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Moreno-Sánchez M, Matsushima EH, Aznar-Casanova JA. Exploring Binocular Visual Attention by Presenting Rapid Dichoptic and Dioptic Series. Brain Sci 2024; 14:518. [PMID: 38790496 PMCID: PMC11119880 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14050518] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2024] [Revised: 05/12/2024] [Accepted: 05/16/2024] [Indexed: 05/26/2024] Open
Abstract
This study addresses an issue in attentional distribution in a binocular visual system using RSVP tasks under Attentional Blink (AB) experimental protocols. In Experiment 1, we employed dichoptic RSVP to verify whether, under interocular competition, attention may be captured by a monocular channel. Experiment 2 was a control experiment, where a monoptic RSVP assessed by both or only one eye determines whether Experiment 1 monocular condition results were due to an allocation of attention to one eye. Experiment 3 was also a control experiment designed to determine whether Experiment 1 results were due to the effect of interocular competition or to a diminished visual contrast. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that dichoptic presentations caused a delay in the type stage of the Wyble's eSTST model, postponing the subsequent tokenization process. The delay in monocular conditions may be further explained by a visual attenuation, due to fusion of target and an empty frame. Experiment 2 evidenced the attentional allocation to monocular channels when forced by eye occlusion. Experiment 3 disclosed that monocular performance in Experiment 1 differs significantly from conditions with interocular competition. While both experiments revealed similar performance in monocular conditions, rivalry conditions exhibit lower detection rates, suggesting that competing stimuli was not responsible for Experiment 1 results. These findings highlight the differences between dichoptic and monoptic presentations of stimuli, particularly on the AB effect, which appears attenuated or absent in dichoptic settings. Furthermore, results suggest that monoptic presentation and binocular fusion stages were a necessary condition for the attentional allocation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manuel Moreno-Sánchez
- Facultad de Psicologia, Department Section of Cognitive Processes, Universitat de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain;
- Institut of Neuroscience, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Elton H. Matsushima
- Programa de Pós-Graduação em Medicina (Neurologia and Eurociências), Niterói 24020-140, RJ, Brazil;
- Institute of Psychology, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói 24020-140, RJ, Brazil
| | - Jose Antonio Aznar-Casanova
- Facultad de Psicologia, Department Section of Cognitive Processes, Universitat de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain;
- Institut of Neuroscience, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
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2
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Kelly NF, Mansfield CJ, Schneider E, Moeller JC, Bleacher JS, Prakash RS, Briggs MS. Functional connectivity patterns are altered by low back pain and cause different responses to sham and real dry needling therapies: a systematic review of fMRI studies. Physiother Theory Pract 2024; 40:671-688. [PMID: 36484262 DOI: 10.1080/09593985.2022.2155094] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2022] [Revised: 11/30/2022] [Accepted: 11/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND There is a relationship between low back pain (LBP) and central nervous system dysfunction. Needling therapies (e.g. acupuncture, dry needling) are proposed to impact the nervous system, however their specific influence is unclear. PURPOSE Determine how needling therapies alter functional connectivity and LBP as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS Databases were searched following PRISMA guidelines. Studies using fMRI on individuals with LBP receiving dry needling or acupuncture compared to control or sham treatments were included. RESULTS Eight studies were included, all of which used acupuncture. The quality of studies ranged from good (n = 6) to excellent (n = 2). After acupuncture, individuals with LBP demonstrated significant functional connectivity changes across several networks, notably the salience, somatomotor, default mode network (DMN) and limbic networks. A meta-analysis demonstrated evidence of no effect to potential small effect of acupuncture in reducing LBP (SMD -0.28; 95% CI: -0.70, 0.13). CONCLUSION Needling therapies, like acupuncture, may have a central effect on patients beyond the local tissue effects, reducing patients' pain and disability due to alterations in neural processing, including the DMN, and potentially other central nervous system effects. The meta-analysis should be interpreted with caution due to the narrow focus and confined sample used.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nina F Kelly
- Cleveland Clinic Main Campus, Crile Building Sports Medicine Rehabilitation, Cleveland, OH, USA
- Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy Fellowship, Sports Medicine Rehab, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Gahanna Sports Medicine Rehabilitation, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Cody J Mansfield
- Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy Fellowship, Sports Medicine Rehab, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Gahanna Sports Medicine Rehabilitation, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Sports Medicine Research Institute, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Jameson Crane Sports Medicine Institute, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, College of Medicine, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Eric Schneider
- School of Health Sciences, Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, OH, USA
| | - Josh C Moeller
- School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, College of Medicine, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
- Department of Psychology, Ohio State University 1825 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Jerald S Bleacher
- Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy Fellowship, Sports Medicine Rehab, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Gahanna Sports Medicine Rehabilitation, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Ruchika S Prakash
- Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Matthew S Briggs
- Sports Medicine Research Institute, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- Jameson Crane Sports Medicine Institute, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
- School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, College of Medicine, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
- Department of Orthopedics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA
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Rizza A, Pedale T, Mastroberardino S, Olivetti Belardinelli M, Van der Lubbe RHJ, Spence C, Santangelo V. Working Memory Maintenance of Visual and Auditory Spatial Information Relies on Supramodal Neural Codes in the Dorsal Frontoparietal Cortex. Brain Sci 2024; 14:123. [PMID: 38391698 PMCID: PMC10886761 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14020123] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2023] [Revised: 01/19/2024] [Accepted: 01/20/2024] [Indexed: 02/24/2024] Open
Abstract
The frontoparietal attention network plays a pivotal role during working memory (WM) maintenance, especially under high-load conditions. Nevertheless, there is ongoing debate regarding whether this network relies on supramodal or modality-specific neural signatures. In this study, we used multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to evaluate the neural representation of visual versus auditory information during WM maintenance. During fMRI scanning, participants maintained small or large spatial configurations (low- or high-load trials) of either colour shades or sound pitches in WM for later retrieval. Participants were less accurate in retrieving high- vs. low-load trials, demonstrating an effective manipulation of WM load, irrespective of the sensory modality. The frontoparietal regions involved in maintaining high- vs. low-load spatial maps in either sensory modality were highlighted using a conjunction analysis. Widespread activity was found across the dorsal frontoparietal network, peaking on the frontal eye fields and the superior parietal lobule, bilaterally. Within these regions, MVPAs were performed to quantify the pattern of distinctness of visual vs. auditory neural codes during WM maintenance. These analyses failed to reveal distinguishable patterns in the dorsal frontoparietal regions, thus providing support for a common, supramodal neural code associated with the retention of either visual or auditory spatial configurations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aurora Rizza
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, P.le A. Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Tiziana Pedale
- Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Rome, Italy
| | - Serena Mastroberardino
- Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences & Education, University of Perugia, Piazza G. Ermini 1, 06123 Perugia, Italy
| | - Marta Olivetti Belardinelli
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, P.le A. Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
- ECONA, Interuniversity Centre for Research on Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Rob H J Van der Lubbe
- Cognition, Data and Education, University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, 7522 NB Enschede, The Netherlands
- Laboratory of Vision Science and Optometry, Adam Mickiewicz University, Wieniawskiego 1, 61-712 Poznan, Poland
| | - Charles Spence
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Anna Watts Building, Oxford OX2 6BW, UK
| | - Valerio Santangelo
- Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Rome, Italy
- Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences & Education, University of Perugia, Piazza G. Ermini 1, 06123 Perugia, Italy
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4
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DeRosa J, Kim H, Lewis-Peacock J, Banich MT. Neural Systems Underlying the Implementation of Working Memory Removal Operations. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e0283232023. [PMID: 37963765 PMCID: PMC10866188 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0283-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2023] [Revised: 09/24/2023] [Accepted: 10/27/2023] [Indexed: 11/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Recently, multi-voxel pattern analysis has verified that information can be removed from working memory (WM) via three distinct operations replacement, suppression, or clearing compared to information being maintained ( Kim et al., 2020). While univariate analyses and classifier importance maps in Kim et al. (2020) identified brain regions that contribute to these operations, they did not elucidate whether these regions represent the operations similarly or uniquely. Using Leiden-community-detection on a sample of 55 humans (17 male), we identified four brain networks, each of which has a unique configuration of multi-voxel activity patterns by which it represents these WM operations. The visual network (VN) shows similar multi-voxel patterns for maintain and replace, which are highly dissimilar from suppress and clear, suggesting this network differentiates whether an item is held in WM or not. The somatomotor network (SMN) shows a distinct multi-voxel pattern for clear relative to the other operations, indicating the uniqueness of this operation. The default mode network (DMN) has distinct patterns for suppress and clear, but these two operations are more similar to each other than to maintain and replace, a pattern intermediate to that of the VN and SMN. The frontoparietal control network (FPCN) displays distinct multi-voxel patterns for each of the four operations, suggesting that this network likely plays an important role in implementing these WM operations. These results indicate that the operations involved in removing information from WM can be performed in parallel by distinct brain networks, each of which has a particular configuration by which they represent these operations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob DeRosa
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
| | - Hyojeong Kim
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
| | | | - Marie T Banich
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
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5
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Carlos BJ, Santacroce LA, Tamber-Rosenau BJ. The slow rate of working memory consolidation from vision is a structural limit. Atten Percept Psychophys 2023; 85:2210-2225. [PMID: 37495932 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02757-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/22/2023] [Indexed: 07/28/2023]
Abstract
The speed with which information from vision is transformed into working memory (WM) representations that resist interference from ongoing perception and cognition is the subject of conflicting results. Using distinct paradigms, researchers have arrived at estimates of the consolidation time course ranging from 25 ms to 1 s - a range of more than an order of magnitude. However, comparisons of consolidation duration across very different estimation paradigms rely on the implicit assumption that WM consolidation speed is a stable, structural constraint of the WM system. The extremely large variation in WM consolidation speed estimates across measurement approaches motivated the current work's goal of determining whether consolidation speed truly is a stable structural constraint of WM encoding, or instead might be under strategic control as suggested by some accounts. By manipulating the relative task priority of WM encoding and a subsequent sensorimotor decision in a dual-task paradigm, the current experiments demonstrate that the long duration of WM consolidation does not change as a result of task-specific strategies. These results allow comparison of WM consolidation across estimation approaches, are consistent with recent multi-phase WM consolidation models, and are consistent with consolidation duration being an inflexible structural limit.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brandon J Carlos
- University of Houston Department of Psychology, Houston, TX, USA.
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6
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Baltaretu BR, Stevens WD, Freud E, Crawford JD. Occipital and parietal cortex participate in a cortical network for transsaccadic discrimination of object shape and orientation. Sci Rep 2023; 13:11628. [PMID: 37468709 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-38554-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2023] [Accepted: 07/11/2023] [Indexed: 07/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Saccades change eye position and interrupt vision several times per second, necessitating neural mechanisms for continuous perception of object identity, orientation, and location. Neuroimaging studies suggest that occipital and parietal cortex play complementary roles for transsaccadic perception of intrinsic versus extrinsic spatial properties, e.g., dorsomedial occipital cortex (cuneus) is sensitive to changes in spatial frequency, whereas the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) is modulated by changes in object orientation. Based on this, we hypothesized that both structures would be recruited to simultaneously monitor object identity and orientation across saccades. To test this, we merged two previous neuroimaging protocols: 21 participants viewed a 2D object and then, after sustained fixation or a saccade, judged whether the shape or orientation of the re-presented object changed. We, then, performed a bilateral region-of-interest analysis on identified cuneus and SMG sites. As hypothesized, cuneus showed both saccade and feature (i.e., object orientation vs. shape change) modulations, and right SMG showed saccade-feature interactions. Further, the cuneus activity time course correlated with several other cortical saccade/visual areas, suggesting a 'functional network' for feature discrimination. These results confirm the involvement of occipital/parietal cortex in transsaccadic vision and support complementary roles in spatial versus identity updating.
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Affiliation(s)
- B R Baltaretu
- Centre for Vision Research and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
- Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
- Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10F, 35394, Giessen, Hesse, Germany.
| | - W Dale Stevens
- Centre for Vision Research and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
| | - E Freud
- Centre for Vision Research and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
| | - J D Crawford
- Centre for Vision Research and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
- Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
- School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
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7
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Calzolari S, Boneva S, Fernández-Espejo D. Investigating the shift between externally and internally oriented cognition: a novel task-switching paradigm. Neurosci Conscious 2022; 2022:niac016. [PMID: 36415846 PMCID: PMC9675616 DOI: 10.1093/nc/niac016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2022] [Revised: 09/05/2022] [Accepted: 10/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite our constant need to flexibly balance internal and external information, research on cognitive flexibility has focused solely on shifts between externally oriented tasks. In contrast, switches across internally oriented processes (and self-referential cognition specifically) and between internal and external domains have never been investigated. Here, we report a novel task-switching paradigm developed to explore the behavioural signatures associated with cognitive flexibility when self-referential processes, as well as more traditional external processes, are involved. Two hundred healthy volunteers completed an online task. In each trial, participants performed one of four possible tasks on written words, as instructed by a pre-stimulus cue. These included two externally and two internally oriented tasks: assessing whether the third letter was a consonant or the penultimate letter was a vowel versus assessing whether the adjective applied to their personality or if it described a bodily sensation they were currently experiencing. In total, 40% of trials involved switches to another task, and these were equally distributed across within-external, within-internal, internal-to-external and external-to-internal switches. We found higher response times for switches compared to repetitions both in the external and internal domains, thus demonstrating the presence of switch costs in self-referential tasks for the first time. We also found higher response times for between-domain switches compared to switches within each domain. We propose that these effects originate from the goal-directed engagement of different domain-specific cognitive systems that flexibly communicate and share domain-general control features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Calzolari
- Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
| | - Svetla Boneva
- Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
| | - Davinia Fernández-Espejo
- Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham , 05 CHBH Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
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8
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Zhou Y, Curtis CE, Sreenivasan KK, Fougnie D. Common Neural Mechanisms Control Attention and Working Memory. J Neurosci 2022; 42:7110-7120. [PMID: 35927036 PMCID: PMC9480871 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0443-22.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2022] [Revised: 07/10/2022] [Accepted: 07/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Although previous studies point to qualitative similarities between working memory (WM) and attention, the degree to which these two constructs rely on shared neural mechanisms remains unknown. Focusing on one such potentially shared mechanism, we tested the hypothesis that selecting an item within WM utilizes similar neural mechanisms as selecting a visible item via a shift of attention. We used fMRI and machine learning to decode both the selection among items visually available and the selection among items stored in WM in human subjects (both sexes). Patterns of activity in visual, parietal, and to a lesser extent frontal cortex predicted the locations of the selected items. Critically, these patterns were strikingly interchangeable; classifiers trained on data during attentional selection predicted selection from WM, and classifiers trained on data during selection from memory predicted attentional selection. Using models of voxel receptive fields, we visualized topographic population activity that revealed gain enhancements at the locations of the externally and internally selected items. Our results suggest that selecting among perceived items and selecting among items in WM share a common mechanism. This common mechanism, analogous to a shift of spatial attention, controls the relative gains of neural populations that encode behaviorally relevant information.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How we allocate our attention to external stimuli that we see and to internal representations of stimuli stored in memory might rely on a common mechanism. Supporting this hypothesis, we demonstrated that not only could patterns of human brain activity predict which items were selected during perception and memory, but that these patterns were interchangeable during external and internal selection. Additionally, this generalized selection mechanism operates by changes in the gains of the neural populations both encoding attended sensory representations and storing relevant memory representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ying Zhou
- Program in Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 129188
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003
| | - Clayton E Curtis
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York 10003
| | - Kartik K Sreenivasan
- Program in Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 129188
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003
- Program in Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 129188
| | - Daryl Fougnie
- Program in Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 129188
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003
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9
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Siestrup S, Jainta B, El-Sourani N, Trempler I, Wurm MF, Wolf OT, Cheng S, Schubotz RI. What Happened When? Cerebral Processing of Modified Structure and Content in Episodic Cueing. J Cogn Neurosci 2022; 34:1287-1305. [PMID: 35552744 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Episodic memories are not static but can change on the basis of new experiences, potentially allowing us to make valid predictions in the face of an ever-changing environment. Recent research has identified prediction errors during memory retrieval as a possible trigger for such changes. In this study, we used modified episodic cues to investigate whether different types of mnemonic prediction errors modulate brain activity and subsequent memory performance. Participants encoded episodes that consisted of short toy stories. During a subsequent fMRI session, participants were presented videos showing the original episodes, or slightly modified versions thereof. In modified videos, either the order of two subsequent action steps was changed or an object was exchanged for another. Content modifications recruited parietal, temporo-occipital, and parahippocampal areas reflecting the processing of the new object information. In contrast, structure modifications elicited activation in right dorsal premotor, posterior temporal, and parietal areas, reflecting the processing of new sequence information. In a post-fMRI memory test, the participants' tendency to accept modified episodes as originally encoded increased significantly when they had been presented modified versions already during the fMRI session. After experiencing modifications, especially those of the episodes' structure, the recognition of originally encoded episodes was impaired as well. Our study sheds light onto the neural processing of different types of episodic prediction errors and their influence on subsequent memory recall.
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Pomp J, Heins N, Trempler I, Kulvicius T, Tamosiunaite M, Mecklenbrauck F, Wurm MF, Wörgötter F, Schubotz RI. Touching events predict human action segmentation in brain and behavior. Neuroimage 2021; 243:118534. [PMID: 34469813 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118534] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2021] [Revised: 08/19/2021] [Accepted: 08/28/2021] [Indexed: 10/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Recognizing the actions of others depends on segmentation into meaningful events. After decades of research in this area, it remains still unclear how humans do this and which brain areas support underlying processes. Here we show that a computer vision-based model of touching and untouching events can predict human behavior in segmenting object manipulation actions with high accuracy. Using this computational model and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we pinpoint the neural networks underlying this segmentation behavior during an implicit action observation task. Segmentation was announced by a strong increase of visual activity at touching events followed by the engagement of frontal, hippocampal and insula regions, signaling updating expectation at subsequent untouching events. Brain activity and behavior show that touching-untouching motifs are critical features for identifying the key elements of actions including object manipulations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer Pomp
- Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany.
| | - Nina Heins
- Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany
| | - Ima Trempler
- Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany.
| | - Tomas Kulvicius
- Institute for Physics 3 - Biophysics and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), University of Göttingen, Germany; University Medical Center Göttingen, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Göttingen, Germany.
| | - Minija Tamosiunaite
- Institute for Physics 3 - Biophysics and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), University of Göttingen, Germany; Department of Informatics, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania.
| | | | - Moritz F Wurm
- Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.
| | - Florentin Wörgötter
- Institute for Physics 3 - Biophysics and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), University of Göttingen, Germany.
| | - Ricarda I Schubotz
- Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany.
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11
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Verschooren S, Schindler S, De Raedt R, Pourtois G. Early reduction of sensory processing within the visual cortex when switching from internal to external attention. Biol Psychol 2021; 163:108119. [PMID: 34019967 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2020] [Revised: 04/26/2021] [Accepted: 05/16/2021] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
The neurocognitive process underlying attention switches between external (perception-based) and internal (memory-based) attention is poorly characterized. Previous research has found that when participants switch attention either between two perception-based tasks (within-domain switches) or between a memory- and a perception-based task (between-domain switches), a substantial and similar processing cost was observed compared to the repetition of the same task (Verschooren, Schindler, De Raedt, & Pourtois, 2019). Here, we recorded 64-channel EEG while participants carried out within- versus between-domain switches of attention. ERP results showed that during early sensory processing, a marked P1 attenuation was associated with both switch types, suggesting that switching was associated with an early bottleneck during information processing. This early gating effect was stronger when switching from an internal to an external task, compared to switching between external tasks, suggesting different top-down requirements for them. These findings are in line with earlier proposals in the literature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sam Verschooren
- Cognitive & Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
| | - Sebastian Schindler
- Cognitive & Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Rudi De Raedt
- Psychopathology & Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Gilles Pourtois
- Cognitive & Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
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12
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Zhang Z, Peng P, Eickhoff SB, Lin X, Zhang D, Wang Y. Neural substrates of the executive function construct, age-related changes, and task materials in adolescents and adults: ALE meta-analyses of 408 fMRI studies. Dev Sci 2021; 24:e13111. [PMID: 33817920 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2020] [Revised: 03/10/2021] [Accepted: 03/16/2021] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
To explore the neural substrates of executive function (EF), we conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of 408 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (9639 participants, 7587 activation foci, 518 experimental contrasts) covering three fundamental EF subcomponents: inhibition, switching, and working memory. Our results found that activation common to all three EF subcomponents converged in the multiple-demand network across adolescence and adulthood. The function of EF with the multiple-demand network involved, especially for the prefrontal cortex and the parietal regions, could not be mature until adulthood. In adolescents, only working memory could be separable from common EF, whereas in adults, the three EF subcomponents could be separable from common EF. However, findings of switching in adolescents should be treated with substantial caution and may be exploratory due to limited data available on switching tasks. For task materials, inhibition and working memory showed both domain generality and domain specificity, undergirded by the multiple-demand network, as well as different brain regions in response to verbal and nonverbal task materials, respectively. In contrast, switching showed only domain generality with no activation specialized for either verbal or nonverbal task materials. These findings, taken together, support and contribute to the unitary-diverse nature of EF such that EF should be interpreted in an integrative model that relies on the integration of the EF construct, development, and task materials.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zheng Zhang
- Department of Special Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
| | - Peng Peng
- Department of Special Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
| | - Simon B Eickhoff
- Medical Faculty, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.,Brain & Behaviour (INM-7), Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany
| | - Xin Lin
- Department of Special Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
| | - Delong Zhang
- School of Psychology, Center for the Study of Applied Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, PR China
| | - Yingying Wang
- Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders, Neuroimaging for Language, Literacy, and Learning, College of Education and Human Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
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13
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Evaluating the distinction between semantic knowledge and semantic access: Evidence from semantic dementia and comprehension-impaired stroke aphasia. Psychon Bull Rev 2021; 27:607-639. [PMID: 31993976 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01706-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Theories of semantic memory based on neuropsychological findings have posited a distinction between stored semantic representations and the mechanisms used to access and manipulate them (e.g., Lambon Ralph, Jefferies, Patterson, & Rogers, 2017; Warrington & Cipolotti, 1996). The most recent instantiation of this view, the controlled semantic cognition theory (Lambon Ralph et al., 2017), is supported by findings suggesting that multimodal (i.e., both verbal and nonverbal) semantic deficits may result from qualitatively different impairments: on the one hand, damage to a semantic access mechanism related to executive control, which is observed in semantic aphasia (SA), and on the other, damage to semantic representations, which is observed in semantic dementia (SD) (Jefferies & Lambon Ralph, 2006). In this study we compared SA and SD patients on several phenomena previously used to support these distinctions. Contrary to the prior results, we found that (1) overall, cross-task consistency was equivalent for the two groups; (2) neither patient group showed consistency driven by item identity across different semantic tasks; (3) correlations among task performance were not obviously driven by the semantic control demands of different tasks; (4) both groups showed executive function deficits; and (5) both groups showed strong effects of distractor interference in a synonym judgment task. Furthermore, we investigated the components of executive ability that could underlie semantic control deficits by correlating performance on updating, shifting, and inhibition tasks with performance on tasks testing semantic abilities. We found that updating was related to semantic processing generally, whereas shifting and inhibition were not. These results also suggest that complex executive function tasks relate to semantic tasks through their shared relationship with language abilities. Overall, evidence from SA and SD patients does not differentiate representations and access mechanisms in the semantic system, as has previously been suggested. Implications for the storage-access distinction are discussed.
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14
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Rasoulzadeh V, Sahan MI, van Dijck JP, Abrahamse E, Marzecova A, Verguts T, Fias W. Spatial Attention in Serial Order Working Memory: An EEG Study. Cereb Cortex 2020; 31:2482-2493. [DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa368] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2020] [Revised: 11/10/2020] [Accepted: 11/10/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract
Theoretical models explaining serial order processing link order information to specified position markers. However, the precise characteristics of position marking have remained largely elusive. Recent studies have shown that space is involved in marking serial position of items in verbal working memory (WM). Furthermore, it has been suggested, but not proven, that accessing these items involves horizontal shifts of spatial attention. We used continuous electroencephalography recordings to show that memory search in serial order verbal WM involves spatial attention processes that share the same electrophysiological signatures as those operating on the visuospatial WM and external space. Accessing an item from a sequence in verbal WM induced posterior “early directing attention negativity” and “anterior directing attention negativity” contralateral to the position of the item in mental space (i.e., begin items on the left; end items on the right). In the frequency domain, we observed posterior alpha suppression contralateral to the position of the item. Our results provide clear evidence for the involvement of spatial attention in retrieving serial information from verbal WM. Implications for WM models are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vesal Rasoulzadeh
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium
| | | | - Jean-Philippe van Dijck
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium
- Department of Applied Psychology, Thomas More University College, Antwerpen B-2018, Belgium
| | - Elger Abrahamse
- Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands
| | - Anna Marzecova
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium
| | - Tom Verguts
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium
| | - Wim Fias
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium
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15
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González-García C, Formica S, Wisniewski D, Brass M. Frontoparietal action-oriented codes support novel instruction implementation. Neuroimage 2020; 226:117608. [PMID: 33271270 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117608] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2020] [Accepted: 11/24/2020] [Indexed: 01/05/2023] Open
Abstract
A key aspect of human cognitive flexibility concerns the ability to convert complex symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous research proposes that this transformation is supported by two neurocognitive states: an initial declarative maintenance of task knowledge, and an implementation state necessary for optimal task execution. Furthermore, current models predict a crucial role of frontal and parietal brain regions in this process. However, whether declarative and procedural signals independently contribute to implementation remains unknown. We report the results of an fMRI experiment in which participants executed novel instructed stimulus-response associations. We then used a pattern-tracking procedure to quantify the contribution of format-unique signals during instruction implementation. This revealed independent procedural and declarative representations of novel S-Rs in frontoparietal areas, prior to execution. Critically, the degree of procedural activation predicted subsequent behavioral performance. Altogether, our results suggest an important contribution of frontoparietal regions to the neural architecture that regulates cognitive flexibility.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Silvia Formica
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
| | - David Wisniewski
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
| | - Marcel Brass
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium; Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Department of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
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16
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Orienting Attention to Short-Term Memory Representations via Sensory Modality and Semantic Category Retro-Cues. eNeuro 2020; 7:ENEURO.0018-20.2020. [PMID: 33139321 PMCID: PMC7716432 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0018-20.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2020] [Revised: 10/19/2020] [Accepted: 10/23/2020] [Indexed: 01/21/2023] Open
Abstract
There is growing interest in characterizing the neural mechanisms underlying the interactions between attention and memory. Current theories posit that reflective attention to memory representations generally involves a fronto-parietal attentional control network. The present study aimed to test this idea by manipulating how a particular short-term memory (STM) representation is accessed, that is, based on its input sensory modality or semantic category, during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human participants performed a novel variant of the retro-cue paradigm, in which they were presented with both auditory and visual non-verbal stimuli followed by Modality, Semantic, or Uninformative retro-cues. Modality and, to a lesser extent, Semantic retro-cues facilitated response time relative to Uninformative retro-cues. The univariate and multivariate pattern analyses (MVPAs) of fMRI time-series revealed three key findings. First, the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), including portions of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and ventral angular gyrus (AG), had activation patterns that spatially overlapped for both modality-based and semantic-based reflective attention. Second, considering both the univariate and multivariate analyses, Semantic retro-cues were associated with a left-lateralized fronto-parietal network. Finally, the experimental design enabled us to examine how dividing attention cross-modally within STM modulates the brain regions involved in reflective attention. This analysis revealed that univariate activation within bilateral portions of the PPC increased when participants simultaneously attended both auditory and visual memory representations. Therefore, prefrontal and parietal regions are flexibly recruited during reflective attention, depending on the representational feature used to selectively access STM representations.
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17
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Olivers CN, Roelfsema PR. Attention for action in visual working memory. Cortex 2020; 131:179-194. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.07.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2020] [Revised: 06/22/2020] [Accepted: 07/14/2020] [Indexed: 12/27/2022]
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18
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Han SW, Eaton HP, Marois R. Functional Fractionation of the Cingulo-opercular Network: Alerting Insula and Updating Cingulate. Cereb Cortex 2020; 29:2624-2638. [PMID: 29850839 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhy130] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/16/2017] [Revised: 04/17/2018] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Abstract
The anterior insula (AI) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) are engaged in various cognitive and affective processes. An influential account posits that the AI and dACC's ubiquitous engagements reflect their role in the transient capture of attention by salient stimuli. Using fMRI here we tested this claim and functionally dissociated these regions. In the first experiment, we compared these regions' responses to emotion-laden and emotion-neutral salient "oddball" movie events. We found that while the AI only responded transiently to the onset and offset of neutral events, its response to affective events was sustained, challenging the transient attention capture account. By contrast, dACC remained transient regardless of event type. A second experiment distinguished the information encoded by these brain regions with the presentation of behaviorally salient events that require either maintaining the current task set or updating to a different one; the AI was found to signal the presence of the behaviorally relevant events, while the dACC was associated with switching of attention settings in response to the events. We conclude that AI and dACC are involved in signaling the presence of potentially or de facto behaviorally significant events and updating internal attention settings in response to these events, respectively.
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Affiliation(s)
- Suk Won Han
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neurosciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
- Department of Psychology, Chugnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
| | - Hana P Eaton
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neurosciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - René Marois
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neurosciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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19
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Hardiansyah I, Pergher V, Van Hulle MM. Single-Trial EEG Responses Classified Using Latency Features. Int J Neural Syst 2020; 30:2050033. [DOI: 10.1142/s0129065720500331] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Covert attention has been repeatedly shown to impact on EEG responses after single and repeated practice sessions. Machine learning techniques are increasingly adopted to classify single-trial EEG responses thereby primarily relying on amplitude-based features instead of latency-based features. In this study, we investigated changes in EEG response signatures of nine healthy older subjects when performing 10 sessions of covert attention training. We show that, when we trained classifiers to distinguish recorded EEG patterns between the two experimental conditions (a target stimulus is “present” or “not present”), latency-based classifiers outperform the amplitude-based ones and that classification accuracy improved along with behavioral accuracy, providing supportive evidence of brain plasticity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irzam Hardiansyah
- Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven — University of Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, P.O. Box 2402, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Valentina Pergher
- Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138 U.S.A
- Computational Neuroscience Research Group, Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, KU Leuven - University of Leuven, Herestraat 49, O&N II, PO Box 1021, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Marc M. Van Hulle
- Computational Neuroscience Research Group, Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, KU Leuven - University of Leuven, Herestraat 49, O&N II, PO Box 1021, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
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20
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Evaluating the causal contribution of fronto-parietal cortices to the control of the bottom-up and top-down visual attention using fMRI-guided TMS. Cortex 2020; 126:200-212. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2019] [Revised: 10/28/2019] [Accepted: 01/14/2020] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
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21
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Günseli E, Fahrenfort JJ, van Moorselaar D, Daoultzis KC, Meeter M, Olivers CNL. EEG dynamics reveal a dissociation between storage and selective attention within working memory. Sci Rep 2019; 9:13499. [PMID: 31534150 PMCID: PMC6751203 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-49577-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2018] [Accepted: 08/27/2019] [Indexed: 12/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Selective attention plays a prominent role in prioritizing information in working memory (WM), improving performance for attended representations. However, it remains unclear whether unattended WM representations suffer from information loss. Here we tested the hypothesis that within WM, selectively attending to an item and stopping storing other items are independent mechanisms. We recorded EEG while participants performed a WM recall task in which the item most likely to be tested was cued retrospectively during retention. By manipulating retro-cue reliability (i.e., the ratio of valid to invalid cue trials), we varied the incentive to retain non-cued items. Storage and selective attention in WM were measured during the retention interval by contralateral delay activity (CDA) and contralateral alpha power suppression, respectively. Soon after highly reliable cues, the cued item was attended, and non-cued items suffered information loss. However, for less reliable cues, initially the cued item was attended, but unattended items were kept in WM. Later during the delay, previously unattended items suffered information loss despite now attention being reallocated to their locations, presumably to strengthen their weakening traces. These results show that storage and attention in WM are distinct processes that can behave differently depending on the relative importance of representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eren Günseli
- Columbia University, Department of Psychology, New York, USA. .,Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
| | - Johannes Jacobus Fahrenfort
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands.,Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
| | - Dirk van Moorselaar
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands.,Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
| | - Konstantinos Christos Daoultzis
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands.,Panteion University, Department of Psychology, Athens, Greece
| | - Martijn Meeter
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, LEARN! Research Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands
| | - Christian N L Olivers
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands.,Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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22
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Kim H. Neural activity during working memory encoding, maintenance, and retrieval: A network-based model and meta-analysis. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:4912-4933. [PMID: 31373730 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24747] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/04/2019] [Revised: 07/08/2019] [Accepted: 07/23/2019] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
It remains unclear whether and to what extent working memory (WM) temporal subprocesses (i.e., encoding, maintenance, and retrieval) involve shared or distinct intrinsic networks. To address this issue, I constructed a model of intrinsic network contributions to different WM phases and then evaluated the validity of the model by performing a quantitative meta-analysis of relevant functional neuroimaging data. The model suggests that the transition from the encoding to maintenance and to retrieval stages involves progressively decreasing involvement of the dorsal attention network (DAN), but progressively increasing involvement of the frontoparietal control network (FPCN). Separate meta-analysis of each phase effect and direct comparisons between them yielded results that were largely consistent with the model. This evidence included between-phase double dissociations that were consistent with the model, such as encoding > maintenance contrast showing some DAN, but no FPCN, regions, and maintenance > encoding contrast showing the reverse, that is, some FPCN, but no DAN, regions. Two closely juxtaposed regions that are members of the DAN and FPCN, such as inferior frontal junction versus caudal prefrontal cortex and superior versus inferior intraparietal sulcus, showed a high degree of functional differentiation. Although all regions identified in the present study were already identified in previous WM studies, this study uniquely enhances our understating of their roles by clarifying their network membership and specific associations with different WM phases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hongkeun Kim
- Department of Rehabilitation Psychology, Daegu University, Gyeongsan-si, Republic of Korea
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23
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Cross-Language Pattern Similarity in the Bilateral Fusiform Cortex Is Associated with Reading Proficiency in Second Language. Neuroscience 2019; 410:254-263. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2019.05.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2018] [Revised: 05/03/2019] [Accepted: 05/08/2019] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
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24
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Switching attention from internal to external information processing: A review of the literature and empirical support of the resource sharing account. Psychon Bull Rev 2019; 26:468-490. [DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01568-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
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25
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Tamber-Rosenau BJ, Asplund CL, Marois R. Functional dissociation of the inferior frontal junction from the dorsal attention network in top-down attentional control. J Neurophysiol 2018; 120:2498-2512. [PMID: 30156458 PMCID: PMC6295539 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00506.2018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2018] [Revised: 08/27/2018] [Accepted: 08/27/2018] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The posterior lateral prefrontal cortex-specifically, the inferior frontal junction (IFJ)-is thought to exert a key role in the control of attention. However, the precise nature of that role remains elusive. During the voluntary deployment and maintenance of visuospatial attention, the IFJ is typically coactivated with a core dorsal network consisting of the frontal eye field and superior parietal cortex. During stimulus-driven attention, IFJ instead couples with a ventrolateral network, suggesting that IFJ plays a role in attention distinct from the dorsal network. Because IFJ rapidly switches activation patterns to accommodate conditions of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention (Asplund CL, Todd JJ, Snyder AP, Marois R. Nat Neurosci 13: 507-512, 2010), we hypothesized that IFJ's primary role is to dynamically reconfigure attention rather than to maintain attention under steady-state conditions. This hypothesis predicts that in a goal-directed visuospatial cuing paradigm IFJ would transiently deploy attention toward the cued location, whereas the dorsal attention network would maintain attentional weights during the delay between cue and target presentation. Here we tested this hypothesis with functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects were engaged in a Posner cuing task with variable cue-target delays. Both IFJ and dorsal network regions were involved in transient processes, but sustained activity was far more evident in the dorsal network than in IFJ. These results support the account that IFJ primarily acts to shift attention whereas the dorsal network is the main locus for the maintenance of stable attentional states. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Goal-directed visuospatial attention is controlled by a dorsal fronto-parietal network and lateral prefrontal cortex. However, the relative roles of these regions in goal-directed attention are unknown. Here we present evidence for their dissociable roles in the transient reconfiguration and sustained maintenance of attentional settings: while maintenance of attentional settings is confined to the dorsal network, the configuration of these settings at the beginning of an attentional episode is a function of lateral prefrontal cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin J Tamber-Rosenau
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee
- Department of Psychology, University of Houston , Houston, Texas
| | | | - René Marois
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee
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26
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Elkhetali AS, Fleming LL, Vaden RJ, Nenert R, Mendle JE, Visscher KM. Background connectivity between frontal and sensory cortex depends on task state, independent of stimulus modality. Neuroimage 2018; 184:790-800. [PMID: 30237034 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2018] [Revised: 09/13/2018] [Accepted: 09/15/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022] Open
Abstract
The human brain has the ability to process identical information differently depending on the task. In order to perform a given task, the brain must select and react to the appropriate stimuli while ignoring other irrelevant stimuli. The dynamic nature of environmental stimuli and behavioral intentions requires an equally dynamic set of responses within the brain. Collectively, these responses act to set up and maintain states needed to perform a given task. However, the mechanisms that allow for setting up and maintaining a task state are not fully understood. Prior evidence suggests that one possible mechanism for maintaining a task state may be through altering 'background connectivity,' connectivity that exists independently of the trials of a task. Although previous studies have suggested that background connectivity contributes to a task state, these studies have typically not controlled for stimulus characteristics, or have focused primarily on relationships among areas involved with visual sensory processing. In the present study we examined background connectivity during tasks involving both visual and auditory stimuli. We examined the connectivity profiles of both visual and auditory sensory cortex that allow for selection of task-relevant stimuli, demonstrating the existence of a potentially universal pattern of background connectivity underlying attention to a stimulus. Participants were presented with simultaneous auditory and visual stimuli and were instructed to respond to only one, while ignoring the other. Using functional MRI, we observed task-based modulation of the background connectivity profile for both the auditory and visual cortex to certain brain regions. There was an increase in background connectivity between the task-relevant sensory cortex and control areas in the frontal cortex. This increase in synchrony when receiving the task-relevant stimulus as compared to the task irrelevant stimulus may be maintaining paths for passing information within the cortex. These task-based modulations of connectivity occur independently of stimuli and could be one way the brain sets up and maintains a task state.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abdurahman S Elkhetali
- University of Utah School of Medicine Department of Neurology, Salt Lake City, UT, 84132, USA
| | - Leland L Fleming
- University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA
| | - Ryan J Vaden
- University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA
| | - Rodolphe Nenert
- Department of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA
| | - Jane E Mendle
- Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA
| | - Kristina M Visscher
- University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA.
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27
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Li H, Qu J, Chen C, Chen Y, Xue G, Zhang L, Lu C, Mei L. Lexical learning in a new language leads to neural pattern similarity with word reading in native language. Hum Brain Mapp 2018; 40:98-109. [PMID: 30136328 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24357] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2018] [Revised: 07/24/2018] [Accepted: 08/03/2018] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested similar neural activations for word reading in native and second languages. However, such similarities were qualitatively determined (i.e., overlapping activation based on traditional univariate activation analysis). In this study, using representational similarity analysis and an artificial language training paradigm, we quantitatively computed cross-language neural pattern similarity to examine the modulatory effect of proficiency in the new language. Twenty-four native Chinese speakers were trained to learn 30 words in a logographic artificial language for 12 days and scanned while performing a semantic decision task after 4-day training and after 12-day training. Results showed that higher proficiency in the new language was associated with higher cross-language pattern similarity in select regions of the reading network.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huiling Li
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Jing Qu
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Chuansheng Chen
- Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, California
| | - Yanjun Chen
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Gui Xue
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Lei Zhang
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Chengrou Lu
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Leilei Mei
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
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28
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Bhandari A, Gagne C, Badre D. Just above Chance: Is It Harder to Decode Information from Prefrontal Cortex Hemodynamic Activity Patterns? J Cogn Neurosci 2018; 30:1473-1498. [PMID: 29877764 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to flexible, goal-directed cognition, and understanding its representational code is an important problem in cognitive neuroscience. In humans, multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) measurements has emerged as an important approach for studying neural representations. Many previous studies have implicitly assumed that MVPA of fMRI BOLD is just as effective in decoding information encoded in PFC neural activity as it is in visual cortex. However, MVPA studies of PFC have had mixed success. Here we estimate the base rate of decoding information from PFC BOLD activity patterns from a meta-analysis of published MVPA studies. We show that PFC has a significantly lower base rate (55.4%) than visual areas in occipital (66.6%) and temporal (71.0%) cortices and one that is close to chance levels. Our results have implications for the design and interpretation of MVPA studies of PFC and raise important questions about its functional organization.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - David Badre
- Brown University.,Carney Institute for Brain Science, Providence, RI
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29
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Frenken M, Berti S. Exploring the switching of the focus of attention within working memory: A combined event-related potential and behavioral study. Int J Psychophysiol 2018; 126:30-41. [PMID: 29476873 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.01.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2017] [Revised: 01/26/2018] [Accepted: 01/27/2018] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Working memory enables humans to maintain selected information for cognitive processes and ensures instant access to the memorized contents. Theories suggest that switching the focus of attention between items within working memory realizes the access. This is reflected in object-switching costs in response times when the item for the task processing is to be changed. Another correlate of attentional allocation in working memory is the P3a-component of the human event-related potential. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that switching of attention within working memory is a separable processing step. Participants completed a cued memory-updating task in which they were instructed to update one memory item at a time out of a memory list of four digits by applying a mathematical operation indicated by a target sign. The hypotheses predicted (1) prolonged updating times in switch (different item compared to previous trial) versus repetition trials (same item), (2) an influence of cues (valid/neutral) presented before the mathematical target on switching costs, and (3) that the P3a-component is more pronounced in the cue-target interval in the valid cue condition and more pronounced in the post-target interval in the neutral cue condition. A student's t-test verified the first hypothesis, repeated-measurement analyses of variance demonstrated that hypotheses 2 and 3 should be rejected. Results suggest that switching of attention within working memory could not be separated from further processing steps and retro-cue benefits are not due to a head start of retrieval as well as that switch costs represent internal processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marius Frenken
- Institute for Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany.
| | - Stefan Berti
- Institute for Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany
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Naughtin CK, Mattingley JB, Bender AD, Dux PE. Decoding early and late cortical contributions to individuation of attended and unattended objects. Cortex 2017; 99:45-54. [PMID: 29149617 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2017] [Revised: 05/29/2017] [Accepted: 10/19/2017] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
To isolate a visual stimulus as a unique object with a specific spatial location and time of occurrence, it is necessary to first register (individuate) the stimulus as a distinct perceptual entity. Recent investigations into the neural substrates of object individuation have suggested it is subserved by a distributed neural network, but previous manipulations of individuation load have introduced extraneous visual confounds, which might have yielded ambiguous findings, particularly in early cortical areas. Furthermore, while it has been assumed that selective attention is required for object individuation, there is no definitive evidence on the brain regions recruited for attended and ignored objects. Here we addressed these issues by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a novel object-enumeration paradigm in which to-be-individuated objects were defined by illusory contours, such that the physical elements of the display remained constant across individuation conditions. Multi-voxel pattern analyses revealed that attended objects modulated patterns of activity in early visual cortex, as well as frontal and parietal brain areas, as a function of object-individuation load. These findings suggest that object individuation recruits both early and later cortical areas, consistent with theoretical accounts proposing that this operation acts at the junction of feed-forward and feedback processing stages in visual analysis. We also found dissociations between brain regions involved in individuation of attended and unattended objects, suggesting that voluntary spatial attention influences the brain regions recruited for this process.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Jason B Mattingley
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia; Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia
| | - Angela D Bender
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia
| | - Paul E Dux
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
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31
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Executive control of stimulus-driven and goal-directed attention in visual working memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 2017; 78:2164-75. [PMID: 27142524 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1106-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We examined the role of executive control in stimulus-driven and goal-directed attention in visual working memory using probed recall of a series of objects, a task that allows study of the dynamics of storage through analysis of serial position data. Experiment 1 examined whether executive control underlies goal-directed prioritization of certain items within the sequence. Instructing participants to prioritize either the first or final item resulted in improved recall for these items, and an increase in concurrent task difficulty reduced or abolished these gains, consistent with their dependence on executive control. Experiment 2 examined whether executive control is also involved in the disruption caused by a post-series visual distractor (suffix). A demanding concurrent task disrupted memory for all items except the most recent, whereas a suffix disrupted only the most recent items. There was no interaction when concurrent load and suffix were combined, suggesting that deploying selective attention to ignore the distractor did not draw upon executive resources. A final experiment replicated the independent interfering effects of suffix and concurrent load while ruling out possible artifacts. We discuss the results in terms of a domain-general episodic buffer in which information is retained in a transient, limited capacity privileged state, influenced by both stimulus-driven and goal-directed processes. The privileged state contains the most recent environmental input together with goal-relevant representations being actively maintained using executive resources.
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Tracking the will to attend: Cortical activity indexes self-generated, voluntary shifts of attention. Atten Percept Psychophys 2017; 78:2176-84. [PMID: 27301353 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1159-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The neural substrates of volition have long tantalized philosophers and scientists. Over the past few decades, researchers have employed increasingly sophisticated technology to investigate this issue, but many studies have been limited considerably by their reliance on intrusive experimental procedures (e.g., abrupt instructional cues), measures of brain activity contaminated by overt behavior, or introspective self-report techniques of questionable validity. Here, we used multivoxel pattern time-course analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to index voluntary, covert perceptual acts-shifts of visuospatial attention-in the absence of instructional cues, overt behavioral indices, and self-report. We found that these self-generated, voluntary attention shifts were time-locked to activity in the medial superior parietal lobule, supporting the hypothesis that this brain region is engaged in voluntary attentional reconfiguration. Self-generated attention shifts were also time-locked to activity in the basal ganglia, a novel finding that motivates further research into the role of the basal ganglia in acts of volition. Remarkably, prior to self-generated shifts of attention, we observed early and selective increases in the activation of medial frontal (dorsal anterior cingulate) and lateral prefrontal (right middle frontal gyrus) cortex-activity that likely reflects processing related to the intention or preparation to reorient attention. These findings, which extend recent evidence on freely chosen motor movements, suggest that dorsal anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortices play key roles in both overt and covert acts of volition, and may constitute core components of a brain network underlying the will to attend.
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Naughtin CK, Tamber-Rosenau BJ, Dux PE. The neural basis of temporal individuation and its capacity limits in the human brain. J Neurophysiol 2017; 118:2601-2613. [PMID: 28855297 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00839.2016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2016] [Revised: 07/23/2017] [Accepted: 08/09/2017] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Individuation refers to individuals' use of spatial and temporal properties to register objects as distinct perceptual events relative to other stimuli. Although behavioral studies have examined both spatial and temporal individuation, neuroimaging investigations have been restricted to the spatial domain and at relatively late stages of information processing. Here, we used univariate and multivoxel pattern analyses of functional MRI data to identify brain regions involved in individuating temporally distinct visual items and the neural consequences that arise when this process reaches its capacity limit (repetition blindness, RB). First, we found that regional patterns of blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity across the cortex discriminated between instances where repeated and nonrepeated stimuli were successfully individuated-conditions that placed differential demands on temporal individuation. These results could not be attributed to repetition suppression or other stimulus-related factors, task difficulty, regional activation differences, other capacity-limited processes, or artifacts in the data or analyses. Contrary to current theoretical models, this finding suggests that temporal individuation is supported by a distributed set of brain regions, rather than a single neural correlate. Second, conditions that reflect the capacity limit of individuation-instances of RB-lead to changes in the spatial patterns within this network, as well as amplitude changes in the left hemisphere premotor cortex, superior medial frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral parahippocampal place area. These findings could not be attributed to response conflict/ambiguity and likely reflect the core brain regions and mechanisms that underlie the capacity-limited process that gives rise to RB.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We present novel findings into the neural bases of temporal individuation and repetition blindness (RB)-the perceptual deficit that arises when this process reaches its capacity limit. Specifically, we found that temporal individuation is a widely distributed process in the brain and identified a number of candidate brain regions that appear to underpin RB. These findings enhance our understanding of how these fundamental perceptual processes are reflected in the human brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Claire K Naughtin
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
| | - Benjamin J Tamber-Rosenau
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; and.,Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, Texas
| | - Paul E Dux
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia;
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In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect. Atten Percept Psychophys 2017; 78:1839-60. [PMID: 27098647 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1108-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 212] [Impact Index Per Article: 30.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Abstract
The concept of attention has a prominent place in cognitive psychology. Attention can be directed not only to perceptual information, but also to information in working memory (WM). Evidence for an internal focus of attention has come from the retro-cue effect: Performance in tests of visual WM is improved when attention is guided to the test-relevant contents of WM ahead of testing them. The retro-cue paradigm has served as a test bed to empirically investigate the functions and limits of the focus of attention in WM. In this article, we review the growing body of (behavioral) studies on the retro-cue effect. We evaluate the degrees of experimental support for six hypotheses about what causes the retro-cue effect: (1) Attention protects representations from decay, (2) attention prioritizes the selected WM contents for comparison with a probe display, (3) attended representations are strengthened in WM, (4) not-attended representations are removed from WM, (5) a retro-cue to the retrieval target provides a head start for its retrieval before decision making, and (6) attention protects the selected representation from perceptual interference. The extant evidence provides support for the last four of these hypotheses.
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35
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Central attention is serial, but midlevel and peripheral attention are parallel-A hypothesis. Atten Percept Psychophys 2017; 78:1874-88. [PMID: 27388496 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1171-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In this brief review, we argue that attention operates along a hierarchy from peripheral through central mechanisms. We further argue that these mechanisms are distinguished not just by their functional roles in cognition, but also by a distinction between serial mechanisms (associated with central attention) and parallel mechanisms (associated with midlevel and peripheral attention). In particular, we suggest that peripheral attentional deployments in distinct representational systems may be maintained simultaneously with little or no interference, but that the serial nature of central attention means that even tasks that largely rely on distinct representational systems will come into conflict when central attention is demanded. We go on to review both the behavioral and neural evidence for this prediction. We conclude that even though the existing evidence mostly favors our account of serial central and parallel noncentral attention, we know of no experiment that has conclusively borne out these claims. As such, this article offers a framework of attentional mechanisms that will aid in guiding future research on this topic.
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Delgado-Moreno R, Robles-Pérez JJ, Clemente-Suárez VJ. Combat Stress Decreases Memory of Warfighters in Action. J Med Syst 2017; 41:124. [PMID: 28699082 DOI: 10.1007/s10916-017-0772-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2017] [Accepted: 07/02/2017] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The present research aimed to analyze the effect of combat stress in the psychophysiological response and attention and memory of warfighters in a simulated combat situation. Variables of blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, blood glucose, blood lactate, body temperature, lower body muscular strength manifestation, cortical arousal, autonomic modulation, state anxiety and memory and attention through a postmission questionnaire were analyzed before and after a combat simulation in 20 male professional Spanish Army warfighters. The combat simulation produces a significant increase (p < 0.05) in explosive leg strength, rated perceived exertion, blood glucose, blood lactate, somatic anxiety, heart rate, and low frequency domain of the HRV (LF) and a significant decrease of high frequency domain of the heart rate variability (HF). The percentage of correct response in the postmission questionnaire parameters show that elements more related with a physical integrity threat are the most correctly remembered. There were significant differences in the postmission questionnaire variables when participants were divided by the cortical arousal post: sounds no response, mobile phone correct, mobile phone no response, odours correct. The correlation analysis showed positive correlations: LF post/body temperature post, HF post/correct sound, body temperature post/glucose post, CFFTpre/lactate post, CFFT post/wrong sound, glucose post/AC pre, AC post/wrong fusil, AS post/SC post and SC post/wrong olfactory; and negative correlations: LF post/correct sound, body temperature post/lactate post and glucose post/lactate post. This data suggest that combat stress actives fight-flight system of soldiers. As conclusion, Combat stress produces an increased psychophysiological response that cause a selective decrease of memory, depending on the nature, dangerous or harmless of the objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rosa Delgado-Moreno
- Research Center in Applied Combat (CESCA), Toledo, Spain
- Faculty of Sport Sciences, Department of Sport Science, European University of Madrid, Calle Tajo, s/n, 28670 Villaviciosa de Odón, Madrid, España
| | - José Juan Robles-Pérez
- Research Center in Applied Combat (CESCA), Toledo, Spain
- Light Forces Head Quarter of the Spanish Army, Madrid, Spain
| | - Vicente Javier Clemente-Suárez
- Research Center in Applied Combat (CESCA), Toledo, Spain.
- Faculty of Sport Sciences, Department of Sport Science, European University of Madrid, Calle Tajo, s/n, 28670 Villaviciosa de Odón, Madrid, España.
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Myers NE, Stokes MG, Nobre AC. Prioritizing Information during Working Memory: Beyond Sustained Internal Attention. Trends Cogn Sci 2017; 21:449-461. [PMID: 28454719 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 206] [Impact Index Per Article: 29.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2016] [Revised: 03/17/2017] [Accepted: 03/28/2017] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
Working memory (WM) has limited capacity. This leaves attention with the important role of allowing into storage only the most relevant information. It is increasingly evident that attention is equally crucial for prioritizing representations within WM as the importance of individual items changes. Retrospective prioritization has been proposed to result from a focus of internal attention highlighting one of several representations. Here, we suggest an updated model, in which prioritization acts in multiple steps: first orienting towards and selecting a memory, and then reconfiguring its representational state in the service of upcoming task demands. Reconfiguration sets up an optimized perception-action mapping, obviating the need for sustained attention. This view is consistent with recent literature, makes testable predictions, and links WM with task switching and action preparation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicholas E Myers
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Oxford University, Oxford, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
| | - Mark G Stokes
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Oxford University, Oxford, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
| | - Anna C Nobre
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Oxford University, Oxford, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
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38
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Allen RJ, Baddeley AD, Hitch GJ. Executive and perceptual distraction in visual working memory. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2017; 43:1677-1693. [PMID: 28414499 PMCID: PMC5560518 DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000413] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
The contents of visual working memory are likely to reflect the influence of both executive control resources and information present in the environment. We investigated whether executive attention is critical in the ability to exclude unwanted stimuli by introducing concurrent potentially distracting irrelevant items to a visual working memory paradigm, and manipulating executive load using simple or more demanding secondary verbal tasks. Across 7 experiments varying in presentation format, timing, stimulus set, and distractor number, we observed clear disruptive effects of executive load and visual distraction, but relatively minimal evidence supporting an interactive relationship between these factors. These findings are in line with recent evidence using delay-based interference, and suggest that different forms of attentional selection operate relatively independently in visual working memory. This study demonstrates that the ability to encode and temporarily hold visual information depends both on how active (executive) attentional control is allocated, and whether there are (perceptual) distracting stimuli present in the visual environment. Across seven experiments, memory accuracy was always reduced when participants performed a more demanding task at the same time, and when to-be-remembered targets were accompanied by additional irrelevant items. These two forms of attentional interference appear to have relatively distinct impacts, indicating that we do not necessarily become more vulnerable to perceptual distraction when our executive attention is preoccupied by other tasks. This work provides new insights for the current debate on how working memory and attention might interact.
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Thakral PP, Benoit RG, Schacter DL. Imagining the future: The core episodic simulation network dissociates as a function of timecourse and the amount of simulated information. Cortex 2017; 90:12-30. [PMID: 28324695 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.02.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/09/2016] [Revised: 01/18/2017] [Accepted: 02/02/2017] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
Neuroimaging data indicate that episodic memory (i.e., remembering specific past experiences) and episodic simulation (i.e., imagining specific future experiences) are associated with enhanced activity in a common set of neural regions, often referred to as the core network. This network comprises the hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, lateral and medial parietal cortex, lateral temporal cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex. Evidence for a core network has been taken as support for the idea that episodic memory and episodic simulation are supported by common processes. Much remains to be learned about how specific core network regions contribute to specific aspects of episodic simulation. Prior neuroimaging studies of episodic memory indicate that certain regions within the core network are differentially sensitive to the amount of information recollected (e.g., the left lateral parietal cortex). In addition, certain core network regions dissociate as a function of their timecourse of engagement during episodic memory (e.g., transient activity in the posterior hippocampus and sustained activity in the left lateral parietal cortex). In the current study, we assessed whether similar dissociations could be observed during episodic simulation. We found that the left lateral parietal cortex modulates as a function of the amount of simulated details. Of particular interest, while the hippocampus was insensitive to the amount of simulated details, we observed a temporal dissociation within the hippocampus: transient activity occurred in relatively posterior portions of the hippocampus and sustained activity occurred in anterior portions. Because the posterior hippocampal and lateral parietal findings parallel those observed during episodic memory, the present results add to the evidence that episodic memory and episodic simulation are supported by common processes. Critically, the present study also provides evidence that regions within the core network support dissociable processes.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Roland G Benoit
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany
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40
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Kulke LV, Atkinson J, Braddick O. Neural Differences between Covert and Overt Attention Studied using EEG with Simultaneous Remote Eye Tracking. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:592. [PMID: 27932962 PMCID: PMC5120114 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00592] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2016] [Accepted: 11/07/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Research on neural mechanisms of attention has generally instructed subjects to direct attention covertly while maintaining a fixed gaze. This study combined simultaneous eye tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure neural attention responses during exogenous cueing in overt attention shifts (with saccadic eye movements to a target) and compared these with covert attention shifts (responding manually while maintaining central fixation). EEG analysis of the period preceding the saccade latency showed similar occipital response amplitudes for overt and covert shifts, although response latencies differed. However, a frontal positivity was greater during covert attention shifts, possibly reflecting saccade inhibition to maintain fixation. The results show that combined EEG and eye tracking can be successfully used to study natural overt shifts of attention (applicable to non-verbal infants) and that requiring inhibition of saccades can lead to additional frontal responses. Such data can be used to refine current neural models of attention that have been mainly based on covert shifts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Louisa V Kulke
- Department of Cognitive Developmental Psychology, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute for Psychology, Georg-August University GöttingenGöttingen, Germany; Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College LondonLondon, UK
| | - Janette Atkinson
- Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College LondonLondon, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of OxfordOxford, UK
| | - Oliver Braddick
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford Oxford, UK
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Heuer A, Schubö A, Crawford JD. Different Cortical Mechanisms for Spatial vs. Feature-Based Attentional Selection in Visual Working Memory. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:415. [PMID: 27582701 PMCID: PMC4987349 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/05/2016] [Accepted: 08/04/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
The limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM) necessitates attentional mechanisms that selectively update and maintain only the most task-relevant content. Psychophysical experiments have shown that the retroactive selection of memory content can be based on visual properties such as location or shape, but the neural basis for such differential selection is unknown. For example, it is not known if there are different cortical modules specialized for spatial vs. feature-based mnemonic attention, in the same way that has been demonstrated for attention to perceptual input. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to identify areas in human parietal and occipital cortex involved in the selection of objects from memory based on cues to their location (spatial information) or their shape (featural information). We found that TMS over the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) selectively facilitated spatial selection, whereas TMS over the lateral occipital cortex (LO) selectively enhanced feature-based selection for remembered objects in the contralateral visual field. Thus, different cortical regions are responsible for spatial vs. feature-based selection of working memory representations. Since the same regions are involved in terms of attention to external events, these new findings indicate overlapping mechanisms for attentional control over perceptual input and mnemonic representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Heuer
- Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg Marburg, Germany
| | - Anna Schubö
- Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg Marburg, Germany
| | - J D Crawford
- Centre for Vision Research, York UniversityToronto, ON, Canada; Canadian Action and Perception Network, York UniversityToronto, ON, Canada; Departments of Psychology, Biology, and Kinesiology and Health Sciences, York UniversityToronto, ON, Canada
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42
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Díaz-Santos M, Mauro S, Cao B, Yazdanbakhsh A, Neargarder S, Cronin-Golomb A. Bistable perception in normal aging: perceptual reversibility and its relation to cognition. AGING NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITION 2016; 24:115-134. [PMID: 27116194 DOI: 10.1080/13825585.2016.1173646] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
The effects of age on the ability to resolve perceptual ambiguity are unknown, though it depends on frontoparietal attentional networks known to change with age. We presented the bistable Necker cube to 24 middle-aged and OAs (older adults; 56-78 years) and 20 YAs (younger adults; 18-24 years) under passive-viewing and volitional control conditions: Hold one cube percept and Switch between cube percepts. During passive viewing, OAs had longer dominance durations (time spent on each percept) than YAs. In the Hold condition, OAs were less able than YAs to increase dominance durations. In the Switch condition, OAs and YAs did not differ in performance. Dominance durations in either condition correlated with performance on tests of executive function mediated by the frontal lobes. Eye movements (fixation deviations) did not differ between groups. These results suggest that OAs' reduced ability to hold a percept may arise from reduced selective attention. The lack of correlation of performance between Hold and executive-function measures suggests at least a partial segregation of underlying mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mirella Díaz-Santos
- a Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA
| | - Samantha Mauro
- a Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA
| | - Bo Cao
- b Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA
| | - Arash Yazdanbakhsh
- b Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA
| | - Sandy Neargarder
- a Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA.,c Department of Psychology , Hart Hall, Bridgewater State University , Bridgewater , MA , USA
| | - Alice Cronin-Golomb
- a Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA
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43
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Heuer A, Schubö A. The Focus of Attention in Visual Working Memory: Protection of Focused Representations and Its Individual Variation. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0154228. [PMID: 27099938 PMCID: PMC4839725 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0154228] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2015] [Accepted: 04/10/2016] [Indexed: 01/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Visual working memory can be modulated according to changes in the cued task relevance of maintained items. Here, we investigated the mechanisms underlying this modulation. In particular, we studied the consequences of attentional selection for selected and unselected items, and the role of individual differences in the efficiency with which attention is deployed. To this end, performance in a visual working memory task as well as the CDA/SPCN and the N2pc, ERP components associated with visual working memory and attentional processes, were analysed. Selection during the maintenance stage was manipulated by means of two successively presented retrocues providing spatial information as to which items were most likely to be tested. Results show that attentional selection serves to robustly protect relevant representations in the focus of attention while unselected representations which may become relevant again still remain available. Individuals with larger retrocueing benefits showed higher efficiency of attentional selection, as indicated by the N2pc, and showed stronger maintenance-associated activity (CDA/SPCN). The findings add to converging evidence that focused representations are protected, and highlight the flexibility of visual working memory, in which information can be weighted according its relevance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Heuer
- Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Anna Schubö
- Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
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Abstract
Working memory refers to a system involved in the online maintenance and manipulation of information in the absence of external input. Due to the importance of working memory in higher-level cognition, a wealth of neuroscience studies has investigated its neural basis. These studies have often led to conflicting viewpoints regarding the importance of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior sensory cortices. Here, we review evidence for each position. We suggest that the relative contributions of the PFC and sensory cortices to working memory can be understood with respect to processing demands. We argue that procedures that minimize processing demands lead to increased importance of sensory representations, while procedures that permit transformational processing lead to representational abstraction that relies on the PFC. We suggest that abstract PFC representations support top-down control over posterior representations while also providing bottom-up inputs into higher-level cognitive processing. Although a number of contemporary studies have studied working memory while using procedures that minimize the role of the PFC, we argue that consideration of the PFC is critical for our understanding of working memory and higher-level cognition more generally.
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Flaisch T, Imhof M, Schmälzle R, Wentz KU, Ibach B, Schupp HT. Implicit and Explicit Attention to Pictures and Words: An fMRI-Study of Concurrent Emotional Stimulus Processing. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1861. [PMID: 26733895 PMCID: PMC4683193 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01861] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2015] [Accepted: 11/17/2015] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural processing of concurrently presented emotional stimuli under varying explicit and implicit attention demands. Specifically, in separate trials, participants indicated the category of either pictures or words. The words were placed over the center of the pictures and the picture-word compound-stimuli were presented for 1500 ms in a rapid event-related design. The results reveal pronounced main effects of task and emotion: the picture categorization task prompted strong activations in visual, parietal, temporal, frontal, and subcortical regions; the word categorization task evoked increased activation only in left extrastriate cortex. Furthermore, beyond replicating key findings regarding emotional picture and word processing, the results point to a dissociation of semantic-affective and sensory-perceptual processes for words: while emotional words engaged semantic-affective networks of the left hemisphere regardless of task, the increased activity in left extrastriate cortex associated with explicitly attending to words was diminished when the word was overlaid over an erotic image. Finally, we observed a significant interaction between Picture Category and Task within dorsal visual-associative regions, inferior parietal, and dorsolateral, and medial prefrontal cortices: during the word categorization task, activation was increased in these regions when the words were overlaid over erotic as compared to romantic pictures. During the picture categorization task, activity in these areas was relatively decreased when categorizing erotic as compared to romantic pictures. Thus, the emotional intensity of the pictures strongly affected brain regions devoted to the control of task-related word or picture processing. These findings are discussed with respect to the interplay of obligatory stimulus processing with task-related attentional control mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tobias Flaisch
- Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany
| | - Martin Imhof
- Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany
| | - Ralf Schmälzle
- Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany
| | - Klaus-Ulrich Wentz
- Department of Radiology, Kantonsspital Münsterlingen Münsterlingen, Switzerland
| | - Bernd Ibach
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrische Dienste Thurgau Münsterlingen, Switzerland
| | - Harald T Schupp
- Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany
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Lorenc ES, Lee TG, Chen AJW, D'Esposito M. The Effect of Disruption of Prefrontal Cortical Function with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Visual Working Memory. Front Syst Neurosci 2015; 9:169. [PMID: 26732764 PMCID: PMC4679864 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2015.00169] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2015] [Accepted: 11/23/2015] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
It is proposed that feedback signals from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to extrastriate cortex are essential for goal-directed processing, maintenance, and selection of information in visual working memory (VWM). In a previous study, we found that disruption of PFC function with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in healthy individuals impaired behavioral performance on a face/scene matching task and decreased category-specific tuning in extrastriate cortex as measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this study, we investigated the effect of disruption of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) function on the fidelity of neural representations of two distinct information codes: (1) the stimulus category and (2) the goal-relevance of viewed stimuli. During fMRI scanning, subjects were presented face and scene images in pseudo-random order and instructed to remember either faces or scenes. Within both anatomical and functional regions of interest (ROIs), a multi-voxel pattern classifier was used to quantitatively assess the fidelity of activity patterns representing stimulus category: whether a face or a scene was presented on each trial, and goal relevance, whether the presented image was task relevant (i.e., a face is relevant in a “Remember Faces” block, but irrelevant in a “Remember Scenes” block). We found a reduction in the fidelity of the stimulus category code in visual cortex after left IFG disruption, providing causal evidence that lateral PFC modulates object category codes in visual cortex during VWM. In addition, we found that IFG disruption caused a reduction in the fidelity of the goal relevance code in a distributed set of brain regions. These results suggest that the IFG is involved in determining the task-relevance of visual input and communicating that information to a network of regions involved in further processing during VWM. Finally, we found that participants who exhibited greater fidelity of the goal relevance code in the non-disrupted right IFG after TMS performed the task with the highest accuracy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth S Lorenc
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Taraz G Lee
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Anthony J-W Chen
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of CaliforniaBerkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Neurology, VA Northern California Healthcare SystemMartinez, CA, USA; Department of Neurology, University of CaliforniaSan Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Mark D'Esposito
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of CaliforniaBerkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Neurology, VA Northern California Healthcare SystemMartinez, CA, USA; Department of Psychology, University of CaliforniaBerkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
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Yang W, Cun L, Du X, Yang J, Wang Y, Wei D, Zhang Q, Qiu J. Gender differences in brain structure and resting-state functional connectivity related to narcissistic personality. Sci Rep 2015; 5:10924. [PMID: 26109334 PMCID: PMC4479992 DOI: 10.1038/srep10924] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2014] [Accepted: 05/07/2015] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Although cognitive and personality studies have observed gender differences in narcissism, the neural bases of these differences remain unknown. The current study combined the voxel-based morphometry and resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) analyses to explore the sex-specific neural basis of narcissistic personality. The VBM results showed that the relationship between narcissistic personality and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. Narcissistic scores had a significant positive correlation with the rGMV of the right SPL in females, but not in males. Further analyses were conducted to investigate the sex-specific relationship between rsFC and narcissism, using right SPL/frontal eye fields (FEF) as the seed regions (key nodes of the dorsal attention network, DAN). Interestingly, decreased anticorrelations between the right SPL/FEF and areas of the precuneus and middle frontal gyrus (key nodes of the the default mode network, DMN) were associated with higher narcissistic personality scores in males, whereas females showed the opposite tendency. The findings indicate that gender differences in narcissism may be associated with differences in the intrinsic and dynamic interplay between the internally-directed DMN and the externally-directed TPN. Morphometry and functional connectivity analyses can enhance our understanding of the neural basis of sex-specific narcissism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenjing Yang
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Lingli Cun
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Xue Du
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Junyi Yang
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Yanqiu Wang
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Dongtao Wei
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Qinglin Zhang
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
| | - Jiang Qiu
- 1] Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China [2] School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, P. R. China
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Guggenmos M, Thoma V, Haynes JD, Richardson-Klavehn A, Cichy RM, Sterzer P. Spatial attention enhances object coding in local and distributed representations of the lateral occipital complex. Neuroimage 2015; 116:149-57. [PMID: 25865144 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.04.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2014] [Revised: 03/25/2015] [Accepted: 04/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The modulation of neural activity in visual cortex is thought to be a key mechanism of visual attention. The investigation of attentional modulation in high-level visual areas, however, is hampered by the lack of clear tuning or contrast response functions. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study we therefore systematically assessed how small voxel-wise biases in object preference across hundreds of voxels in the lateral occipital complex were affected when attention was directed to objects. We found that the strength of attentional modulation depended on a voxel's object preference in the absence of attention, a pattern indicative of an amplificatory mechanism. Our results show that such attentional modulation effectively increased the mutual information between voxel responses and object identity. Further, these local modulatory effects led to improved information-based object readout at the level of multi-voxel activation patterns and to an increased reproducibility of these patterns across repeated presentations. We conclude that attentional modulation enhances object coding in local and distributed object representations of the lateral occipital complex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthias Guggenmos
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany; Visual Perception Laboratory, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Volker Thoma
- School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK
| | | | | | - Radoslaw Martin Cichy
- Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA
| | - Philipp Sterzer
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany; Visual Perception Laboratory, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany
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Banich MT, Mackiewicz Seghete KL, Depue BE, Burgess GC. Multiple modes of clearing one's mind of current thoughts: overlapping and distinct neural systems. Neuropsychologia 2015; 69:105-17. [PMID: 25637772 PMCID: PMC4378864 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.039] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2014] [Revised: 01/21/2015] [Accepted: 01/27/2015] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
This study used the power of neuroimaging to identify the neural systems that remove information from working memory, a thorny issue to examine because it is difficult to confirm that individuals have actually modified their thoughts. To overcome this problem, brain activation as measured via fMRI was assessed when individuals had to clear their mind of all thought (global clear), clear their mind of a particular thought (targeted clear), or replace the current thought (replace), relative to maintaining an item in working memory. The pattern of activity in posterior sensory regions across these conditions confirmed compliance with task demands. A hierarchy of brain regions involved in cognitive control, including parietal, dorsolateral prefrontal and frontopolar regions, were engaged to varying degrees depending on the manner in which information was removed from working memory. In addition, individuals with greater difficulty in controlling internal thoughts exhibited greater activity in prefrontal brain regions associated with cognitive control, as well as in left lateral prefrontal areas including Broca's area, which is associated with inner speech.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marie T Banich
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
| | | | - Brendan E Depue
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA
| | - Gregory C Burgess
- Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
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