About

Michael McCloskey is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University. His research explores normal and impaired reading, spelling, writing, and visual perception. He conducts cognitive neuropsychological studies of adults and children with brain damage or learning disabilities, utilizing behavioral and functional neuroimaging methods to examine deficits in early perceptual stages of reading and in writing processes that translate knowledge of a word’s spelling into the movements necessary to write the word. His aims include gaining insight into normal mental representations and processes, understanding cognitive deficits, and exploring how these deficits may be treated. In addition to his neuropsychological work, McCloskey investigates the representations and processes underlying reading and writing through behavioral studies of neurotypical participants and computational modeling. His research in visual perception probes representations of object orientation and shape acquired through vision and touch, often exploiting errors in recalling object orientations to infer the structure of shape and orientation representations. His studies employ behavioral and neuroimaging methods with diverse participant groups, including neurotypical adults and children, individuals with perceptual deficits, and congenitally blind adults. McCloskey also engages with foundational issues in cognitive science, such as the rationale for adopting a representational and computational conception of the mind, the relationship between cognitive science and neuroscience, and the use of deficits as a basis for conclusions about normal cognition. He is interested in the role of simulation in cognitive science. His work aims to contribute to understanding the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying perception, reading, and writing, and to advance theories of mental representations and processes.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Anatomy
• Communication
• Biology
• Medicine
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Effector independence in writing.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance · 2025-03-24 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study concerns motor representations acquired in learning to write. Most theorists assume that at the highest levels of the motor programming hierarchy, learned motor programs for writing characters (e.g., "A") are effector-independent, specifying the order and trajectories of writing strokes in a form not tied to specific effectors (e.g., right hand). On this view, once a high-level motor program has been learned with one effector, that same program will be used for writing with other effectors. However, in experiments conducted during 2018-2024, we found a clear qualitative difference between dominant and nondominant hands for participants writing in uppercase print: the direction of horizontal writing strokes (rightward or leftward) varied systematically with the hand used for writing. We interpret this phenomenon as evidence against the standard effector independence hypothesis and offer two alternatives. The first proposes that even the highest level motor programs are effector-specific. The second assumes that high-level motor programs learned with one effector can drive writing with other effectors, yet may be nonoptimal for a novel effector, in which case a new motor program may be generated. Both hypotheses imply a dual-route conception in which a high-level motor program may be activated either by retrieving a previously learned program from memory, or by generating a new program on the fly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• A Scene with an Invisible Wall—Navigational Experience Shapes Visual Scene Representation

  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · 2025-10-30

  article

  Human navigation heavily relies on visual information. Although many previous studies have investigated how navigational information is inferred from visual features of scenes, little is understood about the impact of navigational experience on visual scene representation. In this study, we examined how navigational experience influences both the behavioral and neural responses to a visual scene. During training, participants navigated in the virtual reality (VR) environments, which we manipulated navigational experience while holding the visual properties of scenes constant. Half of the environments allowed free navigation (navigable), while the other half featured an "invisible wall" preventing the participants to continue forward even though the scene was visually navigable (nonnavigable). During testing, participants viewed scene images from the VR environment while completing either a behavioral perceptual identification task (Experiment 1) or an fMRI scan (Experiment 2). Behaviorally, we found that participants judged a scene pair to be significantly more visually different if their prior navigational experience varied, even after accounting for visual similarities between the scene pairs. Neurally, multivoxel pattern of the parahippocampal place area distinguished visual scenes based on prior navigational experience alone. These results suggest that the human visual scene cortex represents information about navigability obtained through prior experience, beyond those computable from the visual properties of the scene. Taken together, these results suggest that scene representation is modulated by prior navigational experience to help us construct a functionally meaningful visual environment.

  PublisherDOI

• Corticostriatal responses to social reward are linked to trait reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use in young adults

  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · 2024-01-01 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access

  Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g. positive peer feedback). Testing this relation is critical for predicting risk for development of substance use disorder. In this pre-registered study, participants (N = 44) underwent fMRI while completing well-matched tasks that assess neural response to reward in social and monetary domains. Contrary to our hypotheses, aberrant reward sensitivity blunted the relationship between substance use and striatal activation during receipt of rewards, regardless of domain. Moreover, exploratory whole-brain analyses showed unique relations between substance use and social rewards in temporoparietal junction. Psychophysiological interactions demonstrated that aberrant reward sensitivity is associated with increased connectivity between the VS and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during social rewards. Finally, we found that substance use was associated with decreased connectivity between the VS and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for social rewards, independent of reward sensitivity. These findings demonstrate nuanced relations between reward sensitivity and substance use, even among those without substance use disorder, and suggest altered reward-related engagement of cortico-VS responses as potential predictors of developing disordered behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Representing orientation: A coordinate-system hypothesis and evidence from developmental deficits

  Psychology Press eBooks · 2024-10-03

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A scene with an invisible wall - navigational experience shapes visual scene representation

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-07-05

  preprintOpen access

  Human navigation heavily relies on visual information. Although many previous studies have investigated how navigational information is inferred from visual features of scenes, little is understood about the impact of navigational experience on visual scene representation. In this study, we examined how navigational experience influences both the behavioral and neural responses to a visual scene. During training, participants navigated in the virtual reality (VR) environments which we manipulated navigational experience while holding the visual properties of scenes constant. Half of the environments allowed free navigation (navigable), while the other half featured an 'invisible wall' preventing the participants to continue forward even though the scene was visually navigable (non-navigable). During testing, participants viewed scene images from the VR environment while completing either a behavioral perceptual identification task (Experimentl) or an fMRI scan (Experiment2). Behaviorally, we found that participants judged a scene pair to be significantly more visually different if their prior navigational experience varied, even after accounting for visual similarities between the scene pairs. Neurally, multi-voxel pattern of the parahippocampal place area (PPA) distinguished visual scenes based on prior navigational experience alone. These results suggest that the human visual scene cortex represents information about navigability obtained through prior experience, beyond those computable from the visual properties of the scene. Taken together, these results suggest that scene representation is modulated by prior navigational experience to help us construct a functionally meaningful visual environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Corticostriatal Responses to Social Reward are Linked to Trait Reward Sensitivity and Subclinical Substance Use in Young Adults

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023-01-19 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g., positive peer feedback). Testing this relation is critical for predicting risk for development of substance use disorder. In this pre-registered study, participants (N=44) underwent fMRI while completing well-matched tasks that assess neural response to reward in social and monetary domains. Contrary to our hypotheses, aberrant reward sensitivity blunted the relationship between substance use and striatal activation during receipt of rewards, regardless of domain. Moreover, exploratory whole-brain analyses showed unique relations between substance use and social rewards in temporoparietal junction. Psychophysiological interactions demonstrated that aberrant reward sensitivity is associated with increased connectivity between the VS and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during social rewards. Finally, we found that substance use was associated with decreased connectivity between the VS and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for social rewards, independent of reward sensitivity. These findings demonstrate nuanced relations between reward sensitivity and substance use, even among those without substance use disorder, and suggest altered reward-related engagement of cortico-VS responses as potential predictors of developing disordered behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Text Mining Approach to Characterizing Interpersonal Stress among Individuals with a Nonsuicidal Self-Injury History

  2023-02-17

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Objective: Interpersonal difficulties are salient among those with a history of NSSI and precede NSSI urges and behaviors. Yet, limited research has focused on identifying which aspects of interpersonal stress may confer risk for NSSI. Method: The current study aimed to leverage data from two samples (combined n =206; n =114 with NSSI history) of participant-driven interviews regarding a recent interpersonal stressor to enhance the field’s knowledge of interpersonal difficulties in relation to NSSI risk. Results: Using topic modeling to extract thematic information, analyses identified four main topics: daily difficulties; family members; adjectives/verbal fillers; and friendship/romantic relationships. Relationships between the topics and three predictors (i.e., NSSI history, emotion dysregulation, sample) were examined. In one sample, the proportion of ‘adjectives/verbal fillers’ was greater for participants with a NSSI history and at higher levels of emotion dysregulation. Across samples, for participants with a NSSI history, ‘adjectives/verbal fillers’ and ‘friendship/romantic partners’ increased with levels of emotion dysregulation. Conclusion: Findings highlight a greater use of adjectives and verbal fillers among individuals with a history of NSSI and higher levels of emotion dysregulation. This pattern of language may serve as an indicator of a specific aspect of emotion regulation difficulties that confers risk for NSSI.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Properties of graphic motor plans in the writing system

  Cognitive Neuropsychology · 2022-11-17 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The present study explores the extent to which properties of abstract graphemic representations are maintained at the post-graphemic level of graphic motor plans, where the sequences of writing strokes for producing the letters in a word are represented. On the basis of results from a stroke patient (NGN) who has a deficit affecting the activation of graphic motor plans, we explore the post-graphemic representation of 1) consonant/vowel status of letters; 2) geminate (double) letters, such as the BB in RABBIT; and 3) digraphs, such as the SH in SHIP. Through analyses of NGN's letter substitution errors, we conclude that 1) consonant-vowel status is not represented at the level of graphic motor plans; 2) geminates have special representations at the motor-plan level, as at the graphemic level; and 3) digraphs are represented by two separate single-letter graphic motor plans, and not by unitary digraph motor plans.

  PublisherDOI

• Do animals dream?

  Consciousness and Cognition · 2021-10-01 · 25 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Lack of awareness despite complex visual processing: Evidence from event-related potentials in a case of selective metamorphopsia

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 36 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive psychology

  Visual awareness is thought to result from integration of low- and high-level processing; instances of integration failure provide a crucial window into the cognitive and neural bases of awareness. We present neurophysiological evidence of complex cognitive processing in the absence of awareness, raising questions about the conditions necessary for visual awareness. We describe an individual with a neurodegenerative disease who exhibits impaired visual awareness for the digits 2 to 9, and stimuli presented in close proximity to these digits, due to perceptual distortion. We identified robust event-related potential responses indicating 1) face detection with the N170 component and 2) task-dependent target-word detection with the P3b component, despite no awareness of the presence of faces or target words. These data force us to reconsider the relationship between neural processing and visual awareness; even stimuli processed by a workspace-like cognitive system can remain inaccessible to awareness. We discuss how this finding challenges and constrains theories of visual awareness.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brenda Rapp

  21 shared

• Emma Gregory

  University of Toronto

  17 shared

• Teresa Schubert

  Kleijnen Systematic Reviews (United Kingdom)

  12 shared

• Howard E. Egeth

  Johns Hopkins University

  11 shared

• Scott M. Sokol

  11 shared

• Maria S. Zaragoza

  Kent State University

  10 shared

• Barbara Landau

  Johns Hopkins University

  9 shared

• Paul Macaruso

  Community College of Rhode Island

  8 shared

Labs

• Cognitive Neuroscience LabPI