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Doucet G, Kruse JA, Hamlin N, Peyrin C, Poirel N. Neural correlates underlying local and global processing during visual search across adulthood. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0303796. [PMID: 38905236 PMCID: PMC11192325 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303796] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2022] [Accepted: 04/30/2024] [Indexed: 06/23/2024] Open
Abstract
Visual processing relies on the identification of both local and global features of visual stimuli. While well investigated at the behavioral level, the underlying brain mechanisms are less clear, especially in the context of aging. Using fMRI, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates underlying local and global processing in early and late adulthood. We recruited 77 healthy adults aged 19-77 who completed a visual search task based on 2-level hierarchical stimuli made of squares and/or circles. Participants were instructed to detect a target (a square) at either a local (small) or global (large) level of a hierarchical geometrical form, in the presence or absence of other hierarchical geometrical forms (distractors). At the behavioral level, we revealed high accuracy for all participants, but older participants were slower to detect local targets, specifically in presence of distractors. At the brain level, while both local and global processing were associated with occipital activation, local processing also recruited the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, that are core regions of the salience network. However, while the presence of distractors in the local condition elicited specifically stronger activation within the right anterior insula for the young group, it was not observed for older participants. In addition, older participants showed less activation than younger participants in the occipital cortex, especially for the most complex conditions. Our findings suggest that the brain correlates underlying local and global processing change with aging, especially for complex visual patterns. These results are discussed in terms of top-down reduction effects from the salience network on primary visual areas, that may lead to specific difficulties to process local visual details in older adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gaelle Doucet
- Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America
- Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America
| | - Jordanna A. Kruse
- Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America
| | - Noah Hamlin
- Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America
| | - Carole Peyrin
- French National Centre for Scientific Research, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Universite Grenoble Alpes, Universite Savoie Mont Blanc, Grenoble, France
| | - Nicolas Poirel
- LaPsyDÉ, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Université de Paris, Paris, France
- GIP Cyceron, Caen, France
- Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France
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Santacà M. Some like it "local": A review of hierarchical processing in non-human animals. Learn Behav 2024; 52:143-161. [PMID: 37930619 DOI: 10.3758/s13420-023-00605-0] [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: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 11/07/2023]
Abstract
When seeing a visual image, humans prioritize the perception of global features, which is followed by the assessment of the local ones. This global precedence has been investigated using hierarchical stimuli that consist of a large, global shape formed by the spatial arrangement of small local shapes. Comparing non-human animals to humans, research on global and local processing has revealed a heterogeneous pattern of results with some species exhibiting a local precedence and others a global one. Many factors have been proposed to influence the global and local processing: internal factors (e.g., age, sex) and external elements or perceptual field variables (e.g., stimulus size, visual angle, eccentricity, sparsity). In this review, studies showing that different non-human species process hierarchical stimuli in the same (global precedence) or reverse (local precedence) direction as humans are first collated. Different ecological, perceptual, and anatomical features that may influence global and local processing are subsequently proposed based on a detailed analysis of these studies. This information is likely to improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind the perceptual organization and visual processing, and could explain the observed differences in hierarchical processing between species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Santacà
- Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Djerassi-Platz 1, 1030, Vienna, Austria.
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Rüttgens T, Suchan B, Wolf OT, Merz CJ. Acute stress does not modulate selective attention in a composite letter task. Stress 2024; 27:2330704. [PMID: 38528793 DOI: 10.1080/10253890.2024.2330704] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 03/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Acute stress has been demonstrated to affect a diverse array of attentional processes, one of which is selective attention. Selective attention refers to the cognitive process of deliberately allocating attentional resources to a specific stimulus, while ignoring other, distracting stimuli. While catecholamines have been shown to narrow attention, investigations on the influence of the stress hormone cortisol have yielded ambiguous results. We conducted two separate studies utilizing different laboratory stress induction paradigms to examine if cortisol influences the ability to selectively attend to local or global elements of a visual stimulus. In Study 1, 72 healthy young men took part either in the stressful Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test (SECPT) or a non-stressful (warm water) control, before being exposed to a composite letter task (CLT). Study 2 comprised a sample of 72 healthy young men and women and made use of a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) as well as a non-stressful control version, the friendly-TSST (f-TSST). Via endocrine, physiological, and subjective markers, we confirmed a successful stress induction. As verified with Bayesian statistics, stress did not affect selective attention in neither of the two studies. Furthermore, we were able to replicate the previously demonstrated absence of global precedence for composite figures composed of letters. Our results offer novel insights into the temporal dynamics of the effects of acute stress on attentional processes. Future studies should manipulate the timing of stress induction and investigate the effects of stress on letter vs. non-letter composite figures to shed further light on the underlying mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tobias Rüttgens
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
| | - Boris Suchan
- Department of Neuropsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
| | - Oliver T Wolf
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
| | - Christian J Merz
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
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Anderson MD, Elder JH, Graf EW, Adams WJ. The time-course of real-world scene perception: Spatial and semantic processing. iScience 2022; 25:105633. [PMID: 36505927 PMCID: PMC9732406 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105633] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2022] [Revised: 09/16/2022] [Accepted: 11/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Real-world scene perception unfolds remarkably quickly, yet the underlying visual processes are poorly understood. Space-centered theory maintains that a scene's spatial structure (e.g., openness, mean depth) can be rapidly recovered from low-level image statistics. In turn, the statistical relationship between a scene's spatial properties and semantic content allows for semantic identity to be inferred from its layout. We tested this theory by investigating (1) the temporal dynamics of spatial and semantic perception in real-world scenes, and (2) dependencies between spatial and semantic judgments. Participants viewed backward-masked images for 13.3 to 106.7 ms, and identified the semantic (e.g., beach, road) or spatial structure (e.g., open, closed-off) category. We found no temporal precedence of spatial discrimination relative to semantic discrimination. Computational analyses further suggest that, instead of using spatial layout to infer semantic categories, humans exploit semantic information to discriminate spatial structure categories. These findings challenge traditional 'bottom-up' views of scene perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matt D. Anderson
- Centre for Perception and Cognition, Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK,Corresponding author
| | - James H. Elder
- Centre for Vision Research, Department of Psychology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, Toronto, Canada
| | - Erich W. Graf
- Centre for Perception and Cognition, Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - Wendy J. Adams
- Centre for Perception and Cognition, Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
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Xu J, Zhou L, Liu F, Xue C, Jiang J, Jiang C. The autistic brain can process local but not global emotion regularities in facial and musical sequences. Autism Res 2021; 15:222-240. [PMID: 34792299 DOI: 10.1002/aur.2635] [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: 05/27/2021] [Revised: 10/31/2021] [Accepted: 11/01/2021] [Indexed: 11/05/2022]
Abstract
Whether autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with a global processing deficit remains controversial. Global integration requires extraction of regularity across various timescales, yet little is known about how individuals with ASD process regularity at local (short timescale) versus global (long timescale) levels. To this end, we used event-related potentials to investigate whether individuals with ASD would show different neural responses to local (within trial) versus global (across trials) emotion regularities extracted from sequential facial expressions; and if so, whether this visual abnormality would generalize to the music (auditory) domain. Twenty individuals with ASD and 21 age- and IQ-matched individuals with typical development participated in this study. At an early processing stage, ASD participants exhibited preserved neural responses to violations of local emotion regularity for both faces and music. At a later stage, however, there was an absence of neural responses in ASD to violations of global emotion regularity for both faces and music. These findings suggest that the autistic brain responses to emotion regularity are modulated by the timescale of sequential stimuli, and provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying emotional processing in ASD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jie Xu
- Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Linshu Zhou
- Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Fang Liu
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK
| | - Chao Xue
- Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jun Jiang
- Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Cunmei Jiang
- Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Face and word composite effects are similarly affected by priming of local and global processing. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 83:2189-2204. [PMID: 33772446 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02287-0] [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] [Accepted: 02/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Holistic processing has been shown with both faces and words, but it is unclear how similar their underlying mechanisms are. In this study attention to global and local features was manipulated and the consequences for holistic word and face processing were examined. On each trial participants were presented two Navon figures and told to focus on either the global or the local level. Then they performed a composite task in which they indicated whether the target halves of two sequentially presented faces or words were the same or different, ignoring the irrelevant halves. Similar stronger global priming effects were found for faces and words, indicating that holistic processing for the two types of stimuli were susceptible to attention manipulations to similar degrees, which was confirmed with Bayesian analyses. The findings add to the investigation of the similarity and differences between holistic processing and help reveal those aspects of holistic processing that are domain general and those specific to individual categories.
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Álvarez-San Millán A, Iglesias J, Gutkin A, Olivares EI. Forest Before Trees: Letter Stimulus and Sex Modulate Global Precedence in Visual Perception. Front Psychol 2021; 12:546483. [PMID: 33841222 PMCID: PMC8024528 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.546483] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2020] [Accepted: 03/01/2021] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
The global precedence effect (GPE), originally referring to processing hierarchical visual stimuli composed of letters, is characterised by both global advantage and global interference. We present herein a study of how this effect is modulated by the variables letter and sex. The Navon task, using the letters “H” and “S,” was administered to 78 males and 168 females (69 follicular women, 52 luteal women, and 47 hormonal contraceptive users). No interaction occurred between the letter and sex variables, but significant main effects arose from each of these. Reaction times (RTs) revealed that the letter “H” was identified more rapidly in the congruent condition both in the global and the local task, and the letter “S” in the incongruent condition for the local task. Also, although RTs showed a GPE in both males and females, males displayed shorter reaction times in both global and local tasks. Furthermore, luteal women showed higher d’ index (discrimination sensitivity) in the congruent condition for the local task than both follicular women and hormonal contraceptive users, as well as longer exploration time of the irrelevant level during the global task than males. We conclude that, according to the linear periodicity law, the GPE is enhanced for compound letters with straight vs. curved strokes, whereas it is stronger in males than in females. Relevantly, luteal phase of the menstrual cycle seems to tilt women to rely on finer grained information, thus exhibiting an analytical processing style in global/local visual processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Álvarez-San Millán
- Department of Biological and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Jaime Iglesias
- Department of Biological and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Anahí Gutkin
- Department of Biological and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Ela I Olivares
- Department of Biological and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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The Brain’s Asymmetric Frequency Tuning: Asymmetric Behavior Originates from Asymmetric Perception. Symmetry (Basel) 2020. [DOI: 10.3390/sym12122083] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
To construct a coherent multi-modal percept, vertebrate brains extract low-level features (such as spatial and temporal frequencies) from incoming sensory signals. However, because frequency processing is lateralized with the right hemisphere favouring low frequencies while the left favours higher frequencies, this introduces asymmetries between the hemispheres. Here, we describe how this lateralization shapes the development of several cognitive domains, ranging from visuo-spatial and numerical cognition to language, social cognition, and even aesthetic appreciation, and leads to the emergence of asymmetries in behaviour. We discuss the neuropsychological and educational implications of these emergent asymmetries and suggest future research approaches.
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