Understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms of cognitive security

Cognitive security is a relatively new field that aims to understand and defend against information-based threats that people encounter in the different contexts of their everyday lives. At the individual level, cognitive security refers to the human factors and phenomena that explain how information-based threats influence thinking, feeling, and acting in cognitive security situations. Understanding the driving factors of what makes people susceptible and resilient to such threats is critical because existing intervention strategies stand to benefit from insights into how individual cognitive (in)security affects human performance. However, these drivers are only beginning to be understood; even less clear are their neurophysiological underpinnings. The purpose of the present work is therefore to review and synthesize research on these less-studied topics. Specifically, we review experimental research and theoretical perspectives on why people are susceptible to erroneous, inauthentic, and misleading information. These works are then synthesized to propose a framework for understanding cognitive (in)security more generally, which can be used as a tool for characterizing how different exogenous and endogenous factors might dynamically interact to affect outcomes in cognitive security situations. The theoretical and empirical implications of these interactions are subsequently described from a cognitive neuroscientific perspective, with a key neurophysiological implication being that certain brain systems are more exploitable than others, making them appropriate candidates for detecting neuromarkers of susceptibility and resilience. We conclude that assessing the engagement of brain activity supporting executive, affective, and integrative mechanisms during human-threat interactions is key to developing better intervention strategies for cultivating cognitive resilience (e.g., AI-based tools).