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Noyce AL, Varghese L, Mathias SR, Shinn-Cunningham BG. Perceptual organization and task demands jointly shape auditory working memory capacity. JASA Express Lett 2024; 4:034402. [PMID: 38526127 PMCID: PMC10966505 DOI: 10.1121/10.0025392] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2023] [Accepted: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 03/26/2024]
Abstract
Listeners performed two different tasks in which they remembered short sequences comprising either complex tones (generally heard as one melody) or everyday sounds (generally heard as separate objects). In one, listeners judged whether a probe item had been present in the preceding sequence. In the other, they judged whether a second sequence of the same items was identical in order to the preceding sequence. Performance on the first task was higher for everyday sounds; performance on the second was higher for complex tones. Perceptual organization strongly shapes listeners' memory for sounds, with implications for real-world communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abigail L Noyce
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA
| | - Leonard Varghese
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
| | - Samuel R Mathias
- Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, , , ,
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2
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Kwasa JA, Noyce AL, Torres LM, Richardson BN, Shinn-Cunningham BG. Top-down auditory attention modulates neural responses more strongly in neurotypical than ADHD young adults. Brain Res 2023; 1798:148144. [PMID: 36328068 PMCID: PMC9749882 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2022.148144] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2022] [Revised: 10/24/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Human cognitive abilities naturally vary along a spectrum, even among those we call "neurotypical". Individuals differ in their ability to selectively attend to goal-relevant auditory stimuli. We sought to characterize this variability in a cohort of people with diverse attentional functioning. We recruited both neurotypical (N = 20) and ADHD (N = 25) young adults, all with normal hearing. Participants listened to one of three concurrent, spatially separated speech streams and reported the order of the syllables in that stream while we recorded electroencephalography (EEG). We tested both the ability to sustain attentional focus on a single "Target" stream and the ability to monitor the Target but flexibly either ignore or switch attention to an unpredictable "Interrupter" stream from another direction that sometimes appeared. Although differences in both stimulus structure and task demands affected behavioral performance, ADHD status did not. In both groups, the Interrupter evoked larger neural responses when it was to be attended compared to when it was irrelevant, including for the P3a "reorienting" response previously described as involuntary. This attentional modulation was weaker in ADHD listeners, even though their behavioral performance was the same. Across the entire cohort, individual performance correlated with the degree of top-down modulation of neural responses. These results demonstrate that listeners differ in their ability to modulate neural representations of sound based on task goals, while suggesting that adults with ADHD may have weaker volitional control of attentional processes than their neurotypical counterparts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jasmine A. Kwasa
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, United States, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 1 Silber Way, Boston, MA, 02215, United States, Corresponding author at: 4825 Frew St, A52A Baker Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States. (J.A. Kwasa)
| | - Abigail L. Noyce
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, United States
| | - Laura M. Torres
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 1 Silber Way, Boston, MA, 02215, United States
| | - Benjamin N. Richardson
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, United States
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3
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Noyce AL, Kwasa JAC, Shinn-Cunningham BG. Defining attention from an auditory perspective. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci 2023; 14:e1610. [PMID: 35642475 PMCID: PMC9712589 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1610] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2021] [Revised: 04/24/2022] [Accepted: 04/29/2022] [Indexed: 01/17/2023]
Abstract
Attention prioritizes certain information at the expense of other information in ways that are similar across vision, audition, and other sensory modalities. It influences how-and even what-information is represented and processed, affecting brain activity at every level. Much of the core research into cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention has used visual tasks. However, the same top-down, object-based, and bottom-up attentional processes shape auditory perception, largely through the same underlying, cognitive networks. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention.
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An WW, Pei A, Noyce AL, Shinn-Cunningham B. Decoding auditory attention from EEG using a convolutional neural network . Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2021; 2021:6586-6589. [PMID: 34892618 DOI: 10.1109/embc46164.2021.9630484] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems allow users to communicate directly with a device using their brain. BCI devices leveraging electroencephalography (EEG) signals as a means of communication typically use manual feature engineering on the data to perform decoding. This approach is time intensive, requires substantial domain knowledge, and does not translate well, even to similar tasks. To combat this issue, we designed a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to perform decoding on EEG data collected from an auditory attention paradigm. Our CNN model not only bypasses the need for manual feature engineering, but additionally improves decoding accuracy (∼77%) and efficiency (∼11 bits/min) compared to a support vector machine (SVM) baseline. The results demonstrate the potential for the use of CNN in auditory BCI designs.
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Bulger E, Shinn-Cunningham BG, Noyce AL. Expected and unexpected distractors in the Eriksen flanker task. J Vis 2021. [DOI: 10.1167/jov.21.9.2696] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Eli Bulger
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
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Noyce AL, Lefco RW, Brissenden JA, Tobyne SM, Shinn-Cunningham BG, Somers DC. Extended Frontal Networks for Visual and Auditory Working Memory. Cereb Cortex 2021; 32:855-869. [PMID: 34467399 PMCID: PMC8841551 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab249] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2020] [Revised: 06/25/2021] [Accepted: 06/28/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Working memory (WM) supports the persistent representation of transient sensory information. Visual and auditory stimuli place different demands on WM and recruit different brain networks. Separate auditory- and visual-biased WM networks extend into the frontal lobes, but several challenges confront attempts to parcellate human frontal cortex, including fine-grained organization and between-subject variability. Here, we use differential intrinsic functional connectivity from 2 visual-biased and 2 auditory-biased frontal structures to identify additional candidate sensory-biased regions in frontal cortex. We then examine direct contrasts of task functional magnetic resonance imaging during visual versus auditory 2-back WM to validate those candidate regions. Three visual-biased and 5 auditory-biased regions are robustly activated bilaterally in the frontal lobes of individual subjects (N = 14, 7 women). These regions exhibit a sensory preference during passive exposure to task stimuli, and that preference is stronger during WM. Hierarchical clustering analysis of intrinsic connectivity among novel and previously identified bilateral sensory-biased regions confirms that they functionally segregate into visual and auditory networks, even though the networks are anatomically interdigitated. We also observe that the frontotemporal auditory WM network is highly selective and exhibits strong functional connectivity to structures serving non-WM functions, while the frontoparietal visual WM network hierarchically merges into the multiple-demand cognitive system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abigail L Noyce
- Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.,Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - Ray W Lefco
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - James A Brissenden
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.,Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Sean M Tobyne
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | | | - David C Somers
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
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Somers DC, Michalka SW, Tobyne SM, Noyce AL. Individual Subject Approaches to Mapping Sensory-Biased and Multiple-Demand Regions in Human Frontal Cortex. Curr Opin Behav Sci 2021; 40:169-177. [PMID: 34307791 PMCID: PMC8294130 DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Sensory modality, widely accepted as a key factor in the functional organization of posterior cortical areas, also shapes the organization of human frontal lobes. 'Deep imaging,' or the practice of collecting a sizable amount of data on individual subjects, offers significant advantages in revealing fine-scale aspects of functional organization of the human brain. Here, we review deep imaging approaches to mapping multiple sensory-biased and multiple-demand regions within human lateral frontal cortex. In addition, we discuss how deep imaging methods can be transferred to large public data sets to further extend functional mapping at the group level. We also review how 'connectome fingerprinting' approaches, combined with deep imaging, can be used to localize fine-grained functional organization in individual subjects using resting-state data. Finally, we summarize current 'best practices' for deep imaging.
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Affiliation(s)
- David C. Somers
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Samantha W. Michalka
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
- Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, US
| | - Sean M. Tobyne
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
- Physiological Systems – Sensing, Perception and Applied Robotics Division, Charles River Analytics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Abigail L. Noyce
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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An WW, Pei A, Noyce AL, Shinn-Cunningham B. Decoding auditory attention from single-trial EEG for a high-efficiency brain-computer interface. Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2020; 2020:3456-3459. [PMID: 33018747 DOI: 10.1109/embc44109.2020.9175753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems enable humans to communicate with a machine in a non-verbal and covert way. Many past BCI designs used visual stimuli, due to the robustness of neural signatures evoked by visual input. However, these BCI systems can only be used when visual attention is available. This study proposes a new BCI design using auditory stimuli, decoding spatial attention from electroencephalography (EEG). Results show that this new approach can decode attention with a high accuracy (>75%) and has a high information transfer rate (>10 bits/min) compared to other auditory BCI systems. It also has the potential to allow decoding that does not depend on subject-specific training.
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Fleming JT, Noyce AL, Shinn-Cunningham BG. Audio-visual spatial alignment improves integration in the presence of a competing audio-visual stimulus. Neuropsychologia 2020; 146:107530. [PMID: 32574616 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107530] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2019] [Revised: 06/08/2020] [Accepted: 06/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
In order to parse the world around us, we must constantly determine which sensory inputs arise from the same physical source and should therefore be perceptually integrated. Temporal coherence between auditory and visual stimuli drives audio-visual (AV) integration, but the role played by AV spatial alignment is less well understood. Here, we manipulated AV spatial alignment and collected electroencephalography (EEG) data while human subjects performed a free-field variant of the "pip and pop" AV search task. In this paradigm, visual search is aided by a spatially uninformative auditory tone, the onsets of which are synchronized to changes in the visual target. In Experiment 1, tones were either spatially aligned or spatially misaligned with the visual display. Regardless of AV spatial alignment, we replicated the key pip and pop result of improved AV search times. Mirroring the behavioral results, we found an enhancement of early event-related potentials (ERPs), particularly the auditory N1 component, in both AV conditions. We demonstrate that both top-down and bottom-up attention contribute to these N1 enhancements. In Experiment 2, we tested whether spatial alignment influences AV integration in a more challenging context with competing multisensory stimuli. An AV foil was added that visually resembled the target and was synchronized to its own stream of synchronous tones. The visual components of the AV target and AV foil occurred in opposite hemifields; the two auditory components were also in opposite hemifields and were either spatially aligned or spatially misaligned with the visual components to which they were synchronized. Search was fastest when the auditory and visual components of the AV target (and the foil) were spatially aligned. Attention modulated ERPs in both spatial conditions, but importantly, the scalp topography of early evoked responses shifted only when stimulus components were spatially aligned, signaling the recruitment of different neural generators likely related to multisensory integration. These results suggest that AV integration depends on AV spatial alignment when stimuli in both modalities compete for selective integration, a common scenario in real-world perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Justin T Fleming
- Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, Division of Medical Sciences, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Abigail L Noyce
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
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10
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Lefco RW, Brissenden JA, Noyce AL, Tobyne SM, Somers DC. Gradients of functional organization in posterior parietal cortex revealed by visual attention, visual short-term memory, and intrinsic functional connectivity. Neuroimage 2020; 219:117029. [PMID: 32526387 PMCID: PMC7542540 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2019] [Revised: 04/27/2020] [Accepted: 06/04/2020] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Visual attention and visual working memory tasks recruit a common network of lateral frontal cortical (LFC) and posterior parietal cortical (PPC) regions. Here, we examine finer-scale organization of this frontoparietal network. Three LFC regions recruited by visual cognition tasks, superior precentral sulcus (sPCS), inferior precentral sulcus (iPCS), and mid inferior frontal sulcus (midIFS) exhibit differential patterns of resting-state functional connectivity to PPC. A broad dorsomedial to ventrolateral gradient is observed, with sPCS connectivity dominating in the dorsomedial PPC band, iPCS dominating in the middle band, and midIFS dominating in the ventrolateral band. These connectivity-defined subregions of PPC capture differential task activation between a pair of visual attention and working memory tasks. The relative functional connectivity of sPCS and iPCS also varies along the rostral-caudal axis of the retinotopic regions of PPC. iPCS connectivity is relatively stronger near the IPS0/IPS1 and IPS2/IPS3 borders, especially on the lateral portions of these borders, which each preferentially encode central visual field representations. In contrast, sPCS connectivity is relatively stronger elsewhere in retinotopic IPS regions which preferentially encode peripheral visual field representations. These findings reveal fine-scale gradients in functional connectivity within the frontoparietal visual network that capture a high-degree of specificity in PPC functional organization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ray W Lefco
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - James A Brissenden
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - Abigail L Noyce
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - Sean M Tobyne
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - David C Somers
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
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Bonacci LM, Bressler S, Kwasa JAC, Noyce AL, Shinn-Cunningham BG. Effects of Visual Scene Complexity on Neural Signatures of Spatial Attention. Front Hum Neurosci 2020; 14:91. [PMID: 32265675 PMCID: PMC7105597 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00091] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2019] [Accepted: 03/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Spatial selective attention greatly affects our processing of complex visual scenes, yet the way in which the brain selects relevant objects while suppressing irrelevant objects is still unclear. Evidence of these processes has been found using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG). However, few studies have characterized these measures during attention to dynamic stimuli, and little is known regarding how these measures change with increased scene complexity. Here, we compared attentional modulation of the EEG N1 and alpha power (oscillations between 8–14 Hz) across three visual selective attention tasks. The tasks differed in the number of irrelevant stimuli presented, but all required sustained attention to the orientation trajectory of a lateralized stimulus. In scenes with few irrelevant stimuli, top-down control of spatial attention is associated with strong modulation of both the N1 and alpha power across parietal-occipital channels. In scenes with many irrelevant stimuli in both hemifields, however, top-down control is no longer represented by strong modulation of alpha power, and N1 amplitudes are overall weaker. These results suggest that as a scene becomes more complex, requiring suppression in both hemifields, the neural signatures of top-down control degrade, likely reflecting some limitation in EEG to represent this suppression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lia M Bonacci
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Scott Bressler
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Jasmine A C Kwasa
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Abigail L Noyce
- Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
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Marshall RD, Brissenden JA, Devaney KJ, Noyce AL, Rosen ML, Somers DC. Functional Differentiation of Visual Attention Processing Within Human Cerebellum. J Vis 2019. [DOI: 10.1167/19.10.320b] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
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13
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Tobyne SM, Somers DC, Brissenden JA, Michalka SW, Noyce AL, Osher DE. Prediction of individualized task activation in sensory modality-selective frontal cortex with 'connectome fingerprinting'. Neuroimage 2018; 183:173-185. [PMID: 30092348 PMCID: PMC6292512 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2018] [Revised: 08/01/2018] [Accepted: 08/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
The human cerebral cortex is estimated to comprise 200-300 distinct functional regions per hemisphere. Identification of the precise anatomical location of an individual's unique set of functional regions is a challenge for neuroscience that has broad scientific and clinical utility. Recent studies have demonstrated the existence of four interleaved regions in lateral frontal cortex (LFC) that are part of broader visual attention and auditory attention networks (Michalka et al., 2015; Noyce et al., 2017; Tobyne et al., 2017). Due to a large degree of inter-subject anatomical variability, identification of these regions depends critically on within-subject analyses. Here, we demonstrate that, for both sexes, an individual's unique pattern of resting-state functional connectivity can accurately identify their specific pattern of visual- and auditory-selective working memory and attention task activation in lateral frontal cortex (LFC) using "connectome fingerprinting." Building on prior techniques (Saygin et al., 2011; Osher et al., 2016; Tavor et al., 2016; Smittenaar et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017; Parker Jones et al., 2017), we demonstrate here that connectome fingerprint predictions are far more accurate than group-average predictions and match the accuracy of within-subject task-based functional localization, while requiring less data. These findings are robust across brain parcellations and are improved with penalized regression methods. Because resting-state data can be easily and rapidly collected, these results have broad implications for both clinical and research investigations of frontal lobe function. Our findings also provide a set of recommendations for future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sean M Tobyne
- Graduate Program for Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - David C Somers
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
| | - James A Brissenden
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | | | - Abigail L Noyce
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - David E Osher
- Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
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