Tracking the Cognitive Band in an Open-Ended Task.

Open-ended tasks can be decomposed into the three levels of Newell's Cognitive Band: the Unit-Task level, the Operation level, and the Deliberate-Act level. We analyzed the video game Co-op Space Fortress at these levels, reporting both the match of a cognitive model to subject behavior and the use of electroencephalogram (EEG) to track subject cognition. The Unit Task level in this game involves coordinating with a partner to kill a fortress.

Negative Consequences of the Widespread and Inappropriate Easy Access to Purchasing Prescription Medications on the Internet.

Background: The purchase of prescription medications via the Internet is a global phenomenon with significant economic, social, and health-related impacts. The growth of online purchasing of prescription medicines is significant and has been amplified by social isolation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many patients unable to obtain medicines as they normally would. By contrast, there are licensed, certified, legitimate retail pharmacies that provide significant and vital services to patients.

Reconstructing fine-grained cognition from brain activity.

We describe the Sketch-and-Stitch method for bringing together a cognitive model and EEG to reconstruct the cognition of a subject. The method was tested in the context of a video game where the actions are highly interdependent and variable: simply changing whether a key was pressed or not for a 30th of a second can lead to a very different outcome. The Sketch level identifies the critical events in the game and the Stitch level fills in the detailed actions between these events.

Spatiotemporal analysis of event-related fMRI to reveal cognitive states.

Cognitive science has a rich history of developing theories of processing that characterize the mental steps involved in performance of many tasks. Recent work in neuroimaging and machine learning has greatly improved our ability to link cognitive processes with what is happening in the brain. This article analyzes a hidden semi-Markov model-multivoxel pattern-analysis (HSMM-MVPA) methodology that we have developed for inferring the sequence of brain states one traverses in the performance of a cognitive task.

The Common Time Course of Memory Processes Revealed.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to compare memory processes in two experiments, one involving recognition of word pairs and the other involving recall of newly learned arithmetic facts. A combination of hidden semi-Markov models and multivariate pattern analysis was used to locate brief "bumps" in the sensor data that marked the onset of different stages of cognitive processing. These bumps identified a separation between a retrieval stage that identified relevant information in memory and a decision stage that determined what response was implied by that information.