Coherent covariation appears to be a powerful explanatory factor accounting for a range of phenomena in semantic cognition. But its role in accounting for the crosslinguistic facts is less clear. Variation in naming, within the same semantic domain, raises vexing questions about the necessary parameters needed to account for the basic facts underlying categorization.

The target article suggests that taste is not based on the traditional four basic tastes, but rather is a continuum subserved by cross-fiber integration. This commentary describes evidence indicating that the traditional concept is valid, and that with suitable precautions, it is possible to match natural substances using mixtures representing fundamental tastes.

Taking into account an evolutionary viewpoint, we hypothesize that music could hide a universal and adaptive code determining preferences. We consider the possible selective pressure that might have shaped, at least in part, our emotional appreciation of sound and music, and sketch a comparison between parameters of some naturalistic sounds and music.

The model proposed by Redish et al. considers vulnerabilities within decision systems based on expectancy-value assumptions. Further understanding of processes leading to addiction can be gained by considering other inputs to decision-making, particularly affective associations with behaviors. This consideration suggests additional decision-making vulnerabilities that might explain addictive behaviors.

The target article described the ubiquitous and often undefined idea of “basic tastes” as the basis for sensory coding in taste, and its attendant problems. The commentaries cover the full range of reaction to this argument, from full support, to qualification of the level of analysis to which “basic tastes” apply and the nature of empirical support, to full denial of either the characterization of the literature or that such characterization reveals any problem. Many commentators, and I, go on to propose other types and sources for taste analysis, which I relate to the “across-fiber pattern model.”

Rogers & McClelland (R&M) present a powerful account of semantic (conceptual) learning. Their model admirably handles many characteristics of early concept formation, but it also needs to address attentional biases, and distinguish direct input from error-driven learning, and fast versus slow learning. Not distinguishing implicit and explicit knowledge means that the authors also cannot explain why some coherently varying information becomes accessible and other information does not.

With this commentary, I raise two issues relevant to the theoretical framework from a developmental perspective. First, the infants' emotional responses are induced by the music as well as by the multimodal information they perceive in interaction with their mothers, and these responses change with time. Second, contrary to what is suggested in the target article, musical expectancy is already experienced by young infants.

Decision-making is a complex activity for which emotions and affects are essential. Maladaptive choices depend on negative affects. Vulnerabilities to drug or non-drug objects depend on previous psychopathological comorbidities. Premorbid individual characteristics allow us to understand why some individuals – and not others – enter into the addiction cycle. Moreover, plasticity of reward neurocircuitry is, at least in past, responsible for these vulnerabilities leading to compulsive drug use.

Correction of sensory transmission delays is an intractable problem, since there is no absolute reference for calibration. Phase-alignment is a practical alternative solution and can be realized by adaptive filters that operate locally with simple error signals.

The mechanisms proposed in the target article are quite general and do not address variables specific for music. I argue that reactions to music include motivational mechanisms related to functions of music. To further the field, as the authors envision, consideration of internal mechanisms must be paired with specific hypotheses that include musical and musically relevant variables.

Rogers & McClelland's (R&M's) précis represents an important effort to address key issues in concepts and categorization, but few of the simulations deliver what is promised. We argue that the models are seriously underconstrained, importantly incomplete, and psychologically implausible; more broadly, R&M dwell too heavily on the apparent successes without comparable concern for limitations already noted in the literature.

In the target article Nijhawan speculates that visual perceptual mechanisms compensate for neural delays so that moving objects may be perceived closer to their physical locations. However, the vast majority of published psychophysical data are inconsistent with this speculation.

Redish et al. present a compelling, interdisciplinary, unified framework of addiction. The effort to integrate pathological gambling is especially important, but only the vulnerability of misclassifying situations is described in detail as being linked directly to this disorder. This commentary focuses on further developing the comprehensiveness of this framework for pathological gambling using over-fast discounting as an illustrative example.

Speculation by Nijhawan that visual perceptual mechanisms compensate for neural delays has no basis in the physiological properties of neurons known to be involved in motion perception and visuomotor control. Behavioral and physiological evidence is consistent with delay compensation mediated primarily by motor systems.

Analogical inferences are an important consequence of the way semantic knowledge is represented, that is, with relations as explicit structures that can take arguments. We review evidence that this feature of semantic cognition successfully predicts how quickly and broadly children's concepts change with experience and show that Rogers & McClelland's (R&M's) parallel distributed processing (PDP) model fails to simulate these cognitive changes due to its handling of relational information.

Juslin & Västfjäll (J&V) have suggested a promising theoretical framework for understanding musical emotions. However, the way they classify the hypothetical underlying psychological mechanisms suffers from certain weaknesses, both in principle and when it comes to details. It is proposed that the authors consider incorporating ideas from a recent dissertation that has advanced another multimechanism theory of musical emotions.

Redish et al. rely too much on a rational and innate view of decision-making, when their emphasis on variation, their integrative spirit, and their neuroscientific insights point towards a broader view of why addiction is such a tenacious problem. The integration of subjective, sociocultural, and evolutionary factors with cognitive neuroscience advances our understanding of addiction and decision-making.

For all its problems, the microeconomic “rational addiction” theory had the appeal of making clear predictions about the effects of various drug policies. The emerging picture of the “what” and “how” of addiction is far more complex. Addiction scientists might help bridge the science–policy gap by devoting more attention to the “whom” and “when” of addiction.

The target article inventories mechanisms underlying musical emotions. We argue that the inventory misses important mechanisms and that its structure would benefit from the distinction between two types of musical emotions. We also argue that the authors' claim that appraisal does not play a crucial role in the causation of musical emotions rests on a narrow conception of appraisal.

It is commonplace for a single physiological mechanism to seed multiple phenomena, and for multiple mechanisms to contribute to a single phenomenon. We propose that the flash-lag effect should not be considered a phenomenon with a single cause. Instead, its various aspects arise from the convergence of a number of different mechanisms proposed in the literature. We further give an example of how a neuron's generic spatio-temporal response profile can form a physiological basis not only of “prediction,” but also of many of the other proposed flash-lag mechanisms, thus recapitulating a spectrum of flash-lag phenomena. Finally, in agreeing that such basic predictive mechanisms are present throughout the brain, we argue that motor prediction contributes more to biological fitness than visual prediction.