Deficits in reaching movements under visual interference as a novel diagnostic marker for mild cognitive impairment.

Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) may exhibit poorer performance in visuomotor tasks than healthy individuals, particularly under conditions with high cognitive load. Few studies have examined reaching movements in MCI and did so without assessing susceptibility to distractor interference. This proof-of-concept study analyzed the kinematics of visually guided reaching movements towards a target dot placed along the participants' midsagittal/reaching axis.

Mechanical and semantic knowledge mediate the implicit understanding of the physical world.

Most recent accounts highlight the importance of two aspects of cognition in the implicit understanding of the physical world: semantic knowledge (the ability to recognize, categorize, and relate concepts) and mechanical knowledge (the capability to comprehend how things mechanically work). However, how the human brain may integrate these cognitive processes remains largely unexplored. Here, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate this integration employing a novel free-viewing task.

Two distinct neural pathways for mechanical versus digital technology.

Technology pervades every aspect of our lives, making it crucial to investigate how the human mind deals with it. Here we examine the cognitive and neural foundations of technological cognition. In the first fMRI experiment, participants viewed videos depicting the use of mechanical tools (e.