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Michael Posner has been professor of psychology at the University of Oregon since 1965. His work has generally been in the area of selective attention. During the 1960s and 1970s, [...]

Performance of patients with quadrant lesions on the inherently ambiguous Cognitive Bias Task (CBT) suggests sexual dimorphism in the fundamental aspects of functional cortical geometry, by emphasizing different cerebral axes. In right-handed males, extreme context-dependent and context-independent response selection biases are reciprocally linked to left vs. right frontal systems. In right-handed females, these complementary biases appear to be reciprocally linked to posterior vs. frontal cortices. Frontal lobe functions are more lateralized in males than females due to sexual dimorphism of the left frontal systems. Both in males and females, patterns of CBT scores in non-right-handers with quadrant lesions are opposite to those found in right-handers. This suggests the existence of two functionally and neurally distinct cognitive selection mechanisms. Both mechanisms involve the frontal lobes, but their exact neuroanatomy depends on sex and handedness.

Stephen M. Kosslyn is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and an Associate Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his B.A. in 1970 from UCLA and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1974, both in psychology, and taught at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Brandeis Universities before joining the Harvard Faculty as Professor of Psychology in 1983. His work focuses on the nature of visual mental imagery and high-level vision, as well as applications of psychological principles to visual display design. He has published over 125 papers on these topics, co-edited five books, and authored or co-authored five books. His books include Image and Mind (1980), Ghosts in the Mind's Machine (1983), Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience (with O. Koenig, 1992), Elements of Graph Design (1994), and Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate (1994). Dr. Kosslyn has received numerous honors, including the National Academy of Sciences Initiatives in Research Award, is currently on the editorial boards of many professional journals, and has served on several National Research Council committees to advise the government on new technologies.