More Like this

1. Global Functional Connectivity at Rest Is Associated with Attention: An Arterial Spin Labeling Study

   https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020228  

   Chen, Shichun; Zhang, Yakun; Zhang, Zongpai; Zhou, Tony D.; Duan, Wenna; Weinschenk, George; Luh, Wen-Ming; Anderson, Adam K.; Dai, Weiying (February 2023, Brain Sciences)

   Neural markers of attention, including those frequently linked to the event-related potential P3 (P300) or P3b component, vary widely within and across participants. Understanding the neural mechanisms of attention that contribute to the P3 is crucial for better understanding attention-related brain disorders. All ten participants were scanned twice with a resting-state PCASL perfusion MRI and an ERP with a visual oddball task to measure brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and P3 parameters (P3 amplitudes and P3 latencies). Global rsFC (average rsFC across the entire brain) was associated with both P3 amplitudes (r = 0.57, p = 0.011) and P3 onset latencies (r = −0.56, p = 0.012). The observed P3 parameters were correlated with predicted P3 amplitude from the global rsFC (amplitude: r = +0.48, p = 0.037; latency: r = +0.40, p = 0.088) but not correlated with the rsFC over the most significant individual edge. P3 onset latency was primarily related to long-range connections between the prefrontal and parietal/limbic regions, while P3 amplitudes were related to connections between prefrontal and parietal/occipital, between sensorimotor and subcortical, and between limbic/subcortical and parietal/occipital regions. These results demonstrated the power of resting-state PCASL and P3 correlation with brain global functional connectivity. 

   more » « less
2. The Impact of Indoor Environment on Engineering Students’ Inhibition Control Ability

   Mehri Mobaraki-Omoumi; Md Tanvir Ahad; Javeed Kittur; Zahed Siddique (November 2023, Proceedings of the ASME 2023 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition)

   Inhibition control is one of the executive functions identified as the process by which goals influence prepotent response tendency. Most of the engineering courses include problem solving activities, and it has been proven that cognitive inhibition abilities improve students’ performance. So, understanding the factors that can enhance interference control skills is highly valuable in education. The Stroop task was designed to investigate interference control by evaluating how incongruent conditions can increase response time (RT), called the Stroop effect. In this study, we investigate the impact of indoor temperature (20° C, 24.40° C, and 26° C) on interference control ability using Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies. Ten engineering students from the University of Oklahoma performed Stroop/reverse Stroop tasks using Neurobs’ Presentation (Neurobehavioral Systems, Inc., Albany, CA). The ERP components related to the Stroop effect and the anatomical location of the topographic scalp maps were evaluated. The prefrontal network is active during the process, with one exception. N100-N200 components with higher amplitudes are related to the selective attention observed in this study in all three thermal conditions. The statistical analysis showed a significant impact of the thermal condition on response time in the incongruent condition presented by the Stroop test and general incongruent condition. 

   more » « less
3. Leveling the Field for a Fairer Race between Going and Stopping: Neural Evidence for the Race Model of Motor Inhibition from a New Version of the Stop Signal Task

   https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01503  

   Dykstra, Tobin; Waller, Darcy A.; Hazeltine, Eliot; Wessel, Jan R. (April 2020, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience)

   The stop signal task (SST) is the gold standard experimental model of inhibitory control. However, neither SST condition–contrast (stop vs. go, successful vs. failed stop) purely operationalizes inhibition. Because stop trials include a second, infrequent signal, the stop versus go contrast confounds inhibition with attentional and stimulus processing demands. While this confound is controlled for in the successful versus failed stop contrast, the go process is systematically faster on failed stop trials, contaminating the contrast with a different noninhibitory confound. Here, we present an SST variant to address both confounds and evaluate putative neural indices of inhibition with these influences removed. In our variant, stop signals occurred on every trial, equating the noninhibitory demands of the stop versus go contrast. To entice participants to respond despite the impending stop signals, responses produced before stop signals were rewarded. This also reversed the go process bias that typically affects the successful versus failed stop contrast. We recorded scalp electroencephalography in this new version of the task (as well as a standard version of the SST with infrequent stop signal) and found that, even under these conditions, the properties of the frontocentral stop signal P3 ERP remained consistent with the race model. Specifically, in both tasks, the amplitude of the P3 was increased on stop versus go trials. Moreover, the onset of this P3 occurred earlier for successful compared with failed stop trials in both tasks, consistent with the proposal of the race model that an earlier start of the inhibition process will increase stopping success. Therefore, the frontocentral stop signal P3 represents a neural process whose properties are in line with the predictions of the race model of motor inhibition, even when the SST's confounds are controlled. 

   more » « less
4. Age-related differences in the temporal dynamics of spectral power during memory encoding

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227274  

   Healey, M Karl; Kahana, Michael J (January 2020, PloS one)

   We examined oscillatory power in electroencephalographic recordings obtained while younger (18-30 years) and older (60+ years) adults studied lists of words for later recall. Power changed in a highly consistent way from word-to-word across the study period. Above 14 Hz, there were virtually no age differences in these neural gradients. But gradients below 14 Hz reliably discriminated between age groups. Older adults with the best memory performance showed the largest departures from the younger adult pattern of neural activity. These results suggest that age differences in the dynamics of neural activity across an encoding period reflect changes in cognitive processing that may compensate for age-related decline. 

   more » « less
5. Age Differences In Retrieval-Related Reinstatement Reflect Age-Related Dedifferentiation At Encoding

   https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa210  

   Hill, Paul F; King, Danielle R; Rugg, Michael D (August 2020, Cerebral Cortex)

   Abstract Age-related reductions in neural selectivity have been linked to cognitive decline. We examined whether age differences in the strength of retrieval-related cortical reinstatement could be explained by analogous differences in neural selectivity at encoding, and whether reinstatement was associated with memory performance in an age-dependent or an age-independent manner. Young and older adults underwent fMRI as they encoded words paired with images of faces or scenes. During a subsequent scanned memory test participants judged whether test words were studied or unstudied and, for words judged studied, also made a source memory judgment about the associated image category. Using multi-voxel pattern similarity analyses, we identified robust evidence for reduced scene reinstatement in older relative to younger adults. This decline was however largely explained by age differences in neural differentiation at encoding; moreover, a similar relationship between neural selectivity at encoding and retrieval was evident in young participants. The results suggest that, regardless of age, the selectivity with which events are neurally processed at the time of encoding can determine the strength of retrieval-related cortical reinstatement. 

   more » « less