Transcript A dilemma for the extended mind

Scheduling error
Our officially scheduled final exam period is
Saturday at 10:30 a.m. We put Monday at
7:30 a.m. on the syllabus.
We still plan to hold the Monday session,
beginning at 8:30.
If you cannot make it on Monday morning
and you want to give an extra-credit
presentation, please let me know. We can
have an additional session on Saturday.
View animation from Heider and Simmel
Martin and Weisberg
Methodology: Four different kinds of animations
Social vignettes (for example, sharing ice cream)
Mechanical vignettes (for example, conveyor belt
moving)
Random movement (using same shapes used in
the other displays)
Still (no motion)
Subjects view displays while in the fMRI
magnet.
Subjects are highly accurate in their
multiple-choice identification of animation
themes during fMRI. Subjects have no
trouble recognizing, for example, sharing
of ice cream as the right answer even
when other closely related answers are
provided.
Results
Distinctively social areas:
Lateral Fusiform Gyrus
Right Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS)
Right Anterior STS
Amygdala
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex
Fusiform Gyrus (pink)
Superior Temporal Sulcus (red)
Amygdala (red bulb)
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex
(VMPFC)
Distinctively mechanical areas:
--Medial Fusiform Gyrus
--Left Middle Temporal Gyrus
Standard Intro to the Brain
Conditions for a Representation’s
Being Modally Specific
--is realized (i.e., takes physical form) in
primary sensory cortex?
--should we include secondary sensory
areas?
How are sensory areas determined,
anyway?
Where Should We Expect Amodal
Symbols to Be in the Brain?
Look for areas that are active when we
engage in “abstract” reasoning, for
example, logical deduction or decisionmaking in the absence of related sensory
input. (What about naming?)
And whatever activity we find must be the
realizer (the physical form) of an amodal
symbol? That approach seems too
simplistic.
What if we find some of this activity in areas
that were previously thought to be specific
to a sensory modality? How should we
reason in response? Two possibilities:
1. We found the physical realizers of what
we thought were amodal symbols, and it
turns out that they’re in the sensory cortex;
therefore, there are no amodal symbols,
only modally specific ones.
OR
2. We found the physical realizers of what
we thought were amodal symbols, and it
turns out that they’re in what we used to
think was sensory cortex; now we know
that such cortex is not entirely devoted to
modally specific processing.
In other words, do we change our
conception of the symbols, or do we
change our conception of the cortex?
Similarly, what if sensory stimuli cause activation in
areas that are not so directly related to what we
thought were modally specific areas? Two
possible reactions:
1. The activity is occurring in nonsensory cortex,
so the symbols appearing in that part of cortex
are not modally specific. The activation of
modally specific representations (realized in
genuinely sensory cortex) causes the activation
of associated amodal symbols.
OR
2. We expand what counts as sensory
cortex and hold that the activation
observed in response to sensory stimulus
is the physical form of only one (perhaps
neurally distributed) sensory symbol.
What drives the decision of one response
over the other?
Take the ventromedial prefrontal activation
in response to social vignettes.
This active area is known to regulate
emotion and social communication.
Should this be considered part of the very
representation of people or merely the
activity of a mechanism that affects the
processing of thoughts about people?