EyeLink fMRI / MEG Publications
All EyeLink fMRI and MEG research publications (with concurrent eye tracking) up until 2023 (with some early 2024s) are listed below by year. You can search the publications using keywords such as Visual Cortex, Neural Plasticity, MEG, etc. You can also search for individual author names. If we missed any EyeLink fMRI or MEG articles, please email us!
2024 |
Reza Azadi; Emily Lopez; Jessica Taubert; Amanda Patterson; Arash Afraz Inactivation of face- selective neurons alters eye movements when free viewing faces Journal Article In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 121, no. 3, pp. 1–10, 2024. @article{Azadi2024a, During free viewing, faces attract gaze and induce specific fixation patterns corresponding to the facial features. This suggests that neurons encoding the facial features are in the causal chain that steers the eyes. However, there is no physiological evidence to support a mechanistic link between face- encoding neurons in high- level visual areas and the oculo- motor system. In this study, we targeted the middle face patches of the inferior temporal (IT) cortex in two macaque monkeys using an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizer. We then utilized muscimol microinjection to unilaterally suppress IT neural activity inside and outside the face patches and recorded eye movements while the animals free viewing natural scenes. Inactivation of the face- selective neurons altered the pattern of eye movements on faces: The monkeys found faces in the scene but neglected the eye contralateral to the inactivation hemisphere. These findings reveal the causal contribution of the high- level visual cortex in eye movements. |
Andy Brendler; Max Schneider; Immanuel G. Elbau; Rui Sun; Taechawidd Nantawisarakul; Dorothee Pöhlchen; Tanja Brückl; A. K. Brem; E. B. Binder; A. Erhardt; J. Fietz; N. C. Grandi; Y. Kim; S. Ilić-Ćoćić; L. Leuchs; S. Lucae; T. Namendorf; J. Pape; L. Schilbach; I. Mücke-Heim; J. Ziebula; Michael Czisch; Philipp G. Sämann; Michael D. Lee; Victor I. Spoormaker In: Scientific Reports, vol. 14, no. 344, pp. 1–11, 2024. @article{Brendler2024, Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a devastating and heterogenous disorder for which there are no approved biomarkers in clinical practice. We recently identified anticipatory hypo-arousal indexed by pupil responses as a candidate mechanism subserving depression symptomatology. Here, we conducted a replication and extension study of these findings. We analyzed a replication sample of 40 unmedicated patients with a diagnosis of depression and 30 healthy control participants, who performed a reward anticipation task while pupil responses were measured. Using a Bayesian modelling approach taking measurement uncertainty into account, we could show that the negative correlation between pupil dilation and symptom load during reward anticipation is replicable within MDD patients, albeit with a lower effect size. Furthermore, with the combined sample of 136 participants (81 unmedicated depressed and 55 healthy control participants), we further showed that reduced pupil dilation in anticipation of reward is inversely associated with anhedonia items of the Beck Depression Inventory in particular. Moreover, using simultaneous fMRI, particularly the right anterior insula as part of the salience network was negatively correlated with depressive symptom load in general and anhedonia items specifically. The present study supports the utility of pupillometry in assessing noradrenergically mediated hypo-arousal during reward anticipation in MDD, a physiological process that appears to subserve anhedonia. |
2023 |
Sreenivasan Meyyappan; Abhijit Rajan; George R. Mangun; Mingzhou Ding Top-down control of the left visual field bias in cued visual spatial attention Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 33, no. 9, pp. 5097–5107, 2023. @article{Meyyappan2023, A left visual field (LVF) bias in perceptual judgments, response speed, and discrimination accuracy has been reported in humans. Cognitive factors, such as visual spatial attention, are known to modulate or even eliminate this bias. We investigated this problem by recording pupillometry together with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a cued visual spatial attention task. We observed that (i) the pupil was significantly more dilated following attend-right than attend-left cues, (ii) the task performance (e.g. reaction time [RT]) did not differ between attend-left and attend-right trials, and (iii) the difference in cue-related pupil dilation between attend-left and attend-right trials was inversely related to the corresponding difference in RT. Neuroscientically, correlating the difference in cue-related pupil dilation with the corresponding cue-related fMRI difference yielded activations primarily in the right hemisphere, including the right intraparietal sulcus and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that (i) there is an asymmetry in visual spatial attention control, with the rightward attention control being more effortful than the leftward attention control, (ii) this asymmetry underlies the reduction or the elimination of the LVF bias, and (iii) the components of the attentional control networks in the right hemisphere are likely part of the neural substrate of the observed asymmetry in attentional control. |
Viola Mocz; Su Keun Jeong; Marvin Chun; Yaoda Xu Multiple visual objects are represented differently in the human brain and convolutional neural networks Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Mocz2023, Objects in the real world usually appear with other objects. To form object representations independent of whether or not other objects are encoded concurrently, in the primate brain, responses to an object pair are well approximated by the average responses to each constituent object shown alone. This is found at the single unit level in the slope of response amplitudes of macaque IT neurons to paired and single objects, and at the population level in fMRI voxel response patterns in human ventral object processing regions (e.g., LO). Here, we compare how the human brain and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) represent paired objects. In human LO, we show that averaging exists in both single fMRI voxels and voxel population responses. However, in the higher layers of five CNNs pretrained for object classification varying in architecture, depth and recurrent processing, slope distribution across units and, consequently, averaging at the population level both deviated significantly from the brain data. Object representations thus interact with each other in CNNs when objects are shown together and differ from when objects are shown individually. Such distortions could significantly limit CNNs' ability to generalize object representations formed in different contexts. |
Alina Nostadt; Michael A. Nitsche; Martin Tegenthoff; Silke Lissek In: Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Nostadt2023, Contextual information is essential for learning and memory processes and plays a crucial role during the recall of extinction memory, and in the renewal effect, which is the context-dependent recovery of an extinguished response. The dopaminergic system is known to be involved in regulating attentional processes by shifting attention to novel and salient contextual cues. Higher dopamine levels are associated with a better recall of previously learned stimulus-outcome associations and enhanced encoding, as well as retrieval of contextual information which promotes renewal. In this fMRI study, we aimed to investigate the impact of processing contextual information and the influence of dopaminergic D2-like receptor activation on attention to contextual information during a predictive learning task as well as upon extinction learning, memory performance, and activity of extinction-related brain areas. A single oral dose of 1.25 mg bromocriptine or an identical-looking placebo was administered to the participants. We modified a predictive learning task that in previous studies reliably evoked a renewal effect, by increasing the complexity of contextual information. We analysed fixations and dwell on contextual cues by use of eye-tracking and correlated these with behavioural performance and BOLD activation of extinction-related brain areas. Our results indicate that the group with dopaminergic D2-like receptor stimulation had higher attention to task-relevant contextual information and greater/lower BOLD activation of brain regions associated with cognitive control during extinction learning and recall. Moreover, renewal responses were almost completely absent. Since this behavioural effect was observed for both treatment groups, we assume that this was due to the complexity of the altered task design. |
Amir Assouline; Avi Mendelsohn Weaving a story: Narrative formation over prolonged time scales engages social cognition and frontoparietal networks Journal Article In: European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 57, no. 5, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Assouline2023, Forming narratives is of key importance to human experience, enabling one to render large amounts of information into relatively compacted stories for future retrieval, giving meaning to otherwise fragmented occurrences. The neural mechanisms that underlie coherent narrative construction of causally connected information over prolonged temporal periods are yet unclear. Participants in this fMRI study observed consecutive scenes from a full-length movie either in their original order, enabling causal inferences over time, or in reverse order, impeding a key component of coherent narratives—causal inference. In between scenes, we presented short periods of blank screens for examining post-encoding processing effects. Using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) followed by seed-base correlation analysis, we hypothesized that net- works involved in online monitoring of incoming information on the one hand, and offline processing of previous occurrences on the other would differ between the groups. We found that despite the exposure to the same scenes, the chronological-order condition exhibited enhanced functional connectivity in frontoparietal regions associated with information integration and working memory. The reverse-order condition yielded offline, post-scene coactivation of neural networks involved in social cognition and particularly theory of mind and action comprehension. These findings shed light on offline processes of narrative construction efforts, highlighting the role of social cognition networks in seeking for narrative coherence. |
Elise Beckers; Islay Campbell; Roya Sharifpour; Ilenia Paparella; Alexandre Berger; Jose Fermin Balda Aizpurua; Ekaterina Koshmanova; Nasrin Mortazavi; Puneet Talwar; Siya Sherif; Heidi I. L. Jacobs; Gilles Vandewalle Impact of repeated short light exposures on sustained pupil responses in an fMRI environment Journal Article In: Journal of Sleep Research, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Beckers2023, Light triggers numerous non-image-forming, or non-visual, biological effects. The brain correlates of these non-image-forming effects have been investigated, notably using magnetic resonance imaging and short light exposures varying in irradiance and spectral quality. However, it is not clear whether non-image-forming responses estimation may be biased by having light in sequential blocks, for example, through a potential carryover effect of one light onto the next. We reasoned that pupil light reflex was an easy readout of one of the non-image-forming effects of light that could be used to address this issue. We characterised the sustained pupil light reflex in 13–16 healthy young individuals under short light exposures during three distinct cognitive processes (executive, emotional and attentional). Light conditions pseudo-randomly alternated between monochromatic orange light (0.16 melanopic equivalent daylight illuminance lux) and polychromatic blue-enriched white light of three different levels (37, 92, 190 melanopic equivalent daylight illuminance lux). As expected, higher melanopic irradiance was associated with larger sustained pupil light reflex in each cognitive domain. This result was stable over the light sequence under higher melanopic irradiance levels compared with lower ones. Exploratory frequency-domain analyses further revealed that sustained pupil light reflex was more variable under lower melanopic irradiance levels. Importantly, sustained pupil light reflex varied across tasks independently of the light condition, pointing to a potential impact of light history and/or cognitive context on sustained pupil light reflex. Together, our results emphasise that the distinct contribution and adaptation of the different retinal photoreceptors influence the non-image-forming effects of light and therefore potentially their brain correlates. |
Gene Tangtartharakul; Catherine A. Morgan; Simon K. Rushton; D. Samuel Schwarzkopf Retinotopic connectivity maps of human visual cortex with unconstrained eye movements Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 44, no. 16, pp. 5221–5237, 2023. @article{Tangtartharakul2023, Human visual cortex contains topographic visual field maps whose organization can be revealed with retinotopic mapping. Unfortunately, constraints posed by standard mapping hinder its use in patients, atypical subject groups, and individuals at either end of the lifespan. This severely limits the conclusions we can draw about visual processing in such individuals. Here, we present a novel data-driven method to estimate connective fields, resulting in fine-grained maps of the functional connectivity between brain areas. We find that inhibitory connectivity fields accompany, and often surround facilitatory fields. The visual field extent of these inhibitory subfields falls off with cortical magnification. We further show that our method is robust to large eye movements and myopic defocus. Importantly, freed from the controlled stimulus conditions in standard mapping experiments, using entertaining stimuli and unconstrained eye movements our approach can generate retinotopic maps, including the periphery visual field hitherto only possible to map with special stimulus displays. Generally, our results show that the connective field method can gain knowledge about retinotopic architecture of visual cortex in patients and participants where this is at best difficult and confounded, if not impossible, with current methods. |
Qawi K. Telesford; Eduardo Gonzalez-Moreira; Ting Xu; Yiwen Tian; Stanley J. Colcombe; Jessica Cloud; Brian E. Russ; Arnaud Falchier; Maximilian Nentwich; Jens Madsen; Lucas C. Parra; Charles E. Schroeder; Michael P. Milham; Alexandre R. Franco An open-access dataset of naturalistic viewing using simultaneous EEG-fMRI Journal Article In: Scientific Data, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Telesford2023, In this work, we present a dataset that combines functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to use as a resource for understanding human brain function in these two imaging modalities. The dataset can also be used for optimizing preprocessing methods for simultaneously collected imaging data. The dataset includes simultaneously collected recordings from 22 individuals (ages: 23–51) across various visual and naturalistic stimuli. In addition, physiological, eye tracking, electrocardiography, and cognitive and behavioral data were collected along with this neuroimaging data. Visual tasks include a flickering checkerboard collected outside and inside the MRI scanner (EEG-only) and simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings. Simultaneous recordings include rest, the visual paradigm Inscapes, and several short video movies representing naturalistic stimuli. Raw and preprocessed data are openly available to download. We present this dataset as part of an effort to provide open-access data to increase the opportunity for discoveries and understanding of the human brain and evaluate the correlation between electrical brain activity and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals. |
Ruud L. Brink; Keno Hagena; Niklas Wilming; Peter R. Murphy; Christian Büchel; Tobias H. Donner Flexible sensory-motor mapping rules manifest in correlated variability of stimulus and action codes across the brain Journal Article In: Neuron, vol. 111, no. 4, pp. 571–584, 2023. @article{Brink2023, Humans and non-human primates can flexibly switch between different arbitrary mappings from sensation to action to solve a cognitive task. It has remained unknown how the brain implements such flexible sensory-motor mapping rules. Here, we uncovered a dynamic reconfiguration of task-specific correlated variability between sensory and motor brain regions. Human participants switched between two rules for reporting visual orientation judgments during fMRI recordings. Rule switches were either signaled explicitly or inferred by the participants from ambiguous cues. We used behavioral modeling to reconstruct the time course of their belief about the active rule. In both contexts, the patterns of correlations between ongoing fluctuations in stimulus- and action-selective activity across visual- and action-related brain regions tracked participants' belief about the active rule. The rule-specific correlation patterns broke down around the time of behavioral errors. We conclude that internal beliefs about task state are instantiated in brain-wide, selective patterns of correlated variability. |
Isabella C. Wagner; Luise P. Graichen; Boryana Todorova; Andre Lüttig; David B. Omer; Matthias Stangl; Claus Lamm Entorhinal grid-like codes and time-locked network dynamics track others navigating through space Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Wagner2023a, Navigating through crowded, dynamically changing environments requires the ability to keep track of other individuals. Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex are a central component of self-related navigation but whether they also track others' movement is unclear. Here, we propose that entorhinal grid-like codes make an essential contribution to socio-spatial navigation. Sixty human participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while observing and re-tracing different paths of a demonstrator that navigated a virtual reality environment. Results revealed that grid-like codes in the entorhinal cortex tracked the other individual navigating through space. The activity of grid-like codes was time-locked to increases in co-activation and entorhinal-cortical connectivity that included the striatum, the hippocampus, parahippocampal and right posterior parietal cortices. Surprisingly, the grid-related effects during observation were stronger the worse participants performed when subsequently re-tracing the demonstrator's paths. Our findings suggests that network dynamics time-locked to entorhinal grid-cell-related activity might serve to distribute information about the location of others throughout the brain. |
Noriya Watanabe; Kosuke Miyoshi; Koji Jimura; Daisuke Shimane; Ruedeerat Keerativittayayut; Kiyoshi Nakahara; Masaki Takeda Multimodal deep neural decoding reveals highly resolved spatiotemporal profile of visual object representation in humans Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 275, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Watanabe2023, Perception and categorization of objects in a visual scene are essential to grasp the surrounding situation. Recently, neural decoding schemes, such as machine learning in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has been employed to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms. However, it remains unclear as to how spatially distributed brain regions temporally represent visual object categories and sub-categories. One promising strategy to address this issue is neural decoding with concurrently obtained neural response data of high spatial and temporal resolution. In this study, we explored the spatial and temporal organization of visual object representations using concurrent fMRI and electroencephalography (EEG), combined with neural decoding using deep neural networks (DNNs). We hypothesized that neural decoding by multimodal neural data with DNN would show high classification performance in visual object categorization (faces or non-face objects) and sub-categorization within faces and objects. Visualization of the fMRI DNN was more sensitive than that in the univariate approach and revealed that visual categorization occurred in brain-wide regions. Interestingly, the EEG DNN valued the earlier phase of neural responses for categorization and the later phase of neural responses for sub-categorization. Combination of the two DNNs improved the classification performance for both categorization and sub-categorization compared with fMRI DNN or EEG DNN alone. These deep learning-based results demonstrate a categorization principle in which visual objects are represented in a spatially organized and coarse-to-fine manner, and provide strong evidence of the ability of multimodal deep learning to uncover spatiotemporal neural machinery in sensory processing. |
Kim Lara Weiss; Stefan Hawelka; Florian Hutzler; Sarah Schuster Stronger functional connectivity during reading contextually predictable words in slow readers Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Weiss2023, The effect of word predictability is well-documented in terms of local brain activation, but less is known about the functional connectivity among those regions associated with processing predictable words. Evidence from eye movement studies showed that the effect is much more pronounced in slow than in fast readers, suggesting that speed-impaired readers rely more on sentence context to compensate for their difficulties with visual word recognition. The present study aimed to investigate differences in functional connectivity of fast and slow readers within core regions associated with processing predictable words. We hypothesize a stronger synchronization between higher-order language areas, such as the left middle temporal (MTG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and the left occipito-temporal cortex (OTC) in slow readers. Our results show that slow readers exhibit more functional correlations among these connections; especially between the left IFG and OTC. We interpret our results in terms of the lexical quality hypothesis which postulates a stronger involvement of semantics on orthographic processing in (speed-)impaired readers. |
Mirjam C. M. Wever; Lisanne A. E. M. Houtum; Loes H. C. Janssen; Wilma G. M. Wentholt; Iris M. Spruit; Marieke S. Tollenaar; Geert Jan Will; Bernet M. Elzinga In: Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1598–1609, 2023. @article{Wever2023, One of the most prevalent nonverbal, social phenomena known to automatically elicit self- and other-referential processes is eye contact. By its negative effects on the perception of social safety and views about the self and others, childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) may fundamentally affect these processes. To investigate whether the socioaffective consequences of CEM may become visible in response to (prolonged) eye gaze, 79 adult participants (mean [M]age = 49.87, standard deviation [SD]age = 4.62) viewed videos with direct and averted gaze of an unfamiliar other and themselves while we recorded self-reported mood, eye movements using eye-tracking, and markers of neural activity using fMRI. Participants who reported higher levels of CEM exhibited increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex to one's own, but not to others', direct gaze. Furthermore, in contrast to those who reported fewer of such experiences, they did not report a better mood in response to a direct gaze of self and others, despite equivalent amounts of time spent looking into their own and other peoples' eyes. The fact that CEM is associated with enhanced neural activation in a brain area that is crucially involved in self-referential processing (i.e., vmPFC) in response to one's own direct gaze is in line with the chronic negative impact of CEM on a person's self-views. Interventions that directly focus on targeting maladaptive self-views elicited during eye gaze to self may be clinically useful. |
Alex L. White; Kendrick N. Kay; Kenny A. Tang; Jason D. Yeatman Engaging in word recognition elicits highly specific modulations in visual cortex Journal Article In: Current Biology, vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 1308–1320, 2023. @article{White2023, A person's cognitive state determines how their brain responds to visual stimuli. The most common such effect is a response enhancement when stimuli are task relevant and attended rather than ignored. In this fMRI study, we report a surprising twist on such attention effects in the visual word form area (VWFA), a region that plays a key role in reading. We presented participants with strings of letters and visually similar shapes, which were either relevant for a specific task (lexical decision or gap localization) or ignored (during a fixation dot color task). In the VWFA, the enhancement of responses to attended stimuli occurred only for letter strings, whereas non-letter shapes evoked smaller responses when attended than when ignored. The enhancement of VWFA activity was accompanied by strengthened functional connectivity with higher-level language regions. These task-dependent modulations of response magnitude and functional connectivity were specific to the VWFA and absent in the rest of visual cortex. We suggest that language regions send targeted excitatory feedback into the VWFA only when the observer is trying to read. This feedback enables the discrimination of familiar and nonsense words and is distinct from generic effects of visual attention. |
Mengna Yao; Bincheng Wen; Mingpo Yang; Jiebin Guo; Haozhou Jiang; Chao Feng; Yilei Cao; Huiguang He; Le Chang High-dimensional topographic organization of visual features in the primate temporal lobe Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1–23, 2023. @article{Yao2023a, The inferotemporal cortex supports our supreme object recognition ability. Numerous studies have been conducted to elucidate the functional organization of this brain area, but there are still important questions that remain unanswered, including how this organization differs between humans and non-human primates. Here, we use deep neural networks trained on object categorization to construct a 25-dimensional space of visual features, and systematically measure the spatial organization of feature preference in both male monkey brains and human brains using fMRI. These feature maps allow us to predict the selectivity of a previously unknown region in monkey brains, which is corroborated by additional fMRI and electrophysiology experiments. These maps also enable quantitative analyses of the topographic organization of the temporal lobe, demonstrating the existence of a pair of orthogonal gradients that differ in spatial scale and revealing significant differences in the functional organization of high-level visual areas between monkey and human brains. |
Wei Zhou; Sile Wang; Ming Yan Fixation-related fMRI analysis reveals the neural basis of natural reading of unspaced and spaced Chinese sentences Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 33, no. 19, pp. 10401–10410, 2023. @article{Zhou2023b, Although there are many eye-movement studies focusing on natural sentence reading and functional magnetic resonance imaging research on reading with serial visual presentation paradigms, there is a scarcity of investigations into the neural mechanism of natural sentence reading. The present study recruited 33 adults to read unspaced and spaced Chinese sentences with the eye tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging data recorded simultaneously. By using fixation-related functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis, this study showed that natural reading of Chinese sentences produced activations in ventral visual, dorsal attention, and semantic brain regions, which were modulated by the properties of words such as word length and word frequency. The multivoxel pattern analysis showed that the activity pattern in the left middle temporal gyrus could significantly predict the visual layout categories (i.e. unspaced vs. spaced conditions). Dynamic causal modeling analysis showed that there were bidirectional brain connections between the left middle temporal gyrus and the left inferior occipital cortex in the unspaced Chinese sentence reading but not in the spaced reading. These results provide a neural mechanism for the natural reading of Chinese sentences from the perspective of word segmentation. |
Lauren M. DiNicola; Wendy Sun; Randy L. Buckner In: Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 130, no. 6, pp. 1602–1615, 2023. @article{DiNicola2023, A recurring debate concerns whether regions of primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) support domain-flexible or domain-specific processes. Here we tested the hypothesis with functional MRI (fMRI) that side-by-side PFC regions, within distinct parallel association networks, differentially support domain-flexible and domain-specialized processing. Individuals (N = 9) were intensively sampled, and all effects were estimated within their own idiosyncratic anatomy. Within each individual, we identified PFC regions linked to distinct networks, including a dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) region coupled to the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and an extended region associated with the canonical multiple-demand network. We further identified an inferior PFC region coupled to the language network. Exploration in separate task data, collected within the same individuals, revealed a robust functional triple dissociation. The DLPFC region linked to the MTL was recruited during remembering and imagining the future, distinct from juxtaposed regions that were modulated in a domain-flexible manner during working memory. The inferior PFC region linked to the language network was recruited during sentence processing. Detailed analysis of the trial-level responses further revealed that the DLPFC region linked to the MTL specifically tracked processes associated with scene construction. These results suggest that the DLPFC possesses a domain-specialized region that is small and easily confused with nearby (larger) regions associated with cognitive control. The newly described region is domain specialized for functions traditionally associated with the MTL. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to convergent anatomical analysis in the monkey.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Competing hypotheses link regions of prefrontal cortex (PFC) to domain-flexible or domain-specific processes. Here, using a precision neuroimaging approach, we identify a domain-specialized region in dorsolateral PFC, coupled to the medial temporal lobe and recruited for scene construction. This region is juxtaposed to, but distinct from, broader PFC regions recruited flexibly for cognitive control. Region distinctions align with broader network differences, suggesting that PFC regions gain dissociable processing properties via segregated anatomical projections. |
Matthias Ekman; Sarah Kusch; Floris P. Lange Successor-like representation guides the prediction of future events in human visual cortex and hippocampus Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 12, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Ekman2023, Human agents build models of their environment, which enable them to anticipate and plan upcoming events. However, little is known about the properties of such predictive models. Recently, it has been proposed that hippocampal representations take the form of a predictive map-like structure, the so-called successor representation (SR). Here, we used human functional magnetic resonance imaging to probe whether activity in the early visual cortex (V1) and hippocampus adhere to the postulated properties of the SR after visual sequence learning. Participants were exposed to an arbitrary spatiotemporal sequence consisting of four items (A-B-C-D). We found that after repeated exposure to the sequence, merely presenting single sequence items (e.g.,-B–) resulted in V1 activation at the successor locations of the full sequence (e.g., C-D), but not at the predecessor locations (e.g., A). This highlights that visual representations are skewed toward future states, in line with the SR. Similar results were also found in the hippocampus. Moreover, the hippocampus developed a coactivation profile that showed sensitivity to the temporal distance in sequence space, with fading representations for sequence events in the more distant past and future. V1, in contrast, showed a coactivation profile that was only sensitive to spatial distance in stimulus space. Taken together, these results provide empirical evidence for the proposition that both visual and hippo-campal cortex represent a predictive map of the visual world akin to the SR. |
Magdalena Fafrowicz; Anna Ceglarek; Justyna Olszewska; Anna Sobczak; Bartosz Bohaterewicz; Monika Ostrogorska; Patricia Reuter-Lorenz; Koryna Lewandowska; Barbara Sikora-Wachowicz; Halszka Oginska; Magdalena Hubalewska-Mazgaj; Tadeusz Marek Dynamics of working memory process revealed by independent component analysis in an fMRI study Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Fafrowicz2023, Human memory is prone to errors in many everyday activities but also when cultivating hobbies such as traveling and/or learning a new language. For instance, while visiting foreign countries, people erroneously recall foreign language words that are meaningless to them. Our research simulated such errors in a modified Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm for short-term memory with phonologically related stimuli aimed at uncovering behavioral and neuronal indices of false memory formation with regard to time-of-day, a variable known to influence memory. Fifty-eight participants were tested in a magnetic resonance (MR) scanner twice. The results of an Independent Component Analysis revealed encoding-related activity of the medial visual network preceding correct recognition of positive probes and correct rejection of lure probes. The engagement of this network preceding false alarms was not observed. We also explored if diurnal rhythmicity influences working memory processes. Diurnal differences were seen in the default mode network and the medial visual network with lower deactivation in the evening hours. The GLM results showed greater activation of the right lingual gyrus, part of the visual cortex and the left cerebellum in the evening. The study offers new insight into the mechanisms associated with false memories, suggesting that deficient engagement of the medial visual network during the memorization phase of a task results in short-term memory distortions. The results shed new light on the dynamics of working memory processes by taking into account the effect of time-of-day on memory performance. |
Maria Celeste Fasano; Joana Cabral; Angus Stevner; Peter Vuust; Pauline Cantou; Elvira Brattico; Morten L. Kringelbach The early adolescent brain on music: Analysis of functional dynamics reveals engagement of orbitofrontal cortex reward system Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 429–446, 2023. @article{Fasano2023, Music listening plays a pivotal role for children and adolescents, yet it remains unclear how music modulates brain activity at the level of functional networks in this young population. Analysing the dynamics of brain networks occurring and dissolving over time in response to music can provide a better understanding of the neural underpinning of music listening. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 17 preadolescents aged 10–11 years while listening to two similar music pieces separated by periods without music. We subsequently tracked the occurrence of functional brain networks over the recording time using a recent method that detects recurrent patterns of phase-locking in the fMRI signals: the leading eigenvector dynamics analysis (LEiDA). The probabilities of occurrence and switching profiles of different functional networks were compared between periods of music and no music. Our results showed significantly increased occurrence of a specific functional network during the two music pieces compared to no music, involving the medial orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices—a brain subsystem associated to reward processing. Moreover, the higher the musical reward sensitivity of the preadolescents, the more this network was preceded by a pattern involving the insula. Our findings highlight the involvement of a brain subsystem associated with hedonic and emotional processing during music listening in the early adolescent brain. These results offer novel insight into the neural underpinnings of musical reward in early adolescence, improving our understanding of the important role and the potential benefits of music at this delicate age. |
Carolina Feher da Silva; Gaia Lombardi; Micah Edelson; Todd A. Hare Rethinking model-based and model-free influences on mental effort and striatal prediction errors Journal Article In: Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 956–969, 2023. @article{FeherdaSilva2023, A standard assumption in neuroscience is that low-effort model-free learning is automatic and continuously used, whereas more complex model-based strategies are only used when the rewards they generate are worth the additional effort. We present evidence refuting this assumption. First, we demonstrate flaws in previous reports of combined model-free and model-based reward prediction errors in the ventral striatum that probably led to spurious results. More appropriate analyses yield no evidence of model-free prediction errors in this region. Second, we find that task instructions generating more correct model-based behaviour reduce rather than increase mental effort. This is inconsistent with cost–benefit arbitration between model-based and model-free strategies. Together, our data indicate that model-free learning may not be automatic. Instead, humans can reduce mental effort by using a model-based strategy alone rather than arbitrating between multiple strategies. Our results call for re-evaluation of the assumptions in influential theories of learning and decision-making. |
Julia Fietz; Dorothee Pöhlchen; Elisabeth B. Binder; Angelika Erhardt; Susanne Lucae; Norma C. Grandi; Tamara Namendorf; Immanuel Elbau; Laura Leuchs; Leonhard Schilbach; Sanja Ilić-Ćoćić; Julius Ziebula; Iven-Alex Mücke-Heim; Yeho Kim; Julius Pape; Tanja M. Brückl; Anna-Katharine Brem; Frank Padberg; Michael Czisch; Philipp G. Sämann; Victor I. Spoormaker In: Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, no. 24, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Fietz2023, Background Neurocognitive functioning is a relevant transdiagnostic dimension in psychiatry. As pupil size dynamics track cognitive load during a working memory task, we aimed to explore if this parameter allows identification of psychophysiological subtypes in healthy participants and patients with affective and anxiety disorders. Methods Our sample consisted of 226 participants who completed the n-back task during simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging and pupillometry measurements. We used latent class growth modeling to identify clusters based on pupil size in response to cognitive load. In a second step, these clusters were compared on affective and anxiety symptom levels, performance in neurocognitive tests, and functional magnetic resonance imaging activity. Results The clustering analysis resulted in two distinct pupil response profiles: one with a stepwise increasing pupil size with increasing cognitive load (reactive group) and one with a constant pupil size across conditions (nonreactive group). A larger increase in pupil size was significantly associated with better performance in neurocognitive tests in executive functioning and sustained attention. Statistical maps of parametric modulation of pupil size during the n-back task showed the frontoparietal network in the positive contrast and the default mode network in the negative contrast. The pupil response profile of the reactive group was associated with more thalamic activity, likely reflecting better arousal upregulation and less deactivation of the limbic system. Conclusions Pupil measurements have the potential to serve as a highly sensitive psychophysiological readout for detection of neurocognitive deficits in the core domain of executive functioning, adding to the development of valid transdiagnostic constructs in psychiatry. |
Nick Fogt; Andrew J. Toole; Xiangrui Li; Emmanuel Owusu; Steven T. T. Manning; Marjean T. Kulp Functional magnetic resonance imaging activation for different vergence eye movement subtypes Journal Article In: Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 93–104, 2023. @article{Fogt2023, Introduction: Maddox suggested that there were four convergence subtypes, each driven by a different stimulus. The purpose of this study was to assess the neural correlates for accommodative convergence, proximal convergence (convergence stimulus provided), disparity convergence and voluntary convergence (no specific convergence stimulus provided) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Methods: Ten subjects (mean age = 24.4 years) with normal binocular vision participated. The blood oxygenation level- dependent (BOLD) signals of the brain from fMRI scans were measured when subjects made vergence eye movements while: (1) alternately viewing letters monocularly where one eye viewed through a −2.00 D lens, (2) alternately viewing Difference of Gaussian targets monocularly at distance and near, (3) viewing random dot stereograms with increasing disparity and (4) voluntarily converging the eyes with binocular viewing. Results: The accommodative convergence paradigm resulted in activation on the right side in the right fusiform cortex and the right middle occipital cortex. The proximal convergence stimulus mainly activated areas in the right occipital lobe. The disparity stimulus activated areas in the left occipital cortex and the left frontal cortex. Finally, the voluntary convergence paradigm resulted in activation primarily in the occipital lobe and mostly bilaterally. Conclusion: The accommodative, proximal, disparity and voluntary convergence paradigms resulted in activation in unique areas in the brain with functional MRI. Activation was found in more areas in the proximal and voluntary conditions compared with the accommodative and disparity conditions. |
Rani Gera; Maya Bar Or; Ido Tavor; Dana Roll; Jeffrey Cockburn; Segev Barak; Elizabeth Tricomi; John P. O'Doherty; Tom Schonberg Characterizing habit learning in the human brain at the individual and group levels: A multi-modal MRI study Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 272, pp. 1–23, 2023. @article{Gera2023, The dual-process theory of action control postulates that there are two competitive and complementary mechanisms that control our behavior: a goal-directed system that executes deliberate actions, explicitly aimed toward a particular outcome, and a habitual system that autonomously execute well-learned actions, typically following an encounter with a previously associated cue. In line with dual-process theory, animal studies have provided convincing evidence for dissociable neural mechanisms, mainly manifested in cortico-striatal regions, involved in goal-directed and habitual action control. While substantial progress has been made in characterizing the neural mechanism underlying habit learning in animals, we still lack knowledge on how habits are formed and maintained in the human brain. Thus far only one study, conducted more than a decade ago by Tricomi et al. (2009), has been able to induce habitual behavior in humans via extensive training. This study also implicated the posterior putamen in the process, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, recent attempts to replicate the behavioral results of this study were not successful. This leaves the research of human habits, and particularly the research of their formation through extensive repetition, as well as their neural basis, limited and far behind the animal research in the field. This motivated us to (1) attempt to replicate the behavioral and imaging main findings of Tricomi et al., (2) identify further functional and microstructural neural modifications associated with habit formation and manifestation, and (3) investigate the relationships between functional and structural plasticity and individual differences in habit expression. To this end, in this registered report we used Tricomi et al.'s free-operant task along with multi-modal MRI methods in a well-powered sample (n=123). In this task participants' sensitivity to outcome devaluation (an index of goal-directed/habitual action control) is tested following either short or extensive training. In contrast to our hypothesis, we were not able to demonstrate habit formation as a function of training duration nor were we able to relate any functional or microstructural plasticity in the putamen with individual habit expression. We found that a pattern of increased activations in the left head of caudate that re-occurred across each day's training is associated with goal directed behavior and that increased processing of devalued cues in low-level visual regions was indicative of goal-directed behavior. In a follow-up exploratory analysis comparing habitual and goal-directed subgroups within each experimental group, we found that elevated activations in frontoparietal regions during early stages of training, as well as increased reactivity towards still-valued cues in somatosensory and superior parietal regions were found in individuals that were more inclined to perform goal-directed behavior (compared with more habitual individuals). Taken together, regions commonly implicated in goal-directed behavior were most predictive of individual habit expression. Finally, we also found that differential patterns of training-related microstructural plasticity, as measured with diffusion MRI, in midbrain dopaminergic regions were associated with habit expression. This work provides new insights into the neural dynamics involved in individual habit formation/expression and encourages the development and testing of new, more sensitive, procedures for experimental habit induction in humans. |
Hengda He; Linbi Hong; Paul Sajda Pupillary response is associated with the reset and switching of functional brain networks during salience processing Journal Article In: PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 1–29, 2023. @article{He2023a, The interface between processing internal goals and salient events in the environment involves various top-down processes. Previous studies have identified multiple brain areas for salience processing, including the salience network (SN), dorsal attention network, and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. However, interactions among these systems in salience processing remain unclear. Here, we simultaneously recorded pupillometry, EEG, and fMRI during an auditory oddball paradigm. The analyses of EEG and fMRI data uncovered spatiotemporally organized target-associated neural correlates. By modeling the target-modulated effective connectivity, we found that the target-evoked pupillary response is associated with the network directional couplings from late to early subsystems in the trial, as well as the network switching initiated by the SN. These findings indicate that the SN might cooperate with the pupil-indexed LC-NE system in the reset and switching of cortical networks, and shed light on their implications in various cognitive processes and neurological diseases. |
Stefano Ioannucci; Valentine Chirokoff; Bixente Dilharreguy; Valéry Ozenne; Sandra Chanraud; Alexandre Zénon In: Communications Biology, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2023. @article{Ioannucci2023, Cognitive fatigue is defined by a reduced capacity to perform mental tasks. Despite its pervasiveness, the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. Specifically, it is unclear whether prolonged effort affects performance through alterations in over-worked task-relevant neuronal assemblies. Our paradigm based on repeated passive visual stimulation discerns fatigue effects from the influence of motivation, skill and boredom. We induced performance loss and observed parallel alterations in the neural blueprint of the task, by mirroring behavioral performance with multivariate neuroimaging techniques (MVPA) that afford a subject-specific approach. Crucially, functional areas that responded the most to repeated stimulation were also the most affected. Finally, univariate analysis revealed clusters displaying significant disruption within the extrastriate visual cortex. In sum, here we show that repeated stimulation impacts the implicated brain areas' activity and causes tangible behavioral repercussions, providing evidence that cognitive fatigue can result from local, functional, disruptions in the neural signal induced by protracted recruitment. |
Nidhi Jain; Aria Wang; Margaret M. Henderson; Ruogu Lin; Jacob S. Prince; Michael J. Tarr; Leila Wehbe Selectivity for food in human ventral visual cortex Journal Article In: Communications Biology, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Jain2023, Visual cortex contains regions of selectivity for domains of ecological importance. Food is an evolutionarily critical category whose visual heterogeneity may make the identification of selectivity more challenging. We investigate neural responsiveness to food using natural images combined with large-scale human fMRI. Leveraging the improved sensitivity of modern designs and statistical analyses, we identify two food-selective regions in the ventral visual cortex. Our results are robust across 8 subjects from the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD), multiple independent image sets and multiple analysis methods. We then test our findings of food selectivity in an fMRI “localizer” using grayscale food images. These independent results confirm the existence of food selectivity in ventral visual cortex and help illuminate why earlier studies may have failed to do so. Our identification of food-selective regions stands alongside prior findings of functional selectivity and adds to our understanding of the organization of knowledge within the human visual system. |
Omid Kardan; Andrew J. Stier; Elliot A. Layden; Kyoung Whan Choe; Muxuan Lyu; Xihan Zhang; Sian L. Beilock; Monica D. Rosenberg; Marc G. Berman Improvements in task performance after practice are associated with scale-free dynamics of brain activity Journal Article In: Network Neuroscience, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 1129–1152, 2023. @article{Kardan2023, Although practicing a task generally benefits later performance on that same task, there are individual differences in practice effects. One avenue to model such differences comes from research showing that brain networks extract functional advantages from operating in the vicinity of criticality, a state in which brain network activity is more scale-free. We hypothesized that higher scale-free signal from fMRI data, measured with the Hurst exponent (H), indicates closer proximity to critical states. We tested whether individuals with higher H during repeated task performance would show greater practice effects. In Study 1, participants performed a dual-n-back task (DNB) twice during MRI (n = 56). In Study 2, we used two runs of n-back task (NBK) data from the Human Connectome Project sample (n = 599). In Study 3, participants performed a word completion task (CAST) across six runs (n = 44). In all three studies, multivariate analysis was used to test whether higher H was related to greater practicerelated performance improvement. Supporting our hypothesis, we found patterns of higher H that reliably correlated with greater performance improvement across participants in all three studies. However, the predictive brain regions were distinct, suggesting that the specific spatial H↑ patterns are not task-general. |
Noa Katabi; Hadas Simon; Sharon Yakim; Inbal Ravreby; Tal Ohad; Yaara Yeshurun Deeper than you think: Partisanship-dependent brain responses in early sensory and motor brain regions Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 1027–1037, 2023. @article{Katabi2023, Recent political polarization has illustrated how individuals with opposing political views often experience ongoing events in markedly different ways. In this study, we explored the neural mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon. We conducted fMRI scanning of 34 right- and left-wing participants (45% females) watching political videos (e.g., campaign ads and political speeches) just before the elections in Israel. As expected, we observed significant differences between left- and right-wing participants in their interpretation of the videos' content. Furthermore, neuroimaging results revealed partisanship-dependent differences in activation and synchronization in higher-order regions. Surprisingly, such differences were also revealed in early sensory, motor, and somatosensory regions. We found that the political content synchronized the responses of primary visual and auditory cortices in a partisanship-dependent manner. Moreover, right-wing (and not left-wing) individuals' sensorimotor cortex was involved in processing right-wing (and not left-wing) political content. These differences were pronounced to the extent that we could predict political orientation from the early brain-response alone. Importantly, no such differences were found with respect to neutral content. Therefore, these results uncover more fundamental neural mechanisms underlying processes of political polarization. |
Hyung Cho Kim; Claire M. Kaplan; Samiha Islam; Allegra S. Anderson; Megan E. Piper; Daniel E. Bradford; John J. Curtin; Kathryn A. DeYoung; Jason F. Smith; Andrew S. Fox; Alexander J. Shackman Acute nicotine abstinence amplifies subjective withdrawal symptoms and threat-evoked fear and anxiety, but not extended amygdala reactivity Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, pp. 1–31, 2023. @article{Kim2023a, Tobacco smoking imposes a staggering burden on public health, underscoring the urgency of developing a deeper understanding of the processes that maintain addiction. Clinical and experience-sampling data highlight the importance of anxious withdrawal symptoms, but the underlying neurobiology has remained elusive. Mechanistic work in animals implicates the central extended amygdala (EAc)—including the central nucleus of the amygdala and the neighboring bed nucleus of the stria terminalis—but the translational relevance of these discoveries remains unexplored. Here we leveraged a randomized trial design, well-established threat-anticipation paradigm, and multidimensional battery of assessments to understand the consequences of 24-hour nicotine abstinence. The threat-anticipation paradigm had the expected consequences, amplifying subjective distress and arousal, and recruiting the canonical threat-anticipation network. Abstinence increased smoking urges and withdrawal symptoms, and potentiated threat-evoked distress, but had negligible consequences for EAc threat reactivity, raising questions about the translational relevance of prominent animal and human models of addiction. These observations provide a framework for conceptualizing nicotine abstinence and withdrawal, with implications for basic, translational, and clinical science. |
Janina Klautke; Celia Foster; W. Pieter Medendorp; Tobias Heed Dynamic spatial coding in parietal cortex mediates tactile-motor transformation Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Klautke2023, Movements towards touch on the body require integrating tactile location and body posture information. Tactile processing and movement planning both rely on posterior parietal cortex (PPC) but their interplay is not understood. Here, human participants received tactile stimuli on their crossed and uncrossed feet, dissociating stimulus location relative to anatomy versus external space. Participants pointed to the touch or the equivalent location on the other foot, which dissociates sensory and motor locations. Multi-voxel pattern analysis of concurrently recorded fMRI signals revealed that tactile location was coded anatomically in anterior PPC but spatially in posterior PPC during sensory processing. After movement instructions were specified, PPC exclusively represented the movement goal in space, in regions associated with visuo-motor planning and with regional overlap for sensory, rule-related, and movement coding. Thus, PPC flexibly updates its spatial codes to accommodate rule-based transformation of sensory input to generate movement to environment and own body alike. |
Michaela Klímová; Ilona M. Bloem; Sam Ling Attention preserves the selectivity of feature-tuned normalization Journal Article In: Journal of neurophysiology, vol. 130, no. 4, pp. 990–998, 2023. @article{Klimova2023, Attention and divisive normalization both contribute to making visual processing more efficient. Attention selectively increases the neural gain of relevant information in the early visual cortex, resulting in stronger perceived salience for attended regions or features. Divisive normalization improves processing efficiency by suppressing responses to homogeneous inputs and highlighting salient boundaries, facilitating sparse coding of inputs. Theoretical and empirical research suggest a tight link between attention and normalization, wherein attending to a stimulus results in a release from normalization, thereby allowing for an increase in neural response gain. In the present study, we address whether attention alters the qualitative properties of normalization. Specifically, we examine how attention influences the feature-tuned nature of normalization, whereby suppression is stronger between visual stimuli whose orientation contents are similar, and weaker when the orientations are different. Ten human observers viewed stimuli that varied in orientation content while we acquired fMRI BOLD responses under two attentional states: attending toward or attending away from the stimulus. Our results indicate that attention does not alter the specificity of feature-tuned normalization. Instead, attention seems to enhance visuocortical responses evenly, regardless of the degree of orientation similarity within the stimulus. Since visuocortical responses exhibit adaptation to statistical regularities in natural scenes, we conclude that while attention can selectively increase the gain of responses to attended items, it does not appear to alter the ecologically relevant correspondence between orientation differences and strength of tuned normalization.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The magnitude of visuocortical BOLD responses scales with orientation differences in visual stimuli, with the strongest response suppression for collinear stimuli and least suppression for orthogonal, in a way that appears to match natural scene statistics. We examined the effects of attention on this feature-tuned property of suppression and found that while attending to a stimulus increases the overall gain of visuocortical responses, the qualitative properties of feature-tuning remain unchanged, suggesting attention preserves tuned normalization properties. |
Mrinmayi Kulkarni; Allison E. Nickel; Greta N. Minor; Deborah E. Hannula; Mrinmayi Kulkarni; Allison E. Nickel; Greta N. Minor; Deborah E. Hannula Control of memory retrieval alters memory-based eye movements Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–22, 2023. @article{Kulkarni2023, Past work has shown that eye movements are affected by long-term memory across different tasks and instructional manipulations. In the current study, we tested whether these memory-based eye movements persist when memory retrieval is under intentional control. Participants encoded multiple scenes with six objects (three faces; three tools). Next, they completed a memory regulation and visual search task, while undergoing eye tracking. Here, scene cues were presented and participants either retrieved the encoded associate, suppressed it, or substituted it with a specific object from the other encoded category. Following a delay, a search display consisting of six dots intermixed with the six encoded objects was presented. Participants' task was to fixate one remaining dot after five had disappeared. Incidental viewing of the objects was of interest. Results revealed that performance in a final recognition phase was impaired for suppressed pairs, but only when the associate was a tool. During the search task, incidental associate viewing was lower when participants attempted to control retrieval, whereas one object from the nonassociate category was most viewed in the substitute condition. Additionally, viewing patterns in the search phase were related to final recognition performance, but the direction of this association differed between conditions. Overall, these results suggest that eye movements are attracted to information retrieved from long-term memory and held active (the associate in the retrieve condition, or an object from the other category in the sub- stitute condition). Furthermore, the level of viewing may index the strength of the representation of retrieved information. |
Mathieu Lesourd; Alia Afyouni; Franziska Geringswald; Fabien Cignetti; Lisa Raoul; Julien Sein; Bruno Nazarian; Jean-Luc Anton; Marie-Hélène Grosbras Action observation network activity related to object-directed and socially-directed actions in adolescents Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 125–141, 2023. @article{Lesourd2023, The human action observation network (AON) encompasses brain areas consistently engaged when we observe other's actions. Although the core nodes of the AON are present from childhood, it is not known to what extent they are sensitive to different action features during development. Because social cognitive abilities continue to mature during adolescence, the AON response to socially-oriented actions, but not to object-related actions, may differ in adolescents and adults. To test this hypothesis, we scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) male and female typically-developing teenagers (n = 28; 13 females) and adults (n = 25; 14 females) while they passively watched videos of manual actions varying along two dimensions: sociality (i.e., directed toward another person or not) and transitivity (i.e., involving an object or not). We found that action observation recruited the same fronto-parietal and occipito-temporal regions in adults and adolescents. The modulation of voxel-wise activity according to the social or transitive nature of the action was similar in both groups of participants. Multivariate pattern analysis, however, revealed that decoding accuracies in intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parietal lobe (SPL) for both sociality and transitivity were lower for adolescents compared with adults. In addition, in the lateral occipital temporal cortex (LOTC), generalization of decoding across the orthogonal dimension was lower for sociality only in adolescents. These findings indicate that the representation of the content of others' actions, and in particular their social dimension, in the adolescent AON is still not as robust as in adults. |
Hsin-Hung Li; Clayton E. Curtis Neural population dynamics of human working memory Journal Article In: Current Biology, vol. 33, no. 17, pp. 3775–3784, 2023. @article{Li2023d, The activity of neurons in macaque prefrontal cortex (PFC) persists during working memory (WM) delays, providing a mechanism for memory.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 Although theory,11,12 including formal network models,13,14 assumes that WM codes are stable over time, PFC neurons exhibit dynamics inconsistent with these assumptions.15,16,17,18,19 Recently, multivariate reanalyses revealed the coexistence of both stable and dynamic WM codes in macaque PFC.20,21,22,23 Human EEG studies also suggest that WM might contain dynamics.24,25 Nonetheless, how WM dynamics vary across the cortical hierarchy and which factors drive dynamics remain unknown. To elucidate WM dynamics in humans, we decoded WM content from fMRI responses across multiple cortical visual field maps.26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48 We found coexisting stable and dynamic neural representations of WM during a memory-guided saccade task. Geometric analyses of neural subspaces revealed that early visual cortex exhibited stronger dynamics than high-level visual and frontoparietal cortex. Leveraging models of population receptive fields, we visualized and made the neural dynamics interpretable. We found that during WM delays, V1 population initially encoded a narrowly tuned bump of activation centered on the peripheral memory target. Remarkably, this bump then spread inward toward foveal locations, forming a vector along the trajectory of the forthcoming memory-guided saccade. In other words, the neural code transformed into an abstraction of the stimulus more proximal to memory-guided behavior. Therefore, theories of WM must consider both sensory features and their task-relevant abstractions because changes in the format of memoranda naturally drive neural dynamics. |
Ming-Ray Liao; Andy J. Kim; Brian A. Anderson Neural correlates of value-driven spatial orienting Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Liao2023, Reward learning has been shown to habitually guide overt spatial attention to specific regions of a scene. However, the neural mechanisms that support this bias are unknown. In the present study, participants learned to orient themselves to a particular quadrant of a scene (a high-value quadrant) to maximize monetary gains. This learning was scene-specific, with the high-value quadrant varying across different scenes. During a subsequent test phase, participants were faster at identifying a target if it appeared in the high-value quadrant (valid), and initial saccades were more likely to be made to the high-value quadrant. fMRI analyses during the test phase revealed learning-dependent priority signals in the caudate tail, superior colliculus, frontal eye field, anterior cingulate cortex, and insula, paralleling findings concerning feature-based, value-driven attention. In addition, ventral regions typically associated with scene selection and spatial information processing, including the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, and temporo-occipital cortex, were also implicated. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into the neural architecture subserving value-driven attention, both extending our understanding of nodes in the attention network previously implicated in feature-based, value-driven attention and identifying a ventral network of brain regions implicated in reward's influence on scene-dependent spatial orienting. |
Tianyuan Liu; Bao Li; Chi Zhang; Panpan Chen; Weichen Zhao; Bin Yan Real-time classification of motor imagery using Dynamic Window-Level Granger Causality analysis of fMRI data Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 13, no. 10, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Liu2023e, This article presents a method for extracting neural signal features to identify the imagination of left- and right-hand grasping movements. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment is employed to identify four brain regions with significant activations during motor imagery (MI) and the effective connections between these regions of interest (ROIs) were calculated using Dynamic Window-level Granger Causality (DWGC). Then, a real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI) classification system for left- and right-hand MI is developed using the Open-NFT platform. We conducted data acquisition and processing on three subjects, and all of whom were recruited from a local college. As a result, the maximum accuracy of using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier on real-time three-class classification (rest, left hand, and right hand) with effective connections is 69.3%. And it is 3% higher than that of traditional multivoxel pattern classification analysis on average. Moreover, it significantly improves classification accuracy during the initial stage of MI tasks while reducing the latency effects in real-time decoding. The study suggests that the effective connections obtained through the DWGC method serve as valuable features for real-time decoding of MI using fMRI. Moreover, they exhibit higher sensitivity to changes in brain states. This research offers theoretical support and technical guidance for extracting neural signal features in the context of fMRI-based studies. |
Marloes Mak; Myrthe Faber; Roel M. Willems Different kinds of simulation during literary reading: Insights from a combined fMRI and eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 162, pp. 115–135, 2023. @article{Mak2023, Mental simulation is an important aspect of narrative reading. In a previous study, we found that gaze durations are differentially impacted by different kinds of mental simulation. Motor simulation, perceptual simulation, and mentalizing as elicited by literary short stories influenced eye movements in distinguishable ways (Mak & Willems, 2019). In the current study, we investigated the existence of a common neural locus for these different kinds of simulation. We additionally investigated whether individual differences during reading, as indexed by the eye movements, are reflected in domain-specific activations in the brain. We found a variety of brain areas activated by simulation-eliciting content, both modality-specific brain areas and a general simulation area. Individual variation in percent signal change in activated areas was related to measures of story appreciation as well as personal characteristics (i.e., transportability, perspective taking). Taken together, these findings suggest that mental simulation is supported by both domain-specific processes grounded in previous experiences, and by the neural mechanisms that underlie higher-order language processing (e.g., situation model building, event indexing, integration). |
Audrey Mazancieux; Franck Mauconduit; Alexis Amadon; Jan Willem de Gee; Tobias H. Donner; Florent Meyniel Brainstem fMRI signaling of surprise across different types of deviant stimuli Journal Article In: Cell Reports, vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Mazancieux2023, Detection of deviant stimuli is crucial to orient and adapt our behavior. Previous work shows that deviant stimuli elicit phasic activation of the locus coeruleus (LC), which releases noradrenaline and controls central arousal. However, it is unclear whether the detection of behaviorally relevant deviant stimuli selectively triggers LC responses or other neuromodulatory systems (dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine). We combine human functional MRI (fMRI) recordings optimized for brainstem imaging with pupillometry to perform a mapping of deviant-related responses in subcortical structures. Participants have to detect deviant items in a “local-global” paradigm that distinguishes between deviance based on the stimulus probability and the sequence structure. fMRI responses to deviant stimuli are distributed in many cortical areas. Both types of deviance elicit responses in the pupil, LC, and other neuromodulatory systems. Our results reveal that the detection of task-relevant deviant items recruits the same multiple subcortical systems across computationally different types of deviance. |
Sarah Nadine MeWIBBLEer; Marc Bächinger; Sanne Kikkert; Jenny Imhof; Silvia Missura; Manuel Carro Dominguez; Nicole Wenderoth Self-regulating arousal via pupil-based biofeedback Journal Article In: Nature Human Behaviour, pp. 1–25, 2023. @article{MeWIBBLEer2023, The brain's arousal state is controlled by several neuromodulatory nuclei known to substantially influence cognition and mental well-being. Here we investigate whether human participants can gain volitional control of their arousal state using a pupil-based biofeedback approach. Our approach inverts a mechanism suggested by previous literature that links activity of the locus coeruleus, one of the key regulators of central arousal and pupil dynamics. We show that pupil-based biofeedback enables participants to acquire volitional control of pupil size. Applying pupil self-regulation systematically modulates activity of the locus coeruleus and other brainstem structures involved in arousal control. Furthermore, it modulates cardiovascular measures such as heart rate, and behavioural and psychophysiological responses during an oddball task. We provide evidence that pupil-based biofeedback makes the brain's arousal system accessible to volitional control, a finding that has tremendous potential for translation to behavioural and clinical applications across various domains, including stress-related and anxiety disorders. |
Lucia Melloni; Liad Mudrik; Michael Pitts; Katarina Bendtz; Oscar Ferrante; Urszula Gorska; Rony Hirschhorn; Aya Khalaf; Csaba Kozma; Alex Lepauvre; Ling Liu; David Mazumder; David Richter; Hao Zhou; Hal Blumenfeld; Melanie Boly; David J. Chalmers; Sasha Devore; Francis Fallon; Floris P. Lange; Ole Jensen; Gabriel Kreiman; Huan Luo; Theofanis I. Panagiotaropoulos; Stanislas Dehaene; Christof Koch; Giulio Tononi An adversarial collaboration protocol for testing contrasting predictions of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theory Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, pp. 1–28, 2023. @article{Melloni2023, The relationship between conscious experience and brain activity has intrigued scientists and philosophers for centuries. In the last decades, several theories have suggested different accounts for these relationships. These theories have developed in parallel, with little to no cross-talk among them. To advance research on consciousness, we established an adversarial collaboration between proponents of two of the major theories in the field, Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theory. Together, we devised and preregistered two experiments that test contrasting predictions of these theories concerning the location and timing of correlates of visual consciousness, which have been endorsed by the theories' proponents. Predicted outcomes should either support, refute, or challenge these theories. Six theory-impartial laboratories will follow the study protocol specified here, using three complementary methods: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Magneto-Electroencephalography (M-EEG), and intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). The study protocol will include built-in replications, both between labs and within datasets. Through this ambitious undertaking, we hope to provide decisive evidence in favor or against the two theories and clarify the footprints of conscious visual perception in the human brain, while also providing an innovative model of large-scale, collaborative, and open science practice. |
Ilenia Paparella; Islay Campbell; Roya Sharifpour; Elise Beckers; Alexandre Berger; Jose Fermin Balda Aizpurua; Ekaterina Koshmanova; Nasrin Mortazavi; Puneet Talwar; Christian Degueldre; Laurent Lamalle; Siya Sherif; Christophe Phillips; Pierre Maquet; Gilles Vandewalle Light modulates task-dependent thalamo-cortical connectivity during an auditory attentional task Journal Article In: Communications Biology, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Paparella2023, Exposure to blue wavelength light stimulates alertness and performance by modulating a widespread set of task-dependent cortical and subcortical areas. How light affects the crosstalk between brain areas to trigger this stimulating effect is not established. Here we record the brain activity of 19 healthy young participants (24.05±2.63; 12 women) while they complete an auditory attentional task in darkness or under an active (blue-enriched) or a control (orange) light, in an ultra-high-field 7 Tesla MRI scanner. We test if light modulates the effective connectivity between an area of the posterior associative thalamus, encompassing the pulvinar, and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), key areas in the regulation of attention. We find that only the blue-enriched light strengthens the connection from the posterior thalamus to the IPS. To the best of our knowledge, our results provide the first empirical data supporting that blue wavelength light affects ongoing non-visual cognitive activity by modulating task-dependent information flow from subcortical to cortical areas. |
Eva R. Pool; Wolfgang M. Pauli; Logan Cross; John P. O'Doherty Neural substrates of parallel devaluation-sensitive and devaluation-insensitive Pavlovian learning in humans Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1–17, 2023. @article{Pool2023, We aim to differentiate the brain regions involved in the learning and encoding of Pavlovian associations sensitive to changes in outcome value from those that are not sensitive to such changes by combining a learning task with outcome devaluation, eye-tracking, and functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans. Contrary to theoretical expectation, voxels correlating with reward prediction errors in the ventral striatum and subgenual cingulate appear to be sensitive to devaluation. Moreover, regions encoding state prediction errors appear to be devaluation insensitive. We can also distinguish regions encoding predictions about outcome taste identity from predictions about expected spatial location. Regions encoding predictions about taste identity seem devaluation sensitive while those encoding predictions about an outcome's spatial location seem devaluation insensitive. These findings suggest the existence of multiple and distinct associative mechanisms in the brain and help identify putative neural correlates for the parallel expression of both devaluation sensitive and insensitive conditioned behaviors. |
Sophia Antonia Press; Stefanie C. Biehl; Gregor Domes; Jennifer Svaldi; Sophia Antonia Press; Stefanie C. Biehl; Gregor Domes; Jennifer Svaldi; Sophia Antonia Press Increased insula and amygdala activity during selective attention for negatively valenced body parts in binge eating disorder Journal Article In: Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, vol. 132, no. 1, pp. 63–77, 2023. @article{Press2023, Previous studies indicate that participants with eating disorders show an attentional bias for the negatively valenced body parts of their own body. However, the neural basis underlying these processes has not been investigated. We conducted a preregistered combined functional MRI (fMRI)/eye tracking study and presented 35 women with binge eating disorder (BED) and 24 weight-matched control subjects (CG) with body part images of their own body and a weight-matched unknown body. After the fMRI examination, participants rated the attractiveness of the presented body parts. As expected, women with BED responded with significantly higher insula and amygdala activity when viewing the negatively valenced body parts of their own body (compared to all other combinations). However, individuals with BED did not deviate from the CG in the processing of these stimuli in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the extrastriate body area or the fusiform body area. Our results indicate that the negative valued body parts carry a particularly strong emotional valence in individuals with BED. These results further emphasize the relevance of processing bias for negatively valenced body parts in the pathology of BED. |
Masih Rahmati; Clayton E. Curtis; Kartik K. Sreenivasan Mnemonic representations in human lateral geniculate nucleus Journal Article In: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 17, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Rahmati2023, There is a growing appreciation for the role of the thalamus in high-level cognition. Motivated by findings that internal cognitive state drives activity in feedback layers of primary visual cortex (V1) that target the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), we investigated the role of LGN in working memory (WM). Specifically, we leveraged model-based neuroimaging approaches to test the hypothesis that human LGN encodes information about spatial locations temporarily encoded in WM. First, we localized and derived a detailed topographic organization in LGN that accords well with previous findings in humans and non-human primates. Next, we used models constructed on the spatial preferences of LGN populations in order to reconstruct spatial locations stored in WM as subjects performed modified memory-guided saccade tasks. We found that population LGN activity faithfully encoded the spatial locations held in memory in all subjects. Importantly, our tasks and models allowed us to dissociate the locations of retinal stimulation and the motor metrics of memory-guided saccades from the maintained spatial locations, thus confirming that human LGN represents true WM information. These findings add LGN to the growing list of subcortical regions involved in WM, and suggest a key pathway by which memories may influence incoming processing at the earliest levels of the visual hierarchy. |
Elizabeth Riley; Hamid Turker; Dongliang Wang; Khena M. Swallow; Adam K. Anderson; Eve De Rosa Nonlinear changes in pupillary attentional orienting responses across the lifespan Journal Article In: GeroScience, pp. 1–17, 2023. @article{Riley2023, The cognitive aging process is not necessarily linear. Central task-evoked pupillary responses, representing a brainstem-pupil relationship, may vary across the lifespan. Thus we examined, in 75 adults ranging in age from 19 to 86, whether task-evoked pupillary responses to an attention task may serve in as an index of cognitive aging. This is because the locus coeruleus (LC), located in the brainstem, is not only among the earliest sites of degeneration in pathological aging, but also supports both attentional and pupillary behaviors. We assessed brief, task-evoked phasic attentional orienting to behaviorally relevant and irrelevant auditory tones, stimuli known specifically to recruit the LC in the brainstem and evoke pupillary responses. Due to potential nonlinear changes across the lifespan, we used a novel data-driven analysis on 6 dynamic pupillary behaviors on 10% of the data to reveal cut off points that best characterized the three age bands: young (19–41 years old), middle aged (42–68 years old), and older adults (69 + years old). Follow-up analyses on independent data, the remaining 90%, revealed age-related changes such as monotonic decreases in tonic pupillary diameter and dynamic range, along with curvilinear phasic pupillary responses to the behaviorally relevant target events, increasing in the middle-aged group and then decreasing in the older group. Additionally, the older group showed decreased differentiation of pupillary responses between target and distractor events. This pattern is consistent with potential compensatory LC activity in midlife that is diminished in old age, resulting in decreased adaptive gain. Beyond regulating responses to light, pupillary dynamics reveal a nonlinear capacity for neurally mediated gain across the lifespan, thus providing evidence in support of the LC adaptive gain hypothesis. |
Michael Paul Schallmo; Kimberly B. Weldon; Rohit S. Kamath; Hannah R. Moser; Samantha A. Montoya; Kyle W. Killebrew; Caroline Demro; Andrea N. Grant; Małgorzata Marjańska; Scott R. Sponheim; Cheryl A. Olman The psychosis human connectome project: Design and rationale for studies of visual neurophysiology Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 272, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Schallmo2023, Visual perception is abnormal in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. In addition to hallucinations, laboratory tests show differences in fundamental visual processes including contrast sensitivity, center-surround interactions, and perceptual organization. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain visual dysfunction in psychotic disorders, including an imbalance between excitation and inhibition. However, the precise neural basis of abnormal visual perception in people with psychotic psychopathology (PwPP) remains unknown. Here, we describe the behavioral and 7 tesla MRI methods we used to interrogate visual neurophysiology in PwPP as part of the Psychosis Human Connectome Project (HCP). In addition to PwPP (n = 66) and healthy controls (n = 43), we also recruited first-degree biological relatives (n = 44) in order to examine the role of genetic liability for psychosis in visual perception. Our visual tasks were designed to assess fundamental visual processes in PwPP, whereas MR spectroscopy enabled us to examine neurochemistry, including excitatory and inhibitory markers. We show that it is feasible to collect high-quality data across multiple psychophysical, functional MRI, and MR spectroscopy experiments with a sizable number of participants at a single research site. These data, in addition to those from our previously described 3 tesla experiments, will be made publicly available in order to facilitate further investigations by other research groups. By combining visual neuroscience techniques and HCP brain imaging methods, our experiments offer new opportunities to investigate the neural basis of abnormal visual perception in PwPP. |
Rebekka Schröder; Kristof Keidel; Peter Trautner; Alexander Radbruch; Ulrich Ettinger Neural mechanisms of background and velocity effects in smooth pursuit eye movements Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 1–17, 2023. @article{Schroeder2023a, Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) are essential to guide behaviour in complex visual environments. SPEM accuracy is known to be degraded by the presence of a structured visual background and at higher target velocities. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate the neural mechanisms of these robust behavioural effects. N = 33 participants performed a SPEM task with two background conditions (present and absent) at two target velocities (0.4 and 0.6 Hz). Eye movement and BOLD data were collected simultaneously. Both the presence of a structured background and faster target velocity decreased pursuit gain and increased catch-up saccade rate. Faster targets additionally increased position error. Higher BOLD response with background was found in extensive clusters in visual, parietal, and frontal areas (including the medial frontal eye fields; FEF) partially overlapping with the known SPEM network. Faster targets were associated with higher BOLD response in visual cortex and left lateral FEF. Task-based functional connectivity analyses (psychophysiological interactions; PPI) largely replicated previous results in the basic SPEM network but did not yield additional information regarding the neural underpinnings of the background and velocity effects. The results show that the presentation of visual background stimuli during SPEM induces activity in a widespread visuo-parieto-frontal network including areas contributing to cognitive aspects of oculomotor control such as medial FEF, whereas the response to higher target velocity involves visual and motor areas such as lateral FEF. Therefore, we were able to propose for the first time different functions of the medial and lateral FEF during SPEM. |
Johannes J. D. Singer; Radoslaw M. Cichy; Martin N. Hebart The spatiotemporal neural dynamics of object recognition for natural images and line drawings Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 484–500, 2023. @article{Singer2023, Drawings offer a simple and efficient way to communicate meaning. While line drawings capture only coarsely how objects look in reality, we still perceive them as resembling real-world objects. Previous work has shown that this perceived similarity is mirrored by shared neural representations for drawings and natural images, which suggests that similar mechanisms underlie the recognition of both. However, other work has proposed that representations of drawings and natural images become similar only after substantial processing has taken place, suggesting distinct mechanisms. To arbitrate between those alternatives, we measured brain responses resolved in space and time using fMRI and MEG, respectively, while human participants (female and male) viewed images of objects depicted as photographs, line drawings, or sketch-like drawings. Using multivariate decoding, we demonstrate that object category information emerged similarly fast and across overlapping regions in occipital, ventral-temporal, and posterior parietal cortex for all types of depiction, yet with smaller effects at higher levels of visual abstraction. In addition, cross-decoding between depiction types revealed strong generalization of object category information from early processing stages on. Finally, by combining fMRI and MEG data using representational similarity analysis, we found that visual information traversed similar processing stages for all types of depiction, yet with an overall stronger representation for photographs. Together, our results demonstrate broad commonalities in the neural dynamics of object recognition across types of depiction, thus providing clear evidence for shared neural mechanisms underlying recognition of natural object images and abstract drawings. |
Rui Sun; Julia Fietz; Mira Erhart; Dorothee Poehlchen; Lara Henco; Tanja M. Brückl; BeCOME Team; Michael Czisch; Philipp G. Saemann; Victor I. Spoormaker Free-viewing gaze patterns reveal a mood-congruency bias in MDD during an affective fMRI/eye-tracking task Journal Article In: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Sun2023b, Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been related to abnormal amygdala activity during emotional face processing. However, a recent large-scale study (n = 28,638) found no such correlation, which is probably due to the low precision of fMRI measurements. To address this issue, we used simultaneous fMRI and eye-tracking measurements during a commonly employed emotional face recognition task. Eye-tracking provide high-precision data, which can be used to enrich and potentially stabilize fMRI readouts. With the behavioral response, we additionally divided the active task period into a task-related and a free-viewing phase to explore the gaze patterns of MDD patients and healthy controls (HC) and compare their respective neural correlates. Our analysis showed that a mood-congruency attentional bias could be detected in MDD compared to healthy controls during the free-viewing phase but without parallel amygdala disruption. Moreover, the neural correlates of gaze patterns reflected more prefrontal fMRI activity in the free-viewing than the task-related phase. Taken together, spontaneous emotional processing in free viewing might lead to a more pronounced mood-congruency bias in MDD, which indicates that combined fMRI with eye-tracking measurement could be beneficial for our understanding of the underlying psychopathology of MDD in different emotional processing phases. |
2022 |
Susana Mouga; Isabel Catarina Duarte; Cátia Café; Daniela Sousa; Frederico Duque; Guiomar Oliveira; Miguel Castelo-Branco Parahippocampal deactivation and hyperactivation of central executive, saliency and social cognition networks in autism spectrum disorder Journal Article In: Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Mouga2022, Background: The concomitant role of the Central Executive, the Saliency and the Social Cognition networks in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in demanding ecological tasks remains unanswered. We addressed this question using a novel task-based fMRI virtual-reality task mimicking a challenging daily-life chore that may present some difficulties to individuals with ASD: the EcoSupermarketX. Methods: Participants included 29 adolescents: 15 with ASD and 15 with typical neurodevelopment (TD). They performed the EcoSupermarketX (a shopping simulation with three goal-oriented sub-tasks including “no cue”, “non-social” or “social” cues), during neuroimaging and eye-tracking. Results: ASD differed from TD only in total time and distance to complete the “social cue” sub-task with matched eye-tracking measures. Neuroimaging revealed simultaneous hyperactivation across social, executive, and saliency circuits in ASD. In contrast, ASD showed reduced activation in the parahippocampal gyrus, involved in scene recognition. Conclusions: When performing a virtual shopping task matching the performance of controls, ASD adolescents hyperactivate three core networks: executive, saliency and social cognition. Parahippocampal hypoactivation is consistent with effortless eidetic scene processing, in line with the notion of peaks and valleys of neural recruitment in individuals with ASD. These hyperactivation/hypoactivation patterns in daily life tasks provide a circuit-level signature of neural diversity in ASD, a possible intervention target. |
Jordana S. Wynn; Zhong-Xu Liu; Jennifer D. Ryan Neural correlates of subsequent memory-related gaze reinstatement Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34, no. 9, pp. 1547–1562, 2022. @article{Wynn2022, Mounting evidence linking gaze reinstatement—the recapitulation of encoding-related gaze patterns during retrieval—to behavioral measures of memory suggests that eye movements play an important role in mnemonic processing. Yet, the nature of the gaze scanpath, including its informational content and neural correlates, has remained in question. In this study, we examined eye movement and neural data from a recognition memory task to further elucidate the behavioral and neural bases of functional gaze reinstatement. Consistent with previous work, gaze reinstatement during retrieval of freely viewed scene images was greater than chance and predictive of recognition memory performance. Gaze reinstatement was also associated with viewing of informationally salient image regions at encoding, suggesting that scanpaths may encode and contain high-level scene content. At the brain level, gaze reinstatement was predicted by encoding-related activity in the occipital pole and BG, neural regions associated with visual processing and oculomotor control. Finally, cross-voxel brain pattern similarity analysis revealed overlapping subsequent memory and subsequent gaze reinstatement modulation effects in the parahippocampal place area and hippocampus, in addition to the occipital pole and BG. Together, these findings suggest that encoding-related activity in brain regions associated with scene processing, oculomotor control, and memory supports the formation, and subsequent recapitulation, of functional scanpaths. More broadly, these findings lend support to Scanpath Theory's assertion that eye movements both encode, and are themselves embedded in, mnemonic representations. |
Christoph Helmchen; Philipp J. Koch; Gabriel Girard; Norbert Brüggemann; Björn Machner; Andreas Sprenger NPTX1-related oculomotor apraxia: An intra-hemispheric disconnection disorder Journal Article In: Journal of Neurology, vol. 269, no. 7, pp. 3931–3936, 2022. @article{Helmchen2022a, Oculomotor apraxia (OMA) is a rare and heavily disabling neurological disorder causing severe difficulties in the initia- tion and maintenance of voluntary eye movements when the head is stationary. If patients try to initiate saccades, they are grossly delayed and hypometric (stair-case). .. The aim of this study was to test competing pathophysiological hypotheses by functional and structural MRI, stating that OMA is related to either abnormal (i) inter-hemispheric or (ii) intra-hemispheric connectivity between the FEF and related oculomotor structures (oculomotor network) or (iii) both mechanisms. |
Jasper H. Fabius; Katarina Moravkova; Alessio Fracasso Topographic organization of eye-position dependent gain fields in human visual cortex Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Fabius2022, The ability to move has introduced animals with the problem of sensory ambiguity: the position of an external stimulus could change over time because the stimulus moved, or because the animal moved its receptors. This ambiguity can be resolved with a change in neural response gain as a function of receptor orientation. Here, we developed an encoding model to capture gain modulation of visual responses in high field (7 T) fMRI data. We characterized population eye-position dependent gain fields (pEGF). The information contained in the pEGFs allowed us to reconstruct eye positions over time across the visual hierarchy. We discovered a systematic distribution of pEGF centers: pEGF centers shift from contra- to ipsilateral following pRF eccentricity. Such a topographical organization suggests that signals beyond pure retinotopy are accessible early in the visual hierarchy, providing the potential to solve sensory ambiguity and optimize sensory processing information for functionally relevant behavior. |
Farzad V. Farahani; Waldemar Karwowski; Mark D'Esposito; Richard F. Betzel; Pamela K. Douglas; Anna Maria Sobczak; Bartosz Bohaterewicz; Tadeusz Marek; Magdalena Fafrowicz Diurnal variations of resting-state fMRI data: A graph-based analysis Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 256, pp. 1–25, 2022. @article{Farahani2022, Circadian rhythms (lasting approximately 24 h) control and entrain various physiological processes, ranging from neural activity and hormone secretion to sleep cycles and eating habits. Several studies have shown that time of day (TOD) is associated with human cognition and brain functions. In this study, utilizing a chronotype-based paradigm, we applied a graph theory approach on resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data to compare whole-brain functional network topology between morning and evening sessions and between morning-type (MT) and evening-type (ET) participants. Sixty-two individuals (31 MT and 31 ET) underwent two fMRI sessions, approximately 1 hour (morning) and 10 h (evening) after their wake-up time, according to their declared habitual sleep-wake pattern on a regular working day. In the global analysis, the findings revealed the effect of TOD on functional connectivity (FC) patterns, including increased small-worldness, assortativity, and synchronization across the day. However, we identified no significant differences based on chronotype categories. The study of the modular structure of the brain at mesoscale showed that functional networks tended to be more integrated with one another in the evening session than in the morning session. Local/regional changes were affected by both factors (i.e., TOD and chronotype), mostly in areas associated with somatomotor, attention, frontoparietal, and default networks. Furthermore, connectivity and hub analyses revealed that the somatomotor, ventral attention, and visual networks covered the most highly connected areas in the morning and evening sessions: the latter two were more active in the morning sessions, and the first was identified as being more active in the evening. Finally, we performed a correlation analysis to determine whether global and nodal measures were associated with subjective assessments across participants. Collectively, these findings contribute to an increased understanding of diurnal fluctuations in resting brain activity and highlight the role of TOD in future studies on brain function and the design of fMRI experiments. |
Mahtab Farahbakhsh; Elaine J. Anderson; Roni O. Maimon-Mor; Andy Rider; John A. Greenwood; Nashila Hirji; Serena Zaman; Pete R. Jones; D. Samuel Schwarzkopf; Geraint Rees; Michel Michaelides; Tessa M. Dekker A demonstration of cone function plasticity after gene therapy in achromatopsia Journal Article In: Brain, vol. 145, pp. 3803–3815, 2022. @article{Farahbakhsh2022, Recent advances in regenerative therapy have placed the treatment of previously incurable eye diseases within arms' reach. Achromatopsia is a severe monogenic heritable retinal disease that disrupts cone function from birth, leaving patients with complete colour blindness, low acuity, photosensitivity and nystagmus. While successful gene-replacement therapy in non-primate models of achromatopsia has raised widespread hopes for clinical treatment, it was yet to be determined if and how these therapies can induce new cone function in the human brain. Using a novel multimodal approach, we demonstrate for the first time that gene therapy can successfully activate dormant cone-mediated pathways in children with achromatopsia (CNGA3- and CNGB3-associated, 10–15 years). To test this, we combined functional MRI population receptive field mapping and psychophysics with stimuli that selectively measure cone photoreceptor signalling. We measured cortical and visual cone function before and after gene therapy in four paediatric patients, evaluating treatment-related change against benchmark data from untreated patients (n = 9) and normal-sighted participants (n = 28). After treatment, two of the four children displayed strong evidence for novel cone-mediated signals in visual cortex, with a retinotopic pattern that was not present in untreated achromatopsia and which is highly unlikely to emerge by chance. Importantly, this change was paired with a significant improvement in psychophysical measures of cone-mediated visual function. These improvements were specific to the treated eye, and provide strong evidence for successful read-out and use of new cone-mediated information. These data show for the first time that gene replacement therapy in achromatopsia within the plastic period of development can awaken dormant cone-signalling pathways after years of deprivation. This reveals unprecedented neural plasticity in the developing human nervous system and offers great promise for emerging regenerative therapies. |
Julia Fietz; Dorothee Pöhlchen; Florian P. Binder; Michael Czisch; Philipp G. Sämann; Victor I. Spoormaker Pupillometry tracks cognitive load and salience network activity in a working memory functional magnetic resonance imaging task Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 665–680, 2022. @article{Fietz2022, The diameter of the human pupil tracks working memory processing and is associated with activity in the frontoparietal network. At the same time, recent neuroimaging research has linked human pupil fluctuations to activity in the salience network. In this combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)/pupillometry study, we recorded the pupil size of healthy human participants while they performed a blockwise organized working memory task (N-back) inside an MRI scanner in order to monitor the pupil fluctuations associated neural activity during working memory processing. We first confirmed that mean pupil size closely followed working memory load. Combining this with fMRI data, we focused on blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) correlates of mean pupil size modeled onto the task blocks as a parametric modulation. Interrogating this modulated task regressor, we were able to retrieve the frontoparietal network. Next, to fully exploit the within-block dynamics, we divided the blocks into 1 s time bins and filled these with corresponding pupil change values (first-order derivative of pupil size). We found that pupil change within N-back blocks was positively correlated with BOLD amplitudes in the areas of the salience network (namely bilateral insula, and anterior cingulate cortex). Taken together, fMRI with simultaneous measurement of pupil parameters constitutes a valuable tool to dissect working memory subprocesses related to both working memory load and salience of the presented stimuli. |
Joshua J. Foster; Sam Ling Feature-based attention multiplicatively scales the fMRI-BOLD contrast-response function Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 36, pp. 6894–6906, 2022. @article{Foster2022, fMRI plays a key role in the study of attention. However, there remains a puzzling discrepancy between attention effects measured with fMRI and with electrophysiological methods. While electrophysiological studies find that attention increases sensory gain, amplifying stimulus-evoked neural responses by multiplicatively scaling the contrast-response function (CRF), fMRI appears to be insensitive to these multiplicative effects. Instead, fMRI studies typically find that attention produces an additive baseline shift in the BOLD signal. These findings suggest that attentional effects measured with fMRI reflect top-down inputs to visual cortex, rather than the modulation of sensory gain. If true, this drastically limits what fMRI can tell us about how attention improves sensory coding. Here, we examined whether fMRI is sensitive to multiplicative effects of attention using a feature-based attention paradigm designed to preclude any possible additive effects. We measured BOLD activity evoked by a probe stimulus in one visual hemifield while participants (6 male, 6 female) attended to the probe orientation (attended condition), or to an orthogonal orientation (unattended condition), in the other hemifield. To measure CRFs in visual areas V1-V3, we parametrically varied the contrast of the probe stimulus. In all three areas, feature-based attention increased contrast gain, improving sensitivity by shifting CRFs toward lower contrasts. In V2 and V3, we also found an increase in response gain, an increase in the responsivity of the CRF, that was greatest at inner eccentricities. These results provide clear evidence that the fMRI-BOLD signal is sensitive to multiplicative effects of attention. |
Mathilda Froesel; Maëva Gacoin; Simon Clavagnier; Marc Hauser; Quentin Goudard; Suliann Ben Hamed Socially meaningful visual context either enhances or inhibits vocalisation processing in the macaque brain Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Froesel2022, Social interactions rely on the interpretation of semantic and emotional information, often from multiple sensory modalities. Nonhuman primates send and receive auditory and visual communicative signals. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the association of visual and auditory information based on their common social meaning are unknown. Using heart rate estimates and functional neuroimaging, we show that in the lateral and superior temporal sulcus of the macaque monkey, neural responses are enhanced in response to species-specific vocalisations paired with a matching visual context, or when vocalisations follow, in time, visual information, but inhibited when vocalisation are incongruent with the visual context. For example, responses to affiliative vocalisations are enhanced when paired with affiliative contexts but inhibited when paired with aggressive or escape contexts. Overall, we propose that the identified neural network represents social meaning irrespective of sensory modality. |
Clément M. Garin; Yuki Hori; Stefan Everling; Christopher T. Whitlow; Finnegan J. Calabro; Beatriz Luna; Mathilda Froesel; Maëva Gacoin; Suliann Ben Hamed; Marc Dhenain; Christos Constantinidis An evolutionary gap in primate default mode network organization Journal Article In: Cell Reports, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Garin2022, The human default mode network (DMN) is engaged at rest and in cognitive states such as self-directed thoughts. Interconnected homologous cortical areas in primates constitute a network considered as the equivalent. Here, based on a cross-species comparison of the DMN between humans and non-hominoid primates (macaques, marmosets, and mouse lemurs), we report major dissimilarities in connectivity profiles. Most importantly, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of non-hominoid primates is poorly engaged with the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), though strong correlated activity between the human PCC and the mPFC is a key feature of the human DMN. Instead, a fronto-temporal resting-state network involving the mPFC was detected consistently across non-hominoid primate species. These common functional features shared between non-hominoid primates but not with humans suggest a substantial gap in the organization of the primate's DMN and its associated cognitive functions. |
Laura S. Geurts; James R. H. Cooke; Ruben S. Bergen; Janneke F. M. Jehee Subjective confidence reflects representation of Bayesian probability in cortex Journal Article In: Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 6, pp. 294–305, 2022. @article{Geurts2022, What gives rise to the human sense of confidence? Here we tested the Bayesian hypothesis that confidence is based on a probability distribution represented in neural population activity. We implemented several computational models of confidence and tested their predictions using psychophysics and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Using a generative model-based decoding technique, we extracted probability distributions from neural population activity in human visual cortex. We found that subjective confidence tracks the shape of the decoded distribution. That is, when sensory evidence was more precise, as indicated by the decoded distribution, observers reported higher levels of confidence. We furthermore found that neural activity in the insula, anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex was linked to both the shape of the decoded distribution and reported confidence, in ways consistent with the Bayesian model. Altogether, our findings support recent statistical theories of confidence and suggest that probabilistic information guides the computation of one's sense of confidence. |
Camille Giacometti; Audrey Dureux; Delphine Autran-Clavagnier; Charles R. E. Wilson; Jérôme Sallet; Manon Dirheimer; Emmanuel Procyk; Fadila Hadj-Bouziane; Céline Amiez Frontal cortical functional connectivity is impacted by anaesthesia in macaques Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, pp. 4050–4067, 2022. @article{Giacometti2022, A critical aspect of neuroscience is to establish whether and how brain networks evolved across primates. To date, most comparative studies have used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) in anaesthetized nonhuman primates and in awake humans. However, anaesthesia strongly affects rs-fMRI signals. The present study investigated the impact of the awareness state (anaesthesia vs. awake) within the same group of macaque monkeys on the rs-fMRI functional connectivity organization of a well-characterized network in the human brain, the cingulo-frontal lateral network. Results in awake macaques show that rostral seeds in the cingulate sulcus exhibited stronger correlation strength with rostral compared to caudal lateral frontal cortical areas, while more caudal seeds displayed stronger correlation strength with caudal compared to anterior lateral frontal cortical areas. Critically, this inverse rostro-caudal functional gradient was abolished under anaesthesia. This study demonstrated a similar functional connectivity (FC) organization of the cingulo-frontal cortical network in awake macaque to that previously uncovered in the human brain pointing toward a preserved FC organization from macaque to human. However, it can only be observed in awake state suggesting that this network is sensitive to anaesthesia and warranting significant caution when comparing FC patterns across species under different states. |
Mengyuan Gong; Yilin Chen; Taosheng Liu Preparatory attention to visual features primarily relies on non-sensory representation Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Gong2022, Prior knowledge of behaviorally relevant information promotes preparatory attention before the appearance of stimuli. A key question is how our brain represents the attended information during preparation. A sensory template hypothesis assumes that preparatory signals evoke neural activity patterns that resembled the perception of the attended stimuli, whereas a non-sensory, abstract template hypothesis assumes that preparatory signals reflect the abstraction of attended stimuli. To test these hypotheses, we used fMRI and multivariate analysis to characterize neural activity patterns when human participants were prepared to attend a feature and then select it from a compound stimulus. In an fMRI experiment using basic visual feature (motion direction), we observed reliable decoding of the to-be-attended feature from the preparatory activity in both visual and frontoparietal areas. However, while the neural patterns constructed by a single feature from a baseline task generalized to the activity patterns during stimulus selection, they could not generalize to the activity patterns during preparation. Our findings thus suggest that neural signals during attentional preparation are predominantly non-sensory in nature that may reflect an abstraction of the attended feature. Such a representation could provide efficient and stable guidance of attention. |
Evan M. Gordon; Timothy O. Laumann; Scott Marek; Dillan J. Newbold; Jacqueline M. Hampton; Nicole A. Seider; David F. Montez; Ashley M. Nielsen; Andrew N. Van; Annie Zheng; Ryland Miller; Joshua S. Siegel; Benjamin P. Kay; Abraham Z. Snyder; Deanna J. Greene; Bradley L. Schlaggar; Steven E. Petersen; Steven M. Nelson; Nico U. F. Dosenbach Individualized functional subnetworks connect human striatum and frontal cortex Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, no. 13, pp. 2868–2884, 2022. @article{Gordon2022, The striatum and cerebral cortex are interconnected via multiple recurrent loops that play a major role in many neuropsychiatric conditions. Primate corticostriatal connections can be precisely mapped using invasive tract-tracing. However, noninvasive human research has not mapped these connections with anatomical precision, limited in part by the practice of averaging neuroimaging data across individuals. Here we utilized highly sampled resting-state functional connectivity MRI for individual-specific precision functional mapping (PFM) of corticostriatal connections. We identified ten individual-specific subnetworks linking cortex—predominately frontal cortex—to striatum, most of which converged with nonhuman primate tract-tracing work. These included separable connections between nucleus accumbens core/shell and orbitofrontal/medial frontal gyrus; between anterior striatum and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; between dorsal caudate and lateral prefrontal cortex; and between middle/posterior putamen and supplementary motor/primary motor cortex. Two subnetworks that did not converge with nonhuman primates were connected to cortical regions associated with human language function. Thus, precision subnetworks identify detailed, individual-specific, neurobiologically plausible corticostriatal connectivity that includes human-specific language networks. |
Marcus Grueschow; Birgit Kleim; Christian Carl Ruff Functional coupling of the locus coeruleus is linked to successful cognitive control Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Grueschow2022, The locus coeruleus (LC) is a brainstem structure that sends widespread efferent projections throughout the mammalian brain. The LC constitutes the major source of noradrenaline (NE), a modulatory neurotransmitter that is crucial for fundamental brain functions such as arousal, attention, and cognitive control. This role of the LC-NE is traditionally not believed to reflect functional influences on the frontoparietal network or the striatum, but recent advances in chemogenetic manipulations of the rodent brain have challenged this notion. However, demonstrations of LCNE functional connectivity with these areas in the human brain are surprisingly sparse. Here, we close this gap. Using an established emotional stroop task, we directly compared trials requiring response conflict control with trials that did not require this, but were matched for visual stimulus properties, response modality, and controlled for pupil dilation differences across both trial types. We found that LC-NE functional coupling with the parietal cortex and regions of the striatum is substantially enhanced during trials requiring response conflict control. Crucially, the strength of this functional coupling was directly related to individual reaction time differences incurred by conflict resolution. Our data concur with recent rodent findings and highlight the importance of converging evidence between human and nonhuman neurophysiology to further understand the neural systems supporting adaptive and maladaptive behavior in health and disease. |
Hengda He; Nabil Ettehadi; Amir Shmuel; Qolamreza R. Razlighi Evidence suggesting common mechanisms underlie contralateral and ipsilateral negative BOLD responses in the human visual cortex Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 262, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{He2022a, The task-evoked positive BOLD response (PBR) to a unilateral visual hemi-field stimulation is often accompanied by robust and sustained contralateral as well as ipsilateral negative BOLD responses (NBRs) in the visual cortex. The signal characteristics and the neural and/or vascular mechanisms that underlie these two types of NBRs are not completely understood. In this paper, we investigated the properties of these two types of NBRs. We first demonstrated the linearity of both NBRs with respect to stimulus duration. Next, we showed that the hemodynamic response functions (HRFs) of the two NBRs were similar to each other, but significantly different from that of the PBR. Moreover, the subject-wise expressions of the two NBRs were tightly coupled to the degree that the correlation between the two NBRs was significantly higher than the correlation between each NBR and the PBR. However, the activation patterns of the two NBRs did not show a high level of interhemispheric spatial similarity, and the functional connectivity between them was not different than the interhemispheric functional connectivity between the NBRs and PBR. Finally, while attention did modulate both NBRs, the attention-related changes in their HRFs were similar. Our findings suggest that the two NBRs might be generated through common neural and/or vascular mechanisms involving distal/deep brain regions that project to the two hemispheres. |
Juyoen Hur; Manuel Kuhn; Shannon E. Grogans; Allegra S. Anderson; Samiha Islam; Hyung Cho Kim; Rachael M. Tillman; Andrew S. Fox; Jason F. Smith; Kathryn A. DeYoung; Alexander J. Shackman Anxiety-related frontocortical activity is associated with dampened stressor reactivity in the real world Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 906–924, 2022. @article{Hur2022, Negative affect is a fundamental dimension of human emotion. When extreme, it contributes to a variety of adverse outcomes, from physical and mental illness to divorce and premature death. Mechanistic work in animals and neuroimaging research in humans and monkeys have begun to reveal the broad contours of the neural circuits governing negative affect, but the relevance of these discoveries to everyday distress remains incompletely understood. Here, we used a combination of approaches—including neuroimaging assays of threat anticipation and emotional-face perception and more than 10,000 momentary assessments of emotional experience—to demonstrate that individuals who showed greater activation in a cingulo-opercular circuit during an anxiety-eliciting laboratory paradigm experienced lower levels of stressor-dependent distress in their daily lives (ns = 202–208 university students). Extended amygdala activation was not significantly related to momentary negative affect. These observations provide a framework for understanding the neurobiology of negative affect in the laboratory and in the real world. |
Tarik Jamoulle; Qian Ran; Karen Meersmans; Jolien Schaeverbeke; Patrick Dupont; Rik Vandenberghe Posterior intraparietal sulcus mediates detection of salient stimuli outside the endogenous focus of attention Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, pp. 1455–1469, 2022. @article{Jamoulle2022, Visual consciousness is shaped by the interplay between endogenous selection and exogenous capture. If stimulus saliency is aligned with a subject's attentional priorities, endogenous selection will be facilitated. In case of a misalignment, endogenous selection may be compromised as attentional capture is a strong and automatic process. We manipulated task-congruent versus -incongruent saliency in a functional magnetic resonance imaging change-detection task and analyzed brain activity patterns in the cortex surrounding the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) within the Julich-Brain probabilistic cytoarchitectonic mapping reference frame. We predicted that exogenous effects would be seen mainly in the posterior regions of the IPS (hIP4-hIP7-hIP8), whereas a conflict between endogenous and exogenous orienting would elicit activity from more anterior cytoarchitectonic areas (hIP1-hIP2-hIP3). Contrary to our hypothesis, a conflict between endogenous and exogenous orienting had an effect early in the IPS (mainly in hIP7 and hIP8). This is strong evidence for an endogenous component in hIP7/8 responses to salient stimuli beyond effects of attentional bottom-up sweep. Our results suggest that hIP7 and hIP8 are implicated in the individuation of attended locations based on saliency as well as endogenous instructions. |
Romuald A. Janik; Igor T. Podolak; Łukasz Struski; Anna Ceglarek; Koryna Lewandowska; Barbara Sikora-Wachowicz; Tadeusz Marek; Magdalena Fafrowicz Neural spatio-temporal patterns of information processing related to cognitive conflict and correct or false recognitions Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Janik2022, Using a visual short-term memory task and employing a new methodological approach, we analyzed neural responses from the perspective of the conflict level and correctness/erroneous over a longer time window. Sixty-five participants performed the short-term memory task in the fMRI scanner. We explore neural spatio-temporal patterns of information processing in the context of correct or erroneous response and high or low level of cognitive conflict using classical fMRI analysis, surface-based cortical data, temporal analysis of interpolated mean activations, and machine learning classifiers. Our results provide evidence that information processing dynamics during the retrieval process vary depending on the correct or false recognition—for stimuli inducing a high level of cognitive conflict and erroneous response, information processing is prolonged. The observed phenomenon may be interpreted as the manifestation of the brain's preparation for future goal-directed action. |
Zhenlan Jin; Dong-gang Jin; Min Xiao; Aolin Ding; Jing Tian; Junjun Zhang; Ling Li In: Brain Structure and Function, vol. 227, no. 8, pp. 2623–2632, 2022. @article{Jin2022, Antisaccade task requires inhibition of a prepotent prosaccade to a peripheral target and initiation of a saccade to the opposite location, and, therefore, is used as a tool to investigate behavioral adjustment. The frontal and parietal cortices are both known for their activation during saccade generation, but it is unclear whether their neuroanatomical characteristics also contribute to antisaccades. Here, we took antisaccade cost (antisaccade latency minus prosaccade latency) as an index for additional time for generating antisaccades. Fifty-eight participants conducted pro and antisaccade tasks outside the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner and their structural MRI (sMRI) data were also collected to explore brain regions neuroanatomically related to antisaccade cost. Then, twelve participants performed saccade tasks in the scanner and their task-state functional MRI (fMRI) data were collected to verify the activation of structurally identified brain regions during the saccade generation. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) results revealed that gray matter volume (GMV) of the left precentral gyrus and the left insula were positively correlated with the antisaccade cost, which was validated by the prediction analysis. Brain activation results showed the activation of the precentral during both pro and antisaccade execution period, but not the insula. Our results suggest that precentral gyrus and insula play vital roles to antisaccade cost, but possibly in different ways. The insula, a key node of the salience network, possibly regulates the saliency processing of the target, while the precentral gyrus possibly mediates the generation of saccades. Our study especially highlights an outstanding role of the precentral gyrus in flexible oculomotor control. |
Johannes Kirchner; Tamara Watson; Markus Lappe Real-time MRI reveals unique insight into the full eye kinematics of eye movements Journal Article In: eNeuro, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Kirchner2022a, Our eyes are constantly in motion and the various kinds of eye movements are closely linked to many aspects of human cognitive processing. Measuring all possible eye movements unobtrusively is not achievable with current methods. Video-based eye-trackers only measure rotational but not translational motion of the eye, re- quire a calibration process relying on the participant's self-report of accurate fixation, and do not work if vision of the eyeball is blocked. Scleral search coils attach physical weight on the eyeball and also do not measure translation. Here, we describe a novel and fully automated method to use real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for eye tracking. We achieved a temporal resolution sufficient to measure eye rotations and transla- tions as short as those that occur within a blink and behind a closed eyelid. To demonstrate this method, we measured the full extent of the blink-related eye movement for two individuals, suggesting that the eye approaches a holding position during lid closure and can move by as much as 35° in rotation and 2 mm in translation. We also investigated the coordination of gaze shifts with blinks. We found that the gaze shift is tightly coupled in time to the translational blink movement and that blinks can induce significant temporal shifts of the gaze trajectory between left and right eye. Our MR-based Eye Tracking (MREyeTrack) method allows measurement of eye movements in terms of both translation and rotation and enables new opportunities for study- ing ocular motility and its disorders. |
Camille Métais; Judith Nicolas; Moussa Diarra; Alexis Cheviet; Eric Koun; Denis Pélisson Neural substrates of saccadic adaptation: Plastic changes versus error processing and forward versus backward learning Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 262, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Metais2022, Previous behavioral, clinical, and neuroimaging studies suggest that the neural substrates of adaptation of saccadic eye movements involve, beyond the central role of the cerebellum, several, still incompletely determined, cortical areas. Furthermore, no neuroimaging study has yet tackled the differences between saccade lengthening ("forward adaptation") and shortening ("backward adaptation") and neither between their two main components, i.e. error processing and oculomotor changes. The present fMRI study was designed to fill these gaps. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal and eye movements of 24 healthy volunteers were acquired while performing reactive saccades under 4 conditions repeated in short blocks of 16 trials: systematic target jump during the saccade and in the saccade direction (forward: FW) or in the opposite direction (backward: BW), randomly directed FW or BW target jump during the saccade (random: RND) and no intra-saccadic target jump (stationary: STA). BOLD signals were analyzed both through general linear model (GLM) approaches applied at the whole-brain level and through sensitive Multi-Variate Pattern Analyses (MVPA) applied to 34 regions of interest (ROIs) identified from independent 'Saccade Localizer' functional data. Oculomotor data were consistent with successful induction of forward and backward adaptation in FW and BW blocks, respectively. The different analyses of voxel activation patterns (MVPAs) disclosed the involvement of 1) a set of ROIs specifically related to adaptation in the right occipital cortex, right and left MT/MST, right FEF and right pallidum; 2) several ROIs specifically involved in error signal processing in the left occipital cortex, left PEF, left precuneus, Medial Cingulate cortex (MCC), left inferior and right superior cerebellum; 3) ROIs specific to the direction of adaptation in the occipital cortex and MT/MST (left and right hemispheres for FW and BW, respectively) and in the pallidum of the right hemisphere (FW). The involvement of the left PEF and of the (left and right) occipital cortex were further supported and qualified by the whole brain GLM analysis: clusters of increased activity were found in PEF for the RND versus STA contrast (related to error processing) and in the left (right) occipital cortex for the FW (BW) versus STA contrasts [related to the FW (BW) direction of error and/or adaptation]. The present study both adds complementary data to the growing literature supporting a role of the cerebral cortex in saccadic adaptation through feedback and feedforward relationships with the cerebellum and provides the basis for improving conceptual frameworks of oculomotor plasticity and of its link with spatial cognition. |
Viola Mocz; Maryam Vaziri-pashkam; Marvin Chun; Yaoda Xu Predicting identity-preserving object transformations in human posterior parietal cortex and convolutional neural networks Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34, pp. 2406–2435, 2022. @article{Mocz2022, Previous research shows that, within human occipito- temporal cortex (OTC), we can use a general linear mapping function to link visual object responses across nonidentity feature changes, including Euclidean features (e.g., position and size) and non-Euclidean features (e.g., image statistics and spatial frequency). Although the learned mapping is capable of predicting responses of objects not included in training, these predictions are better for categories included than those not included in training. These findings demonstrate a near-orthogonal representation of object identity and nonidentity features throughout human OTC. Here, we extended these findings to examine the mapping across both Euclidean and non-Euclidean feature changes in human posterior parietal cortex (PPC), including functionally defined regions in inferior and superior intraparietal sulcus. We additionally examined responses in five convolutional neural networks (CNNs) pretrained with object classification, as CNNs are considered as the current best model of the primate ventral visual system. We separately compared results from PPC and CNNs with those of OTC. We found that a linear mapping function could successfully link object responses in different states of nonidentity transformations in human PPC and CNNs for both Euclidean and non-Euclidean features. Over-all, we found that object identity and nonidentity features are represented in a near-orthogonal, rather than complete-orthogonal, manner in PPC and CNNs, just like they do in OTC. Meanwhile, some differences existed among OTC, PPC, and CNNs. These results demonstrate the similarities and differences in how visual object information across an identity-preserving image transformation may be represented in OTC, PPC, and CNNs |
Robert M. Mok; Bradley C. Love Abstract neural representations of category membership beyond information coding stimulus or response Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 1719–1735, 2022. @article{Mok2022, For decades, researchers have debated whether mental representations are symbolic or grounded in sensory inputs and motor programs. Certainly, aspects of mental representations are grounded. However, does the brain also contain abstract concept representations that mediate between perception and action in a flexible manner not tied to the details of sensory inputs and motor programs? Such conceptual pointers would be useful when concepts remain constant despite changes in appearance and associated actions. We evaluated whether human participants acquire such representations using fMRI. Participants completed a probabilistic concept learning task in which sensory, motor, and category variables were not perfectly coupled or entirely independent, making it possible to observe evidence for abstract representations or purely grounded representations. To assess how the learned concept structure is represented in the brain, we examined brain regions implicated in flexible cognition (e.g., pFC and parietal cortex) that are most likely to encode an abstract representation removed from sensory–motor details. We also examined sensory–motor regions that might encode grounded sensory–motor-based representations tuned for categorization. Using a cognitive model to estimate participants' category rule and multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data, we found the left pFC and human middle temporal visual area (MT)/V5 coded for category in the absence of information coding for stimulus or response. Because category was based on the stimulus, finding an abstract representation of category was not inevitable. Our results suggest that certain brain areas support categorization behavior by constructing concept representations in a format akin to a symbol that differs from stimulus–motor codes. |
Roy Moyal; Hamid B. Turker; Wen Ming Luh; Khena M. Swallow Auditory target detection enhances visual processing and hippocampal functional connectivity Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Moyal2022, Though dividing one's attention between two input streams typically impairs performance, detecting a behaviorally relevant stimulus can sometimes enhance the encoding of unrelated information presented at the same time. Previous research has shown that selection of this kind boosts visual cortical activity and memory for concurrent items. An important unanswered question is whether such effects are reflected in processing quality and functional connectivity in visual regions and in the hippocampus. In this fMRI study, participants were asked to memorize a stream of naturalistic images and press a button only when they heard a predefined target tone (400 or 1,200 Hz, counterbalanced). Images could be presented with a target tone, with a distractor tone, or without a tone. Auditory target detection increased activity throughout the ventral visual cortex but lowered it in the hippocampus. Enhancements in functional connectivity between the ventral visual cortex and the hippocampus were also observed following auditory targets. Multi-voxel pattern classification of image category was more accurate on target tone trials than on distractor and no tone trials in the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus. This effect was stronger in visual cortical clusters whose activity was more correlated with the hippocampus on target tone than on distractor tone trials. In agreement with accounts suggesting that subcortical noradrenergic influences play a role in the attentional boost effect, auditory target detection also caused an increase in locus coeruleus activity and phasic pupil responses. These findings outline a network of cortical and subcortical regions that are involved in the selection and processing of information presented at behaviorally relevant moments. |
Laura Müller-Pinzler; Nora Czekalla; Annalina V. Mayer; Alexander Schröder; David S. Stolz; Frieder M. Paulus; Sören Krach Neurocomputational mechanisms of affected beliefs Journal Article In: Communications Biology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{MuellerPinzler2022, The feedback people receive on their behavior shapes the process of belief formation and self-efficacy in mastering a particular task. However, the neural and computational mechanisms of how the subjective value of self-efficacy beliefs, and the corresponding affect, influence the learning process remain unclear. We investigated these mechanisms during self-efficacy belief formation using fMRI, pupillometry, and computational modeling, and by analyzing individual differences in affective experience. Biases in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs were associated with affect, pupil dilation, and neural activity within the anterior insula, amygdala, ventral tegmental area/ substantia nigra, and mPFC. Specifically, neural and pupil responses mapped the valence of the prediction errors in correspondence with individuals' experienced affective states and learning biases during self-efficacy belief formation. Together with the functional connectivity dynamics of the anterior insula within this network, our results provide evidence for neural and computational mechanisms of how we arrive at affected beliefs. |
Abigail L. Noyce; Ray W. Lefco; James A. Brissenden; Sean M. Tobyne; Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham; David C. Somers Extended frontal networks for visual and auditory working memory Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, pp. 855–869, 2022. @article{Noyce2022, 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. |
Jefferson Ortega; Chelsea Reichert Plaska; Bernard A. Gomes; Timothy M. Ellmore Spontaneous eye blink rate during the working memory delay period predicts task accuracy Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Ortega2022, Spontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR) has been linked to attention and memory, specifically working memory (WM). sEBR is also related to striatal dopamine (DA) activity with schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease showing increases and decreases, respectively, in sEBR. A weakness of past studies of sEBR and WM is that correlations have been reported using blink rates taken at baseline either before or after performance of the tasks used to assess WM. The goal of the present study was to understand how fluctuations in sEBR during different phases of a visual WM task predict task accuracy. In two experiments, with recordings of sEBR collected inside and outside of a magnetic resonance imaging bore, we observed sEBR to be positively correlated with WM task accuracy during the WM delay period. We also found task-related modulation of sEBR, including higher sEBR during the delay period compared to rest, and lower sEBR during task phases (e.g., stimulus encoding) that place demands on visual attention. These results provide further evidence that sEBR could be an important predictor of WM task performance with the changes during the delay period suggesting a role in WM maintenance. The relationship of sEBR to DA activity and WM maintenance is discussed. |
Emily J. Allen; Ghislain St-Yves; Yihan Wu; Jesse L. Breedlove; Jacob S. Prince; Logan T. Dowdle; Matthias Nau; Brad Caron; Franco Pestilli; Ian Charest; J. Benjamin Hutchinson; Thomas Naselaris; Kendrick Kay A massive 7T fMRI dataset to bridge cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence Journal Article In: Nature Neuroscience, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 116–126, 2022. @article{Allen2022, Extensive sampling of neural activity during rich cognitive phenomena is critical for robust understanding of brain function. Here we present the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD), in which high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging responses to tens of thousands of richly annotated natural scenes were measured while participants performed a continuous recognition task. To optimize data quality, we developed and applied novel estimation and denoising techniques. Simple visual inspections of the NSD data reveal clear representational transformations along the ventral visual pathway. Further exemplifying the inferential power of the dataset, we used NSD to build and train deep neural network models that predict brain activity more accurately than state-of-the-art models from computer vision. NSD also includes substantial resting-state and diffusion data, enabling network neuroscience perspectives to constrain and enhance models of perception and memory. Given its unprecedented scale, quality and breadth, NSD opens new avenues of inquiry in cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. |
Bertrand Beffara; Fadila Hadj-Bouziane; Suliann Ben Hamed; C. Nico Boehler; Leonardo Chelazzi; Elisa Santandrea; Emiliano Macaluso In: NeuroImage, vol. 255, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Beffara2022, Visuo-spatial attention prioritizes the processing of relevant inputs via different types of signals, including current goals and stimulus salience. Complex mixtures of these signals engage in everyday life situations, but little is known about how these signals jointly modulate distributed patterns of activity across the occipital regions that represent visual space. Here, we measured spatio-topic, quadrant-specific occipital activity during the processing of visual displays containing both task-relevant targets and salient color-singletons. We computed spatial bias vectors indexing the effect of attention in 2D space, as coded by distributed activity in the occipital cortex. We found that goal-directed spatial attention biased activity towards the target and that salience further modulated this endogenous effect: salient distractors decreased the spatial bias, while salient targets increased it. Analyses of effective connectivity revealed that the processing of salient distractors relied on the modulation of the bidirectional connectivity between the occipital and the posterior parietal cortex, as well as the modulation of the lateral interactions within the occipital cortex. These findings demonstrate that goal-directed attention and salience jointly contribute to shaping processing priorities in the occipital cortex and highlight that multiple functional paths determine how spatial information about these signals is distributed across occipital regions. |
Daniel K. Bjornn; Julie Van; C. Brock Kirwan The contributions of eye gaze fixations and target-lure similarity to behavioral and fMRI indices of pattern separation and pattern completion Journal Article In: Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 171–181, 2022. @article{Bjornn2022, Pattern separation and pattern completion are generally studied in humans using mnemonic discrimination tasks such as the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) where participants identify similar lures and repeated items from a series of images. Failures to correctly discriminate lures are thought to reflect a failure of pattern separation and a propensity toward pattern completion. Recent research has challenged this perspective, suggesting that poor encoding rather than pattern completion accounts for the occurrence of false alarm responses to similar lures. In two experiments, participants completed a continuous recognition task version of the MST while eye movement (Experiments 1 and 2) and fMRI data (Experiment 2) were collected. In Experiment 1, we replicated the result that fixation counts at study predicted accuracy on lure trials (consistent with poor encoding predicting mnemonic discrimination performance), but this effect was not observed in our fMRI task. In both experiments, we found that target-lure similarity was a strong predictor of accuracy on lure trials. Further, we found that fMRI activation changes in the hippocampus were significantly correlated with the number of fixations at study for correct but not incorrect mnemonic discrimination judgments when controlling for target-lure similarity. Our findings indicate that while eye movements during encoding predict subsequent hippocampal activation changes for correct mnemonic discriminations, the predictive power of eye movements for activation changes for incorrect mnemonic discrimination trials was modest at best. |
Charlie S. Burlingham; Minyoung Ryoo; Zvi N. Roth; Saghar Mirbagheri; David J. Heeger; Elisha P. Merriam Task-related hemodynamic responses in human early visual cortex are modulated by task difficulty and behavioral performance Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–24, 2022. @article{Burlingham2022a, Early visual cortex exhibits widespread hemodynamic responses in the absence of visual stimulation, which are entrained to the timing of a task and not predicted by local spiking or local field potential. Such task-related responses (TRRs) covary with reward magnitude and physiological signatures of arousal. It is unknown, however, if TRRs change on a trial-to-trial basis according to behavioral performance and task difficulty. If so, this would suggest that TRRs reflect arousal on a trial-to-trial timescale and covary with critical task and behavioral variables. We measured functional magnetic resonance imaging blood-oxygen-level-dependent (fMRI-BOLD) responses in the early visual cortex of human observers performing an orientation discrimination task consisting of separate easy and hard runs of trials. Stimuli were presented in a small portion of one hemifield, but the fMRI response was measured in the ipsilateral hemisphere, far from the stimulus representation and focus of spatial attention. TRRs scaled in amplitude with task difficulty, behavioral accuracy, reaction time, and lapses across trials. These modulations were not explained by the influence of respiration, cardiac activity, or head movement on the fMRI signal. Similar modulations with task difficulty and behavior were observed in pupil size. These results suggest that TRRs reflect arousal and behavior on the timescale of individual trials. |
Lisa Byrge; Dorit Kliemann; Ye He; Hu Cheng; Julian Michael Tyszka; Ralph Adolphs; Daniel P. Kennedy Video-evoked fMRI BOLD responses are highly consistent across different data acquisition sites Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 43, no. 9, pp. 2972–2991, 2022. @article{Byrge2022, Naturalistic imaging paradigms, in which participants view complex videos in the scanner, are increasingly used in human cognitive neuroscience. Videos evoke temporally synchronized brain responses that are similar across subjects as well as within subjects, but the reproducibility of these brain responses across different data acquisition sites has not yet been quantified. Here, we characterize the consistency of brain responses across independent samples of participants viewing the same videos in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners at different sites (Indiana University and Caltech). We compared brain responses collected at these different sites for two carefully matched datasets with identical scanner models, acquisition, and preprocessing details, along with a third unmatched dataset in which these details varied. Our overall conclusion is that for matched and unmatched datasets alike, video-evoked brain responses have high consistency across these different sites, both when compared across groups and across pairs of individuals. As one might expect, differences between sites were larger for unmatched datasets than matched datasets. Residual differences between datasets could in part reflect participant-level variability rather than scanner- or data- related effects. Altogether our results indicate promise for the development and, critically, generalization of video fMRI studies of individual differences in healthy and clinical populations alike. |
Youngsun T. Cho; Flora Moujaes; Charles H. Schleifer; Martina Starc; Jie Lisa Ji; Nicole Santamauro; Brendan Adkinson; Antonija Kolobaric; Morgan Flynn; John H. Krystal; John D. Murray; Grega Repovs; Alan Anticevic Reward and loss incentives improve spatial working memory by shaping trial-by-trial posterior frontoparietal signals Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 254, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Cho2022a, Integrating motivational signals with cognition is critical for goal-directed activities. The mechanisms that link neural changes with motivated working memory continue to be understood. Here, we tested how externally cued and non-cued (internally represented) reward and loss impact spatial working memory precision and neural circuits in human subjects using fMRI. We translated the classic delayed-response spatial working memory paradigm from non-human primate studies to take advantage of a continuous numeric measure of working memory precision, and the wealth of translational neuroscience yielded by these studies. Our results demonstrated that both cued and non-cued reward and loss improved spatial working memory precision. Visual association regions of the posterior prefrontal and parietal cortices, specifically the precentral sulcus (PCS) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS), had increased BOLD signal during incentivized spatial working memory. A subset of these regions had trial-by-trial increases in BOLD signal that were associated with better working memory precision, suggesting that these regions may be critical for linking neural signals with motivated working memory. In contrast, regions straddling executive networks, including areas in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior parietal cortex and cerebellum displayed decreased BOLD signal during incentivized working memory. While reward and loss similarly impacted working memory processes, they dissociated during feedback when money won or avoided in loss was given based on working memory performance. During feedback, the trial-by-trial amount and valence of reward/loss received was dissociated amongst regions such as the ventral striatum, habenula and periaqueductal gray. Overall, this work suggests motivated spatial working memory is supported by complex sensory processes, and that the IPS and PCS in the posterior frontoparietal cortices may be key regions for integrating motivational signals with spatial working memory precision. |
Nicolas Clairis; Mathias Pessiglione Value, confidence, deliberation: A functional partition of the medial prefrontal cortex demonstrated across rating and choice tasks Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 28, pp. 1–41, 2022. @article{Clairis2022, Deciding about courses of action involves minimizing costs and maximizing benefits. Decision neuroscience studies have implicated both the ventral and dorsal medial PFC (vmPFC and dmPFC) in signaling goal value and action cost, but the precise functional role of these regions is still a matter of debate. Here, we suggest a more general functional partition that applies not only to decisions but also to judgments about goal value (expected reward) and action cost (expected effort). In this conceptual framework, cognitive representations related to options (reward value and effort cost) are dissociated from metacognitive representations (confidence and deliberation) related to solving the task (providing a judgment or making a choice). We used an original approach aimed at identifying consistencies across several preference tasks, from likeability ratings to binary decisions involving both attribute integration and option comparison. fMRI results in human male and female participants confirmed the vmPFC as a generic valuation system, its activity increasing with reward value and decreasing with effort cost. In contrast, more dorsal regions were not concerned with the valuation of options but with metacognitive variables, confidence being reflected in mPFC activity and deliberation time in dmPFC activity. Thus, there was a dissociation between the effort attached to choice options (represented in the vmPFC) and the effort invested in deliberation (represented in the dmPFC), the latter being expressed in pupil dilation. More generally, assessing commonalities across preference tasks might help in reaching a unified view of the neural mechanisms underlying the cost/benefit tradeoffs that drive human behavior. |
Xiaohui Cui; Fabio Richlan; Wei Zhou Fixation-related fMRI analysis reveals the neural basis of parafoveal processing in self-paced reading of Chinese words Journal Article In: Brain Structure and Function, vol. 227, no. 8, pp. 2609–2621, 2022. @article{Cui2022a, While parafoveal word processing plays an important role in natural reading, the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. The present study investigated the neural basis of parafoveal processing during Chinese word reading with the co-registration of eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using fixation-related fMRI analysis. In the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, preview conditions (words that are identical, orthographically similar, and unrelated to target words), pre-target word frequency and target word frequency were manipulated. When fixating the pre-target word, the identical preview condition elicited lower brain activation in the left fusiform gyrus relative to unrelated and orthographically similar preview conditions and there were significant interactions of preview condition and pre-target word frequency on brain activation of the left middle frontal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus and supplementary motor area. When fixating the target word, there was a significant main effect of preview condition on brain activation of the right fusiform gyrus and a significant interaction of preview condition and pre-target word frequency on brain activation of the left middle frontal gyrus. These results suggest that fixation-related brain activation provides immediate measures and new perspectives to understand the mechanism of parafoveal processing in self-paced reading. |
Sharif I. Kronemer; Mark Aksen; Julia Z. Ding; Jun Hwan Ryu; Qilong Xin; Zhaoxiong Ding; Jacob S. Prince; Hunki Kwon; Aya Khalaf; Sarit Forman; David S. Jin; Kevin Wang; Kaylie Chen; Claire Hu; Akshar Agarwal; Erik Saberski; Syed Mohammad Adil Wafa; Owen P. Morgan; Jia Wu; Kate L. Christison-Lagay; Nicholas Hasulak; Martha Morrell; Alexandra Urban; R. Todd Constable; Michael Pitts; R. Mark Richardson; Michael J. Crowley; Hal Blumenfeld Human visual consciousness involves large scale cortical and subcortical networks independent of task report and eye movement activity Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Kronemer2022, The full neural circuits of conscious perception remain unknown. Using a visual perception task, we directly recorded a subcortical thalamic awareness potential (TAP). We also developed a unique paradigm to classify perceived versus not perceived stimuli using eye measurements to remove confounding signals related to reporting on conscious experiences. Using fMRI, we discovered three major brain networks driving conscious visual perception independent of report: first, increases in signal detection regions in visual, fusiform cortex, and frontal eye fields; and in arousal/salience networks involving midbrain, thalamus, nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate, and anterior insula; second, increases in frontoparietal attention and executive control networks and in the cerebellum; finally, decreases in the default mode network. These results were largely maintained after excluding eye movement-based fMRI changes. Our findings provide evidence that the neurophysiology of consciousness is complex even without overt report, involving multiple cortical and subcortical networks overlapping in space and time. |
Kiri Kuroda; Yukiko Ogura; Akitoshi Ogawa; Tomoya Tamei; Kazushi Ikeda; Tatsuya Kameda Behavioral and neuro-cognitive bases for emergence of norms and socially shared realities via dynamic interaction Journal Article In: Communications Biology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Kuroda2022, In the digital era, new socially shared realities and norms emerge rapidly, whether they are beneficial or harmful to our societies. Although these are emerging properties from dynamic interaction, most research has centered on static situations where isolated individuals face extant norms. We investigated how perceptual norms emerge endogenously as shared realities through interaction, using behavioral and fMRI experiments coupled with computational modeling. Social interactions fostered convergence of perceptual responses among people, not only overtly but also at the covert psychophysical level that generates overt responses. Reciprocity played a critical role in increasing the stability (reliability) of the psychophysical function within each individual, modulated by neural activity in the mentalizing network during interaction. These results imply that bilateral influence promotes mutual cognitive anchoring of individual views, producing shared generative models at the collective level that enable endogenous agreement on totally new targets–one of the key functions of social norms. |
Natalia Ladyka-Wojcik; Zhong-Xu Liu; Jennifer D. Ryan Unrestricted eye movements strengthen effective connectivity from hippocampal to oculomotor regions during scene construction Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 260, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{LadykaWojcik2022, Scene construction is a key component of memory recall, navigation, and future imagining, and relies on the medial temporal lobes (MTL). A parallel body of work suggests that eye movements may enable the imagination and construction of scenes, even in the absence of external visual input. There are vast structural and functional connections between regions of the MTL and those of the oculomotor system. However, the directionality of connections between the MTL and oculomotor control regions, and how it relates to scene construction, has not been studied directly in human neuroimaging. In the current study, we used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to interrogate effective connectivity between the MTL and oculomotor regions using a scene construction task in which participants' eye movements were either restricted (fixed-viewing) or unrestricted (free-viewing). By omitting external visual input, and by contrasting free- versus fixed- viewing, the directionality of neural connectivity during scene construction could be determined. As opposed to when eye movements were restricted, allowing free-viewing during construction of scenes strengthened top-down connections from the MTL to the frontal eye fields, and to lower-level cortical visual processing regions, suppressed bottom-up connections along the visual stream, and enhanced vividness of the constructed scenes. Taken together, these findings provide novel, non-invasive evidence for the underlying, directional, connectivity between the MTL memory system and oculomotor system associated with constructing vivid mental representations of scenes. |
Armien Lanssens; Dante Mantini; Hans Op Beeck; Celine R. Gillebert Activity in the fronto-parietal and visual cortex is modulated by feature-based attentional weighting Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Lanssens2022, In day-to-day dynamic activities where sensory input is abundant, stimulus representations in the visual cortex are modulated based on their attentional priority. Several studies have established the top-down role of a fronto-parietal dorsal attention network in selective attention. In the current study, we aimed to investigate whether activity of subregions of this network and the visual cortex is modulated by feature-based attentional weighting, and if so, whether their timecourses of activity are correlated. To this end, we analyzed fMRI data of 28 healthy subjects, who performed a feature-based go/no-go task. Participants had to attend to one or two colored streams of sinusoidal gratings and respond to each grating in the task-relevant stream(s) except to a single non-target grating. Univariate and multivariate fMRI results indicated that activity in bilateral fronto-parietal (frontal eye fields, intraparietal sulcus and superior parietal lobe) and visual (V1–V4, lateral occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus) regions was modulated by selecting one instead of attending to two gratings. Functional connectivity was not significantly different between fronto-parietal and visual regions when attending to one as opposed to two gratings. Our study demonstrates that activity in subregions of both the fronto-parietal and visual cortex is modified by feature-based attentional weighting. |
Kangjoo Lee; Corey Horien; David O'Connor; Bronwen Garand-Sheridan; Fuyuze Tokoglu; Dustin Scheinost; Evelyn M. R. Lake; R. Todd Constable Arousal impacts distributed hubs modulating the integration of brain functional connectivity Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 258, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Lee2022c, Even when subjects are at rest, it is thought that brain activity is organized into distinct brain states during which reproducible patterns are observable. Yet, it is unclear how to define or distinguish different brain states. A potential source of brain state variation is arousal, which may play a role in modulating functional interactions between brain regions. Here, we use simultaneous resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pupillometry to study the impact of arousal levels indexed by pupil area on the integration of large-scale brain networks. We employ a novel sparse dictionary learning-based method to identify hub regions participating in between-network integration stratified by arousal, by measuring k-hubness, the number (k) of functionally overlapping networks in each brain region. We show evidence of a brain-wide decrease in between-network integration and inter-subject variability at low relative to high arousal, with differences emerging across regions of the frontoparietal, default mode, motor, limbic, and cerebellum networks. State-dependent changes in k-hubness relate to the actual patterns of network integration within these hubs, suggesting a brain state transition from high to low arousal characterized by global synchronization and reduced network overlaps. We demonstrate that arousal is not limited to specific brain areas known to be directly associated with arousal regulation, but instead has a brain-wide impact that involves high-level between-network communications. Lastly, we show a systematic change in pairwise fMRI signal correlation structures in the arousal state-stratified data, and demonstrate that the choice of global signal regression could result in different conclusions in conventional graph theoretical analysis and in the analysis of k-hubness when studying arousal modulations. Together, our results suggest the presence of global and local effects of pupil-linked arousal modulations on resting state brain functional connectivity. |
Yih-Shiuan Lin; Chien-Chung Chen; Mark W. Greenlee Neural correlates of lateral modulation and perceptual filling-in in center-surround radial sinusoidal gratings: An fMRI study Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Lin2022, We investigated lateral modulation effects with functional magnetic resonance imaging. We presented radial sinusoidal gratings in random sequence: a scotoma grating with two arc-shaped blank regions (scotomata) in the periphery, one in the left and one in the right visual field, a center grating containing pattern only in the scotoma regions, and a full-field grating where the pattern occupied the whole screen. On each trial, one of the three gratings flickered in counterphase for 10 s, followed by a blank period. Observers were instructed to perform a fixation task and report whether filling-in was experienced during the scotoma condition. The results showed that the blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal was reduced in areas corresponding to the scotoma regions in the full-field compared to the center condition in V1 to V3 areas, indicating a lateral inhibition effect when the surround was added to the center pattern. The univariate analysis results showed no difference between the filling-in and no-filling-in trials. However, multivariate pattern analysis results showed that classifiers trained on activation pattern in V1 to V3 could differentiate between filling-in and no-filling-in trials, suggesting that the neural activation pattern in visual cortex correlated with the subjective percept. |
Christina Lubinus; Wolfgang Einhäuser; Florian Schiller; Tilo Kircher; Benjamin Straube; Bianca M. Kemenade Action-based predictions affect visual perception, neural processing, and pupil size, regardless of temporal predictability Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 263, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Lubinus2022, Sensory consequences of one's own action are often perceived as less intense, and lead to reduced neural responses, compared to externally generated stimuli. Presumably, such sensory attenuation is due to predictive mechanisms based on the motor command (efference copy). However, sensory attenuation has also been observed outside the context of voluntary action, namely when stimuli are temporally predictable. Here, we aimed at disentangling the effects of motor and temporal predictability-based mechanisms on the attenuation of sensory action consequences. During fMRI data acquisition, participants (N = 25) judged which of two visual stimuli was brighter. In predictable blocks, the stimuli appeared temporally aligned with their button press (active) or aligned with an automatically generated cue (passive). In unpredictable blocks, stimuli were presented with a variable delay after button press/cue, respectively. Eye tracking was performed to investigate pupil-size changes and to ensure proper fixation. Self-generated stimuli were perceived as darker and led to less neural activation in visual areas than their passive counterparts, indicating sensory attenuation for self-generated stimuli independent of temporal predictability. Pupil size was larger during self-generated stimuli, which correlated negatively with the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response: the larger the pupil, the smaller the BOLD amplitude in visual areas. Our results suggest that sensory attenuation in visual cortex is driven by action-based predictive mechanisms rather than by temporal predictability. This effect may be related to changes in pupil diameter. Altogether, these results emphasize the role of the efference copy in the processing of sensory action consequences. |
Björn Machner; Lara Braun; Jonathan Imholz; Philipp J. Koch; Thomas F. Münte; Christoph Helmchen; Andreas Sprenger In: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 15, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Machner2022, Between-subject variability in cognitive performance has been related to inter-individual differences in functional brain networks. Targeting the dorsal attention network (DAN) we questioned (i) whether resting-state functional connectivity (FC) within the DAN can predict individual performance in spatial attention tasks and (ii) whether there is short-term adaptation of DAN-FC in response to task engagement. Twenty-seven participants first underwent resting-state fMRI (PRE run), they subsequently performed different tasks of spatial attention [including visual search (VS)] and immediately afterwards received another rs-fMRI (POST run). Intra- and inter-hemispheric FC between core hubs of the DAN, bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and frontal eye field (FEF), was analyzed and compared between PRE and POST. Furthermore, we investigated rs-fMRI-behavior correlations between the DAN-FC in PRE/POST and task performance parameters. The absolute DAN-FC did not change from PRE to POST. However, different significant rs-fMRI-behavior correlations were revealed for intra-/inter-hemispheric connections in the PRE and POST run. The stronger the FC between left FEF and IPS before task engagement, the better was the learning effect (improvement of reaction times) in VS (r = 0.521 |
Paola Mengotti; Anne Sophie Käsbauer; Gereon R. Fink; Simone Vossel In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, pp. 4698–4714, 2022. @article{Mengotti2022, Updating beliefs after unexpected events is fundamental for an optimal adaptation to the environment. Previous findings suggested a causal involvement of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in belief updating in an attention task. We combined offline continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) over rTPJ with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate local and remote stimulation effects within the attention and salience networks. In a sham-controlled, within-subject crossover design, 25 participants performed an attentional cueing task during fMRI with true or false information about cue predictability. By estimating learning rates from response times, we characterized participants' belief updating. Model-derived cue predictability entered the fMRI analysis as a parametric regressor to identify the neural correlates of updating. rTPJ-cTBS effects showed high interindividual variability. The expected learning rate reduction with false cue predictability information by cTBS was only observed in participants showing higher updating in false than in true blocks after sham. cTBS modulated the neural signatures of belief updating, both in rTPJ and in nodes of the attention and salience networks. The interindividual variability of the behavioral cTBS effect was related to differential activity and rTPJ connectivity of the right anterior insula. These results demonstrate a crucial interaction between ventral attention and salience networks for belief updating. |
Soo Hyun Park; Kenji W. Koyano; Brian E. Russ; Elena N. Waidmann; David B. T. McMahon; David A. Leopold Parallel functional subnetworks embedded in the macaque face patch system Journal Article In: Science Advances, vol. 8, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Park2022, During normal vision, our eyes provide the brain with a continuous stream of useful information about the world. How visually specialized areas of the cortex, such as face-selective patches, operate under natural modes of behavior is poorly understood. Here we report that, during the free viewing of movies, cohorts of face-selective neurons in the macaque cortex fractionate into distributed and parallel subnetworks that carry distinct information. We classified neurons into functional groups on the basis of their movie-driven coupling with functional magnetic resonance imaging time courses across the brain. Neurons from each group were distributed across multiple face patches but intermixed locally with other groups at each recording site. These findings challenge prevailing views about functional segregation in the cortex and underscore the importance of naturalistic paradigms for cognitive neuroscience. |
Jordan E. Pierce; Elizabeth Clancy; Nathan M. Petro; Michael D. Dodd; Maital Neta Task-irrelevant emotional faces impact BOLD responses more for prosaccades than antisaccades in a mixed saccade fMRI task Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 177, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Pierce2022, Cognitive control allows individuals to flexibly and efficiently perform tasks by attending to relevant stimuli while inhibiting distraction from irrelevant stimuli. The antisaccade task assesses cognitive control by requiring participants to inhibit a prepotent glance towards a peripheral stimulus and generate an eye movement to the mirror image location. This task can be administered with various contextual manipulations to investigate how factors such as trial timing or emotional content interact with cognitive control. In the current study, 26 healthy adults completed a mixed antisaccade and prosaccade fMRI task that included task irrelevant emotional faces and gap/overlap timing. The results showed typical antisaccade and gap behavioral effects with greater BOLD activation in frontal and parietal brain regions for antisaccade and overlap trials. Conversely, there were no differences in behavior based on the emotion of the task irrelevant face, but trials with neutral faces had greater activation in widespread visual regions than trials with angry faces, particularly for prosaccade and overlap trials. Together, these effects suggest that a high level of cognitive control and inhibition was required throughout the task, minimizing the impact of the face presentation on saccade behavior, but leading to increased attention to the neutral faces on overlap prosaccade trials when both the task cue (look towards) and emotion stimulus (neutral, non-threatening) facilitated disinhibition of visual processing. |
McKinney Pitts; Derek Evan Nee Generalizing the control architecture of the lateral prefrontal cortex Journal Article In: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol. 195, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Pitts2022a, Cognitive control guides non-habitual, goal directed behaviors allowing us to flexibly adapt to ongoing demands. Previous work has suggested that multiple cognitive control processes exist that can be classed according to their action on present-oriented/external information versus future-oriented/internal information. These processes can be mapped onto the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) such that increasingly rostral areas are involved in increasingly future-oriented/internal control processes. Whether and how such processes are organized to support goal-directed behavior remains unclear. On the one hand, the LPFC may flexibly adapt based upon demands. On the other hand, there may be a consistent control architecture such as a control hierarchy that generalizes across demands. Previous work using fMRI in humans during a comprehensive control task that engaged several control processes at once found that an area in mid-LPFC consistently exerted widespread influence throughout the LPFC. These data suggested that the mid-LPFC forms an apex of a putative control hierarchy. However, whether such an architecture generalizes across tasks remains to be tested. Here, we utilized a modified comprehensive control task designed to alter how control processes influence one another to test the generalizability of the LPFC control architecture. Univariate fMRI activations revealed distinct control-related activations relative to past work. Despite these changes, effective connectivity modeling revealed a directed architecture similar to previous findings with the mid-LPFC exerting the most widespread influences throughout LPFC. These results suggest that the fundamental control architecture of the LPFC is relatively fixed, and that different demands are accommodated through modulations of this fixed architecture. |
Ignacio Polti; Matthias Nau; Raphael Kaplan; Virginie Wassenhove; Christian F. Doeller Rapid encoding of task regularities in the human hippocampus guides sensorimotor timing Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Polti2022, The brain encodes the statistical regularities of the environment in a task-specific yet flexible and generalizable format. Here, we seek to understand this process by bridging two parallel lines of research, one centered on sensorimotor timing, and the other on cognitive mapping in the hippocampal system. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a fast-paced time-to-contact (TTC) estimation task, we found that the hippocampus signaled behavioral feedback received in each trial as well as performance improvements across trials along with reward-processing regions. Critically, it signaled performance improvements independent from the tested intervals, and its activity accounted for the trial-wise regression-to-the-mean biases in TTC estimation. This is in line with the idea that the hippocampus supports the rapid encoding of temporal context even on short time scales in a behavior-dependent manner. Our results emphasize the central role of the hippocampus in statistical learning and position it at the core of a brain-wide network updating sensorimotor representations in real time for flexible behavior. |