later, it might be time for reconsidering the complex interplay between cognitive science, cognitive neuropsychology in particular, and functional imaging. While there is little doubt that cognitive science will still inspire fMRI studies, it is becoming questionable whether there will still be a place for the cognitive neuropsychological approach in the study of the brain/mind relationship.
A recent sign of the times might be the recent review in Nature by Poldrack and Farah [1] where, in a lengthy discussion of the future agenda in brain research, no single instance is taken from neuropsychology. How comes? Are we neuropsychologists becoming so irrelevant from brain sciences? Are the hypotheses generated by neuropsychology no longer important for brain sciences?
Let’s discuss this among us and with some colleagues who have pushed the methods of functional imaging to their current limits. The aim of this symposium is therefore twofold: on the one hand, to showcase some recent developments in imaging methodology; on the other hand to discuss whether and how the neuropsychological approach and the ensuing models derived from brain damage, can capitalize on these new techniques.
Eraldo Paulesu will start the proceedings with a commentary on Poldrack & Farah [1] and beyond.
The three speakers are
(1) James Haxby who will present the merits of pattern classification to the definition of visual cognitive neuroscience.
(2) Peter Fox will contend in favour of the experiments of experiments, that is meta-analyses, and their explanatory power of group level or even single subject level
(3) Christian Beckmann who will take the challenge of considering how cognitive neuropsychology could take advantage of functional and structural imaging in the era of connectomes.
To Gereon Fink the honor to provoke and wrap-up the discussions.
References:
1. Poldrack R. & Farah, M. Nature 526, 371–379 (15 October 2015)
2. Marshall JC. The lifeblood of language. Nature (News&Views) 331, 560-561 (1988). pdf