Cognitive Science

The latest breakthroughs, innovations, and cool happenings at the cutting edge of the world of cognitive science. Updated daily.

Working memory needs pointers

Cognitive neuroscience has converged on a definition of working memory (WM) as a capacity-limited system that maintains highly accessible representations via stimulus-specific neural patterns. We argue that this standard definition may be incomplete. We highlight the fundamental need to recognize specific instances or tokens and to bind those tokens to the surrounding context. We propose […]

Published on January 8, 2025

Do the Gödel Vignettes Involve a New Descriptivist Meaning? A Critical Discussion of Devitt and Porot’s Elicited Production Test on Proper Names

Abstract Proper names—expressions such as “Barack Obama” or “New York”—play a crucial role in the philosophical debate on reference, that is, the relation that allows words to stand for entities of the world. In an elicited production test, Devitt and Porot prompt participants to use proper names to compare the Descriptivist Theory and the Causal-Historical […]

Published on January 8, 2025

Why do primates have view cells instead of place cells?

Hippocampal place cells that encode the spatial location of an individual during navigation are widely reported in rodents. However, studies in primates have instead reported hippocampal cells that encode views of the environment. Evolutionary adaptations for navigating during night and day may explain the divergence of hippocampal representations between species. Read Full Article (External Site) […]

Published on January 7, 2025