Integrating cognitive psychology, neurology and neuroimaging

In the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in research effectiv ely integrating cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, and behavior al neurology. This new work is typically conducting basic research into asp ects of the human mind and brain. The present review features as examples o f such integrations two series of studies by the author and his colleagues. One series, employing object recognition, mental motor imagery, and mental rotation paradigms, clarifies the nature of a cognitive process, imagined spatial transformations used in shape recognition. Among other implications , it suggests that when recognizing a hand's handedness, imagining one's bo dy movement depends on cerebrally lateralized sensory-motor structures and deciding upon handedness depends on exact match shape confirmation. The oth er series, using cutaneous, tactile, and auditory pitch discrimination para digms, elucidates the function of a brain structure, the cerebellum. It sug gests that the cerebellum has non-motor sensory support functions upon whic h optimally fine sensory discriminations depend. Tn addition, six key issue s for this integrative approach are reviewed. These include arguments for t he value and greater use of: rigorous quantitative meta-analyses of neuroim aging studies; stereotactic coordinate-based data, as opposed to surface la ndmark-based data; standardized vocabularies capturing the elementary compo nent operations of cognitive and behavioral tasks; functional hypotheses ab out brain areas that are consistent with underlying microcircuitry; an awar eness that not all brain areas implicated by neuroimaging or neurology are necessarily directly involved in the associated cognitive or behavioral tas k; and systematic approaches to integrations of this kind. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.