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Rouault M, Weiss A, Lee JK, Drugowitsch J, Chambon V, Wyart V. Controllability boosts neural and cognitive signatures of changes-of-mind in uncertain environments. eLife 2022; 11:75038. [PMID: 36097814 PMCID: PMC9470160 DOI: 10.7554/elife.75038] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2021] [Accepted: 07/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
In uncertain environments, seeking information about alternative choice options is essential for adaptive learning and decision-making. However, information seeking is usually confounded with changes-of-mind about the reliability of the preferred option. Here, we exploited the fact that information seeking requires control over which option to sample to isolate its behavioral and neurophysiological signatures. We found that changes-of-mind occurring with control require more evidence against the current option, are associated with reduced confidence, but are nevertheless more likely to be confirmed on the next decision. Multimodal neurophysiological recordings showed that these changes-of-mind are preceded by stronger activation of the dorsal attention network in magnetoencephalography, and followed by increased pupil-linked arousal during the presentation of decision outcomes. Together, these findings indicate that information seeking increases the saliency of evidence perceived as the direct consequence of one's own actions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marion Rouault
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), Paris, France.,Institut Jean Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France.,Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL University), Paris, France
| | - Aurélien Weiss
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), Paris, France.,Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL University), Paris, France.,Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Junseok K Lee
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), Paris, France.,Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL University), Paris, France
| | - Jan Drugowitsch
- Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
| | - Valerian Chambon
- Institut Jean Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France.,Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL University), Paris, France
| | - Valentin Wyart
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), Paris, France.,Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL University), Paris, France
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2
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Mazaheri A, Seminowicz DA, Furman AJ. Peak alpha frequency as a candidate biomarker of pain sensitivity: the importance of distinguishing slow from slowing. Neuroimage 2022; 262:119560. [PMID: 35973563 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119560] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2022] [Revised: 07/27/2022] [Accepted: 08/11/2022] [Indexed: 10/31/2022] Open
Abstract
The study by Valentini et al. (2022) observed that the peak alpha frequency (PAF) of participants became slower after they were exposed to painful, as well as non-painful but unpleasant stimuli. The authors interpreted this as a challenge to our previous studies which propose that the speed of resting PAF, independently of pain-induced changes to PAF, can be a reliable biomarker marker for gaging individual pain sensitivity. While investigations into the role that PAF plays in pain perception are timely, we have some concerns about the assumptions and methodology employed by Valentini et al. Moreover, we believe the authors here have also misrepresented some of our previous work. In the current commentary, we detail the critical differences between our respective studies, with the ultimate aim of guiding future investigations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ali Mazaheri
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH), University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
| | - David A Seminowicz
- Department of Medical Biophysics, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
| | - Andrew J Furman
- Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; Center to Advance Chronic Pain Research, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
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Keitel C, Ruzzoli M, Dugué L, Busch NA, Benwell CSY. Rhythms in cognition: The evidence revisited. Eur J Neurosci 2022; 55:2991-3009. [PMID: 35696729 PMCID: PMC9544967 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15740] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2022] [Revised: 05/27/2022] [Accepted: 05/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Manuela Ruzzoli
- Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain.,Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain
| | - Laura Dugué
- Université Paris Cité, INCC UMR 8002, CNRS, Paris, France.,Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France
| | - Niko A Busch
- Institute for Psychology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
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Cardiac sympathetic-vagal activity initiates a functional brain-body response to emotional arousal. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2119599119. [PMID: 35588453 PMCID: PMC9173754 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119599119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 18.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/27/2023] Open
Abstract
We investigate the temporal dynamics of brain and cardiac activities in healthy subjects who underwent an emotional elicitation through videos. We demonstrate that, within the first few seconds, emotional stimuli modulate heartbeat activity, which in turn stimulates an emotion intensity (arousal)–specific cortical response. The emotional processing is then sustained by a bidirectional brain–heart interplay, where the perceived arousal level modulates the amplitude of ascending heart-to-brain neural information flow. These findings may constitute fundamental knowledge linking neurophysiology and psychiatric disorders, including the link between depressive symptoms and cardiovascular disorders. A century-long debate on bodily states and emotions persists. While the involvement of bodily activity in emotion physiology is widely recognized, the specificity and causal role of such activity related to brain dynamics has not yet been demonstrated. We hypothesize that the peripheral neural control on cardiovascular activity prompts and sustains brain dynamics during an emotional experience, so these afferent inputs are processed by the brain by triggering a concurrent efferent information transfer to the body. To this end, we investigated the functional brain–heart interplay under emotion elicitation in publicly available data from 62 healthy subjects using a computational model based on synthetic data generation of electroencephalography and electrocardiography signals. Our findings show that sympathovagal activity plays a leading and causal role in initiating the emotional response, in which ascending modulations from vagal activity precede neural dynamics and correlate to the reported level of arousal. The subsequent dynamic interplay observed between the central and autonomic nervous systems sustains the processing of emotional arousal. These findings should be particularly revealing for the psychophysiology and neuroscience of emotions.
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Pfeffer T, Keitel C, Kluger DS, Keitel A, Russmann A, Thut G, Donner TH, Gross J. Coupling of pupil- and neuronal population dynamics reveals diverse influences of arousal on cortical processing. eLife 2022; 11:e71890. [PMID: 35133276 PMCID: PMC8853659 DOI: 10.7554/elife.71890] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2021] [Accepted: 02/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Fluctuations in arousal, controlled by subcortical neuromodulatory systems, continuously shape cortical state, with profound consequences for information processing. Yet, how arousal signals influence cortical population activity in detail has so far only been characterized for a few selected brain regions. Traditional accounts conceptualize arousal as a homogeneous modulator of neural population activity across the cerebral cortex. Recent insights, however, point to a higher specificity of arousal effects on different components of neural activity and across cortical regions. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of the relationships between fluctuations in arousal and neuronal population activity across the human brain. Exploiting the established link between pupil size and central arousal systems, we performed concurrent magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and pupillographic recordings in a large number of participants, pooled across three laboratories. We found a cascade of effects relative to the peak timing of spontaneous pupil dilations: Decreases in low-frequency (2-8 Hz) activity in temporal and lateral frontal cortex, followed by increased high-frequency (>64 Hz) activity in mid-frontal regions, followed by monotonic and inverted U relationships with intermediate frequency-range activity (8-32 Hz) in occipito-parietal regions. Pupil-linked arousal also coincided with widespread changes in the structure of the aperiodic component of cortical population activity, indicative of changes in the excitation-inhibition balance in underlying microcircuits. Our results provide a novel basis for studying the arousal modulation of cognitive computations in cortical circuits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Pfeffer
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Center for Brain and Cognition, Computational Neuroscience GroupBarcelonaSpain
- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Neurophysiology and PathophysiologyHamburgGermany
| | - Christian Keitel
- University of Stirling, PsychologyStirlingUnited Kingdom
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of GlasgowGlasgowUnited Kingdom
| | - Daniel S Kluger
- Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignal Analysis, University of Münster, MalmedywegMuensterGermany
- Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of MünsterMuensterGermany
| | - Anne Keitel
- University of Dundee, PsychologyDundeeUnited Kingdom
| | - Alena Russmann
- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Neurophysiology and PathophysiologyHamburgGermany
| | - Gregor Thut
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of GlasgowGlasgowUnited Kingdom
| | - Tobias H Donner
- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Neurophysiology and PathophysiologyHamburgGermany
| | - Joachim Gross
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of GlasgowGlasgowUnited Kingdom
- Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignal Analysis, University of Münster, MalmedywegMuensterGermany
- Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of MünsterMuensterGermany
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Dahl MJ, Mather M, Werkle-Bergner M. Noradrenergic modulation of rhythmic neural activity shapes selective attention. Trends Cogn Sci 2022; 26:38-52. [PMID: 34799252 PMCID: PMC8678372 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.10.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2021] [Revised: 10/12/2021] [Accepted: 10/12/2021] [Indexed: 01/03/2023]
Abstract
During moments involving selective attention, the thalamus orchestrates the preferential processing of prioritized information by coordinating rhythmic neural activity within a distributed frontoparietal network. The timed release of neuromodulators from subcortical structures dynamically sculpts neural synchronization in thalamocortical networks to meet current attentional demands. In particular, noradrenaline modulates the balance of cortical excitation and inhibition, as reflected by thalamocortical alpha synchronization (~8-12 Hz). These neuromodulatory adjustments facilitate the selective processing of prioritized information. Thus, by disrupting effective rhythmic coordination in attention networks, age-related locus coeruleus (LC) degeneration can impair higher levels of neural processing. In sum, findings across different levels of analysis and modalities shed light on how the noradrenergic modulation of neural synchronization helps to shape selective attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin J Dahl
- Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, 90089 Los Angeles, CA, USA.
| | - Mara Mather
- Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, 90089 Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Markus Werkle-Bergner
- Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany
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