Hidden Stages of Cognition Revealed in Patterns of Brain Activation

Abstract

To advance cognitive theory, researchers must be able to parse the performance of a task into its significant mental stages. In this article, we describe a new method that uses functional MRI brain activation to identify when participants are engaged in different cognitive stages on individual trials. The method combines multivoxel pattern analysis to identify cognitive stages and hidden semi-Markov models to identify their durations. This method, applied to a problem-solving task, identified four distinct stages: encoding, planning, solving, and responding. We examined whether these stages corresponded to their ascribed functions by testing whether they are affected by appropriate factors. Planning-stage duration increased as the method for solving the problem became less obvious, whereas solving-stage duration increased as the number of calculations to produce the answer increased. Responding-stage duration increased with the difficulty of the motor actions required to produce the answer.

Discovering Event Structure in Continuous Narrative Perception and Memory

“…One notable exception is the recent work of Anderson and colleagues, which has used HMM-based models to discover temporal structure in brain activity responses during mathematical problem solving (Anderson & Fincham, 2014; Anderson, Lee, & Fincham, 2014; Anderson, Pyke, & Fincham, 2016). These models are used to segment problem-solving operations (performed in less than 30 seconds) into a small number of cognitively distinct stages such as encoding, planning, solving and responding.…”

Constructivist developmental theory is needed in developmental neuroscience

“…52 Specifically, researchers have used hidden semi-Markov models for a multi-voxel pattern analysis of mathematical problem-solving tasks, which yields a sequence of invariants indexing stages of problem solving; these mathematically obtained brain processing stages confirm the rationally expected steps or stages of problem solving. 52 Whether mathematical methods could be used to detect developmental stages in the brain is unknown, but taskanalytical constructivist methods seem to detect developmental stages.…”

“…52 Specifically, researchers have used hidden semi-Markov models for a multi-voxel pattern analysis of mathematical problem-solving tasks, which yields a sequence of invariants indexing stages of problem solving; these mathematically obtained brain processing stages confirm the rationally expected steps or stages of problem solving. 52 Whether mathematical methods could be used to detect developmental stages in the brain is unknown, but taskanalytical constructivist methods seem to detect developmental stages. 34 For constructivists, including Piaget, effective complexity of a scheme, process or action, is given by the number of essential invariants (probabilistic, often functional, relevant regularities that emerge in the context of repeatable situations 50,51 )-invariants that are contextualised, i.e., relative to a situation and to an activity.…”

Spatiotemporal analysis of event‐related fMRI to reveal cognitive states

“…With our own work in this area, we (e.g., Anderson, Betts, Ferris, & Fincham, ; Anderson, Lee, & Fincham, ; Anderson, Pyke, & Fincham, ; Anderson, Zhang, Borst, & Walsh, ) have developed a method that can track what is happening as a particular individual performs a specific task. The method combines spatial pattern matching with temporal pattern matching.…”

“…Each state, or brain signature, is simply a brain activation pattern that is roughly constant during the sojourn time. Figure illustrates a recent application of this method to a novel mathematical task (Anderson, Pyke, & Fincham, ; Anderson, Zhang, et al, ). Each trial corresponded to solving a particular problem, beginning with the problem presentation and ending with the keying of a response.…”