Cognitive Scientists Seek Insights into How the Brain Works: How Do We Know What We Know?

LTU’s Psychology department distinguishes its program by having three noted cognitive scientists on faculty and a new Computational Cognition Laboratory, which gives students an intellectually and technologically rich learning experience.

Drs. Hamad Al-Azary , Corey Bohil , and Franco Delogu form LTU’s powerhouse of cognitive research.

Dr. Hamad Al-Azary

Dr. Corey Bohil

Dr. Franco Delogu

Bohil said, “I’m the third cognitive scientist on the team, and suddenly, LTU has created a significant cognitive psychology group." Al-Azary said, “We want the lab to continue to grow. All of us along with four colleagues from various LTU colleges are PIs (principal investigators) for the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant we recently submitted, all of which are related to the lab in some way.”

Dr. Corey Bohil with Virtual Reality goggles viewing medical simulation

Further, he explained, “We’re each involved in what each other is studying. Our work can potentially augment each other’s work.” Al-Azary is interested in language; Delogu studies perception; Bohil’s expertise is category learning and how human physiology responds to virtual reality.

With the presence of three cognitive scientists and the new Computational Cognition Lab, LTU can claim a unique asset.

“The foundational knowledge that the field of psychology is built upon largely comes from cognitive psychology because most cutting-edge theories today are based on what we’ve learned from behavioral psychology, about how cognition happens, how we form habits, and how our motivation system works.” Because cognition is invisible, we have to come up with ways to identify and study it. Ideas about what the human cognitive system is doing can be expressed and tested within computer models,” Bohil explained.

The Computational Cognition Laboratory began operations at the start of the fall 2023 semester in a former classroom in the Arts and Sciences building. Al-Azary described the contents of the lab, which “is a very good facility to do new experiments.” It presently has two high-end simulations computers, a whole array of virtual reality systems, eye tracking equipment, and a high-definition transcranial direct-current simulation (tDCS) device that can stimulate parts of the brain.

Dr. Franco Delogu at large screen

Bohil serves as the principal investigator on an interdisciplinary MRI (Major Research Instrumentation) grant request for another highly sophisticated research system known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). (MRI is the title of a specific equipment-related NSF solicitation.) Each of the seven co-applicants, from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, and Engineering, presented their proposed adaptation of this new tool for their respective research area of interest.

As Delogu explained, “The same piece of equipment can be used to investigate very different hypotheses. It’s like a car. The car can be used to deliver mail or deliver pizza or for variety of other uses.” He cited the sophisticated eye tracking devices that he and others have been using since 2019 to illustrate how a single piece of equipment can be used to research various scientific hypotheses.

Delogu is also one of the seven LTU researchers to collaborate on the MRI. He proposes to use fNIRS to provide insights on fast decision making in competitive games. “Specifically, the [research] team uses eye tracking, behavioral measures, EEG, and portable EMG to investigate cognitive strategies involved in the game of Morra, an ancient game still widespread in many European countries,” Delogu writes in his section of the proposal. “In the Morra game, players try to predict the number of fingers the opponent will show and to be as unpredictable as possible in their number generation. fNIRS will allow us to investigate intersubjective cortical synchronization in competitive situations or, in more simple terms, the way two opponents use the same brain regions at the same time when competing in a game.”

With Bohil’s research focus being perception, memory, and decision-making, he proposes to use fNIRS to measure neural correlates of uncertainty in one study and to measure workload strain and anxiety in another. For the “uncertainty” study, Bohil writes, “The proposed experiments will examine decisions involving uncertainty and cortical activation when higher or lower certainty choices are presented. Greater activation for high uncertainty trials can be interpreted as awareness of uncertainty due to insufficient information as this contrast indexes neural response to unknown (vs. known) probabilities. “I want to test the hypothesis that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex will show increased functional activation for decisions involving high uncertainty,” he said.

Regarding the “workload” study, Bohil said, “We wish to use fNIRS to assess cognitive states during training or in operational environments like those encountered by warfighters and first responders. fNIRS measures blood oxygenation, which can be separated into distinct measures of oxygenated- and deoxygenated-hemoglobin that change in response to cortical activity. fNIRS also captures blood volume and flow, which reflects heart rate and respiration. “We want to include these physiological indicators, which are usually considered ‘noise,’ in our analysis to develop a machine-learning classifier related to mental workload and other relevant psychological states.” A long-term goal is to use fNIRS as a compact, single-device system for assessing changes in cognitive state to maximize training effectiveness and human performance in a range of contexts.

Al-Azary studies how concepts are understood. He proposes to use fNIRS and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate conceptual processing. Concepts differ in many ways, such as in concreteness (e.g., concrete concepts, such as pen, are experienced with the senses whereas abstract concepts, such as idea, are not), body-object interaction (BOI; some concepts are easy to motorically interact with, such as bike, whereas others are difficult to interact with, such as cloud), and semantic neighborhood density (SND; some concepts are highly related to their word associations, such as castle being closely related to fortress and palace, whereas other concepts are less closely related to their associations, such as lighthouse, being less related to tower and pier). Al-Azary explained, “Taken together, concreteness, BOI, and SND, elements of language and meaning that I’ve been studying for years, constitute a concept’s semantic richness, and studies found such variables work together to affect language comprehension. But little is known about the neural correlates of semantic richness variables because neuroimaging studies typically do not consider their interactions but rather study the variables in isolation and in limited contexts.” Previous studies haven’t been able to confirm if particular parts of the brain are activated or deactivated during conceptual processing. The current research program will pair fNIRS with transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), a tool already in the LTU Computational Cognition Lab. The proposed studies will be the first to couple fNIRS and tDCS to uncover the neural substrates involved in higher-order conceptual processing and help characterize the neural underpinnings of semantic richness. “Basically,” Al-Azary said, “this is a continuation of and builds upon my previous research, but with the benefit of new and emerging technology like fNIRS.”