We studied patients with left visual extinction following right hemisphere damage in a simple manual reaction time task using brief visual stimuli. With unilateral lateralized stimuli the patients showed a high proportion of unwanted, reflex-like saccades to either side of stimulation. In contrast, with bilateral stimuli there was an overall decrease in the proportion of unwanted saccades, and the vast majority of them were directed toward the ipsilesional side. The implications of these results for the Findlay & Walker model are discussed.

The target article differentiates a new, syntactic component in verbal working memory. We suggest that several more components could be differentiated to make a model of working memory complete. Next, syntax is not always separable from the subject's verbal memory capacity as measured by standard working memory tasks. Finally, interference between different processes cannot be taken as evidence for the processes sharing the same resources. Interference might be a result of active mutual inhibition.

Clahsen proposes two distinct processing routes, for regularly and irregularly inflected forms, respectively, and thus is apparently making a psychological claim. We argue that his position, which embodies a strictly linguistic perspective, does not constitute a psychological processing model.

Logical problems inherent in claims that biological neuroscience can ultimately explain mind are not anomalous: They result from underlying social interests. Neuroscientists are currently making a successful bid to fill a vacuum of authority created by the demise of Freudian theory in popular culture. The conflations described in the Gold & Stoljar target article are the result of alliances between certain apologist-philosophers, neuroscientists, and institutions, for the purpose of commanding authority and resources. Social analysis has a role to play in addressing logical issues in the philosophy of neuroscience.

Working memory span forms an important cornerstone of current accounts of cognition, and cognitive development. We describe data that challenge the conventional interpretation of span as a measure of working memory capacity. We argue that the implications of these data undermine the analysis provided by Caplan & Waters concerning the role of working memory in sentence comprehension.

This commentary considers experimental material – some new, some from earlier studies – challenging the model presented by Findlay & Walker. It concentrates on the role of voluntary and involuntary visual attention versus fixation in saccade control and on the generation of antisaccades, reflexive prosaccades, and corrective saccades. The data of a large number of subjects are presented to show the systematic relationship between voluntary saccade generation, error production, and error correction in an antisaccade task.

Research into entries and rules based on English is hampered by the fact that crucial factors coincide. Clahsen avoids this problem and demonstrates his claims by working on German. Seen against the background of the immense variety of the world's languages, this successful move is potentially the first of many possible ones: Several languages offer promising configurations of the factors relevant to Clahsen, and others present new challenges.

A Hebbian model for speech generation opens a number of paths. A cross-linguistic scheme of functional relationships (inspired by Aristotle) dispenses with distraction by the “parts of speech” distinctions, while bridging the gap between “content” and “structure” words. A gradient model identifies emotional and rational dynamics and shows speech generation as a process where a speaker's dissatisfaction gets minimized.

Two radical neuron doctrines must be distinguished, strong and weak. Gold & Stoljar direct much of their attack at the former, but the Churchlands hold only the latter. The weak radical neuron doctrine remains a serious possibility.

The effort to identify the neural substrate of episodic recall, though ambitious, lacks experimental support. By considering the data on c-fos activation by novel and familiar stimuli in recognition studies, we illustrate how inadequate experimental designs permit alternative interpretations. We stress that interpretation of c-fos expression changes should be supported by adequate recognition tests.

Clahsen's view on language is intimately linked with the Chomskian distinction between competence and performance. He uses performance to verify theoretical assumptions about the underlying structure of competence. Using mostly off-line tasks, he may fail to answer the question of how language is generated and perceived in natural situations.

In general, we endorse Aggleton & Brown's thesis that the neuroanatomy of amnesia comprises two functionally distinct systems, but we are disappointed in the lack of detail regarding the critical functional contribution of the hippocampus. We also take issue with the characterization of the cortical areas surrounding the hippocampus, particularly the decreased emphasis on the cortical input to the hippocampus.

Caplan & Waters's model differentiating levels of processing and the role of working memory is important and likely right. However, their claim rests on a lack of correlation between working memory and structural complexity. We examine sources of variability in these measures that remain unaccounted for (by anyone), variability that muddies a straightforward claim that the lack of correlation is cleanly established.

Hebb's theory of cell assemblies is a precursor of the neural network approach used as an implicit hypothesis by most contemporary neuroscientists. Applying this model to language representation leads to demanding predictions about the organization of semantic categories. Other implications of a Hebbian approach to language representation, however, may prove problematic with respect to both neurolinguistic concepts and the results of neuroimaging studies.

It seems that I often say things that might mistakenly be thought to identify me as an adherent of the radical neuron doctrine. I take the opportunity to explain my position more clearly and argue that many apparent conflations of the radical and trivial neuron doctrines are merely the result of misunderstanding what is meant when neuroscientists talk about the relations between different levels of description. It follows that there may be considerably fewer followers of the radical doctrine than Gold & Stoljar suggest.

The framework of Findlay & Walker's target article provides a first attempt to model the saccadic system at all levels. Their scheme is based on two main principles. These are “parallel processing of saccade timing and metrics” and “competitive inhibition through winner-take-all strategies.” In our opinion, however, both concepts are in their strictest sense at odds with the current knowledge of the saccadic system, and need to be refined to make the scheme more relevant.

The Findlay & Walker model of saccade generation does not appear to account fully for saccadic performance deficits observed in schizophrenia patients. It would be enhanced by inclusion of a frontally mediated, central executive function system. A review of schizophrenia patients' antisaccade task deficits provides an example of the role of higher cortical functioning in saccade generation.

Three questions arising from Aggleton & Brown's target article are addressed. (1) Is there any benefit to considering the effects of partial lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei (AT)? (2) Do the AT have a separate role in the proposed extended hippocampal system? (3) Should perirhinal cortex function be restricted to familiarity judgements?

Gold & Stoljar argue persuasively that there is presently not a good case for the “radical neuron doctrine.” There are strong reasons to believe that this doctrine is false. An analogy between psychology and economics strongly throws the radical neuron doctrine into doubt.

Clahsen's conception of inflectional rules – as being not only regular, but simultaneously only concatenative (combinatorial), general and productive, representing the default, not occurring in interfixation within German compounds, and identical to the first rules to be acquired in first-language acquisition – involves an unwarranted collapsing of morphological concepts.