Electrophysiological correlates of selective attention: a lifespan comparison

Reliability and validity of a novel attention assessment scale (broken ring enVision search test) in the Chinese population

Background

The correct assessment of attentional function is the key to cognitive research. A new attention assessment scale, the Broken Ring enVision Search Test (BReViS), has not been validated in China. The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the BReViS in the Chinese population.

Methods

From July to October 2023, 100 healthy residents of Changzhou were selected and subjected to the BReViS, Digital Cancelation Test (D-CAT), Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), and Digit Span Test (DST). Thirty individuals were randomly chosen to undergo the BReViS twice for test-retest reliability assessment. Correlation analysis was conducted between age, education level, gender, and various BReViS sub-tests including Selective Attention (SA), Orientation of Attention (OA), Focal Attention (FA), and Total Errors (Err). Intergroup comparisons and multiple linear regression analyses were performed. Additionally, correlation analyses between the BReViS sub-tests and with other attention tests were also analyzed.

Results

The correlation coefficients of the BReViS sub-tests (except for FA) between the two tests were greater than 0.600 (p < 0.001), indicating good test-retest reliability. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.874, suggesting high internal consistency reliability. SA showed a significant negative correlation with the net score of D-CAT (r = -0.405, p < 0.001), and a significant positive correlation with the error rate of D-CAT (r = 0.401, p < 0.001), demonstrating good criterion-related validity. The correlation analysis among the results of each sub-test showed that the correlation coefficient between SA and Err was 0.532 (p < 0.001), and between OA and Err was-0.229 (p < 0.05), whereas there was no significant correlation between SA, OA, and FA, which indicated that the scale had good informational content validity and structural validity. Both SA and Err were significantly correlated with age and years of education, while gender was significantly correlated with OA and Err. Multiple linear regression suggested that Err was mainly affected by age and gender. There were significant differences in the above indexes among different age, education level and gender groups. Correlation analysis with other attention tests revealed that SA negatively correlated with DST forward and backward scores and SDMT scores. Err positively correlated with D-CAT net scores and negatively with D-CAT error rate, DST forward and backward scores, and SDMT scores. OA and FA showed no significant correlation with other attention tests.

Conclusion

The BReViS test, demonstrating good reliability and validity, assessing not only selective attention but also gauging capacities in immediate memory, information processing speed, visual scanning, and hand-eye coordination. The results are susceptible to demographic variables such as age, gender, and education level.

Neural correlates of lexical-tone and vowel-quality processing in 6- and 9-month-old German-learning infants and adults

We examined the neurophysiological underpinnings of lexical-tone and vowel-quality perception in learners of a non-tonal language. We tested 25 6- and 25 9-month-old German-learning infants, as well as 24 German adults and expected developmental differences for the two linguistic properties, as they are both carried by vowels, but have a different status in German. In adults, both lexical-tone and vowel-quality contrasts elicited mismatch negativities, with a stronger response to the vowel-quality contrast. Six-month-olds showed positive mismatch responses for lexical-tone and vowel-quality contrasts, with an emerging negative mismatch response for vowel-quality only. The negative mismatch responses became more pronounced for the vowel-quality contrast at 9 months, while the lexical-tone contrast elicited mainly positive mismatch responses. Our data reveal differential developmental changes in the processing of vowel properties that differ in their lexical relevance in the ambient language.

Brain Activity is Influenced by How High Dimensional Data are Represented: An EEG Study of Scatterplot Diagnostic (Scagnostics) Measures

Visualization and visual analytic tools amplify one's perception of data, facilitating deeper and faster insights that can improve decision making. For multidimensional data sets, one of the most common approaches of visualization methods is to map the data into lower dimensions. Scatterplot matrices (SPLOM) are often used to visualize bivariate relationships between combinations of variables in a multidimensional dataset. However, the number of scatterplots increases quadratically with respect to the number of variables. For high dimensional data, the corresponding enormous number of scatterplots makes data exploration overwhelmingly complex, thereby hindering the usefulness of SPLOM in human decision making processes. One approach to address this difficulty utilizes Graph-theoretic Scatterplot Diagnostic (Scagnostics) to automatically extract a subset of scatterplots with salient features and of manageable size with the hope that the data will be sufficient for improving human decisions. In this paper, we use Electroencephalogram (EEG) to observe brain activity while participants make decisions informed by scatterplots created using different visual measures. We focused on 4 categories of Scagnostics measures: Clumpy, Monotonic, Striated, and Stringy. Our findings demonstrate that by adjusting the level of difficulty in discriminating between data sets based on the Scagnostics measures, different parts of the brain are activated: easier visual discrimination choices involve brain activity mostly in visual sensory cortices located in the occipital lobe, while more difficult discrimination choices tend to recruit more parietal and frontal regions as they are known to be involved in resolving ambiguities. Our results imply that patterns of neural activity are predictive markers of which specific Scagnostics measures most assist human decision making based on visual stimuli such as ours.

Neuroelectric indices of attention are related to academic skills in preschool-aged children

PURPOSE

This study assessed the relationship between neuroelectric indices of attention and inhibition and academic skills in children 4-6 years-old. We hypothesized that modulation of the P3 and N2 components would be related to academic skills.

METHODS

Participants (N = 27, 16 female) completed The Woodcock Johnson Early Cognitive and Academic Development Test to assess general intellectual abilities (GIA) and early academic skills (EAS). Electroencephalography was recorded during an auditory oddball task to elicit P3 and N2 components. Two-step linear regressions including age, sex, income, and GIA assessed relationships between P3 and N2 modulations and EAS.

RESULTS

P3 peak amplitude (R2=0.765, β=0.379, p = 0.030) and N2 mean (R2=0.759, β=0.302, p = 0.039) and peak (R2=0.759, β=0.303, p = 0.038) amplitude modulation were positively related to EAS.

CONCLUSION

Upregulation of P3 and N2 components was associated with EAS independent of GIA. Therefore, neuroelectric assessments of attention and inhibition may a biomarker of academic achievement in early childhood.

Working memory and processing speed abilities are related to habituation and change detection in school-aged children: An ERP study

High cognitive performance is related to efficient brain processing while accomplishing complex cognitive tasks. This efficiency is observed through a rapid engagement of the brain regions and the cognitive processes required for task accomplishment. However, it is unclear if this efficiency is also present in basic sensory processes such as habituation and change detection. We recorded EEG with 85 healthy children (51 males) aged between 4 and 13 years old, while they listened to an auditory oddball paradigm. Cognitive functioning was evaluated using the Weschler Intelligence Scales for Children Fifth Edition and the Weschler Preschool & Primary School for Intelligence Fourth Edition. Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) analyses and repeated measure analysis of covariance as well as regression models were performed. The analysis revealed that P1 and N1 repetition effects were observed across levels of cognitive functioning. Further, working memory abilities were related to repetition suppression on the auditory P2 component amplitude, while faster processing speed was related to repetition enhancement on the N2 component amplitude. Also, Late Discriminative Negativity (LDN) amplitude, a neural correlate of change detection, increased with working memory abilities. Our results confirm that efficient repetition suppression (i.e. greater reduction in amplitudes with greater levels of cognitive functioning) and more sensitive change detection (greater amplitude changes of the LDN) are related to the level of cognitive functioning in healthy children. More specifically, working memory and processing speed abilities are the cognitive domains related to efficient sensory habituation and change detection.

Working memory impairment in children orphaned by parental HIV/AIDS: An event-related potentials study

A large body of literature has established that children orphaned by HIV/AIDS ('AIDS orphans') face numerous challenges, such as parental death, poverty, disrupted school attendance and stigma. All of these early life adversities can have long-lasting effects on brain function, especially the executive functions. Working memory, as one of the most studied aspects of executive functions, is also reported to be impaired in children with early adversity. However, limited data are available regarding how early life adverse events affect the neural dynamic associated with working memory processing in AIDS orphans. This study applied the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique to investigate the working memory process in 81 AIDS orphans and 62 non-orphan controls with n-back tasks. Results from EEG analysis and time-frequency analysis showed that AIDS orphans displayed smaller N2 and larger P2, P3 activation as well as enhanced theta and attenuated alpha band oscillations compared to the controls. The present findings indicated a deficit in working memory process in AIDS orphans and suggested that this deficit might be due to the impairments in attention allocation, detection and classification of stimuli and updating process in working memory.

Classification of age groups and task conditions provides additional evidence for differences in electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control across the lifespan

The aim of this study was to extend previous findings on selective attention over a lifetime using machine learning procedures. By decoding group membership and stimulus type, we aimed to study differences in the neural representation of inhibitory control across age groups at a single-trial level. We re-analyzed data from 211 subjects from six age groups between 8 and 83 years of age. Based on single-trial EEG recordings during a flanker task, we used support vector machines to predict the age group as well as to determine the presented stimulus type (i.e., congruent, or incongruent stimulus). The classification of group membership was highly above chance level (accuracy: 55%, chance level: 17%). Early EEG responses were found to play an important role, and a grouped pattern of classification performance emerged corresponding to age structure. There was a clear cluster of individuals after retirement, i.e., misclassifications mostly occurred within this cluster. The stimulus type could be classified above chance level in ~ 95% of subjects. We identified time windows relevant for classification performance that are discussed in the context of early visual attention and conflict processing. In children and older adults, a high variability and latency of these time windows were found. We were able to demonstrate differences in neuronal dynamics at the level of individual trials. Our analysis was sensitive to mapping gross changes, e.g., at retirement age, and to differentiating components of visual attention across age groups, adding value for the diagnosis of cognitive status across the lifespan. Overall, the results highlight the use of machine learning in the study of brain activity over a lifetime.

Interpersonal synchrony when singing in a choir

Singing in a choir has long been known to enhance well-being and protect mental health. Clearly, the experience of a uniquely harmonious social activity is very satisfying for the singers. How might this come about? One of the important factors positively associated with well-being is interpersonal action coordination allowing the choir to function as a whole. This review focuses on temporal coordination dynamics of physiological systems and/or subsystems forming part or the core of the functional substrate of choir singing. These coordination dynamics will be evaluated with respect to the concept of a superordinate system, or superorganism, based on the principles of self-organization and circular causality. We conclude that choral singing is a dynamic process requiring tight interpersonal action coordination that is characterized by coupled physiological systems and specific network topology dynamics, representing a potent biomarker for social interaction.

Multiple functions of the angular gyrus at high temporal resolution

Here, the functions of the angular gyrus (AG) are evaluated in the light of current evidence from transcranial magnetic/electric stimulation (TMS/TES) and EEG/MEG studies. 65 TMS/TES and 52 EEG/MEG studies were examined in this review. TMS/TES literature points to a causal role in semantic processing, word and number processing, attention and visual search, self-guided movement, memory, and self-processing. EEG/MEG studies reported AG effects at latencies varying between 32 and 800 ms in a wide range of domains, with a high probability to detect an effect at 300-350 ms post-stimulus onset. A three-phase unifying model revolving around the process of sensemaking is then suggested: (1) early AG involvement in defining the current context, within the first 200 ms, with a bias toward the right hemisphere; (2) attention re-orientation and retrieval of relevant information within 200-500 ms; and (3) cross-modal integration at late latencies with a bias toward the left hemisphere. This sensemaking process can favour accuracy (e.g. for word and number processing) or plausibility (e.g. for comprehension and social cognition). Such functions of the AG depend on the status of other connected regions. The much-debated semantic role is also discussed as follows: (1) there is a strong TMS/TES evidence for a causal semantic role, (2) current EEG/MEG evidence is however weak, but (3) the existing arguments against a semantic role for the AG are not strong. Some outstanding questions for future research are proposed. This review recognizes that cracking the role(s) of the AG in cognition is possible only when its exact contributions within the default mode network are teased apart.

Formant-invariant voice and pitch representations are pre-attentively formed from constantly varying speech and non-speech stimuli

The present study investigated whether listeners can form abstract voice representations while ignoring constantly changing phonological information and if they can use the resulting information to facilitate voice change detection. Further, the study aimed at understanding whether the use of abstraction is restricted to the speech domain or can be deployed also in non‐speech contexts. We ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment including one passive and one active oddball task, each featuring a speech and a rotated speech condition. In the speech condition, participants heard constantly changing vowels uttered by a male speaker (standard stimuli) which were infrequently replaced by vowels uttered by a female speaker with higher pitch (deviant stimuli). In the rotated speech condition, participants heard rotated vowels, in which the natural formant structure of speech was disrupted. In the passive task, the mismatch negativity was elicited after the presentation of the deviant voice in both conditions, indicating that listeners could successfully group together different stimuli into a formant‐invariant voice representation. In the active task, participants showed shorter reaction times (RTs), higher accuracy and a larger P3b in the speech condition with respect to the rotated speech condition. Results showed that whereas at a pre‐attentive level the cognitive system can track pitch regularities while presumably ignoring constantly changing formant information both in speech and in rotated speech, at an attentive level the use of such information is facilitated for speech. This facilitation was also testified by a stronger synchronisation in the theta band (4–7 Hz), potentially pointing towards differences in encoding/retrieval processes.

Power Spectrum and Connectivity Analysis in EEG Recording during Attention and Creativity Performance in Children

The present research aims at examining the power spectrum and exploring functional brain connectivity/disconnectivity during concentration performance, as measured by the d2 test of attention and creativity as measured by the CREA test in typically developing children. To this end, we examined brain connectivity by using phase synchrony (i.e., phase locking index (PLI) over the EEG signals acquired by the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset in 15 children aged 9- to 12-years. Besides, as a complement, a power spectrum analysis of the acquired signals was performed. Our results indicated that, during d2 Test performance there was an increase in global gamma phase synchronization and there was a global alpha and theta band desynchronization. Conversely, during CREA task, power spectrum analysis showed a significant increase in the delta, beta, theta, and gamma bands. Connectivity analysis revealed marked synchronization in theta, alpha, and gamma. These findings are consistent with other neuroscience research indicating that multiple brain mechanisms are indeed involved in creativity. In addition, these results have important implications for the assessment of attention functions and creativity in clinical and research settings, as well as for neurofeedback interventions in children with typical and atypical development.

Emotional processing in bullying: an event-related potential study

Bullying is a subtype of violence that leads to maladaptive behaviors and emotional responses, with implications for social competence, emotions, and empathy. The present study compared the time course of emotional processing in children who were involved in the dynamics of bullying (i.e., as victims, bullies, and observers) by evaluating event-related potentials [early posterior negativity and late positive potential (LPP)] in different brain regions during a passive visualization task that involved positive, neutral, and negative social pictures. High-density electroencephalograms were recorded in 45 children, 8–12 years old (M = 9.5 years, SD = 1.3), while they observed emotional and neutral social pictures that we selected from the International Affective Picture System. Late positive potential had higher amplitudes in the victim group, especially in posterior and anterior regions. In the central region, LPP was greater toward neutral social pictures in bullying victims. The greater amplitude of LPP in victims was observed during and after the stimulus. The results showed a consistent response with a higher intensity in response to emotional stimuli in the victim group, suggesting a tendency toward hypervigilance that could interfere with emotional regulation.

Inter- and Intra-Hemispheric Age-Related Remodeling in Visuo-Spatial Working Memory

Electroencephalography (EEG) studies investigating visuo-spatial working memory (vWM) in aging typically adopt an event-related potential (ERP) analysis approach that has shed light on the age-related changes during item retention and retrieval. However, this approach does not fully enable a detailed description of the time course of the neural dynamics related to aging. The most frequent age-related changes in brain activity have been described by two influential models of neurocognitive aging, the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) and the Posterior-Anterior Shift in Aging (PASA). These models posit that older adults tend to recruit additional brain areas (bilateral as predicted by HAROLD and anterior as predicted by PASA) when performing several cognitive tasks. We tested younger (N = 36) and older adults (N = 35) in a typical vWM task (delayed match-to-sample) where participants have to retain items and then compare them to a sample. Through a data-driven whole scalp EEG analysis we aimed at characterizing the temporal dynamics of the age-related activations predicted by the two models, both across and within different stages of stimulus processing. Behaviorally, younger outperformed older adults. The EEG analysis showed that older adults engaged supplementary bilateral posterior and frontal sites when processing different levels of memory load, in line with both HAROLD and PASA-like activations. Interestingly, these age-related supplementary activations dynamically developed over time. Indeed, they varied across different stages of stimulus processing, with HAROLD-like modulations being mainly present during item retention, and PASA-like activity during both retention and retrieval. Overall, the present results suggest that age-related neural changes are not a phenomenon indiscriminately present throughout all levels of cognitive processing.

Applying Spike-density component analysis for high-accuracy auditory event-related potentials in children

OBJECTIVE

Overlapping neurophysiological signals are the main obstacle preventing from using cortical auditory event-related potentials (AEPs) in clinical settings. Children AEPs are particularly affected by this problem, as their cerebral cortex is still maturing. To overcome this problem, we applied a new version of Spike-density Component Analysis (SCA), an analysis method recently developed, to isolate with high accuracy the neural components of auditory responses of 8-year-old children.

METHODS

Electroencephalography was used with 33 children to record AEPs to auditory stimuli varying in spectrotemporal features. Three different analysis approaches were adopted: the standard AEP analysis procedure, SCA with template-match (SCA-TM), and SCA with half-split average consistency (SCA-HSAC).

RESULTS

SCA-HSAC most successfully allowed the extraction of AEPs for each child, revealing that the most consistent components were P1 and N2. An immature N1 component was also detected.

CONCLUSION

Superior accuracy in isolating neural components at the individual level was demonstrated for SCA-HSAC over other SCA approaches even for children AEPs.

SIGNIFICANCE

Reliable methods of extraction of neurophysiological signals at the individual level are crucial for the application of cortical AEPs for routine diagnostic exams in clinical settings both in children and adults.

The Effect of Learning English on P300 in Children

Introduction  Learning a second language is an essential task in today's world, and is experienced by many children. The cognitive auditory-evoked potential (P300) is related to cognitive activity, attention and concentration, enabling the investigation of the effect of a second language on the central auditory pathway. Objective  To analyze the effects of learning English on P300 latency and amplitude in children and to correlate them with age, time of exposure to English, and time in class. Method  An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative study, in which 33 children, aged between 5 and 9 years and 11 months, of both genders participated, 14 of them in the process of learning English (study group) and 19 without this experience (control group). All subjects had their P300 evaluated using the Intelligent Hearing Systems (IHS, Miami, FL, US) Smart EP equipment. A total of 300 binaural stimuli were used in 75 dBnHL, as well as 240 frequent and 60 rare stimuli, using the pairs /ba/ and /di/ respectively. Results  There was a statistically significant difference regarding P300 latency between the groups, and children exposed to English classes had lower latency in this component. No statistical difference was found between P300 amplitudes. No correlation was observed regarding age, time of exposure to English, time in class, and electrophysiological responses. Conclusion  The Children exposed to English classes had the most stimulating auditory pathway, because their P300 had lower latency, being a resource for the speech therapy clinic.

Time-oriented attention improves accuracy in a paced finger-tapping task

Finger tapping is a task widely used in a variety of experimental paradigms, in particular to understand sensorimotor synchronization and time processing in the range of hundreds of milliseconds (millisecond timing). Normally, subjects do not receive any instruction about what to attend to and the results are seldom interpreted taking into account the possible effects of attention. In this work we show that attention can be oriented to the purely temporal aspects of a paced finger-tapping task and that it affects performance. Specifically, time-oriented attention improves the accuracy in paced finger tapping and it also increases the resynchronization efficiency after a period perturbation. We use two markers of the attention level: auditory ERPs and subjective report of the mental workload. In addition, we propose a novel algorithm to separate the auditory, stimulus-related components from the somatosensory, response-related ones, which are naturally overlapped in the recorded EEG.

Sensory processing and P300 event-related potential correlates of stimulant response in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A critical review

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with considerable impairment in psychiatric and functional domains. Although stimulant medication can reduce core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, a subgroup of patients does not respond to this intervention. A precision medicine approach has been proposed, whereby biomarkers are used to identify an effective treatment approach for a given individual. This review synthesizes the existing literature on event-related potential (ERP) correlates of stimulant response in children diagnosed with ADHD, with the goal of evaluating the potential for ERP to inform precision medicine care in this population. Forty-three articles were examined and results tentatively suggest that stimulant medications normalize the amplitude of the P300 component, and this is also associated with behavioral improvement. In contrast, results generally indicate that stimulants do not significantly alter early processing components, although there are some exceptions to this finding. Implications for research, theory, and clinical work are considered and concrete recommendations for future directions are provided. While recognizing limitations of existing literature (e.g., homogenous samples, variable methodologies), we conclude that ERP methods represent a promising approach for precision medicine care of patients with ADHD.

The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Scalp Event-Related Potentials: A Systematic Review

Several decades of behavioral research have established that variations in socioeconomic status (SES) are related to differences in cognitive performance. Neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques have recently emerged as a method of choice to better understand the neurobiological processes underlying this phenomenon. Here we present a systematic review of a particular sub-domain of this field. Specifically, we used the PICOS approach to review studies investigating potential relationships between SES and scalp event-related brain potentials (ERP). This review found evidence that SES is related to amplitude variations in a diverse range of ERPs: P1, N1, N2, Error-Related Negativities (ERN), N400, auditory evoked potentials, negative difference waves (Nd), P3 and slow waves (SW). These ERPs include early, mid-latency and late potentials that reflect a broad range of cognitive processes (e.g., automatic attentional processes, overt attention, language, executive function, etc.). In this review, all SES effects on ERPs appeared to reflect an impairment or a less efficient form of task-related neural activity for low-SES compared to high-SES individuals. Overall, these results confirm that a wide variety of distinct neural processes with different functional meanings are sensitive to SES differences. The findings of this review also suggest that the relationship between SES and some ERP components may depend on the developmental stage of study participants. Results are further discussed in terms of the current limitations of this field and future avenues of research.

Nx4 Reduced Susceptibility to Distraction in an Attention Modulation Task

Background: Stress adversely affects the attentional focus, the active concentration on stimuli, and increases susceptibility to distraction. To experimentally explore the susceptibility to distraction, the Attention Modulation by Salience Task (AMST) is a validated paradigm measuring reaction times (RT) for processing auditory information while presenting task-irrelevant visual distractors of high or low salience. We extended the AMST by an emotional dimension of distractors and an EEG-based evaluation. We then investigated the effect of the stress-relieving medication Neurexan (Nx4) on the participants' susceptibility to distraction. Methods: Data from a randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial (NEURIM study; ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02602275) were exploratively reanalyzed post-hoc. In this trial, 39 participants received a single dose of placebo or Nx4 immediately before the AMST. Participants had to discriminate two different tone modulations (ascending or descending) while simultaneously perceiving task-irrelevant pictures of different salience (high or low) or valence (negative or positive) as distractors. Using EEG recordings, RT and the event-related potential (ERP) components N1, N2, and N3 were analyzed as markers for susceptibility to distraction. Results: In the placebo condition, we could replicate the previously reported task effects of salient distractors with longer RT for high salient distractors on the behavioral level. On the electrophysiological level, we observed significantly increased amplitudes of the N2 and N3 ERP components for positive emotional pictures. In terms of drug effect, we found evidence that Nx4 reduced distractibility by emotional distractors. The effect was shown by significantly reduced amplitudes of N2 and N3 ERP components and reduced RT for the positive valence domain under Nx4 compared to placebo. The Nx4 effects on RT and ERP components also showed a significant correlation. Conclusion: Emotional distractors in addition to the previously used salience distractors and the EEG based evaluation of ERPs valuably complement the AMST. Salient distractors were affecting attentional processes earlier, while valent distractors show modulatory effects later. Our results suggest that Nx4 has beneficial effects on attention by inhibiting the effect of task-irrelevant information and reducing susceptibility to emotionally distracting stimuli. The observation of a beneficial impact of Nx4 on attention regulation is supportive of Nx4's claim as a stress-relieving medication.

Pain and Distraction According to Sensory Modalities: Current Findings and Future Directions

BACKGROUND

This review discusses the findings in the literature on pain and distraction tasks according to their sensory modality. Distraction tasks have been shown to reduce (experimentally induced) acute pain and chronic pain. This can be influenced by nature and by the sensory modalities used in the distraction tasks. Yet the effect on reducing pain according to the sensory modality of the distraction task has received little attention.

METHODS

A bibliographic search was performed in different databases. The studies will be systematized according to the sensory modality in which the distraction task was applied.

RESULTS

The analyzed studies with auditory distractors showed a reduction of acute pain in adults. However, these are not effective at healthy children and in adults with chronic pain. Visual distractors showed promising results in acute pain in adults and children. Similarly, tactile and mixed distractors decreased acute pain in adults.

CONCLUSION

Distraction tasks by diverse sensory modalities have a positive effect on decreasing the perception of acute pain in adults. Future studies are necessary given the paucity of research on this topic, particularly with tactile distractors (there is only one study). Finally, the most rigorous methodology and the use of ecological contexts are encouraged in future research.

A Signature of Passivity? An Explorative Study of the N3 Event- Related Potential Component in Passive Oddball Tasks

BACKGROUND

Many passive oddball experiments show a sharp negative deflection N3 after P3b, peaking between 400 and 500 ms, but this wave has never been analyzed properly. We conducted five passive oddball experiments, in which the number of deviants (i.e., one or two), their alleged meaning, and their distinctiveness varied.

RESULTS

Mastoid- or common-referenced waveforms showed a fronto-central N3 in all experiments. The data were CSD (Current Source Density) transformed and underwent a Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The PCA revealed N3 containing two subcomponents with very stable peak latencies of about 415 and 455 ms, respectively. Both topography of the subcomponents and their variation with experimental conditions were very similar, indicating a midfrontal sink and a posterior temporal source. An analysis of P3a and P3b components replicated previously known effects.

CONCLUSION

We discuss the similarities and differences between the passive N3 and other components including the MMN, N1, late positive Slow Wave, and reorienting negativity. We also make general hypotheses about a possible functional meaning of N3; on this basis, specific hypotheses are formulated and further experiments are suggested to test these hypotheses.

Age-related differences in Voice-Onset-Time in Polish language users: An ERP study

Using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) paradigm we investigated for the first time cortical responses to consonant - vowel (CV) syllables differing in Voice-Onset-Time (VOT) for Polish, a member of the Slavic group of languages. The study aimed at testing age-related effects on different ERP responses in young (20-30 years of age) and elderly (60-68 years) native Polish speakers. Participants were presented with a sequence of voiced and voiceless stop CV syllables /to/ and /do/ with different VOT values (-100 ms, -70 ms, -30 ms, -20 ms, +20 ms, +50 ms). We analyzed MMN and P1, N1, N1', P2, N2 components. Our results showed an age-related decline in voicing perception in all tested ERP components. This decline could be explained in relation to a general slowing in neural processing with advancing age and may be associated with difficulties in temporal- and spectral-information processing in elderly people. Our findings revealed also that specific features of Slavic languages influence ERP morphology in a different way than reported in the literature for aspirating languages.

A Non-linear Relationship Between Selective Attention and Associated ERP Markers Across the Lifespan

The ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information increases throughout childhood and decreases in older age. Here, we intended to investigate these opposing developmental trajectories, to assess whether gains and losses early and late in life are associated with similar or different electrophysiological changes, and to get a better understanding about the development in middle-adulthood. We (re-)analyzed behavioral and electrophysiological data of 211 participants, who performed a colored Flanker task while their Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Participants were subdivided into six groups depending on their age, ranging from 8 to 83 years. We analyzed response speed and accuracy as well as the event replated potential (ERP) components P1 and N1, associated with visual processing and attention, N2 as marker of interference suppression and cognitive control, and P3 as a marker of cognitive updating and stimulus categorization. Response speed and accuracy were low early and later in life, with peak performance in young adults. Similarly, ERP latencies of all components and P1 and N1 amplitudes followed a u-shape pattern with shortest latencies and smallest amplitudes occurring in middle-age. N2 amplitudes were larger in children, and for incongruent stimuli in adults middle-aged and older. P3 amplitudes showed a parietal-to-frontal shift with age. Further, group-wise regression analyses suggested that children’s performance depended on cognitive processing speed, while older adults’ performance depended on cognitive resources. Together these results imply that different mechanisms restrict performance early and late in life and suggest a non-linear relationship between electrophysiological markers and performance in the Flanker task across the lifespan.

The effects of aging on early stages of the auditory deviance detection system

OBJECTIVE

The aging effects on auditory change detection have been studied using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) potential. However, recent studies have found earlier correlates of deviance detection at the level of the middle-latency response (MLR) and the effects of aging on this deviant-related response have not yet been clarified. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of aging on both levels of the auditory deviance detection system.

METHODS

MMN and MLR responses were recorded in 33 young and 29 older adults from 32 scalp electrodes during frequency oddball and swapped-oddball conditions.

RESULTS

In the young group, modulation of MLR and a clear MMN response were observed, whereas in the aged group, no evidence of deviance detection was found at the level of MLR and the MMN amplitude was significantly diminished.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on the obtained results, aging affects both levels of the auditory deviance detection system which seems to be a result of deficits in regularity encoding along the auditory hierarchy.

SIGNIFICANCE

The current findings suggest that age-related physiological changes result in deficits in regularity encoding, starting from early stages of processing. This might eventually affect stream segregation and induce difficulties in understanding speech in complex environments.

Visual mismatch response and fMRI signal adaptation correlate in the occipital-temporal cortex

Several electrophysiological studies found response differences to a given stimulus when it is repeated frequently as compared to when it occurs rarely in oddball sequences. Initially defined in acoustic perception, such difference also exists in the visual modality and is referred to as visual mismatch negativity (vMMN). However, the repetition of a stimulus also leads to the reduction of the blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal (fMRI adaptation, fMRIa) when compared to alternating stimuli in fMRI experiments. So far no study compared the vMMN to fMRIa within the same paradigm and participants. Here we tested the possible connection between fMRIa and vMMN in a visual oddball paradigm in two separate sessions, acquiring electrophysiological and neuroimaging data for real and false characters from the same participants. We found significant visual mismatch response (vMM) as well as fMRIa for both character types. Importantly, the magnitude of the vMM over the CP1 electrode cluster showed a significant correlation with the fMRIa within the letter form area, for real characters. This finding suggests that similar neural mechanisms are responsible for the two phenomena.

Early enhanced processing and delayed habituation to deviance sounds in autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties processing and encoding sensory information in daily life. Cognitive response to environmental change in control individuals is naturally dynamic, meaning it habituates or reduces over time as one becomes accustomed to the deviance. The origin of atypical response to deviance in ASD may relate to differences in this dynamic habituation. The current study of 133 children and young adults with and without ASD examined classic electrophysiological responses (MMN and P3a), as well as temporal patterns of habituation (i.e., N1 and P3a change over time) in response to a passive auditory oddball task. Individuals with ASD showed an overall heightened sensitivity to change as exhibited by greater P3a amplitude to novel sounds. Moreover, youth with ASD showed dynamic ERP differences, including slower attenuation of the N1 response to infrequent tones and the P3a response to novel sounds. Dynamic ERP responses were related to parent ratings of auditory sensory-seeking behaviors, but not general cognition. As the first large-scale study to characterize temporal dynamics of auditory ERPs in ASD, our results provide compelling evidence that heightened response to auditory deviance in ASD is largely driven by early sensitivity and prolonged processing of auditory deviance.

Electrophysiological evidence for preserved primacy of lexical prediction in aging

Young adults show consistent neural benefits of predictable contexts when processing upcoming words, but these benefits are less clear-cut in older adults. Here we disentangle the neural correlates of prediction accuracy and contextual support during word processing, in order to test current theories that suggest that neural mechanisms underlying predictive processing are specifically impaired in older adults. During a sentence comprehension task, older and younger readers were asked to predict passage-final words and report the accuracy of these predictions. Age-related reductions were observed for N250 and N400 effects of prediction accuracy, as well as for N400 effects of contextual support independent of prediction accuracy. Furthermore, temporal primacy of predictive processing (i.e., earlier facilitation for successful predictions) was preserved across the lifespan, suggesting that predictive mechanisms are unlikely to be uniquely impaired in older adults. In addition, older adults showed prediction effects on frontal post-N400 positivities (PNPs) that were similar in amplitude to PNPs in young adults. Previous research has shown correlations between verbal fluency and lexical prediction in older adult readers, suggesting that the production system may be linked to capacity for lexical prediction, especially in aging. The current study suggests that verbal fluency modulates PNP effects of contextual support, but not prediction accuracy. Taken together, our findings suggest that aging does not result in specific declines in lexical prediction.

Impaired auditory-to-motor entrainment in Parkinson's disease

Several electrophysiological studies suggest that Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have a reduced tendency to entrain to regular environmental patterns. Here we investigate whether this reduced entrainment concerns a generalized deficit or is confined to movement-related activity, leaving sensory entrainment intact. Magnetoencephalography was recorded during a rhythmic auditory target detection task in 14 PD patients and 14 control subjects. Participants were instructed to press a button when hearing a target tone amid an isochronous sequence of standard tones. The variable pitch of standard tones indicated the probability of the next tone to be a target. In addition, targets were occasionally omitted to evaluate entrainment uncontaminated by stimulus effects. Response times were not significantly different between groups and both groups benefited equally from the predictive value of standard tones. Analyses of oscillatory beta power over auditory cortices showed equal entrainment to the tones in both groups. By contrast, oscillatory beta power and event-related fields demonstrated a reduced engagement of motor cortical areas in PD patients, expressed in the modulation depth of beta power, in the response to omitted stimuli, and in an absent motor area P300 effect. Together, these results show equally strong entrainment of neural activity over sensory areas in controls and patients, but, in patients, a deficient translation of the adjustment to the task rhythm to motor circuits. We suggest that the reduced activation reflects not merely altered resonance to rhythmic external events, but a compromised recruitment of an endogenous response reflecting internal rhythm generation.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Previous studies suggest that motor cortical activity in PD patients has a reduced tendency to entrain to regular environmental patterns. This study demonstrates that the deficient entrainment in PD concerns the motor system only, by showing equally strong entrainment of neural activity over sensory areas in controls and patients but, in patients, a deficient translation of this adjustment to the task rhythm to motor circuits.

Preliminary investigation of Brain Network Activation (BNA) and its clinical utility in sport-related concussion

Background: The clinical diagnosis and management of patients with sport-related concussion is largely dependent on subjectively reported symptoms, clinical examinations, cognitive, balance, vestibular and oculomotor testing. Consequently, there is an unmet need for objective assessment tools that can identify the injury from a physiological perspective and add an important layer of information to the clinician’s decision-making process.

Objective: The goal of the study was to evaluate the clinical utility of the EEG-based tool named Brain Network Activation (BNA) as a longitudinal assessment method of brain function in the management of young athletes with concussion.

Methods: Athletes with concussion (n = 86) and age-matched controls (n = 81) were evaluated at four time points with symptom questionnaires and BNA. BNA scores were calculated by comparing functional networks to a previously defined normative reference brain network model to the same cognitive task.

Results: Subjects above 16 years of age exhibited a significant decrease in BNA scores immediately following injury, as well as notable changes in functional network activity, relative to the controls. Three representative case studies of the tested population are discussed in detail, to demonstrate the clinical utility of BNA.

Conclusion: The data support the utility of BNA to augment clinical examinations, symptoms and additional tests by providing an effective method for evaluating objective electrophysiological changes associated with sport-related concussions.

Phonological abilities in literacy-impaired children: Brain potentials reveal deficient phoneme discrimination, but intact prosodic processing

Intact phonological processing is crucial for successful literacy acquisition. While individuals with difficulties in reading and spelling (i.e., developmental dyslexia) are known to experience deficient phoneme discrimination (i.e., segmental phonology), findings concerning their prosodic processing (i.e., suprasegmental phonology) are controversial. Because there are no behavior-independent studies on the underlying neural correlates of prosodic processing in dyslexia, these controversial findings might be explained by different task demands. To provide an objective behavior-independent picture of segmental and suprasegmental phonological processing in impaired literacy acquisition, we investigated event-related brain potentials during passive listening in typically and poor-spelling German school children. For segmental phonology, we analyzed the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) during vowel length discrimination, capturing automatic auditory deviancy detection in repetitive contexts. For suprasegmental phonology, we analyzed the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) that automatically occurs in response to prosodic boundaries. Our results revealed spelling group differences for the MMN, but not for the CPS, indicating deficient segmental, but intact suprasegmental phonological processing in poor spellers. The present findings point towards a differential role of segmental and suprasegmental phonology in literacy disorders and call for interventions that invigorate impaired literacy by utilizing intact prosody in addition to training deficient phonemic awareness.

Brain Network Activation Analysis Utilizing Spatiotemporal Features for Event Related Potentials Classification

The purpose of this study was to introduce an improved tool for automated classification of event-related potentials (ERPs) using spatiotemporally parcellated events incorporated into a functional brain network activation (BNA) analysis. The auditory oddball ERP paradigm was selected to demonstrate and evaluate the improved tool. Methods: The ERPs of each subject were decomposed into major dynamic spatiotemporal events. Then, a set of spatiotemporal events representing the group was generated by aligning and clustering the spatiotemporal events of all individual subjects. The temporal relationship between the common group events generated a network, which is the spatiotemporal reference BNA model. Scores were derived by comparing each subject's spatiotemporal events to the reference BNA model and were then entered into a support vector machine classifier to classify subjects into relevant subgroups. The reliability of the BNA scores (test-retest repeatability using intraclass correlation) and their utility as a classification tool were examined in the context of Target-Novel classification. Results: BNA intraclass correlation values of repeatability ranged between 0.51 and 0.82 for the known ERP components N100, P200, and P300. Classification accuracy was high when the trained data were validated on the same subjects for different visits (AUCs 0.93 and 0.95). The classification accuracy remained high for a test group recorded at a different clinical center with a different recording system (AUCs 0.81, 0.85 for 2 visits). Conclusion: The improved spatiotemporal BNA analysis demonstrates high classification accuracy. The BNA analysis method holds promise as a tool for diagnosis, follow-up and drug development associated with different neurological conditions.

El Sistema-inspired ensemble music training is associated with changes in children's neurocognitive functional integration: preliminary ERP evidence

Children (aged 9-12) training in an El Sistema-inspired program (OrKidstra) and a matched comparison group participated in an auditory Go/No-Go task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Entire-sweep waveform patterns correlated with known ERP peaks associated with executive and other cognitive functions and indicated that the spread of neural activity in the initial 250 ms of executive attention processing (pre-P300) showed higher level of topographical overlap in OrKidstra children. In these children, late potentials (post-P300) concurrent with response control were more widely distributed and temporally coordinated. Intensive ensemble music training, we suggest, may be associated with neuroplastic changes facilitating integration of neural information.

Lexical Specification of Prosodic Information in Swedish: Evidence from Mismatch Negativity

Like that of many other Germanic languages, the stress system of Swedish has mainly undergone phonological analysis. Recently, however, researchers have begun to recognize the central role of morphology in these systems. Similar to the lexical specification of tonal accent, the Swedish stress system is claimed to be morphologically determined and morphemes are thus categorized as prosodically specified and prosodically unspecified. Prosodically specified morphemes bear stress information as part of their lexical representations and are classified as tonic (i.e., lexically stressed), pretonic and posttonic, whereas prosodically unspecified morphemes receive stress through a phonological rule that is right-edge oriented, but is sensitive to prosodic specification at that edge. The presence of prosodic specification is inferred from vowel quality and vowel quantity; if stress moves elsewhere, vowel quality and quantity change radically in phonologically stressed morphemes, whereas traces of stress remain in lexically stressed morphemes. The present study is the first to investigate whether stress is a lexical property of Swedish morphemes by comparing mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to vowel quality and quantity changes in phonologically stressed and lexically stressed words. In a passive oddball paradigm, 15 native speakers of Swedish were presented with standards and deviants, which differed from the standards in formant frequency and duration. Given that vowel quality and quantity changes are associated with morphological derivations only in phonologically stressed words, MMN responses are expected to be greater in phonologically stressed words than in lexically stressed words that lack such an association. The results indicated that the processing differences between phonologically and lexically stressed words were reflected in the amplitude and topography of MMN responses. Confirming the expectation, MMN amplitude was greater for the phonologically stressed word than for the lexically stressed word and showed a more widespread topographic distribution. The brain did not only detect vowel quality and quantity changes but also used them to activate memory traces associated with derivations. The present study therefore implies that morphology is directly involved in the Swedish stress system and that changes in phonological shape due to stress shift cue upcoming stress and potential addition of a morpheme.

What they bring: baseline psychological distress differentially predicts neural response in social exclusion by children's friends and strangers in best friend dyads

Friendships play a major role in cognitive, emotional and social development in middle childhood. We employed the online Cyberball social exclusion paradigm to understand the neural correlates of dyadic social exclusion among best friends assessed simultaneously. Each child played with their friend and an unfamiliar player. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were assessed via electroencephalogram during exclusion by friend and unfamiliar peer. Data were analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling to account for nesting of children within friendship dyads. Results showed that stranger rejection was associated with larger P2 and positive slow wave ERP responses compared to exclusion by a friend. Psychological distress differentially moderated the effects of friend and stranger exclusion such that children with greater psychological distress were observed to have larger neural responses (larger P2 and slow wave) to exclusion by a stranger compared to exclusion by a friend. Conversely, children with lower levels of psychological distress had larger neural responses for exclusion by a friend than by a stranger. Psychological distress within the dyad differentially predicted the P2 and slow wave response. Findings highlight the prominent, but differential role of individual and dyadic psychological distress levels in moderating responses to social exclusion in middle childhood.

Using Event-Related Brain Potentials to Assess Perceptibility: The Case of French Speakers and English [h]

French speaking learners of English encounter persistent difficulty acquiring English [h], thus confusing words like eat and heat in both production and perception. We assess the hypothesis that the acoustic properties of [h] may render detection of this segment in the speech stream insufficiently reliable for second language acquisition. We use the mismatch negativity (MMN) in event-related potentials to investigate [h] perception in French speaking learners of English and native English controls, comparing both linguistic and non-linguistic conditions in an unattended oddball paradigm. Unlike native speakers, French learners of English elicit an MMN response only in the non-linguistic condition. Our results provide neurobiological evidence against the hypothesis that French speakers’ difficulties with [h] are acoustically based. They instead suggest that the problem is in constructing an appropriate phonological representation for [h] in the interlanguage grammar.

Testing a novel method for improving wayfinding by means of a P3b Virtual Reality Visual Paradigm in normal aging

BACKGROUND

We propose a virtual reality (VR) model, reproducing a house environment, where color modification of target places, obtainable by home automation in a real ambient, was tested by means of a P3b paradigm. The target place (bathroom door) was designed to be recognized during a virtual wayfinding in a realistic reproduction of a house environment. Different color and luminous conditions, easily obtained in the real ambient from a remote home automation control, were applied to the target and standard places, all the doors being illuminated in white (W), and only target doors colored with a green (G) or red (R) spotlight. Three different Virtual Environments (VE) were depicted, as the bathroom was designed in the aisle (A), living room (L) and bedroom (B). EEG was recorded from 57 scalp electrodes in 10 healthy subjects in the 60-80 year age range (O-old group) and 12 normal cases in the 20-30 year age range (Y-young group).

RESULTS

In Young group, all the target stimuli determined a significant increase in P3b amplitude on the parietal, occipital and central electrodes compared to frequent stimuli condition, whatever was the color of the target door, while in elderly group the P3b obtained by the green and red colors was significantly different from the frequent stimulus, on the parietal, occipital, and central derivations, while the White stimulus did not evoke a significantly larger P3b with respect to frequent stimulus.

DISCUSSION

The modulation of P3b amplitude, obtained by color and luminance change of target place, suggests that cortical resources, able to compensate the age-related progressive loss of cognitive performance, need to be facilitated even in normal elderly. The event-related responses obtained by virtual reality may be a reliable method to test the environmental feasibility to age-related cognitive changes.

Cross-modal symbolic processing can elicit either an N2 or a protracted N2/N400 response

A cross-modal symbolic paradigm was used to elicit EEG activity related to semantic incongruence. Twenty-five undergraduate students viewed pairings of visual lexical cues (e.g., DOG) with congruent (50% of trials) or incongruent (50%) auditory nonlexical stimuli (animal vocalizations; e.g., sound of a dog woofing or a cat meowing). In one condition, many different pairs of congruent/incongruent stimuli were shown, whereas in a second condition only two pairs of stimuli were repeatedly shown. A typical N400-like pattern of incongruence-related activity (including activity in the N2 time window) was evident in the condition using many stimuli, whereas the incongruence-related activity in the two-stimuli condition was confined to differential N2-like activity. A supplementary analysis excluded stimulus characteristics as the source of this differential activity between conditions. We found that a single individual performing a fixed task can demonstrate either a protracted N400-like pattern of activity or a more temporally focused N2-like pattern of activity in response to the same stimulus, which suggests that the N2 may be a precursor to the protracted N400 response.

The Effect of Aging and the High-Frequency Auditory Threshold on Speech-Evoked Mismatch Negativity in a Noisy Background

Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been widely used to study the function of central auditory processing in the elderly. However, current research has not yet considered the effect of noise and high-frequency hearing threshold on MMN in the elderly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of aging and high-frequency hearing loss on speech-related MMN in noisy backgrounds. Additionally, the possible mechanisms of central auditory processing dysfunction in the elderly were investigated. Fifty people aged 61-80 (70 ± 5.8) years were recruited for this study. They were divided into a 61- to 70-year-old group and a 71- to 80-year-old group. Fifty younger adults aged 21-40 (31 ± 5.3) years were recruited as healthy controls. Pure-tone hearing thresholds were recorded. A speech discrimination score (SDS) and a speech-evoked MMN under white noise with a bandwidth from 125 to 8,000 Hz background condition were recorded. The relationships between SDS and MMN latency and amplitude were analyzed. The effects of age and binaural 2,000-, 4,000- and 8,000-Hz pure-tone hearing thresholds on MMN latency and amplitude were analyzed. We found that the hearing thresholds of 2,000, 4,000 and 8,000 Hz in the 61- to 70-year-old and 71- to 80-year-old groups were higher than those in the control group. The SDS in a noisy background in the 61- to 70-year-old and 71- to 80-year-old groups were lower than those in the control group. Speech-evoked MMN latency was longer in the 61- to 70-year-old and in the 71- to 80-year-old groups than in the control group (215.8 ± 14.2 ms). SDS and speech-evoked MMN latency were negatively correlated. Age and speech-evoked MMN latency were positively correlated, as were the binaural 4,000- to 8,000-Hz pure-tone hearing thresholds and speech-evoked MMN. This study suggests that in elderly subjects, the function of preattentive central auditory processing changes. Additionally, increasing age and high-frequency hearing thresholds create a synergy in neurons that is weakened in the MMN time window, which may be a cause of central auditory processing disorders in elderly subjects in noisy background conditions.

On the development of auditory distraction: A review

The present review focuses on the development of involuntary attention mechanisms in the context of the occurrence of unexpected events during childhood. We introduce a prevailing three-stage model of auditory involuntary attention describing the processes leading to, accompanying, and following the distraction of attention by prediction violations: (a) the automatic detection of prediction violations (associated with the event-related potential [ERP] component mismatch negativity [MMN]), (b) the involuntary orienting of attention processes towards the prediction violating sound (associated with the ERP component P3a), and (c) the reorienting back to task-relevant information (associated with the ERP components reorienting negativity [RON] or late discriminative negativity [LDN]). Within this framework we give an overview of studies investigating MMN, P3a, RON/LDN, and behavioral distraction effects in children. We discuss the development of the underlying involuntary attention mechanisms and highlight the relevance of and future perspectives for this important field of research.

Compensatory processing during rule-based category learning in older adults

Healthy older adults typically perform worse than younger adults at rule-based category learning, but better than patients with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. To further investigate aging's effect on rule-based category learning, we monitored event-related potentials (ERPs) while younger and neuropsychologically typical older adults performed a visual category-learning task with a rule-based category structure and trial-by-trial feedback. Using these procedures, we previously identified ERPs sensitive to categorization strategy and accuracy in young participants. In addition, previous studies have demonstrated the importance of neural processing in the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe for this task. In this study, older adults showed lower accuracy and longer response times than younger adults, but there were two distinct subgroups of older adults. One subgroup showed near-chance performance throughout the procedure, never categorizing accurately. The other subgroup reached asymptotic accuracy that was equivalent to that in younger adults, although they categorized more slowly. These two subgroups were further distinguished via ERPs. Consistent with the compensation theory of cognitive aging, older adults who successfully learned showed larger frontal ERPs when compared with younger adults. Recruitment of prefrontal resources may have improved performance while slowing response times. Additionally, correlations of feedback-locked P300 amplitudes with category-learning accuracy differentiated successful younger and older adults. Overall, the results suggest that the ability to adapt one's behavior in response to feedback during learning varies across older individuals, and that the failure of some to adapt their behavior may reflect inadequate engagement of prefrontal cortex.

Sustained attention and prediction: distinct brain maturation trajectories during adolescence

Adolescence is a key period for frontal cortex maturation necessary for the development of cognitive ability. Sustained attention and prediction are cognitive functions critical for optimizing sensory processing, and essential to efficiently adapt behaviors in an ever-changing world. The aim of the current study was to investigate the brain developmental trajectories of attentive and predictive processing through adolescence. We recorded EEG in 36 participants from the age of 12-24 years (three age groups: 12-14, 14-17, 18-24 years) to target development during early and late adolescence, and early adulthood. We chose a visual target detection task which loaded upon sustained attention, and we manipulated target predictability. Continued maturation of sustained attention after age 12 was evidenced by improved performance (hits, false alarms (FAs) and sensitivity) in a detection task, associated with a frontal shift in the scalp topographies of the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) and P3 responses, with increasing age. No effect of age was observed on predictive processing, with all ages showing similar benefits in reaction time, increases in P3 amplitude (indexing predictive value encoding and memorization), increases in CNV amplitude (corresponding to prediction implementation) and reduction in target-P3 latency (reflecting successful prediction building and use), with increased predictive content. This suggests that adolescents extracted and used predictive information to generate predictions as well as adults. The present results show that predictive and attentive processing follow distinct brain developmental trajectories: prediction abilities seem mature by the age of 12 and sustained attention continues to improve after 12-years of age and is associated with maturational changes in the frontal cortices.

Attention deficits revealed by passive auditory change detection for pure tones and lexical tones in ADHD children

Inattention (IA) has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN) as event-related potential (ERP) markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli-pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones-were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years). Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones) were applied. The pure tone oddball paradigm included a standard stimulus (1000 Hz, 80%) and two deviant stimuli (1015 and 1090 Hz, 10% each). The Mandarin lexical tone oddball paradigm's standard stimulus was /yi3/ (80%) and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each). The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents' and teachers' ratings on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for the evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to alleviate these dysfunctions.

Brain Dynamics of Aging: Multiscale Variability of EEG Signals at Rest and during an Auditory Oddball Task

Recently, the study of brain signal fluctuations is widely put forward as a promising entry point to characterize brain dynamics in health and disease. Although interesting results have been reported regarding how variability of brain activations can serve as an indicator of performance and adaptability in elderly, many uncertainties and controversies remain with regard to the comparability, reproducibility, and generality of the described findings, as well as the ensuing interpretations.

The present work focused on the study of fluctuations of cortical activity across time scales in young and older healthy adults. The main objective was to offer a comprehensive characterization of the changes of brain (cortical) signal variability during aging, and to make the link with known underlying structural, neurophysiological, and functional modifications, as well as aging theories. We analyzed electroencephalogram (EEG) data of young and elderly adults, which were collected at resting state and during an auditory oddball task. We used a wide battery of metrics that typically are separately applied in the literature, and we compared them with more specific ones that address their limits. Our procedure aimed to overcome some of the methodological limitations of earlier studies and verify whether previous findings can be reproduced and extended to different experimental conditions. In both rest and task conditions, our results mainly revealed that EEG signals presented systematic age-related changes that were time-scale-dependent with regard to the structure of fluctuations (complexity) but not with regard to their magnitude. Namely, compared with young adults, the cortical fluctuations of the elderly were more complex at shorter time scales, but less complex at longer scales, although always showing a lower variance. Additionally, the elderly showed signs of spatial, as well as between, experimental conditions dedifferentiation. By integrating these so far isolated findings across time scales, metrics, and conditions, the present study offers an overview of age-related changes in the fluctuation electrocortical activity while making the link with underlying brain dynamics.

Auditory attention in childhood and adolescence: An event-related potential study of spatial selective attention to one of two simultaneous stories

Auditory selective attention is a critical skill for goal-directed behavior, especially where noisy distractions may impede focusing attention. To better understand the developmental trajectory of auditory spatial selective attention in an acoustically complex environment, in the current study we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) across five age groups: 3-5 years; 10 years; 13 years; 16 years; and young adults. Using a naturalistic dichotic listening paradigm, we characterized the ERP morphology for nonlinguistic and linguistic auditory probes embedded in attended and unattended stories. We documented robust maturational changes in auditory evoked potentials that were specific to the types of probes. Furthermore, we found a remarkable interplay between age and attention-modulation of auditory evoked potentials in terms of morphology and latency from the early years of childhood through young adulthood. The results are consistent with the view that attention can operate across age groups by modulating the amplitude of maturing auditory early-latency evoked potentials or by invoking later endogenous attention processes. Development of these processes is not uniform for probes with different acoustic properties within our acoustically dense speech-based dichotic listening task. In light of the developmental differences we demonstrate, researchers conducting future attention studies of children and adolescents should be wary of combining analyses across diverse ages.

Short-term second language and music training induces lasting functional brain changes in early childhood

Immediate and lasting effects of music or second-language training were examined in early childhood using event-related potentials. Event-related potentials were recorded for French vowels and musical notes in a passive oddball paradigm in thirty-six 4- to 6-year-old children who received either French or music training. Following training, both groups showed enhanced late discriminative negativity (LDN) in their trained condition (music group-musical notes; French group-French vowels) and reduced LDN in the untrained condition. These changes reflect improved processing of relevant (trained) sounds, and an increased capacity to suppress irrelevant (untrained) sounds. After 1 year, training-induced brain changes persisted and new hemispheric changes appeared. Such results provide evidence for the lasting benefit of early intervention in young children.

Neural correlates of auditory stream segregation: an analysis of onset- and change-related responses

The temporal order discrimination of target tone pairs is hindered by the presence of flanker tones but is improved when the flanker tones are captured by a separate stream of tones that match the flankers in frequency [Bregman and Rudnicky (1975). J. Exp. Psychol. 1, 263-267]. In an event-related potential (ERP) study with these stimuli, listeners' mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were temporally linked to the position of the changing target tones, irrespective of streaming. In contrast, N1 response latency varied as a function of the perceived grouping of flanker tones established by previous behavioral studies, providing a neurophysiological index of auditory stream segregation.