Functional specificity in the human brain: a window into the functional architecture of the mind.

ABSTRACT: Is the human mind/brain composed of a set of highly specialized components, each carrying out a specific aspect of human cognition, or is it more of a general-purpose device, in which each component participates in a wide variety of cognitive processes? For nearly two centuries, proponents of specialized organs or modules of the mind and brain--from the phrenologists to Broca to Chomsky and Fodor--have jousted with the proponents of distributed cognitive and neural processing--from Flourens to Lashley to McClelland and Rumelhart. I argue here that research using functional MRI is beginning to answer this long-standing question with new clarity and precision by indicating that at least a few specific aspects of cognition are implemented in brain regions that are highly specialized for that

SUBMITTER: Kanwisher N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2895137 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature