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!
2022 |
Jill King; Julie Markant Selective attention to lesson-relevant contextual information promotes 3- to 5-year-old children's learning Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 25, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{King2022, Attending to distracting or competing information is typically considered detrimental to learning, but the presence of competing information can also facilitate learning when it is relevant to ongoing task goals. Educational settings often contain contextual elements such as classroom decorations or visual aids to enhance student learning. Despite this, most research examining effects of contextual information on children's learning has only utilized lesson-irrelevant stimuli. While this research has shown that increased looking to task-irrelevant information hinders learning, the extent to which looking to lesson-relevant information can benefit children's learning is unknown. We addressed this question by examining 3- to 5-year-old children's attention to and learning from lesson-relevant contextual information. We recorded children's eye movements as they viewed video science lessons while lesson-relevant and -irrelevant images appeared in the periphery. We assessed learning based on improvements in content knowledge following the video lessons and separately measured selective attention skills using the Track-It task. Children overall spent more time looking at lesson-relevant versus -irrelevant images, and those with more initial knowledge of the lesson topics or more advanced selective attention skills showed increased preferential looking to the relevant images. This increased preferential looking to lesson-relevant images related to more effective learning during trials in which both relevant and irrelevant images were present. These results suggest that the effects of competing contextual information on early learning depend on the relationship between information content and task goals, as well as children's ability to actively select task-relevant information from their environment. |
Sungyoon Lee; Steven Woltering; Christopher Prickett; Qinxin Shi; Huilin Sun; Julie L. Thompson Exploring the associations between reading skills and eye movements in elementary children's silent sentence reading Journal Article In: Reading Psychology, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 85–103, 2022. @article{Lee2022d, The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between elementary students' reading skills and their online reading (i.e., real-time reading) behaviors during silent sentence processing. Thirty-five students participated in this study and their eye movements were recorded during sentence reading tasks. The effects of students' reading skills measured by traditional standardized measures were investigated for widely-used eye tracking measures such as first fixation duration, gaze duration, regression path duration, total duration, word skipping, fixation count, and regression frequency. The eye tracking measures were chosen to represent early/late cognitive processes and temporal/spatial gaze behaviors. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that children's performances in reading skills predict most of the eye tracking measures. |
Meijia Li; Huamao Peng How cues of being watched promote risk seeking in fund investment in older adults Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Li2022c, Social cues, such as being watched, can subtly alter fund investment choices. This study aimed to investigate how cues of being watched influence decision-making, attention allocation, and risk tendencies. Using decision scenarios adopted from the “Asian Disease Problem,” we examined participants' risk tendency in a financial scenario when they were watched. A total of 63 older and 66 younger adults participated. Eye tracking was used to reveal the decision-maker's attention allocation (fixations and dwell time per word). The results found that both younger and older adults tend to seek risk in the loss frame than in the gain frame (i.e., framing effect). Watching eyes tended to escalate reckless gambling behaviors among older adults, which led them to maintain their share in the depressed fund market, regardless of whether the options were gain or loss framed. The eye-tracking results revealed that older adults gave less attention to the sure option in the eye condition (i.e., fewer fixations and shorter dwell time). However, their attention was maintained on the gamble options. In comparison, images of “watching eyes” did not influence the risk seeking of younger adults but decreased their framing effect. Being watched can affect financial risk preference in decision-making. The exploration of the contextual sensitivity of being watched provides us with insight into developing decision aids to promote rational financial decision-making, such as human-robot interactions. Future research on age differences still requires further replication. |
Sainan Li; Yongsheng Wang; Zebo Lan; Xiaoyuan Yuan; Li Zhang; Guoli Yan Effects of word spacing on children's reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, vol. 35, pp. 1019–1033, 2022. @article{Li2022e, Word is important in Chinese reading. However, when inter-word spaces are inserted into Chinese text, there is no facilitation or disruption to adults' reading. Researchers argued that there was a trade-off between word segmentation facilita- tion and disruption due to format unfamiliarity. To assess the trade-off hypothesis, in Experiment 1, we tested Grade 1, 2 and 3 children who have less reading experi- ence than adults and manipulated four spacing conditions: normal unspaced, word spaced, character spaced, and nonword spaced text. In Experiment 2, we collected data from Grade 1 and 3 with the word spaced condition and normal unspaced con- dition. Overall, global analyses from both Experiments consistently showed that word spacing facilitated Grade 1 reading, with much reduced facilitation for higher grade readers; local measures (total reading time and second-pass reading time) replicated the same pattern in which word spacing effects were more pronounced among younger readers. In summary, we obtained greater facilitatory effects of word spacing for younger compared with elder readers, which provides strong evidence for the trade-off hypothesis. |
Amy M. Lieberman; Allison Fitch; Arielle Borovsky Flexible fast-mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Lieberman2022, Word learning in young children requires coordinated attention between language input and the referent object. Current accounts of word learning are based on spoken language, where the association between language and objects occurs through simultaneous and multimodal perception. In contrast, deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) perceive both linguistic and non-linguistic information through the visual mode. In order to coordinate attention to language input and its referents, deaf children must allocate visual attention optimally between objects and signs. We conducted two eye-tracking experiments to investigate how young deaf children allocate attention and process referential cues in order to fast-map novel signs to novel objects. Participants were deaf children learning ASL between the ages of 17 and 71 months. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 30) were presented with a novel object and a novel sign, along with a referential cue that occurred either before or after the sign label. In Experiment 2, a new group of participants (n = 32) were presented with two novel objects and a novel sign, so that the referential cue was critical for identifying the target object. Across both experiments, participants showed evidence for fast-mapping the signs regardless of the timing of the referential cue. Individual differences in children's allocation of attention during exposure were correlated with their ability to fast-map the novel signs at test. This study provides first evidence for fast-mapping in sign language, and contributes to theoretical accounts of how word learning develops when all input occurs in the visual modality. |
A. Lyu; A. E. Silva; S. H. Cheung; B. Thompson; L. Abel; A. M. Y. Cheong Effects of visual span on Chinese reading performance in normal peripheral vision Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Lyu2022, The current study examined the relationships among temporal processing speed, spatial visual span and Chinese character reading speed in normal central and peripheral vision. Maximum reading speed (MRS) and critical print size (CPS) of 26 native Chinese readers (13 young and 13 older adults) were determined at three visual field locations: central vision, 10° left and 10° below fixation using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. Temporal processing speed was measured using trigrams of randomly selected Chinese characters presented at a range of exposure durations, while spatial visual span was measured using trigrams presented at different spatial positions. It was found that shorter temporal processing speed and larger spatial visual span were associated with faster MRS at the central and inferior visual field locations, but not at the left of fixation location. As expected, reading and visual span metrics were better in central vision compared to both peripheral locations. In addition, reading, temporal processing, and spatial visual span metrics were better in the young than older subjects (except for similar temporal processing speed at two peripheral locations). The results for central and inferior presentation locations support the hypothesis that temporal processing speed and spatial visual span were associated with Chinese character reading speed. Surprisingly, no correlation was observed for the 10° left of the fixation location, suggesting that the factors affecting reading speed might differ for inferior and lateral peripheral viewing locations. |
Wenbo Ma; Min Li; Junru Wu; Zhihao Zhang; Fangfang Jia; Mingsha Zhang; Hagai Bergman; Xuemei Li; Zhipei Ling; Xin Xu Multiple step saccades in simply reactive saccades could serve as a complementary biomarker for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, vol. 14, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Ma2022a, Objective: It has been argued that the incidence of multiple step saccades (MSS) in voluntary saccades could serve as a complementary biomarker for diagnosing Parkinson's disease (PD). However, voluntary saccadic tasks are usually difficult for elderly subjects to complete. Therefore, task difficulties restrict the application of MSS measurements for the diagnosis of PD. The primary objective of the present study is to assess whether the incidence of MSS in simply reactive saccades could serve as a complementary biomarker for the early diagnosis of PD. Materials and methods: There were four groups of human subjects: PD patients, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, elderly healthy controls (EHCs), and young healthy controls (YHCs). There were four monkeys with subclinical hemi-PD induced by injection of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) through the unilateral internal carotid artery and three healthy control monkeys. The behavioral task was a visually guided reactive saccade. Results: In a human study, the incidence of MSS was significantly higher in PD than in YHC, EHC, and MCI groups. In addition, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis could discriminate PD from the EHC and MCI groups, with areas under the ROC curve (AUCs) of 0.76 and 0.69, respectively. In a monkey study, while typical PD symptoms were absent, subclinical hemi-PD monkeys showed a significantly higher incidence of MSS than control monkeys when the dose of MPTP was greater than 0.4 mg/kg. Conclusion: The incidence of MSS in simply reactive saccades could be a complementary biomarker for the early diagnosis of PD. |
Wenbo Ma; Mingsha Zhang The effects of age and sex on the incidence of multiple step saccades and corrective saccades Journal Article In: Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, vol. 14, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Ma2022b, Objective: Although multiple step saccades (MSS) is occasionally observed in healthy subjects, it is more pronounced in patients with aging-related neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson's disease (PD). Thus, MSS has been treated as a complementary biomarker for diagnosing PD. Despite the aforementioned knowledge, several questions remain unexplored: (1) How does aging affect MSS? (2) Is there a sex difference in MSS? (3) Are there differences in MSS between vertical and horizontal saccades? (4) Are MSS and corrective saccade (CS) the same behavior? (5) How do age and sex affect CS? The objectives of the present study are to address these questions. Method: Four hundred eighty healthy participants were recruited to perform a visually guided reactive saccade task. Participants were divided into six groups according to their ages. Each group consisted of 40 male and 40 female participants. Eye movements were recorded with infrared eye trackers. Results: The incidence of MSS increased as a function of age, whereas the incidence of CS first increased with age 20–49 and then decreased with age 50–79. The incidences of both MSS and CS did not show sex differences. The incidence of MSS in vertical saccades was significantly higher than that in horizontal saccades, and their difference increased with increasing age, whereas the incidence of CS showed a reversed pattern. Conclusion: Age and saccadic direction affect the occurrences of MSS and CS differently, indicating that MSS and CS are different saccadic behaviors. In addition, measuring saccades could reliably reflect the function of human's brain which is affected by aging. |
Isabel A. Martin; Matthew J. Goupell; Yi Ting Huang Children's syntactic parsing and sentence comprehension with a degraded auditory signal Journal Article In: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 151, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Martin2022a, During sentence comprehension, young children anticipate syntactic structures using early-arriving words and have difficulties revising incorrect predictions using late-arriving words. However, nearly all work to date has focused on syntactic parsing in idealized speech environments, and little is known about how children's strategies for predicting and revising meanings are affected by signal degradation. This study compares comprehension of active and passive sentences in natural and vocoded speech. In a word-interpretation task, 5-year-olds inferred the meanings of novel words in sentences that (1) encouraged agent-first predictions (e.g., The blicket is eating the seal implies The blicket is the agent), (2) required revising predictions (e.g., The blicket is eaten by the seal implies The blicket is the theme), or (3) weakened predictions by placing familiar nouns in sentence-initial position (e.g., The seal is eating/eaten by the blicket). When novel words promoted agent-first predictions, children misinterpreted passives as actives, and errors increased with vocoded compared to natural speech. However, when familiar words were sentence-initial that weakened agent-first predictions, children accurately interpreted passives, with no signal-degradation effects. This demonstrates that signal quality interacts with interpretive processes during sentence comprehension, and the impacts of speech degradation are greatest when late-arriving information conflicts with predictions. |
Negar Mazloum-Farzaghi; Nathanael Shing; Leanne Mendoza; Morgan D. Barense; Jennifer D. Ryan; Rosanna K. Olsen The impact of aging and repetition on eye movements and recognition memory Journal Article In: Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, pp. 1–27, 2022. @article{MazloumFarzaghi2022, The modulation of gaze fixations on neural activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory, has been shown to be weaker in older adults compared to younger adults. However, as such research has relied on indirect measures of memory, it remains unclear whether the relationship between visual exploration and direct measures of memory is similarly disrupted in aging.β The current study tested older and younger adults on a face memory eye-tracking task previously used by our group that showed that recognition memory for faces presented across variable, but not fixed, viewpoints relies on a hippocampal-dependent binding function. Here, we examined how aging influences eye movement measures that reveal the amount (cumulative sampling) and extent (distribution of gaze fixations) of visual exploration. We also examined how aging influences direct (subsequent conscious recognition) and indirect (eye movement repetition effect) expressions of memory. No age differences were found in direct recognition regardless of facial viewpoint. However, the eye movement measures revealed key group differences. Compared to younger adults, older adults exhibited more cumulative sampling, a different distribution of fixations, and a larger repetition effect. Moreover, there was a positive relationship between cumulative sampling and direct recognition in younger adults, but not older adults. Neither age group showed a relationship between the repetition effect and direct recognition. Thus, despite similar direct recognition, age-related differences were observed in visual exploration and in an indirect eye-movement memory measure, suggesting that the two groups may acquire, retain, and use different facial information to guide recognition. |
Johannes M. Meixner; Jessie S. Nixon; Jochen Laubrock; Johannes M. Meixner; Jessie S. Nixon; Jochen Laubrock The perceptual span is dynamically adjusted in response to foveal load by beginning readers Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 151, no. 6, pp. 1219–1232, 2022. @article{Meixner2022, The perceptual span describes the size of the visual field from which information is obtained during a fixation in reading. Its size depends on characteristics of writing system and reader, but-according to the foveal load hypothesis-it is also adjusted dynamically as a function of lexical processing difficulty. Using the moving window paradigm to manipulate the amount of preview, here we directly test whether the perceptual span shrinks as foveal word difficulty increases. We computed the momentary size of the span from word-based eye-movement measures as a function of foveal word frequency, allowing us to separately describe the perceptual span for information affecting spatial saccade targeting and temporal saccade execution. First fixation duration and gaze duration on the upcoming (parafoveal) word N + 1 were significantly shorter when the current (foveal) word N was more frequent. We show that the word frequency effect is modulated by window size. Fixation durations on word N + 1 decreased with high-frequency words N, but only for large windows, that is, when sufficient parafoveal preview was available. This provides strong support for the foveal load hypothesis. To investigate the development of the foveal load effect, we analyzed data from three waves of a longitudinal study on the perceptual span with German children in Grades 1 to 6. Perceptual span adjustment emerged early in development at around second grade and remained stable in later grades. We conclude that the local modulation of the perceptual span indicates a general cognitive process, perhaps an attentional gradient with rapid readjustment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). |
Shireen Parimoo; Anika Choi; Lauren Iafrate; Cheryl Grady; Rosanna Olsen Are older adults susceptible to visual distraction when targets and distractors are spatially separated? Journal Article In: Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, pp. 1–37, 2022. @article{Parimoo2022, Older adults show preserved memory for previously distracting information due to reduced inhibitory control. In some previous studies, targets and distractors overlap both temporally and spatially. We investigated whether age differences in attentional orienting and disengagement affect recognition memory when targets and distractors are spatially separated at encoding. In Experiments 1 and 2, eye movements were recorded while participants completed an incidental encoding task under covert (i.e., restricted viewing) and overt (i.e., free-viewing) conditions, respectively. The encoding task consisted of pairs of target and distractor item-color stimuli presented in separate visual hemifields. Prior to stimulus onset, a central cue indicated the location of the upcoming target. Participants were subsequently tested on their recognition of the items, their location, and the associated color. In Experiment 3, targets were validly cued on 75% of the encoding trials; on invalid trials, participants had to disengage their attention from the distractor and reorient to the target. Associative memory for colors was reduced among older adults across all experiments, though their location memory was only reduced in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, older and younger adults directed a similar proportion of fixations toward targets and distractors. Explicit recognition of distractors did not differ between age groups in any of the experiments. However, older adults were slower to correctly recognize distractors than false alarm to novel items in Experiment 2, suggesting some implicit memory for distraction. Together, these results demonstrate that older adults may only be vulnerable to encoding visual distraction when viewing behavior is unconstrained. |
Ashley C. Parr; Olivia G. Calancie; Brian C. Coe; Sarosh Khalid-Khan; Douglas P. Munoz Impulsivity and emotional dysregulation predict choice behavior during a mixed-strategy game in adolescents with borderline personality disorder Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, pp. 1–21, 2022. @article{Parr2022, Impulsivity and emotional dysregulation are two core features of borderline personality disorder (BPD), and the neural mechanisms recruited during mixed-strategy interactions overlap with frontolimbic networks that have been implicated in BPD. We investigated strategic choice patterns during the classic two-player game, Matching Pennies, where the most efficient strategy is to choose each option randomly from trial-to-trial to avoid exploitation by one's opponent. Twenty-seven female adolescents with BPD (mean age: 16 years) and twenty-seven age-matched female controls (mean age: 16 years) participated in an experiment that explored the relationship between strategic choice behavior and impulsivity in both groups and emotional dysregulation in BPD. Relative to controls, BPD participants showed marginally fewer reinforcement learning biases, particularly decreased lose-shift biases, increased variability in reaction times (coefficient of variation; CV), and a greater percentage of anticipatory decisions. A subset of BPD participants with high levels of impulsivity showed higher overall reward rates, and greater modulation of reaction times by outcome, particularly following loss trials, relative to control and BPD participants with lower levels of impulsivity. Additionally, BPD participants with higher levels of emotional dysregulation showed marginally increased reward rate and increased entropy in choice patterns. Together, our preliminary results suggest that impulsivity and emotional dysregulation may contribute to variability in mixed-strategy decision-making in female adolescents with BPD. |
Olga Parshina; Anastasiya Lopukhina; Sofya Goldina; Ekaterina Iskra; Margarita Serebryakova; Vladislava Staroverova; Nina Zdorova; Olga Dragoy Global reading processes in children with high risk of dyslexia: A scanpath analysis Journal Article In: Annals of Dyslexia, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 403–425, 2022. @article{Parshina2022, The study presents the first systematic comparison of the global reading processes via scanpath analysis in Russian-speaking children with and without reading difficulties. First, we compared basic eye-movement characteristics in reading sentences in two groups of children in grades 1 to 5 (N = 72 in high risk of developmental dyslexia group and N = 72 in the control group). Next, using the scanpath method, we investigated which global reading processes these children adopt to read the entire sentence and how these processes differ between the groups. Finally, we were interested in the timeframe of the change in the global reading processes from the 1st to the 5th grades for both groups. We found that the main difference in word-level measures between groups was the reading speed reflected in fixation durations. However, the examination of the five identified global reading processes revealed qualitative similarities in reading patterns between groups. Children in the control group progressed quickly and by the 4th grade engaged in an adult-like fluent reading process. The high-risk group started with the beginner reading process, then similar to first graders in the control group, engaged mostly in the intermediate and upper-intermediate reading processes in 2nd to 4th grades. They reach the advanced process in the 5th grade, the same pattern preferred by the control group second graders. Overall, the scanpath analysis reveals that although there are quantitative differences in the word-level eye-tracking measures between groups, qualitatively children in the high-risk group read on par with typically developing peers but with a 3-year reading delay. |
Olga Parshina; Irina A. Sekerina; Anastasiya Lopukhina; Titus Malsburg Monolingual and bilingual reading processes in Russian: An exploratory scanpath analysis Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 469–492, 2022. @article{Parshina2022a, In the present study, we used a scanpath approach to investigate reading processes and factors that can shape them in monolingual Russian-speaking adults, 8-year-old children, and bilingual Russian-speaking readers. We found that monolingual adults' eye movement patterns exhibited a fluent scanpath reading process, representing effortless processing of the written material: They read straight from left to right at a fast pace, skipped words, and regressed rarely. Both high-proficiency heritage-language speakers' and second graders' eye movement patterns exhibited an intermediate scanpath reading process, characterized by a slower pace, longer fixations, an absence of word skipping, and short regressive saccades. Second-language learners and low-proficiency heritage-language speakers exhibited a beginner reading process that involved the slowest pace, even longer fixations, no word skipping, and frequent rereading of the whole sentence and of particular words. We suggest that unlike intermediate readers who use the respective process to resolve local processing difficulties (e.g., word recognition failure), beginner readers, in addition, experience global-level challenges in semantic and morphosyntactic information integration. Proficiency in Russian for heritage-language speakers and comprehension scores for second-language learners were the only individual difference factors predictive of the scanpath reading process adopted by bilingual speakers. Overall, the scanpath analysis revealed qualitative differences in scanpath reading processes among various groups of readers and thus adds a qualitative dimension to the conventional quantitative evaluation of word-level eye-tracking measures. |
Sietske Viersen; Athanassios Protopapas; George K. Georgiou; Rauno Parrila; Laoura Ziaka; Peter F. Jong Lexicality effects on orthographic learning in beginning and advanced readers of Dutch: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 75, no. 6, pp. 1135–1154, 2022. @article{Viersen2022, Orthographic learning is the topic of many recent studies about reading, but much is still unknown about conditions that affect orthographic learning and their influence on reading fluency development over time. This study investigated lexicality effects on orthographic learning in beginning and relatively advanced readers of Dutch. Eye movements of 131 children in Grades 2 and 5 were monitored during an orthographic learning task. Children read sentences containing pseudowords or low-frequency real words that varied in number of exposures. We examined both offline learning outcomes (i.e., orthographic choice and spelling dictation) of target items and online gaze durations on target words. The results showed general effects of exposure, lexicality, and reading-skill level. Also, a two-way interaction was found between the number of exposures and lexicality when detailed orthographic representations were required, consistent with a larger overall effect of exposure on learning the spellings of pseudowords. Moreover, lexicality and reading-skill level were found to affect the learning rate across exposures based on a decrease in gaze durations, indicating a larger learning effect for pseudowords in Grade 5 children. Yet, further interactions between exposure and reading-skill level were not present, indicating largely similar learning curves for beginning and advanced readers. We concluded that the reading system of more advanced readers may cope somewhat better with words varying in lexicality, but is not more efficient than that of beginning readers in building up orthographic knowledge of specific words across repeated exposures. |
Monica Vanoncini; Natalie Boll-Avetisyan; Birgit Elsner; Stefanie Hoehl; Ezgi Kayhan The role of mother-infant emotional synchrony in speech processing in 9-month-old infants Journal Article In: Infant Behavior and Development, vol. 69, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Vanoncini2022, Rhythmicity characterizes both interpersonal synchrony and spoken language. Emotions and language are forms of interpersonal communication, which interact with each other throughout development. We investigated whether and how emotional synchrony between mothers and their 9-month-old infants relates to infants' word segmentation as an early marker of language development. Twenty-six 9-month-old infants and their German-speaking mothers took part in the study. To measure emotional synchrony, we coded positive, neutral and negative emotional expressions of the mothers and their infants during a free play session. We then calculated the degree to which the mothers' and their infants' matching emotional expressions followed a predictable pattern. To measure word segmentation, we familiarized infants with auditory text passages and tested how long they looked at the screen while listening to familiar versus novel words. We found that higher levels of predictability (i.e. low entropy) during mother-infant interaction is associated with infants' word segmentation performance. These findings suggest that individual differences in word segmentation relate to the complexity and predictability of emotional expressions during mother-infant interactions. |
Aaron Veldre; Roslyn Wong; Sally Andrews Predictability effects and parafoveal processing in older readers Journal Article In: Psychology and Aging, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 222–238, 2022. @article{Veldre2022, Normative aging is accompanied by visual and cognitive changes that impact the systems that are critical for fluent reading. The patterns of eye movements during reading displayed by older adults have been characterized as demonstrating a trade-off between longer forward saccades and more word skipping versus higher rates of regressions back to previously read text. This pattern is assumed to reflect older readers' reliance on top-down contextual information to compensate for reduced uptake of parafoveal information from yet-to-be fixated words. However, the empirical evidence for these assumptions is equivocal. This study investigated the depth of older readers' parafoveal processing as indexed by sensitivity to the contextual plausibility of parafoveal words in both neutral and highly constraining sentence contexts. The eye movements of 65 cognitively intact older adults (61–87 years) were compared with data previously collected from young adults in two sentence reading experiments in which critical target words were replaced by valid, plausible, related, or implausible previews until the reader fixated on the target word location. Older and younger adults showed equivalent plausibility preview benefits on first-pass reading measures of both predictable and unpredictable words. However, older readers did not show the benefit of preview orthographic relatedness that was observed in young adults and showed significantly attenuated preview validity effects. Taken together, the data suggest that older readers are specifically impaired in the integration of parafoveal and foveal information but do not show deficits in the depth of parafoveal processing. The implications for understanding the effects of aging on reading are discussed. |
Stephanie Wermelinger; Lea Moersdorf; Simona Ammann; Moritz M. Daum Exploring the role of COVID-19 pandemic-related changes in social interactions on preschoolers' emotion labeling Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Wermelinger2022, During the COVID-19 pandemic people were increasingly obliged to wear facial masks and to reduce the number of people they met in person. In this study, we asked how these changes in social interactions are associated with young children's emotional development, specifically their emotion recognition via the labeling of emotions. Preschoolers labeled emotional facial expressions of adults (Adult Faces Task) and children (Child Faces Task) in fully visible faces. In addition, we assessed children's COVID-19-related experiences (i.e., time spent with people wearing masks, number of contacts without masks) and recorded children's gaze behavior during emotion labeling. We compared different samples of preschoolers (4.00–5.75 years): The data for the no-COVID-19-experience sample were taken from studies conducted before the pandemic (Adult Faces Task: N = 40; Child Faces Task: N = 30). The data for the with-COVID-19-experience sample (N = 99) were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland between June and November 2021. The results did not indicate differences in children's labeling behavior between the two samples except for fearful adult faces. Children with COVID-19-experience more often labeled fearful faces correctly compared to children with no COVID-19 experience. Furthermore, we found no relations between children's labeling behavior, their individual COVID-19-related experiences, and their gaze behavior. These results suggest that, even though the children had experienced differences in the amount and variability of facial input due to the pandemic, they still received enough input from visible faces to be able to recognize and label different emotions. |
Stephanie Wermelinger; Lea Moersdorf; Moritz M. Daum How experience shapes infants' communicative behaviour: Comparing gaze following in infants with and without pandemic experience Journal Article In: Infancy, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 937–962, 2022. @article{Wermelinger2022a, The COVID-19 pandemic has been influencing people's social life substantially. Everybody, including infants and children needed to adapt to changes in social interactions (e.g., social distancing) and to seeing other people wearing facial masks. In this study, we investigated whether these pandemic-related changes influenced 12- to 15-months-old infants' reactions to observed gaze shifts (i.e., their gaze following). In two eye-tracking tasks, we measured infants' gaze-following behavior during the pandemic (with-COVID-19-experience sample) and compared it to data of infants tested before the pandemic (no-COVID-19-experience sample). Overall, the results indicated no significant differences between the two samples. However, in one sub-task infants in the with-COVID-19-experience sample looked longer at the eyes of a model compared to the no-COVID-19-experience sample. Within the with-COVID-19-experience sample, the amount of mask exposure and the number of contacts without mask were not related to infants' gaze-following behavior. We speculate that even though infants encounter fewer different people during the pandemic and are increasingly exposed to people wearing facial masks, they still also see non-covered faces. These contacts might be sufficient to provide infants with the social input they need to develop social and emotional competencies such as gaze following. |
Jingwen Yang; Zelin Chen; Guoxin Qiu; Xiangyu Li; Caixia Li; Kexin Yang; Zhuanggui Chen; Leyan Gao; Shuo Lu In: Computer Speech and Language, vol. 76, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Yang2022, The ability of efficient facial emotion recognition (FER) plays a significant role in successful human communication and is closely associated with multiple speech communication disorders (SCD) in children. Despite the relevance, little is known about how speech communication abilities (SCA) and FER are correlated or of their underlying mechanism. To address this, we monitored eye movements of 115 children while watching human faces with different emotions and designed a machine-learning based SCD prediction model to explore the underlying pattern of eye movements during the FER task as well as their correlation with SCA. Strong and detailed correlations were found between different dimensions of SCA and various eye-movement features. A group of FER gazing patterns was found to be highly sensitive to the possibility of children's SCD. The SCD prediction model reached an accuracy as high as 88.9%, which offers a possible technique to fast screen SCD for children. |
Rachel Yep; Matthew L. Smorenburg; Heidi C. Riek; Olivia G. Calancie; Ryan H. Kirkpatrick; Julia E. Perkins; Jeff Huang; Brian C. Coe; Donald C. Brien; Douglas P. Munoz Interleaved pro/anti-saccade behavior across the lifespan Journal Article In: Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, vol. 14, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Yep2022, The capacity for inhibitory control is an important cognitive process that undergoes dynamic changes over the course of the lifespan. Robust characterization of this trajectory, considering age continuously and using flexible modeling techniques, is critical to advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms that differ in healthy aging and neurological disease. The interleaved pro/anti-saccade task (IPAST), in which pro- and anti-saccade trials are randomly interleaved within a block, provides a simple and sensitive means of assessing the neural circuitry underlying inhibitory control. We utilized IPAST data collected from a large cross-sectional cohort of normative participants (n = 604, 5–93 years of age), standardized pre-processing protocols, generalized additive modeling, and change point analysis to investigate the effect of age on saccade behavior and identify significant periods of change throughout the lifespan. Maturation of IPAST measures occurred throughout adolescence, while subsequent decline began as early as the mid-20s and continued into old age. Considering pro-saccade correct responses and anti-saccade direction errors made at express (short) and regular (long) latencies was crucial in differentiating developmental and aging processes. We additionally characterized the effect of age on voluntary override time, a novel measure describing the time at which voluntary processes begin to overcome automated processes on anti-saccade trials. Drawing on converging animal neurophysiology, human neuroimaging, and computational modeling literature, we propose potential frontal-parietal and frontal-striatal mechanisms that may mediate the behavioral changes revealed in our analysis. We liken the models presented here to “cognitive growth curves” which have important implications for improved detection of neurological disease states that emerge during vulnerable windows of developing and aging. |
Emanuela Yeung; Dimitrios Askitis; Velisar Manea; Victoria Southgate Emerging self-representation presents a challenge when perspectives conflict Journal Article In: Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science, vol. 6, pp. 232–249, 2022. @article{Yeung2022, The capacity to take another's perspective appears to be present from early in life, with young infants ostensibly able to predict others' behaviour even when the self and other perspective are at odds. Yet, infants' abilities are difficult to reconcile with the well-known problems that older children have with ignoring their own perspective. Here we show that it is the development of the self-perspective, at around 18 months, that creates a perspective conflict between self and other during a non-verbal perspective-tracking scenario. Using mirror self-recognition as a measure of self-awareness and pupil dilation to index conflict processing, our results show that mirror recognisers perceive greater conflict during action anticipation, specifically in a high inhibitory demand condition, in which conflict between self and other should be particularly salient. |
Li Zhou; Li Zhang; Yuening Xu; Fuyi Yang; Valerie Benson Attentional engagement and disengagement differences for circumscribed interest objects in young Chinese children with autism Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Zhou2022d, The current study aimed to investigate attentional processing differences for circumscribed interest (CI) and non-CI objects in young Chinese children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) and typically developing (TD) controls. In Experiment 1, a visual preference task explored attentional allocation to cartoon CI and non-CI materials between the two groups. We found that ASC children (n = 22, 4.95 ± 0.59 years) exhibited a preference for CI-related objects compared to non-CI objects, and this effect was absent in the TD children (n = 22, 5.14 ± 0.44 years). Experiment 2 utilized the traditional gap-overlap paradigm (GOP) to investigate attentional disengagement from CI or non-CI items in both groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.92 ± 1.13 years; TD: n = 25, 5.77 ± 0.77 years). There were no group or stimulus interactions in this study. Experiment 3 adopted a modified GOP (MGOP) to further explore disengagement in the two groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.54 ± 0.95 years; TD: n = 24, 5.75 ± 0.52 years), and the results suggested that exogenous disengagement performance was preserved in the ASC group, but the children with ASC exhibited increased endogenous attentional disengagement compared to TD peers. Moreover, endogenous disengagement was influenced further in the presence of CI-related objects in the ASC children. The current results have implications for understanding how the nature of engagement and disengagement processes can contribute to differences in the development of core cognitive skills in young children with ASC. |
Xiaomei Zhou; Shruti Vyas; Jinbiao Ning; Margaret C. Moulson Naturalistic face learning in infants and adults Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 135–151, 2022. @article{Zhou2022e, Everyday face recognition presents a difficult challenge because faces vary naturally in appearance as a result of changes in lighting, expression, viewing angle, and hairstyle. We know little about how humans develop the ability to learn faces despite natural facial variability. In the current study, we provide the first examination of attentional mechanisms underlying adults' and infants' learning of naturally varying faces. Adults (n = 48) and 6- to 12-month-old infants (n = 48) viewed videos of models reading a storybook; the facial appearance of these models was either high or low in variability. Participants then viewed the learned face paired with a novel face. Infants showed adultlike prioritization of face over nonface regions; both age groups fixated the face region more in the high- than low-variability condition. Overall, however, infants showed less ability to resist contextual distractions during learning, which potentially contributed to their lack of discrimination between the learned and novel faces. Mechanisms underlying face learning across natural variability are discussed. |
Ehud Zohary; Daniel Harari; Shimon Ullman; Itay Ben-Zion; Ravid Doron; Sara Attias; Yuval Porat; Asael Y. Sklar; Ayelet McKyton Gaze following requires early visual experience Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 20, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zohary2022, Gaze understanding-a suggested precursor for understanding others' intentions-requires recovery of gaze direction from the observed person's head and eye position. This challenging computation is naturally acquired at infancy without explicit external guidance, but can it be learned later if vision is extremely poor throughout early childhood? We addressed this question by studying gaze following in Ethiopian patients with early bilateral congenital cataracts diagnosed and treated by us only at late childhood. This sight restoration provided a unique opportunity to directly address basic issues on the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in development, as it caused a selective perturbation to the natural process, eliminating some gaze-direction cues while leaving others still available. Following surgery, the patients' visual acuity typically improved substantially, allowing discrimination of pupil position in the eye. Yet, the patients failed to show eye gaze-following effects and fixated less than controls on the eyes-two spontaneous behaviors typically seen in controls. Our model for unsupervised learning of gaze direction explains how head-based gaze following can develop under severe image blur, resembling preoperative conditions. It also suggests why, despite acquiring sufficient resolution to extract eye position, automatic eye gaze following is not established after surgery due to lack of detailed early visual experience. We suggest that visual skills acquired in infancy in an unsupervised manner will be difficult or impossible to acquire when internal guidance is no longer available, even when sufficient image resolution for the task is restored. This creates fundamental barriers to spontaneous vision recovery following prolonged deprivation in early age. |
Trevor Meyer; Laureano Moro-Velazquez; Seneca Motley; Ankur Butala; Ashley Paul; Quincy M. Samus; Pedro Irazoqui; Najim Dehak; Esther S. Oh Automatic extraction of oculographic signals as digital biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease Journal Article In: Alzheimer's Association International Conference, vol. 18, pp. 1–4, 2022. @article{Meyer2022, Background: Similar to other neurological diseases, subtle early neurological changes that occur in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) are difficult to quantify and track objectively. One relevant bio-signal is eyemovement, as it presents a unique window into cognitive processes as a direct measure of real-time inputs to the brain. Eye-tracking allows us to estimate timestamped activity of neural function and begin to infer and quantify atten- tion, reprocessing (eg. word revisits), andmany other aspects relevant to assessing AD. The goal of this study was to investigate the saccadic movements and trial progress during administration of the Stroop test in AD compared to normal controls. Method: 5 AD subjects and 12 age-matched cognitively normal controls were recruited from the Johns Hopkins Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center and the Movement Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. An Eyelink Portable Duo in head-free-to-move mode was used to track eye move- ments. Movement of the eyes were analyzed by automatically segmenting saccade movements throughout a trial. We then analyzed the eye movements in the context of cognitive performance, by identifying when subjects progress to each word in the Stroop test. We compared the performance of each group using a Wilcoxon RankSum test with the SciPy package using Python. Result: |
K. A. Mitchnick; Z. Ahmad; S. D. Mitchnick; J. D. Ryan; R. S. Rosenbaum; E. Freud Damage to the human dentate gyrus impairs the perceptual discrimination of complex, novel objects Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 172, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Mitchnick2022, The hippocampus (HPC), and the dentate gyrus (DG) subregion in particular, is purported to be a pattern separator, orthogonally representing similar information so that distinct memories may be formed. The HPC may also be involved in complex perceptual discrimination. It is unclear if this role is limited to spatial/scene stimuli or extends to the discrimination of objects. Also unclear is whether the DG itself contributes to pattern separation beyond memory. BL, an individual with bilateral DG lesions, was previously shown to have poor discrimination of similar, everyday objects in memory. Here, we demonstrate that BL's deficit extends to complex perceptual discrimination of novel objects. Specifically, BL was presented with closely matched possible and impossible objects, which give rise to fundamentally different 3D perceptual representations despite being visually similar. BL performed significantly worse than controls when asked to select an odd object (e.g., impossible) amongst three identical counterpart objects (e.g., possible) presented at different rotations. His deficit was also evident in an atypical eye fixation pattern during this task. In contrast, BL's performance was indistinguishable from that of controls on other tasks involving the same objects, indicating that he could visually differentiate the object pairs, that he perceived the objects holistically in 3D, and that he has only a mild weakness in categorizing object possibility. Furthermore, his performance on standardized neuropsychological measures indicated intact mental rotation, visual-spatial attention, and working memory (visual and auditory). Collectively, these results provide evidence that the DG is necessary for complex perceptual discrimination of novel objects, indicating that the DG might function as a generic pattern separator of a wide range of stimuli within high-level perception, and that its role is not limited to memory. |
Miranda J. Munoz; Lisa C. Goelz; Gian D. Pal; Jessica A. Karl; Leo Verhagen Metman; Sepehr Sani; Joshua M. Rosenow; Jody D. Ciolino; Ajay S. Kurani; Daniel M. Corcos; Fabian J. David Increased subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation amplitude impairs inhibitory control of eye movements in Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 866–876, 2022. @article{Munoz2022a, Background and Objectives: Bilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) in Parkinson's disease (PD) can have detrimental effects on eye movement inhibitory control. To investigate this detrimental effect of bilateral STN DBS, we examined the effects of manipulating STN DBS amplitude on inhibitory control during the antisaccade task. The prosaccade error rate during the antisaccade task, that is, directional errors, was indicative of impaired inhibitory control. We hypothesized that as stimulation amplitude increased, the prosaccade error rate would increase. Materials and Methods: Ten participants with bilateral STN DBS completed the antisaccade task on six different stimulation amplitudes (including zero amplitude) after a 12-hour overnight withdrawal from antiparkinsonian medication. Results: We found that the prosaccade error rate increased as stimulation amplitude increased (p < 0.01). Additionally, prosaccade error rate increased as the modeled volume of tissue activated (VTA) and STN overlap decreased, but this relationship depended on stimulation amplitude (p = 0.04). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that higher stimulation amplitude settings can be modulatory for inhibitory control. Some individual variability in the effect of stimulation amplitude can be explained by active contact location and VTA-STN overlap. Higher stimulation amplitudes are more deleterious if the active contacts fall outside of the STN resulting in a smaller VTA-STN overlap. This is clinically significant as it can inform clinical optimization of STN DBS parameters. Further studies are needed to determine stimulation amplitude effects on other aspects of cognition and whether inhibitory control deficits on the antisaccade task result in a meaningful impact on the quality of life. |
Miranda J. Munoz; James L. Reilly; Gian D. Pal; Leo Verhagen Metman; Yessenia M. Rivera; Quentin H. Drane; Daniel M. Corcos; Fabian J. David; Lisa C. Goelz Medication adversely impacts visually-guided eye movements in Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 143, pp. 145–153, 2022. @article{Munoz2022, Objective: We examined whether previous inconsistent findings about the effect of anti-Parkinsonian medication on visually-guided saccades (VGS) were due to the use of different paradigms, which change the timing of fixation offset and target onset, or different target eccentricities. Methods: Thirty-three participants with Parkinson's disease (PD) completed the VGS tasks OFF and ON medication, along with 13 healthy controls. Performance on 3 paradigms (gap, step, and overlap) and 2 target eccentricities was recorded. We used mixed models to determine the effect of medication, paradigm, and target eccentricity on saccade latency, gain, and peak velocity. Results: First, we confirmed known paradigm effects on latency, and target eccentricity effects on gain and peak velocity in participants with PD. Second, latency was positively associated with OFF medication Movement Disorders Society – Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) motor score in PD. Third, medication prolonged latency for the larger target eccentricity across the 3 paradigms, while decreasing gain and peak velocity in the step paradigm across target eccentricities. Conclusions: Medication adversely affected and was not therapeutically beneficial for VGS. Previous inconsistencies may have resulted from chosen target eccentricity. Significance: The negative medication effect on VGS may be clinically significant, as many activities in daily life require oculomotor control, inhibitory control, and visually-guided shifts of attention. |
Jordan Murray; Palak Gupta; Cody Dulaney; Kiran Garg; Aasef G. Shaikh; Fatema F. Ghasia Effect of viewing conditions on fixation eye movements and eye alignment in amblyopia Journal Article In: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, vol. 63, no. 2, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Murray2022, PURPOSE. Patients with amblyopia are known to have fixation instability, which arises from alteration of physiologic fixation eye movements (FEMs) and nystagmus. We assessed the effects of monocular, binocular, and dichoptic viewing on FEMs and eye alignment in patients with and without fusion maldevelopment nystagmus (FMN). METHODS. Thirty-four patients with amblyopia and seven healthy controls were recruited for this study. Eye movements were recorded using infrared video-oculography during (1) fellow eye viewing (FEV), (2) amblyopic eye viewing (AEV), (3) both eye viewing (BEV), and (4) dichoptic viewing (DcV) at varying fellow eye (FE) contrasts. The patients were classified per the clinical type of amblyopia and FEM waveforms into those without nystagmus, those with nystagmus with and without FMN. Fixational saccades and intersaccadic drifts, quick and slow phases of nystagmus, and bivariate contour ellipse area were analyzed in the FE and amblyopic eye (AE). RESULTS. We found that FEMs are differentially affected with increased amplitude of quick phases of FMN observed during AEV than BEV and during DcV at lower FE contrasts. Increased fixation instability was seen in anisometropic patients at lower FE contrasts. Incomitance of eye misalignment was seen with the greatest increase during FEV. Strabismic/mixed amblyopia patients without FMN were more likely to demonstrate a fixation switch where the AE attends to the target during DcV than patients with FMN. CONCLUSIONS. Our findings suggest that FEM abnormalities modulate with different viewing conditions as used in various amblyopia therapies. Increased FEM abnormalities could affect the visual function deficits and may have treatment implications. |
Stuart B. Murray; Tomislav D. Zbozinek; Michelle Craske; Reza Tadayonnejad; Michael Strober; Ausaf A. Bari; John P. O'Doherty; Jamie D. Feusner Neural, physiological, and psychological markers of appetitive conditioning in anorexia nervosa: a study protocol Journal Article In: Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Murray2022b, Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a chronic and disabling psychiatric condition characterized by low hedonic drive towards food, and is thought to be inclusive of altered dimensions of reward processing. Whether there exists a fundamental aberrancy in the capacity to acquire and maintain de novo hedonic associations—a critical component of hedonic responding—has never been studied in AN. Methods: This multi-modal study will employ a 2-day Pavlovian appetitive conditioning paradigm to interrogate the (1) acquisition, (2) extinction, (3) spontaneous recovery and (4) reinstatement of appetitive learning in adolescents and young adults with AN. Participants will be 30 currently ill, underweight individuals with AN; 30 weight-restored individuals with AN; and 30 age-matched healthy controls, all aged 12–22 years. All subjects will undergo clinical assessment, followed by the 2-day appetitive conditioning task during which fMRI, pupillometry, heart rate deceleration, and subjective ratings will be acquired. Discussion: This study will be the first to interrogate appetitive conditioning in AN—a disorder characterized by altered hedonic responding to food. Results will help establish objective biomarkers of appetitive conditioning in AN and lay the groundwork for developing novel lines of treatment for AN and other psychiatric disorders involving diminished ability to experience pleasure and reward. Trial registration: Pending. Intended registry: Clinicaltrials.gov. |
Krishnaveni Nagarajan; Gang Luo; Monika Narasimhan; PremNandhini Satgunam Children with amblyopia make more saccadic fixations when doing the visual search task Journal Article In: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, vol. 63, no. 13, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Nagarajan2022, Purpose: Individuals with amblyopia are known to have functional vision deficits (e.g., reduced reading speed) in spite of good visual acuity in the nonamblyopic eye. We studied and compared eye movements in children with and without amblyopia to examine how a visual scene is explored during visual search. Methods: Children (six to 16 years of age) in the control group (n = 14) and cases group with anisometropic amblyopia (n = 23) participated in a visual search study, in which they looked for targets in real-world images displayed on a computer monitor. Eyelink 1000 Plus was used to track the eye movements. Three viewing conditions were randomized: dominant/fellow eye, nondominant/amblyopic eye, and binocular viewing. Visual search performance was measured by combining search time and accuracy. Results: As expected, poorer visual search performance was observed in the amblyopic eye when compared to the controls and fellow eye (P < 0.005). However, the reaction time was longer even in binocular and fellow eye viewing conditions than the controls (P < 0.028). Children with amblyopia made more saccades (17 vs. 12 |
Adam J. Naples; Jennifer H. Foss-Feig; Julie M. Wolf; Vinod H. Srihari; James C. McPartland Predictability modulates neural response to eye contact in ASD Journal Article In: Molecular Autism, vol. 13, no. 42, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Naples2022, Background: Deficits in establishing and maintaining eye-contact are early and persistent vulnerabilities of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and the neural bases of these deficits remain elusive. A promising hypothesis is that social features of autism may reflect difficulties in making predictions about the social world under conditions of uncertainty. However, no research in ASD has examined how predictability impacts the neural processing of eye-contact in naturalistic interpersonal interactions. Method: We used eye tracking to facilitate an interactive social simulation wherein onscreen faces would establish eye-contact when the participant looked at them. In Experiment One, receipt of eye-contact was unpredictable; in Experiment Two, receipt of eye-contact was predictable. Neural response to eye-contact was measured via the N170 and P300 event-related potentials (ERPs). Experiment One included 23 ASD and 46 typically developing (TD) adult participants. Experiment Two included 25 ASD and 43 TD adult participants. Results: When receipt of eye-contact was unpredictable, individuals with ASD showed increased N170 and increased, but non-specific, P300 responses. The magnitude of the N170 responses correlated with measures of sensory and anxiety symptomology, such that increased response to eye-contact was associated with increased symptomology. However, when receipt of eye-contact was predictable, individuals with ASD, relative to controls, exhibited slower N170s and no differences in the amplitude of N170 or P300. Limitations: Our ASD sample was composed of adults with IQ > 70 and included only four autistic women. Thus, further research is needed to evaluate how these results generalize across the spectrum of age, sex, and cognitive ability. Additionally, as analyses were exploratory, some findings failed to survive false-discovery rate adjustment. Conclusions: Neural response to eye-contact in ASD ranged from attenuated to hypersensitive depending on the predictability of the social context. These findings suggest that the vulnerabilities in eye-contact during social interactions in ASD may arise from differences in anticipation and expectation of eye-contact in addition to the perception of gaze alone. |
Sergio Navas-León; Milagrosa Sánchez-Martín; Ana Tajadura-Jiménez; Lize De Coster; Mercedes Borda-Más; Luis Morales In: Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 10, no. 47, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{NavasLeon2022, Background: Recent research indicates that patients with anorexia (AN) show specific eye movement abnormalities such as shorter prosaccade latencies, more saccade inhibition errors, and increased rate of saccadic intrusions compared to participants without AN. However, it remains unknown whether these abnormal eye movement patterns, which may serve as potential biomarkers and endophenotypes for an early diagnosis and preventive clinical treatments, start to manifest also in people with subclinical eating disorders (ED) symptomatology. Therefore, we propose a protocol for an exploratory experimental study to investigate whether participants with subclinical ED symptomatology and control participants differ in their performance on several eye movement tasks. Methods: The sample will be recruited through convenience sampling. The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire will be administered as a screening tool to split the sample into participants with subclinical ED symptomatology and control participants. A fixation task, prosaccade/antisaccade task, and memory-guided task will be administered to both groups. Additionally, we will measure anxiety and premorbid intelligence as confounding variables. Means comparison, exploratory Pearson's correlations and discriminant analysis will be performed. Discussion: This study will be the first to elucidate the presence of specific eye movement abnormalities in participants with subclinical ED symptomatology. The results may open opportunities for developing novel diagnostic tools/therapies being helpful to the EDs research community and allied fields. |
Andrea L. Nelson; Leanne Quigley; Jonathan Carriere; Elizabeth Kalles; Daniel Smilek; Christine Purdon Avoidance of mild threat observed in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using eye tracking Journal Article In: Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol. 88, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Nelson2022, Attentional biases towards threat are assumed to be a causal factor in the development of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, findings have been inconsistent, and studies often examine single time-point bias during threat exposure, instead of across time. Attention to threat may shift throughout exposure (e.g., from initial engagement to avoidance), and research suggests that threat intensity and state anxiety influence attentional biases. No studies to our knowledge have examined biases across time and with varying threat intensity and state anxiety. Participants with GAD (n=38) and non-anxious controls (n=25) viewed emotional (high threat, mild threat, and positive) and neutral image pairs under calm and anxious mood states while their eye movements were tracked. Participants showed an initial orientation to emotional images, and, under the anxious mood induction, demonstrated a bias towards threatening images at first fixation and over time. Results suggest it may be normative to attend to threat cues over other stimuli while in an anxious state. Individuals with GAD uniquely showed a bias away from mild (but not high) threat images over time relative to controls. Implications for theories of attentional biases to threat and clinical implications for GAD and anxiety disorders broadly are discussed. |
José P. Ossandón; Paul Zerr; Idris Shareef; Ramesh Kekunnaya; Brigitte Röder Active vision in sight recovery individuals with a history of long-lasting congenital blindness Journal Article In: eNeuro, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Ossandon2022, What we see is intimately linked to how we actively and systematically explore the world through eye movements. However, it is unknown to what degree visual experience during early development is necessary for such systematic visual exploration to emerge. The present study investigated visual exploration behavior in 10 human participants whose sight had been restored only in childhood or adulthood, after a period of congenital blindness because of dense bilateral congenital cataracts. Participants freely explored real-world images while their eye movements were recorded. Despite severe residual visual impairments and gaze instability (nystag-mus), visual exploration patterns were preserved in individuals with reversed congenital cataract. Modeling analyses indicated that, similar to healthy control subjects, visual exploration in individuals with reversed congenital cataract was based on the low-level (luminance contrast) and high-level (object components) visual content of the images. Moreover, participants used visual short-term memory representations for narrowing down the exploration space. More systematic visual exploration in individuals with reversed congenital cataract was associated with better object recognition, suggesting that active vision might be a driving force for visual system development and recovery. The present results argue against a sensitive period for the development of neural mechanisms associated with visual exploration. |
Mehmet N. Agaoglu; Wai Fung; Susana T. L. Chung Oculomotor responses of the visual system to an artificial central scotoma may not represent genuine visuomotor adaptation Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 1–20, 2022. @article{Agaoglu2022, Patients with central vision loss often adopt a location outside their scotoma as the new reference for vision, the preferred retinal locus (PRL). The development of a PRL is important not only for the rehabilitation of patients with central vision loss, but also helps us better understand how the brain adapts to the lack of visual input. Many investigators studied this question using a gaze-contingent display paradigm by imposing an artificial scotoma to simulate central vision loss for normally sighted subjects, with an important assumption that the "PRL" thus developed is the result of visuomotor adaptation, as is the case for people with a real scotoma. In this study, we tested the validity of this assumption. We used a gaze-contingent display combined with an artificial scotoma to first train normally sighted subjects to develop a "PRL" for saccade eye movements. Then, we compared the properties of saccades when the artificial scotoma was randomly turned off or on. When the artificial scotoma was absent, subjects automatically reverted to using their fovea, with a shorter saccade latency. Our findings suggest that the development of a "PRL" in response to an artificial scotoma may represent a strategy, instead of a genuine visuomotor adaptation. |
Svetlana Alexeeva; Vladislav Zubov; Alena Konina The effect of a dyslexia-specific Cyrillic font, LexiaD, on reading speed: further exploration in adolescents with and without dyslexia Journal Article In: Primenjena Psihologija, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 199–236, 2022. @article{Alexeeva2022, The current study aims to test the assumption that a specially designed Cyrillic font, LexiaD, can assist adolescents with reading problems and facilitate their reading experience. LexiaD was compared with the widely used Arial font. Two groups of adolescents with dyslexia (N = 34) and without dyslexia (N = 28) silently read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus (Laurinavichyute et al., 2019), some of which were presented in LexiaD, and others in Arial, while their eye movements were recorded. LexiaD did not show the desired effect for adolescents at the beginning of the experiment: Arial outperformed it in reading speed in both participant groups. However, by the end of the experiment, LexiaD showed a better performance. Although the speed of the higher-level cognitive processing (e.g., lexical access) in both fonts did not differ significantly, the feature extraction was found to be better in LexiaD than in Arial. Thus, we found some positive effect of LexiaD when participants with and without dyslexia got accustomed to it. A follow-up study with an explicit exposure session is needed to confirm this conclusion. |
Iti Arora; Alessio Bellato; Teodora Gliga; Danielle Ropar; Puja Kochhar; Chris Hollis; Madeleine Groom What is the effect of stimulus complexity on attention to repeating and changing information in Autism? Journal Article In: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 600–616, 2022. @article{Arora2022, Slower habituation to repeating stimuli characterises Autism, but it is not known whether this is driven by difficulties with information processing or an attentional bias towards sameness. We conducted eye-tracking and presented looming geometrical shapes, clocks with moving arms and smiling faces, as two separate streams of stimuli (one repeating and one changing), to 7–15 years old children and adolescents (n = 103) with Autism, ADHD or co-occurring Autism+ADHD, and neurotypical children (Study-1); and to neurotypical children (n = 64) with varying levels of autistic traits (Study-2). Across both studies, autistic features were associated with longer looks to the repeating stimulus, and shorter looks to the changing stimulus, but only for more complex stimuli, indicating greater difficulty in processing complex or unpredictable information. |
Jordi M. Asher; Paul B. Hibbard Visual field loss: Integrating overlayed information to increase the effective field of view Journal Article In: Vision, vol. 6, no. 67, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Asher2022, Visual field loss is a debilitating impairment that can impact normal daily activities. The advancement of augmented and virtual realities brings opportunities for potential substitutive technologies for visual field loss. Here we outline a conceptual approach to increasing the amount of useful information by overlaying the blind field into the sighted field. In this proof-of-concept experiment, 33 observers were allocated to either a left or right blind condition (with a simulated scotoma). All observers completed a line bisection task in all three conditions (baseline, scotoma, manipulation), with the baseline condition always completed first. The scotoma condition (baseline with the addition of a simulated scotoma) and the manipulated condition (baseline with the addition of a simulated scotoma, and a “minified window overlay”) were randomised in order of presentation. Predictably, our results show that a simulated scotoma impaired performance on the task. However, observers were able to make use the overlay to improve their estimation of the line's midpoint. Our results show that a substitutive augmentation of this type improved accuracy in estimating the midpoint of a line with a (simulated) scotoma. |
Asmara Awada; Shahab Bakhtiari; Catherine Legault; Celine Odier; Christopher C. Pack Training with optic flow stimuli promotes recovery in cortical blindness Journal Article In: Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, vol. 40, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Awada2022, Background: Cortical blindness is a form of severe vision loss that is caused by damage to the primary visual cortex (V1) or its afferents. This condition has devastating effects on quality of life and independence. While there are few treatments currently available, accumulating evidence shows that certain visual functions can be restored with appropriate perceptual training: Stimulus sensitivity can be increased within portions of the blind visual field. However, this increased sensitivity often remains highly specific to the trained stimulus, limiting the overall improvement in visual function. Objective: Recent advances in the field of perceptual learning show that such specificity can be overcome with training paradigms that leverage the properties of higher-level visual cortical structures, which have greater capacity to generalize across stimulus positions and features. This targeting can be accomplished by using more complex training stimuli that elicit robust responses in these visual structures. Methods: We trained cortically blind subjects with a complex optic flow motion stimulus that was presented in a location of their blind field. Participants were instructed to train with the stimulus at home for approximately 30 minutes per day. Once performance plateaued, the stimulus was moved deeper into the blind field. A battery of pre- and post-training measures, with careful eye tracking, was performed to quantify the improvements. Results:We show that 1) optic flow motion discrimination can be relearned in cortically blind fields; 2) training with an optic flow stimulus can lead to improvements that transfer to different tasks and untrained locations; and 3) such training leads to a significant expansion of the visual field. The observed expansion of the visual field was present even when eye movements were carefully controlled. Finally, we show that regular training is critical for improved visual function, as sporadic training reduced the benefits of training, even when the total numbers of training sessions were equated. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that complex training stimuli can improve outcomes in cortical blindness, provided that patients adhere to a regular training regimen. Nevertheless, such interventions remain limited in their ability |
Olivia G. Calancie; Donald C. Brien; Jeff Huang; Brian C. Coe; Linda Booij; Sarosh Khalid-Khan; Douglas P. Munoz Maturation of temporal saccade prediction from childhood to adulthood: Predictive saccades, reduced pupil size, and blink synchronization Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 69–80, 2022. @article{Calancie2022, When presented with a periodic stimulus, humans spontaneously adjust their movements from reacting to predicting the timing of its arrival, but little is known about how this sensorimotor adaptation changes across development. To investigate this, we analyzed saccade behavior in 114 healthy humans (ages 6–24 years) performing the visual metronome task, who were instructed to move their eyes in time with a visual target that alternated between two known locations at a fixed rate, and we compared their behavior to per- formance in a random task, where target onsets were randomized across five interstimulus intervals (ISIs) and thus the timing of appearance was unknown. Saccades initiated before registration of the visual target, thus in anticipation of its appearance, were la- beled predictive [saccade reaction time (SRT),90ms] and saccades that were made in reaction to its appearance were labeled reac- tive (SRT.90ms). Eye-tracking behavior including saccadic metrics (e.g., peak velocity, amplitude), pupil size following saccade to target, and blink behavior all varied as a function of predicting or reacting to periodic targets. Compared with reactive saccades, pre- dictive saccades had a lower peak velocity, a hypometric amplitude, smaller pupil size, and a reduced probability of blink occurrence before target appearance. The percentage of predictive and reactive saccades changed inversely from ages 8–16, at which they reached adult-levels of behavior. Differences in predictive saccades for fast and slow target rates are interpreted by differential maturation of cerebellar-thalamic-striatal pathways. |
Frederick H. F. Chan; Hin Suen; Antoni B. Chan; Janet H. Hsiao; Tom J. Barry The effects of attentional and interpretation biases on later pain outcomes among younger and older adults: A prospective study Journal Article In: European Journal of Pain, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 181–196, 2022. @article{Chan2022, Background: Studies examining the effect of biased cognitions on later pain outcomes have primarily focused on attentional biases, leaving the role of interpretation biases largely unexplored. Also, few studies have examined pain-related cognitive biases in elderly persons. The current study aims to fill these research gaps. Methods: Younger and older adults with and without chronic pain (N = 126) completed an interpretation bias task and a free-viewing task of injury and neutral scenes at baseline. Participants' pain intensity and disability were assessed at baseline and at a 6-month follow-up. A machine-learning data-driven approach to analysing eye movement data was adopted. Results: Eye movement analyses revealed two common attentional pattern subgroups for scene-viewing: an “explorative” group and a “focused” group. At baseline, participants with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations compared to pain-free controls, but they did not differ in eye movements on scene images. Older adults interpreted illness-related scenarios more negatively compared to younger adults, but there was also no difference in eye movements between age groups. Moreover, negative interpretation biases were associated with baseline but not follow-up pain disability, whereas a focused gaze tendency for injury scenes was associated with follow-up but not baseline pain disability. Additionally, there was an indirect effect of interpretation biases on pain disability 6 months later through attentional bias for pain-related images. Conclusions: The present study provided evidence for pain status and age group differences in injury-/illness-related interpretation biases. Results also revealed distinct roles of interpretation and attentional biases in pain chronicity. Significance: Adults with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations than pain-free controls. Older adults endorsed more illness interpretations than younger adults. A more negative interpretation bias indirectly predicted pain disability 6 months later through hypervigilance towards pain. |
Isabelle Dautriche; Louise Goupil; Kenny Smith; Hugh Rabagliati Two-year-olds' eye movements reflect confidence in their understanding of words Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 11, pp. 1842–1856, 2022. @article{Dautriche2022, We studied the fundamental issue of whether children evaluate the reliability of their language interpretation, that is, their confidence in understanding words. In two experiments, 2-year-olds (Experiment 1: N = 50; Experiment 2: N = 60) saw two objects and heard one of them being named; both objects were then hidden behind screens and children were asked to look toward the named object, which was eventually revealed. When children knew the label used, they showed increased postdecision persistence after a correct compared with an incorrect anticipatory look, a marker of confidence in word comprehension (Experiment 1). When interacting with an unreliable speaker, children showed accurate word comprehension but reduced confidence in the accuracy of their own choice, indicating that children's confidence estimates are influenced by social information (Experiment 2). Thus, by the age of 2 years, children can estimate their confidence during language comprehension, long before they can talk about their linguistic skills. |
Sebastian P. Dys; Antonio Zuffianò; Veronika Orsanska; Nourhan Zaazou; Tina Malti Children's attentional orientation is associated with their kind emotions Journal Article In: Developmental Psychology, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 1676–1686, 2022. @article{Dys2022, Why do some children feel happy about violating ethical norms whereas others feel guilty? This study examined whether children's attention to two types of competing cues during hypothetical transgressions related to their subsequent emotions. Eye tracking was used to test whether attending to other-oriented cues (i.e., a victim's face) versus self-serving cues (e.g., a stolen good) related to kind and selfish emotions. Participants were 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds (N = 224; Mage = 6.85 years; 51% girls), whose first language was primarily English (80%), and whose primary caregivers mainly reported backgrounds from Asia (40%) or Europe (39%). Overall, almost all children spend more time attending to selfish than other-oriented cues. Latent difference score modeling revealed that higher scores on attentional orientation (i.e., more other-oriented attention compared with self-serving attention or smaller gaps between the two) was significantly related to more kind, but not selfish emotions. This relation remained across age groups. Furthermore, with age, children attended somewhat less to self-serving cues. These findings highlight attention's importance in developing kind emotions |
Eric Failes; Mitchell S. Sommers Using eye-tracking to investigate an activation-based account of false hearing in younger and older adults Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Failes2022, Several recent studies have demonstrated context-based, high-confidence misperceptions in hearing, referred to as false hearing. These studies have unanimously found that older adults are more susceptible to false hearing than are younger adults, which the authors have attributed to an age-related decline in the ability to inhibit the activation of a contextually predicted (but incorrect) response. However, no published work has investigated this activation-based account of false hearing. In the present study, younger and older adults listened to sentences in which the semantic context provided by the sentence was either unpredictive, highly predictive and valid, or highly predictive and misleading with relation to a sentence-final word in noise. Participants were tasked with clicking on one of four images to indicate which image depicted the sentence-final word in noise. We used eye-tracking to investigate how activation, as revealed in patterns of fixations, of different response options changed in real-time over the course of sentences. We found that both younger and older adults exhibited anticipatory activation of the target word when highly predictive contextual cues were available. When these contextual cues were misleading, younger adults were able to suppress the activation of the contextually predicted word to a greater extent than older adults. These findings are interpreted as evidence for an activation-based model of speech perception and for the role of inhibitory control in false hearing. |
Xi Fan; Ronan G. Reilly Eye movement control in reading Chinese: A matter of strength of character? Journal Article In: Acta Psychologica, vol. 230, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Fan2022a, This paper explores the processes underlying eye movement control in Chinese reading among a population of young 4th and 5th grade readers. Various proposals to explain the underlying mechanisms involved in eye movement control are examined and the paper concludes that the most likely account is of a two-factor process whereby the character is the main driver for longer saccades and that the word plays a role in shorter ones. A computational model is proposed to provide an integrated account of the dynamic interaction of these two factors. |
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. |
Lisa Feldmann; Carolin Zsigo; Charlotte Piechaczek; Pia Theresa Schröder; Christian Wachinger; Gerd Schulte-Körne; Ellen Greimel Visual attention during cognitive reappraisal in adolescent major depression: Evidence from two eye-tracking studies Journal Article In: Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol. 153, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Feldmann2022, Adolescent major depression (MD) is associated with impaired emotion regulation. However, results on cognitive reappraisal (CR) are mixed. Investigation of gaze behavior during CR allows a more thorough understanding of intact and deviant CR processes in MD. These studies examined for the first time the role of visual attention during CR in MD. We applied an established CR paradigm in two separate studies, with each study focusing on a different CR strategy. In Study 1, we investigated “distancing” in 39 adolescents with MD and 44 healthy controls (HCs). In Study 2, we applied “reinterpretation” in an independent sample of 37 HCs and 19 adolescents with MD. In both studies, adolescents either down-regulated negative affect to negative pictures via CR or attended them, while eye-movements were continuously recorded. Results of both studies showed that adolescents with MD and HCs did not differ in self-reported ER success. The groups showed comparable gaze behaviour patterns for emotional interest areas and entire pictures. Findings suggest that adolescents with MD are capable of applying CR when instructed and show intact visual attention processes. Future studies should examine whether repeatedly instructing adolescents with MD to apply CR might lead to improved emotion regulation in daily life. |
A. Grillini; L. H. Koens; G. Lizaitiene; F. Lange; F. W. Cornelissen; M. A. J. Tijssen In: Clinical Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, vol. 7, pp. 1–6, 2022. @article{Grillini2022, Introduction: Vertical supranuclear gaze palsy is a key feature of Niemann-Pick type C (NP-C) and is commonly quantified using video-oculography (VOG). VOG requires sitting still for long times and performing specific tasks, thus it can be challenging or impossible for patients severely affected by movement disorders or cognitive impairment. To overcome this limitation, we measure saccades of NP-C patients using a fast eye tracking test based on continuous psychophysics and compare it to VOG. Methods: Saccades of six NP-C patients and six age-matched controls were assessed using VOG and Standardized Oculomotor and Neuro-ophthalmic Disorders Assessment (SONDA). In SONDA, participants continuously track a semi-randomly moving dot on a computer screen while their gaze is being tracked. For both assessments, sac- cades were quantified using four conventional measures: amplitude, gain, latency, and peak velocity. Further- more, SONDA's continuous measures were quantified with several novel spatio-temporal properties. Results: In the NP-C patients, both methods revealed reduced amplitude, gain, peak velocity, and increased la- tency of vertical saccades compared to horizontal saccades and compared to healthy controls. Effect sizes ob- tained with SONDA were overall larger than those for VOG. SONDA's spatio-temporal properties showed similar trends. Conclusion: SONDA reveals a deterioration of vertical saccades in NP-C patients that is consistent with VOG. SONDA's measures based on continuous psychophysics are consistent with traditional saccadic parameters and can potentially provide complementary information. SONDA shows larger effect sizes than VOG, suggesting that it provides robust and clinically relevant outcomes with a more intuitive task and shorter testing time. |
Scott N. Grossman; Rachel Calix; Todd Hudson; John Ross Rizzo; Ivan Selesnick; Steven Frucht; Steven L. Galetta; Laura J. Balcer; Janet C. Rucker Accuracy of clinical versus oculographic detection of pathological saccadic slowing Journal Article In: Journal of the Neurological Sciences, vol. 442, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Grossman2022, Saccadic slowing as a component of supranuclear saccadic gaze palsy is an important diagnostic sign in multiple neurologic conditions, including degenerative, inflammatory, genetic, or ischemic lesions affecting brainstem structures responsible for saccadic generation. Little attention has been given to the accuracy with which clinicians correctly identify saccadic slowing. We compared clinician (n = 19) judgements of horizontal and vertical saccade speed on video recordings of saccades (from 9 patients with slow saccades, 3 healthy controls) to objective saccade peak velocity measurements from infrared oculographic recordings. Clinician groups included neurology residents, general neurologists, and fellowship-trained neuro-ophthalmologists. Saccades with normal peak velocities on infrared recordings were correctly identified as normal in 57% (91/171; 171 = 9 videos × 19 clinicians) of clinician decisions; saccades determined to be slow on infrared recordings were correctly identified as slow in 84% (224/266; 266 = 14 videos × 19 clinicians) of clinician decisions. Vertical saccades were correctly identified as slow more often than horizontal saccades (94% versus 74% of decisions). No significant differences were identified between clinician training levels. Reliable differentiation between normal and slow saccades is clinically challenging; clinical performance is most accurate for detection of vertical saccade slowing. Quantitative analysis of saccade peak velocities enhances accurate detection and is likely to be especially useful for detection of mild saccadic slowing. |
Christoph Helmchen; Björn Machner; Andreas Sprenger; David S. Zee Monocular patching attenuates vertical nystagmus in Wernicke's Encephalopathy via release of activity in subcortical visual pathways Journal Article In: Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 107–109, 2022. @article{Helmchen2022, Downbeat nystagmus (DBN) is common in ataxia syndromes and usually related to cerebellar flocculus dysfunction. Persistent and disabling DBN commonly occurs in B1 deficient Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) causing a functional cerebellar disorder.1 Here we describe a new, unusual phenomenon in a WE patient who has had severe vertical oscillopsia for years due to an incapacitating DBN: oscillopsia and his nystagmus is markedly attenuated when he covers one eye and views monocularly. We propose this is a new clinical sign of emerging activity in subcortical visual pathways. |
Christoph Helmchen; Björn Machner; Janina Gablentz; Andreas Sprenger; David S. Zee Downbeat nystagmus is abolished by alcohol in nonalcoholic Wernicke encephalopathy Journal Article In: Neurology: Clinical Practice, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. E129–E132, 2022. @article{Helmchen2022b, Background and ObjectivesLesions of the cerebellar flocculus cause enduring downbeat nystagmus (DBN) with unrelenting oscillopsia. Unlike most patients with DBN, the flocculus is structurally spared in nonalcoholic Wernicke encephalopathy (nWE) with chronic DBN. The objective was to study the effects of alcohol in nWE.MethodsWe recorded eye movements of a unique patient with nWE under controlled alcohol consumption who said his oscillopsia disappeared with a few drinks of alcohol.ResultsHis DBN was markedly diminished by alcohol (by 77.4%), although he remained alert with normal saccades.DiscussionThis striking observation may be caused by the differential effect of alcohol on the perihypoglossal complex and the paramedian tract neurons, which control the level of activity in the flocculus, with opposite (inhibition and excitation, respectively) effects. The finding suggests new ideas about the treatment and pathophysiology of DBN with a structurally intact cerebellum. |
S. N. Hof; F. C. Loonstra; L. R. J. Ruiter; L. J. Rijn; A. Petzold; B. M. J. Uitdehaag; J. A. Nij Bijvank The prevalence of internuclear ophthalmoparesis in a population-based cohort of individuals with multiple sclerosis Journal Article In: Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders, vol. 63, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Hof2022, Background: Internuclear ophthalmoparesis (INO) occurs in 15–52% of individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and is reliably detected by infrared oculography. Methods for diagnosing INO with infrared oculography and the association between INO and MS characteristics need confirmation. We aimed to describe INO prevalence and the clinical characteristics of individuals with MS and INO in a population-based cohort of individuals with MS born in the year 1966 (Project Y). Methods: Previously described thresholds for the versional dysconjugacy index (VDI), assessed with standardized infrared oculography, were used to detect INO in participants of project Y. Clinical characteristics, visual functioning and complaints were compared between individuals with MS with INO and individuals with MS without INO. Results: Two-hundred-twenty individuals with MS and 110 healthy controls were included. VDI values exceeding the threshold for INO presented in 53 (24%) individuals with MS and 19 controls (13%). INO was associated with male sex, greater disability, worse cognition and worse arm function in individuals with MS. There was no association with disease duration, visual functioning or complaints. Conclusions: INO is prevalent among individuals with MS aged fifty-three and related to clinical characteristics of MS. INO was more frequently detected in healthy controls than previous studies, implying that oculography based diagnosis of INO requires further refinement. |
Lijuan Huang; Yunyu Zhou; Wencong Chen; Ping Lin; Yan Xie; Kaiwen He; Shasha Zhang; Yuyu Wu; Ningdong Li Correlations of FRMD7 gene mutations with ocular oscillations Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Huang2022a, Mutations in the FERM domain containing 7 (FRMD7) gene have been proven to be responsible for infantile nystagmus (IN). The purpose of this study is to investigate FRMD7 gene mutations in patients with IN, and to evaluate the nystagmus intensity among patients with and without FRMD7 mutations. The affected males were subdivided into three groups according to whether or not having FRMD7 mutations and the types of mutations. Fifty-two mutations were detected in FRMD7 in 56 pedigrees and 34 sporadic patients with IN, including 28 novel and 24 previous reported mutations. The novel identified mutations further expand the spectrum of FRMD7 mutations. The parameters of nystagmus intensity and the patients' best corrected visual acuity were not statistically different among the patients with and without identified FRMD7 mutations, and also not different among patients with different mutant types. The FERM-C domain, whose amino acids are encoded by exons 7, 8 and 9, could be the harbor region for most mutations. Loss-of-function is suggested to be the common molecular mechanism for the X-linked infantile nystagmus. |
Todd E. Hudson; Jenna Conway; John-Ross Rizzo; John Martone; Liyung T. Chou; Laura J. Balcer; Steven L. Galetta; Janet C. Rucker In: Clinical and Translational Neuroscience, vol. 6, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Hudson2022, Number and picture rapid automatized naming (RAN) tests are useful sideline diagnostic tools. The main outcome measure of these RAN tests is the completion time, which is prolonged with a concussion, yet yields no information about eye movement behavior. We investigated eye movements during a digitized Mobile Universal Lexicon Evaluation System (MULES) test of rapid picture naming. A total of 23 participants with a history of concussion and 50 control participants performed MULES testing with simultaneous eye tracking. The test times were longer in participants with a concussion (32.4 s [95% CI 30.4, 35.8] vs. 26.9 s [95% CI 25.9, 28.0] |
Divya Jain; Kristy B. Arbogast; Catherine C. McDonald; Olivia E. Podolak; Susan S. Margulies; Kristina B. Metzger; David R. Howell; Mitchell M. Scheiman; Christina L. Master Eye tracking metrics differences among uninjured adolescents and those with acute or persistent post-concussion symptoms Journal Article In: Optometry and Vision Science, vol. 99, no. 8, pp. 616–625, 2022. @article{Jain2022, SIGNIFICANCE Eye tracking assessments that include pupil metrics can supplement current clinical assessments of vision and autonomic dysfunction in concussed adolescents. PURPOSE This study aimed to explore the utility of a 220-second eye tracking assessment in distinguishing eye position, saccadic movement, and pupillary dynamics among uninjured adolescents, those with acute post-concussion symptoms (≤28 days since concussion), or those with persistent post-concussion symptoms (>28 days since concussion). METHODS Two hundred fifty-six eye tracking metrics across a prospective observational cohort of 180 uninjured adolescents recruited from a private suburban high school and 224 concussed adolescents, with acute or persistent symptoms, recruited from a tertiary care subspecialty concussion care program, 13 to 17 years old, from August 2017 to June 2021 were compared. Kruskal-Wallis tests were used, and Bonferroni corrections were applied to account for multiple comparisons and constructed receiver operating characteristic curves. Principal components analysis and regression models were applied to determine whether eye tracking metrics can augment clinical and demographic information in differentiating uninjured controls from concussed adolescents. RESULTS Two metrics of eye position were worse in those with concussion than uninjured adolescents, and only one metric was significantly different between acute cases and persistent cases. Concussed adolescents had larger left and right mean, median, minimum, and maximum pupil size than uninjured controls. Concussed adolescents had greater differences in mean, median, and variance of left and right pupil size. Twelve metrics distinguished female concussed participants from uninjured; only four were associated with concussion status in males. A logistic regression model including clinical and demographics data and transformed eye tracking metrics performed better in predicting concussion status than clinical and demographics data alone. CONCLUSIONS Objective eye tracking technology is capable of quickly identifying vision and pupillary disturbances after concussion, augmenting traditional clinical concussion assessments. These metrics may add to existing clinical practice for monitoring recovery in a heterogeneous adolescent concussion population. |
Anupama Janardhanan; Vijaylakshmi Perumalswamy; Shashikant Shetty; Chitaranjan Mishra; Matt J. Dunn Acquired vertical pendular nystagmus in diffuse unilateral subacute neuroretinitis: A diagnostic dilemma Journal Article In: Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 2, pp. 503–505, 2022. @article{Janardhanan2022, A retinal infectious pathology, an acquired vertical nystagmus, and a suspicious neuroimaging result! Independently, these three entities are not uncommon. However, when they are consecutively observed in a young patient, it ramifies into an intriguing clinical scenario. A 17-year-old diagnosed case of diffuse unilateral subacute neuroretinitis presented to us with acute-onset vertical oscillations. On neuroimaging, she was found to have cerebellar dysgenesis. This case prompted us to revisit the pathogenesis of acquired vertical nystagmus and evaluate whether it resulted from disturbance of afferent (severe visual impairment) or efferent (cerebellar dysfunction) components of the neural integrator mechanism. |
Leah N. Tobin; Christopher R. Sears; Kristin M. Von Ranson In: Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Tobin2022, Objective: This cluster randomized controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of participation in the Body Project—a cognitive-dissonance-based preventive intervention that reduces self-reported body dissatisfaction—for reducing body-dissatisfaction-related attentional biases. We hypothesized that women in a Body Project condition would show a greater reduction in attentional biases to weight-related images and words at postintervention than women in a wait-list control condition. Method: Body-dissatisfied university women (N= 168; Mage = 20.50 ± 3.37 years; 42.0% White; MBMI = 23.08 ± 4.45 kg/m2) were randomly assigned to a Body Project, media psychoeducation (i.e., active control), or wait-list control condition. We assessed attentional biases via eye-gaze tracking and body satisfaction using the Body Shape Questionnaire, at baseline and postintervention. Results: Self-reported outcomes from previous literature were replicated. Compared to wait-list, Body Project participation reduced attention to images of thin models ( ps < .05; ds = .19, .24), but not to weight-related words. Compared to wait-list, the media psychoeducation condition reduced attention to fat-related images and words (ds = .17, .18). Conclusions: This study, which replicates previous self-report findings, is the first to find that two preventive interventions reduced an objective outcome (attentional bias to weight-related images) in body-dissatisfied women. |
Chiara Tortelli; Antonella Pomè; Marco Turi; Roberta Igliozzi; David C. Burr; Paola Binda Contextual information modulates pupil size in autistic children Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Tortelli2022, Recent Bayesian models suggest that perception is more “data-driven” and less dependent on contextual information in autistic individuals than others. However, experimental tests of this hypothesis have given mixed results, possibly due to the lack of objectivity of the self-report methods typically employed. Here we introduce an objective no-report paradigm based on pupillometry to assess the processing of contextual information in autistic children, together with a comparison clinical group. After validating in neurotypical adults a child-friendly pupillometric paradigm, in which we embedded test images within an animation movie that participants watched passively, we compared pupillary response to images of the sun and meaningless control images in children with autism vs. age- and IQ-matched children presenting developmental disorders unrelated to the autistic spectrum. Both clinical groups showed stronger pupillary constriction for the sun images compared with control images, like the neurotypical adults. However, there was no detectable difference between autistic children and the comparison group, despite a significant difference in pupillary light responses, which were enhanced in the autistic group. Our report introduces an objective technique for studying perception in clinical samples and children. The lack of statistically significant group differences in our tests suggests that autistic children and the comparison group do not show large differences in perception of these stimuli. This opens the way to further studies testing contextual processing at other levels of perception. |
Nils S. Berg; Nikki A. Lammers; Anouk R. Smits; Selma Lugtmeijer; Yair Pinto; Edward H. F. De Haan Mid-range visual functions in relation to higher-order visual functions after stroke Journal Article In: Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 580–591, 2022. @article{Berg2022a, Introduction: We aimed to investigate whether associations between deficits in “mid-range” visual functions and deficits in higher-order visual cognitive functions in stroke patients are more in line with a hierarchical, two-pathway model of the visual brain, or with a patchwork model, which assumes a parallel organization with many processing routes and cross-talk. Methods: A group of 182 ischemic stroke patients was assessed with a new diagnostic set-up for the investigation of a comprehensive range of visuosensory mid-range functions: color, shape, location, orientation, correlated motion, contrast and texture. With logistic regression analyses we investigated the predictive value of these mid-range functions for deficits in visuoconstruction (Copy of the Rey-Complex Figure Test), visual emotion recognition (Ekman 60 Faces Test of the FEEST) and visual memory (computerized Doors-test). Results: Results showed that performance on most mid-range visual tasks could not predict performance on higher-order visual cognitive tasks. Correlations were low to weak. Impaired visuoconstruction and visual memory were only modestly predicted by a worse location perception. Impaired emotion perception was modestly predicted by a worse orientation perception. In addition, double dissociations were found: there were patients with selective deficits in mid-range visual functions without higher-order visual deficits and vice versa. Conclusions: Our findings are not in line with the hierarchical, two-pathway model. Instead, the findings are more in line with alternative “patchwork” models, arguing for a parallel organization with many processing routes and cross-talk. However, future studies are needed to test these alternative models. |
Preeti Verghese; Saeideh Ghahghaei; Zachary Lively Mapping residual stereopsis in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 13, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Verghese2022, Individuals with macular degeneration typically lose vision in the central region of one or both eyes. A binocular scotoma occurs when vision loss occurs in overlapping locations in both eyes, but stereopsis is impacted even in the non-overlapping region wherever the visual field in either eye is affected. We used a novel stereoperimetry protocol to measure local stereopsis across the visual field (up to 25° eccentricity) to determine how locations with functional stereopsis relate to the scotomata in the two eyes. Participants included those with monocular or binocular scotomata and age-matched controls with healthy vision. Targets (with or without depth information) were presented on a random dot background. Depth targets had true binocular disparity of 20' (crossed), whereas non-depth targets were defined by monocular cues such as contrast and dot density. Participants reported target location and whether it was in depth or flat. Local depth sensitivity (d') estimates were then combined to generate a stereopsis map. This stereopsis map was compared to the union of the monocular microperimetry estimates that mapped out the functional extent of the scotoma in each eye. The "union" prediction aligned with residual stereopsis, showing impaired stereopsis within this region and residual stereopsis outside this region. Importantly, the stereoblind region was typically more extensive than the binocular scotoma defined by the intersection (overlap) of the scotomata. This explains why individuals may have intact binocular visual fields but be severely compromised in tasks of daily living that benefit from stereopsis, such as eye-hand coordination and navigation. |
Simone Vespa; Lars Stumpp; Giulia Liberati; Jean Delbeke; Antoine Nonclercq; André Mouraux; Riëm El Tahry Characterization of vagus nerve stimulation-induced pupillary responses in epileptic patients Journal Article In: Brain Stimulation, vol. 15, pp. 1498–1507, 2022. @article{Vespa2022, Background: Modulation of the locus coeruleus (LC)-noradrenergic system is a key mechanism of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). Activation of the LC produces pupil dilation, and the VNS-induced change in pupil diameter was demonstrated in animals as a possible dose-dependent biomarker for treatment titration. Objective: This study aimed to characterize VNS-induced pupillary responses in epileptic patients. Methods: Pupil diameter was recorded in ten epileptic patients upon four stimulation conditions: three graded levels of VNS intensity and a somatosensory control stimulation (cutaneous electrical stimulation over the left clavicle). For each block, the patients rated the intensity of stimulation on a numerical scale. We extracted the latency of the peak pupil dilation and the magnitude of the early (0e2.5 s) and late components (2.5e5 s) of the pupil dilation response (PDR). Results: VNS elicited a peak dilation with longer latency compared to the control condition (p ¼ 0.043). The magnitude of the early PDR was significantly correlated with the intensity of perception (p ¼ 0.046), whereas the late PDR was not (p ¼ 0.19). There was a significant main effect of the VNS level of intensity on the magnitude of the late PDR (p ¼ 0.01) but not on the early PDR (p ¼ 0.2). The relationship between late PDR magnitude and VNS intensity was best fit by a Gaussian model (inverted-U). Conclusions: The late component of the PDR might reflect specific dose-dependent effects of VNS, as compared to control somatosensory stimulation. The inverted-U relationship of late PDR with VNS in- tensity might indicate the engagement of antagonist central mechanisms at high stimulation intensities. |
Chiara Visentin; Chiara Valzolgher; Matteo Pellegatti; Paola Potente; Francesco Pavani; Nicola Prodi A comparison of simultaneously-obtained measures of listening effort: Pupil dilation, verbal response time and self-rating Journal Article In: International Journal of Audiology, vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 561–573, 2022. @article{Visentin2022, Objective: The aim of this study was to assess to what extent simultaneously-obtained measures of listening effort (task-evoked pupil dilation, verbal response time [RT], and self-rating) could be sensitive to auditory and cognitive manipulations in a speech perception task. The study also aimed to explore the possible relationship between RT and pupil dilation. Design: A within-group design was adopted. All participants were administered the Matrix Sentence Test in 12 conditions (signal-to-noise ratios [SNR] of −3, −6, −9 dB; attentional resources focussed vs divided; spatial priors present vs absent). Study sample: Twenty-four normal-hearing adults, 20–41 years old (M = 23.5), were recruited in the study. Results: A significant effect of the SNR was found for all measures. However, pupil dilation discriminated only partially between the SNRs. Neither of the cognitive manipulations were effective in modulating the measures. No relationship emerged between pupil dilation, RT and self-ratings. Conclusions: RT, pupil dilation, and self-ratings can be obtained simultaneously when administering speech perception tasks, even though some limitations remain related to the absence of a retention period after the listening phase. The sensitivity of the three measures to changes in the auditory environment differs. RTs and self-ratings proved most sensitive to changes in SNR. |
Cécile Vullings; Zachary Lively; Preeti Verghese Saccades during visual search in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Vullings2022, Macular degeneration (MD) compromises both high-acuity vision and eye movements when the foveal regions of both eyes are affected. Individuals with MD adapt to central field loss by adopting a preferred retinal locus (PRL) for fixation. Here, we investigate how individuals with bilateral MD use eye movements to search for targets in a visual scene under realistic binocular viewing conditions. Five individuals with binocular scotomata, 3 individuals with monocular scotomata and 6 age-matched controls participated in our study. We first extensively mapped the binocular scotoma with an eyetracker, while fixation was carefully monitored (Vullings & Verghese, 2020). Participants then completed a visual search task where 0, 1, or 2 Gaussian blobs were distributed randomly across a natural scene. Participants were given 10 s to actively search the display and report the number of blobs. An analysis of saccade characteristics showed that individuals with binocular scotomata made more saccades in the direction of their scotoma than controls for the same directions. Saccades in the direction of the scotoma were typically of small amplitude, and did not fully uncover the region previously hidden by the scotoma. Rather than make more saccades to explore this hidden region, participants frequently made saccades back toward newly uncovered regions. Backward saccades likely serve a similar purpose to regressive saccades exhibited during reading in MD, by inspecting previously covered regions near the direction of gaze. Our analysis suggests that the higher prevalence of backward saccades in individuals with binocular scotomata might be related to the PRL being adjacent to the scotoma. |
Josefine Waldthaler; Mikkel C. Vinding; Allison Eriksson; Per Svenningsson; Daniel Lundqvist Neural correlates of impaired response inhibition in the antisaccade task in Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 422, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Waldthaler2022, Deficits in response inhibition are a central feature of the highly prevalent dysexecutive syndrome found in Parkinson's disease (PD). Such deficits are related to a range of common clinically relevant symptoms including cognitive impairment as well as impulsive and compulsive behaviors. In this study, we explored the cortical dynamics underlying response inhibition during the mental preparation for the antisaccade task by recording magnetoencephalography (MEG) and eye-movements in 21 non-demented patients with early to mid-stage Parkinson's disease and 21 age-matched healthy control participants (HC). During the pre-stimulus preparatory period for antisaccades we observed: • a preparation-related increase in beta band activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of HC (n = 15) for antisaccades compared with prosaccades that was not detectable in the PD group (n = 17); • a significant attenuation of the preparation-related increase in alpha band power in bilateral FEF and reduced alpha band connectivity between the right DLPFC and right FEF in the PD group compared with HC, suggesting reduced top-down control to inhibit pre-potent activation of FEF in PD; and • a positive correlation between the magnitude of pre-stimulus beta desynchronization in FEF and subsequent antisaccade latency in PD and HC, indicating a relationship between preparatory beta band modulation and effectiveness of subsequent antisaccade execution. Taken together, the results indicate that alterations in pre-stimulus prefrontal alpha and beta activity hinder proactive response inhibition and in turn result in higher error rates and prolonged response latencies in PD. |
Shuai Wang; Jialing Li; Siyu Wang; Can Mi; Wei Wang; Zhengjia Xu; Wenjing Xiong; Longxing Tang; Yanzhang Li Escapism-based motivation affected the psychological performances of high-risk internet gaming disorder individuals Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Wang2022g, Background: Escapism-based motivation (EBM) is considered as one of the diagnostic criteria for internet gaming disorder (IGD). However, how EBM affects the high risk of IGD (HIGD) population remains unclear. Methods: An initial number of 789 college students participated in the general, internet gaming behavior, and motivation surveys. After multiple evaluations, 57 individuals were identified as HIGD (25 with EBM, H-EBM; 32 with non-EBM, H-nEBM). In addition, 51 no-gaming individuals were included as the control group (CONTR). The cohorts completed the psychological assessments and eye-tracking tests, and analyses of group differences, correlations, and influencing factors of the indicators were performed. Results: The Barratt impulsiveness score of H-nEBM and H-EBM was significantly higher than that of CONTR (MD = 3.605 |
Shuai Wang; Jialing Li; Siyu Wang; Wei Wang; Can Mi; Wenjing Xiong; Zhengjia Xu; Longxing Tang; Yanzhang Li In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Wang2022h, Individuals with high risk of internet gaming disorder (HIGD) showed abnormal psychological performances in response inhibition, impulse control, and emotion regulation, and are considered the high-risk stage of internet gaming disorder (IGD). The identification of this population mainly relies on clinical scales, which are less accurate. This study aimed to explore whether these performances have highly accurate for discriminating HIGD from low-risk ones. Eye tracking based anti-saccade task, Barratt impulsiveness scale (BIS), and Wong and Law emotional intelligence scale (WLEIS) were used to evaluate psychological performances in 57 individuals with HIGD and 52 matched low risk of internet gaming disorder (LIGD). HIGD group showed significantly increased BIS total (t = −2.875 |
Ying Wang; Hai-Long Lyu; Xiao-Han Tian; Bing Lang; Xiao-Yi Wang; David St Clair; Renrong Wu; Jingping Zhao The similar eye movement dysfunction between major depressive disorder, bipolar depression and bipolar mania Journal Article In: The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 689–702, 2022. @article{Wang2022i, Objective: To find eye movement characteristics in patients with affective disorders. Method: The demographic and clinical evaluation data of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BPD), and healthy control (HC) were collected. EyeLink 1000 eye tracker was used to collect eye movement data. Chi-squared test and independent sample t-test were used for demographics and clinical characteristics. The Mann–Whitney U-test was used to compare the eye movement variables among four groups, and the FDR method was used for multiple comparison correction. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyse the relationship between clinical symptoms and eye movement variables. Results: Patients with affective disorders showed smaller saccade amplitude under free-viewing task, more fixations and saccades, shorter fixation duration, longer saccade duration under fixation stability and smooth pursuit tasks (all, p < 0.05) when compared to HC, but there was no significant difference in all eye movement variables among patients in the three groups. Also, all eye movement variables under the three paradigms had no significant correlation with clinical scale scores. Conclusion: Patients with major depression, bipolar depression and bipolar mania share similar eye movement dysfunction under free-viewing, fixation stability and smooth pursuit tasks. |
Jingqi Jiang; Yiqin Zhu; Marcus A. Rodriguez; Xu Wen; Mingyi Qian Social anxiety does not impair attention inhibition: An emotion anti-saccade task Journal Article In: Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, vol. 77, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Jiang2022, Background and objectives: Attention avoidance and attention vigilance are two typical attentional biases in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Attention inhibition is a type of attention control, which may be the key factor affecting attention vigilance and attention avoidance. However, previous studies have not examined the difference between the attention inhibition in individuals with SAD and healthy controls. Methods: To further explore this question, the current study used the single anti-saccade task with emotional facial stimuli to assess attention inhibition in 27 individuals with SAD and 22 healthy controls. Results: Regardless of the emotional valence of the facial stimuli, error rates in the social anxiety group were lower than that of the healthy control group, but there was no significant group difference in the saccade latency. Limitations: This research only examined the attentional inhibition process highly related to attention avoidance and attention vigilance. Future research may benefit from adopting different research paradigms for more robust and generalizable conclusions. Conclusions: Results suggest that individuals with SAD have better attention inhibition abilities than healthy control. Such enhanced attention inhibition may underlie their avoidance of threatening social cues. |
Martin E. Johansson; Ian G. M. Cameron; Nicolien M. Van der Kolk; Nienke M. Vries; Eva Klimars; Ivan Toni; Bastiaan R. Bloem; Rick C. Helmich Aerobic exercise alters brain function and structure in Parkinson's disease: A randomized controlled trial Journal Article In: Annals of Neurology, vol. 91, pp. 203–216, 2022. @article{Johansson2022, Objective: Randomized clinical trials have shown that aerobic exercise attenuates motor symptom progression in Parkinson's disease, but the underlying neural mechanisms are unclear. Here, we investigated how aerobic exercise influences disease-related functional and structural changes in the corticostriatal sensorimotor network, which is involved in the emergence of motor deficits in Parkinson's disease. Additionally, we explored effects of aerobic exercise on tissue integrity of the substantia nigra, and on behavioral and cerebral indices of cognitive control. Methods: The Park-in-Shape trial is a single-center, double-blind randomized controlled trial in 130 Parkinson's disease patients who were randomly assigned (1:1 ratio) to aerobic exercise (stationary home trainer) or stretching (active control) interventions (duration = 6 months). An unselected subset from this trial (exercise |
Tatiana Karpouzian-Rogers; Rob Hurley; Mustafa Seckin; Stacey Moeller; Nathan Gill; Hui Zhang; Christina Coventry; Matthew Nelson; Sandra Weintraub; Emily Rogalski; M. Marsel Mesulam Eye movements as a measure of word comprehension deficits in primary progressive aphasia Journal Article In: Brain and Language, vol. 232, pp. 1–5, 2022. @article{KarpouzianRogers2022, Introduction: Eye movement studies can uncover subtle aspects of language processing impairment in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), who may have difficulty understanding words. This study examined eye movement patterns on a word-object matching task in response to varying levels of word-knowledge in PPA. Methods: Participants with semantic and non-semantic PPA completed an object-matching task, where a word was presented and participants then selected the corresponding pictured object from an array. Afterwards, participants defined words for trials to which they incorrectly pointed. Linear mixed-effects analyses examined fixation differences on targets and related and unrelated foils. Results: On incorrectly-pointed trials, participants demonstrated greater fixation duration on related foils, demonstrating intra-category blurring. For words that could not be defined, there was similar fixation duration on related and unrelated foils, demonstrating inter-category semantic blurring. Discussion: This study demonstrated that fixation patterns reflect varying levels of word knowledge in PPA. |
Chaim N. Katz; Andrea G. P. Schjetnan; Kramay Patel; Victoria Barkley; Kari L. Hoffman; Suneil K. Kalia; Katherine D. Duncan; Taufik A. Valiante A corollary discharge mediates saccade-related inhibition of single units in mnemonic structures of the human brain Journal Article In: Current Biology, vol. 32, no. 14, pp. 3082–3094, 2022. @article{Katz2022, Despite the critical link between visual exploration and memory, little is known about how neuronal activity in the human mesial temporal lobe (MTL) is modulated by saccades. Here, we characterize saccade-associated neuronal modulations, unit-by-unit, and contrast them to image onset and to occipital lobe neurons. We reveal evidence for a corollary discharge (CD)-like modulatory signal that accompanies saccades, inhibiting/exciting a unique population of broad-/narrow-spiking units, respectively, before and during saccades and with directional selectivity. These findings comport well with the timing, directional nature, and inhibitory circuit implementation of a CD. Additionally, by linking neuronal activity to event-related potentials (ERPs), which are directionally modulated following saccades, we recontextualize the ERP associated with saccades as a proxy for both the strength of inhibition and saccade direction, providing a mechanistic underpinning for the more commonly recorded saccade-related ERP in the human brain. |
B. C. Kaufmann; D. Cazzoli; P. Bartolomeo; J. Frey; T. Pflugshaupt; S. E. J. Knobel; T. Nef; R. M. Müri; T. Nyffeler Auditory spatial cueing reduces neglect after right-hemispheric stroke: A proof of concept study Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 148, pp. 152–167, 2022. @article{Kaufmann2022, Spatial neglect after right-hemispheric stroke, characterized by the failure to attend or respond to the contralesional space, is a strong negative outcome predictor. Neglect is a supramodal syndrome affecting not only the visual but also the auditory modality. Preliminary studies used this audio-visual cross-modal effect to show short-lasting effects on attention towards the neglected space. The aim of the present study was to introduce a new technique of auditory stimulation combining the unspecific effect of music (i.e., patients choose their preferred music) with the effects of auditory spatial cueing (i.e., the music is presented dynamically as moving from right to left). The effect of this new auditory stimulation technique was investigated in two proof-of-concept experiments using repeated-measures, cross-over designs including 21 patients with visual neglect after a first right-hemispheric stroke. In Experiment I (n = 9), neglect patients showed a significantly larger improvement in Letter Cancellation after listening to preferred music with than without auditory spatial cueing. After granting the feasibility of this new auditory stimulation technique, we investigated the long-term aftereffects in Experiment II (n = 12). Herefore, we used video-oculography during Free Visual Exploration, a sensitive and reliable tool to assess spatial attention over time. Listening to music with auditory spatial cueing – as compared to music without auditory spatial cueing – significantly improved neglect severity in terms of visual exploration behaviour for up to 3h. A voxel-based-lesion-symptom mapping analysis over all patients revealed that the response variability in listening to music with auditory spatial cueing is determined by the integrity of the right inferior parietal lobule, the second branch of the superior longitudinal fascicle, and parieto-parietal callosal fibres. Our study shows that listening to music with auditory spatial cueing significantly reduces neglect severity and has the potential to be used as an add-on in the neurorehabilitation of neglect. |
Hassen Kerkeni; Dominik Brügger; Georgios Mantokoudis; Mathias Abegg; David S. Zee Pharmacological and behavioral strategies to improve vision in acquired pendular nystagmus Journal Article In: American Journal of Case Reports, vol. 23, pp. 1–5, 2022. @article{Kerkeni2022, Objective: Unusual setting of medical care. Background: Acquired pendular nystagmus (APN) is a back and forth, oscillatory eye movement in which the 2 oppositely directed slow phases have similar waveforms. APN occurs commonly in multiple sclerosis and causes a disabling oscillopsia that impairs vision. Previous studies have proven that symptomatic therapy with gabapentin or me-mantine can reduce the nystagmus amplitude or frequency. However, the effect of these medications on visual acuity (VA) is less known and to our knowledge the impact of non-pharmacological strategies such as blinking on VA has not been reported. This is a single observational study without controls (Class IV) and is meant to suggest a future strategy for study of vision in patients with disabling nystagmus and impaired vision. Case Report: A 49-year-old woman with primary progressive multiple sclerosis with spastic paraparesis and a history of optic atrophy presented with asymmetrical binocular APN and bothersome oscillopsia. We found that in the eye with greater APN her visual acuity improved by 1 line (from 0.063 to 0.08 decimals) immediately after blinking. During treatment with memantine, her VA without blinking increased by 2 lines, from 0.063 to 0.12, but improved even more (from 0.12 to 0.16) after blinking. In the contralateral eye with a barely visible nystagmus, VA was reduced by 1 line briefly (~500 ms) after blinking. Conclusions: In a patient with APN, blinking transiently improved vision. The combination of pharmacological treatment with memantine and the blinking strategy may induce better VA and less oscillopsia than either alone. |
Julie A. Kirkby; Rhiannon S. Barrington; Denis Drieghe; Simon P. Liversedge Parafoveal processing and transposed-letter effects in dyslexic reading Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, pp. 359–374, 2022. @article{Kirkby2022, During parafoveal processing, skilled readers encode letter identity independently of letter position (Johnson et al., 2007). In the current experiment, we examined orthographic parafoveal processing in readers with dyslexia. Specifically, the eye movements of skilled readers and adult readers with dyslexia were recorded during a boundary paradigm experiment (Rayner, 1975). Parafoveal previews were either identical to the target word (e.g., nearly), a transposed-letter preview (e.g., enarly), or a substituted-letter preview (e.g., acarly). Dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers demonstrated orthographic parafoveal preview benefits during silent sentence reading and both reading groups encoded letter identity and letter position information parafoveally. However, dyslexic adults showed, that very early in lexical processing, during parafoveal preview, the positional information of a word's initial letters were encoded less flexibly compared to during skilled adult reading. We suggest that dyslexic readers are less able to benefit from correct letter identity information (i.e., in the letter transposition previews) due to the lack of direct mapping of orthography to phonology. The current findings demonstrate that dyslexic readers show consistent and dyslexic-specific reading difficulties in foveal and parafoveal processing during silent sentence reading. |
Alexander Kolevzon; Tess Levy; Sarah Barkley; Sandra Bedrosian-Sermone; Matthew Davis; Jennifer Foss-Feig; Danielle Halpern; Katherine Keller; Ana Kostic; Christina Layton; Rebecca Lee; Bonnie Lerman; Matthew Might; Sven Sandin; Paige M. Siper; Laura G. Sloofman; Hannah Walker; Jessica Zweifach; Joseph D. Buxbaum An open-label study evaluating the safety, behavioral, and electrophysiological outcomes of low-dose ketamine in children with ADNP syndrome Journal Article In: Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Kolevzon2022, Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP) syndrome is a rare genetic condition associated with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. Preclinical evidence suggests that low-dose ketamine may induce expression of ADNP and that neuroprotective effects of ketamine may be mediated by ADNP. The goal of the proposed research was to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and behavioral outcomes of low-dose ketamine in children with ADNP syndrome. We also sought to explore the feasibility of using electrophysiological markers of auditory steady-state response and computerized eye tracking to assess biomarker sensitivity to treatment. This study utilized a single-dose (0.5 mg/kg), open-label design, with ketamine infused intravenously over 40 min. Ten children with ADNP syndrome ages 6 to 12 years were enrolled. Ketamine was generally well tolerated, and there were no serious adverse events. The most common adverse events were elation/silliness (50%), fatigue (40%), and increased aggression (40%). Using parent-report instruments to assess treatment effects, ketamine was associated with nominally significant improvement in a wide array of domains, including social behavior, attention deficit and hyperactivity, restricted and repetitive behaviors, and sensory sensitivities, a week after administration. Results derived from clinician-rated assessments aligned with findings from the parent reports. Overall, nominal improvement was evident based on the Clinical Global Impressions - Improvement scale, in addition to clinician-based scales reflecting key domains of social communication, attention deficit and hyperactivity, restricted and repetitive behaviors, speech, thinking, and learning, activities of daily living, and sensory sensitivities. Results also highlight the potential utility of electrophysiological measurement of auditory steady-state response and eye-tracking to index change with ketamine treatment. Findings are intended to be hypothesis generating and provide preliminary support for the safety and efficacy of ketamine in ADNP syndrome in addition to identifying useful endpoints for a ketamine clinical development program. However, results must be interpreted with caution given limitations of this study, most importantly the small sample size and absence of a placebo-control group. |
Isabel Kreis; Lei Zhang; Steffen Moritz; Gerit Pfuhl Spared performance but increased uncertainty in schizophrenia: Evidence from a probabilistic decision-making task Journal Article In: Schizophrenia Research, vol. 243, pp. 414–423, 2022. @article{Kreis2022, Aberrant attribution of salience to in fact little informative events might explain the emergence of positive symptoms in schizophrenia and has been linked to belief uncertainty. Uncertainty is thought to be encoded by neuromodulators, including norepinephrine. However, norepinephrinergic encoding of uncertainty, measured as task-related pupil dilation, has rarely been explored in schizophrenia. Here, we addressed this question by comparing individuals with a disorder from the schizophrenia spectrum to a non-psychiatric control group on behavioral and pupillometric measures in a probabilistic prediction task, where different levels of uncertainty were introduced. Behaviorally, patients performed similar to controls, but their belief uncertainty was higher, particularly when instability of the task environment was high, suggesting an increased sensitivity to this instability. Furthermore, while pupil dilation scaled positively with uncertainty, this was less the case for patients, suggesting aberrant neuromodulatory regulation of neural gain, which may hinder the reduction of uncertainty in the long run. Together, the findings point to abnormal uncertainty processing and norepinephrinergic signaling in schizophrenia, potentially informing future development of both psychopharmacological therapies and psychotherapeutic approaches that deal with the processing of uncertain information. |
Wupadrasta Santosh Kumar; Keerthana Manikandan; Dinavahi V. P. S. Murty; Ranjini Garani Ramesh; Simran Purokayastha; Mahendra Javali; Naren Prahalada Rao; Supratim Ray Stimulus-induced narrowband gamma oscillations are test–retest reliable in human EEG Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex Communications, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Kumar2022a, Visual stimulus-induced gamma oscillations in electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings have been recently shown to be compromised in subjects with preclinical Alzheimer's Disease (AD), suggesting that gamma could be an inexpensive biomarker for AD diagnosis provided its characteristics remain consistent across multiple recordings. Previous magnetoencephalography studies in young subjects have reported consistent gamma power over recordings separated by a few weeks to months. Here, we assessed the consistency of stimulus-induced slow (20–35 Hz) and fast gamma (36–66 Hz) oscillations in subjects (n = 40) (age: 50–88 years) in EEG recordings separated by a year, and tested the consistency in the magnitude of gamma power, its temporal evolution and spectral profile. Gamma had distinct spectral/temporal characteristics across subjects, which remained consistent across recordings (average intraclass correlation of ~0.7). Alpha (8–12 Hz) and steady-state-visually evoked-potentials were also reliable. We further tested how EEG features can be used to identify 2 recordings as belonging to the same versus different subjects and found high classifier performance (AUC of ~0.89), with temporal evolution of slow gamma and spectral profile being most informative. These results suggest that EEG gamma oscillations are reliable across sessions separated over long durations and can also be a potential tool for subject identification. |
Koji Kuraoka; Kae Nakamura Facial temperature and pupil size as indicators of internal state in primates Journal Article In: Neuroscience Research, 2022. @article{Kuraoka2022, Studies in human subjects have revealed that autonomic responses provide objective and biologically relevant information about cognitive and affective states. Measures of autonomic responses can also be applied to studies of non-human primates, which are neuro-anatomically and physically similar to humans. Facial temperature and pupil size are measured remotely and can be applied to physiological experiments in primates, preferably in a head-fixed condition. However, detailed guidelines for the use of these measures in non-human primates is lacking. Here, we review the neuronal circuits and methodological considerations necessary for measuring and analyzing facial temperature and pupil size in non-human primates. Previous studies have shown that the modulation of these measures primarily reflects sympathetic reactions to cognitive and emotional processes, including alertness, attention, and mental effort, over different time scales. Integrated analyses of autonomic, behavioral, and neurophysiological data in primates are promising methods that reflect multiple dimensions of emotion and could potentially provide tools for understanding the mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders and vulnerabilities characterized by cognitive and affective disturbances. |
Sunwoo Kwon; Berkeley K. Fahrenthold; Matthew R. Cavanaugh; Krystel R. Huxlin; Jude F. Mitchell Perceptual restoration fails to recover unconscious processing for smooth eye movements after occipital stroke Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–23, 2022. @article{Kwon2022, The visual pathways that guide actions do not necessarily mediate conscious perception. Patients with primary visual cortex (V1) damage lose conscious perception but often retain unconscious abilities (e.g. blindsight). Here, we asked if saccade accuracy and post-saccadic following responses (PFRs) that automatically track target motion upon saccade landing are retained when conscious perception is lost. We contrasted these behaviors in the blind and intact fields of 11 chronic V1-stroke patients, and in 8 visually intact controls. Saccade accuracy was relatively normal in all cases. Stroke patients also had normal PFR in their intact fields, but no PFR in their blind fields. Thus, V1 damage did not spare the unconscious visual processing necessary for automatic, postsaccadic smooth eye movements. Importantly, visual training that recovered motion perception in the blind field did not restore the PFR, suggesting a clear dissociation between pathways mediating perceptual restoration and automatic actions in the V1-damaged visual system. |
Nikki A. Lammers; Nils S. Van den Berg; Selma Lugtmeijer; Anouk R. Smits; Yair Pinto; Edward H. F. Haan Mid-range visual deficits after stroke: Prevalence and co-occurrence Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Lammers2022, Visual deficits are common after stroke and are powerful predictors for the chronic functional outcome. However, while basic visual field and recognition deficits are relatively easy to assess with standardized methods, selective deficits in visual primitives, such as shape or motion, are harder to identify, as they often require a symmetrical bilateral posterior lesion in order to provoke full field deficits. Therefore, we do not know how often they occur. Nevertheless, they can have severe repercussions for daily-life functioning. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and co-occurrence of hemifield “mid-range” visual deficits (i.e. color, shape, location, orientation, correlated motion, contrast, texture and glossiness), using a novel experimental set-up with a gaze-contingent presentation of the stimuli. To this end, a prospective cohort of 220 ischemic (sub)cortical stroke patients and a healthy control group was assessed with this set-up. When comparing performance of patients with controls, the results showed that deficits in motion-perception were most prevalent (26%), followed by color (22%), texture (22%), location (21%), orientation (18%), contrast (14%), shape (14%) and glossiness (13%). 63% of the stroke patients showed one or more mid-range visual deficits. Overlap of deficits was small; they mostly occurred in isolation or co-occurred with only one or two other deficits. To conclude, it was found that deficits in “mid-range” visual functions were very prevalent. These deficits are likely to affect the chronic post-stroke condition. Since we found no strong patterns of co-occurrences, we suggest that an assessment of deficits at this level of visual processing requires screening the full range of visual functions. |
Emily A. Lang; Camilla Van Geen; Ellen Tedeschi; Caroline B. Marvin; Daphna Shohamy; Emily A. Lang; Camilla Van Geen; Ellen Tedeschi; Caroline B. Marvin; Daphna Shohamy Learned temporal statistics guide information seeking and shape memory Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 151, no. 5, pp. 986–995, 2022. @article{Lang2022, Curiosity drives information seeking and promotes learning. Prior work has focused on how curiosity is elicited by intrinsic qualities of information, leaving open questions about how curiosity, exploration, and learning are shaped by the environment. Here we examine how temporal dynamics of the learning envi- ronment shape curiosity and learning. Participants (n = 71) foraged for the answer to trivia questions in two conditions that differed only in their temporal statistics. In one condition, the timing of information delivery followed a uniform distribution, while in another it followed a heavy-tailed distribution. We found that the two conditions elicited distinct responses in both behavior and pupil dilation: participants were more likely to wait for information and to later remember it in the uniform distribution. By contrast, participants showed greater surprise, evidenced in a spike in pupil dilation, when presented with the answers in the heavy-tailed distribution. Furthermore, pupil dilation was inversely related to curiosity and memory, suggesting that temporal uncertainty may interfere with the positive effects of curiosity on learning. Our findings demonstrate that the predicted timing of information delivery influences information seeking, memory, and physiological arousal, suggesting that information is best learned when it is both intrinsically interesting and presented within a temporally predictable environment. |
Rebekka Schröder; Eliana Faiola; Maria Fernanda Urquijo; Katharina Bey; Inga Meyhöfer; Maria Steffens; Anna-Maria Kasparbauer; Anne Ruef; Hanna Högenauer; René Hurlemann; Joseph Kambeitz; Alexandra Philipsen; Michael Wagner; Nikolaos Koutsouleris; Ulrich Ettinger Neural correlates of smooth pursuit eye movements in schizotypy and recent onset psychosis: A multivariate pattern classification approach Journal Article In: Schizophrenia Bulletin Open, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Schroeder2022, Schizotypy refers to a set of personality traits that bear resemblance, at subclinical level, to psychosis. Despite evidence of similarity at multiple levels of analysis, direct comparisons of schizotypy and clinical psychotic disorders are rare. Therefore, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates and task-based functional connectivity (psychophysiological interactions; PPI) of smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) in patients with recent onset psychosis (ROP; n = 34), participants with high levels of negative (HNS; n = 46) or positive (HPS; n = 41) schizotypal traits, and low-schizotypy control participants (LS; n = 61) using machine-learning. Despite strong previous evidence that SPEM is a highly reliable marker of psychosis, patients and controls could not be significantly distinguished based on SPEM performance or blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal during SPEM. Classification was, however, significant for the right frontal eye field (FEF) seed region in the PPI analyses but not for seed regions in other key areas of the SPEM network. Applying the right FEF classifier to the schizotypal samples yielded decision scores between the LS and ROP groups, suggesting similarities and dissimilarities of the HNS and HPS samples with the LS and ROP groups. The very small difference between groups is inconsistent with previous studies that showed significant differences between patients with ROP and controls in both SPEM performance and underlying neural mechanisms with large effect sizes. As the current study had sufficient power to detect such differences, other reasons are discussed. |
Foroogh Shamsi; Rong Liu; MiYoung Kwon Binocularly asymmetric crowding in glaucoma and a lack of binocular summation in crowding Journal Article In: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Shamsi2022, PURPOSE. Glaucoma is associated with progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells. Here we investigated the impact of glaucomatous damage on monocular and binocular crowding in parafoveal vision. We also examined the binocular summation of crowding to see if crowding is alleviated under binocular viewing. METHODS. The study design included 40 individuals with glaucoma and 24 age-similar normal cohorts. For each subject, the magnitude of crowding was determined by the extent of crowding zone. Crowding zone measurements were made binocularly in parafoveal vision (i.e., at 2° and 4° retinal eccentricities) visual field. For a subgroup of glaucoma subjects (n = 17), crowding zone was also measured monocularly for each eye. RESULTS. Our results showed that, compared with normal cohorts, individuals with glaucoma exhibited significantly larger crowding—enlargement of crowding zone (an increase by 21%; P < 0.01). Moreover, we also observed a lack of binocular summation (i.e., a binocular ratio of 1): binocular crowding was determined by the better eye. Hence, our results did not provide evidence supporting binocular summation of crowding in glaucomatous vision. CONCLUSIONS. Our findings show that crowding is exacerbated in parafoveal vision in glaucoma and binocularly asymmetric glaucoma seems to induce binocularly asymmetric crowding. Furthermore, the lack of binocular summation for crowding observed in glaucomatous vision combined with the lack of binocular summation reported in a previous study on normal healthy vision support the view that crowding may start in the early stages of visual processing, at least before the process of binocular integration takes place. |
Natela M. Shanidze; Zachary Lively; Rachel Lee; Preeti Verghese Saccadic contributions to smooth pursuit in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 200, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Shanidze2022, Saccades during smooth pursuit can help bring the fovea on target, particularly in cases of low pursuit gain. Individuals with macular degeneration often suffer damage to the central retina including the fovea, which impacts oculomotor function such as fixation, saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. We hypothesized that these oculomotor changes in macular degeneration (MD) would make saccades less appropriately directed (even if more numerous). To investigate saccades during pursuit in MD, we conducted a quantitative analysis of smooth pursuit eye movement data from a prior study, Vision Research 141 (2017) 181–190. Here we examined saccade frequency, magnitude, and direction across viewing conditions for MD and control participants during pursuit of a target moving in a modified step-ramp paradigm. Individuals with MD had more variability in saccade directions that included directions orthogonal to the target trajectory. PRL eccentricity significantly correlated with increases in saccades in non-target directions during smooth pursuit. These results suggest that a large number of saccades during pursuit in MD participants are unlikely to be catch-up saccades that serve to keep the eye on the target. |
Francis X. Smith; Bob McMurray Lexical access changes based on listener needs: Real-time word recognition in continuous speech in cochlear implant users Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1487–1501, 2022. @article{Smith2022, Objectives: A key challenge in word recognition is the temporary ambiguity created by the fact that speech unfolds over time. In normal hearing (NH) listeners, this temporary ambiguity is resolved through incremental processing and competition among lexical candidates. Post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users show similar incremental processing and competition but with slight delays. However, even brief delays could lead to drastic changes when compounded across multiple words in a phrase. This study asks whether words presented in non-informative continuous speech (a carrier phrase) are processed differently than in isolation and whether NH listeners and CI users exhibit different effects of a carrier phrase. Design: In a Visual World Paradigm experiment, listeners heard words either in isolation or in non-informative carrier phrases (e.g., "click on the."). Listeners selected the picture corresponding to the target word from among four items including the target word (e.g., mustard), a cohort competitor (e.g., mustache), a rhyme competitor (e.g., custard), and an unrelated item (e.g., penguin). Eye movements were tracked as an index of the relative activation of each lexical candidate as competition unfolds over the course of word recognition. Participants included 21 post-lingually deafened cochlear implant users and 21 NH controls. A replication experiment presented in the Supplemental Digital Content, http://links.lww.com/EANDH/A999 included an additional 22 post-lingually deafened CI users and 18 NH controls. Results: Both CI users and the NH controls were accurate at recognizing the words both in continuous speech and in isolation. The time course of lexical activation (indexed by the fixations) differed substantially between groups. CI users were delayed in fixating the target relative to NH controls. Additionally, CI users showed less competition from cohorts than NH controls (even as previous studies have often report increased competition). However, CI users took longer to suppress the cohort and suppressed it less fully than the NH controls. For both CI users and NH controls, embedding words in carrier phrases led to more immediacy in lexical access as observed by increases in cohort competition relative to when words were presented in isolation. However, CI users were not differentially affected by the carriers. Conclusions: Unlike prior work, CI users appeared to exhibit "wait-and-see" profile, in which lexical access is delayed minimizing early competition. However, CI users simultaneously sustained competitor activation late in the trial, possibly to preserve flexibility. This hybrid profile has not been observed previously. When target words are heard in continuous speech, both CI users and NH controls more heavily weight early information. However, CI users (but not NH listeners) also commit less fully to the target, potentially keeping options open if they need to recover from a misperception. This mix of patterns reflects a lexical system that is extremely flexible and adapts to fit the needs of a listener. |
Michael J. Spilka; William R. Keller; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss; Robert W. Buchanan; James M. Gold; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss Endogenous oxytocin levels are associated with facial emotion recognition accuracy but not gaze behavior in individuals with schizophrenia Journal Article In: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol. 145, pp. 494–506, 2022. @article{Spilka2022, Abstract Objective: Difficulties in social cognition are common in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and are not ameliorated by antipsychotic treatment. Intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration has been explored as a potential intervention to improve social cognition; however, results are inconsistent, suggesting potential individual difference variables that may influence treatment response. Less is known about the relationship between endogenous OT and social cognition in SZ, knowledge of which may improve the development of OT-focused therapies. We examined plasma OT in relationship to facial emotion recognition and visual attention to salient facial features in SZ and controls. Methods: Forty-two individuals with SZ and 23 healthy controls viewed photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensity and identified the emotional expression displayed. Participants' gaze behavior during the task was recorded via eye tracking. Plasma oxytocin concentrations were determined by radioimmunoassay. Results: SZ were less accurate than controls at identifying high-intensity fear-ful facial expressions and low-intensity sad expressions. Lower overall and high- ntensity facial emotion recognition accuracy was associated with lower plasma OT levels in SZ but not controls. OT was not associated with visual attention to salient facial features; however, SZ had reduced visual attention to the nose re- gion compared to controls. Conclusion: Individual differences in endogenous OT predict facial emotion recognition ability in SZ but are not associated with visual attention to salient facial features. Increased understanding of the association between endogenous OT and social cognitive abilities in SZ may help improve the design and interpretation of OT- ocused clinical trials in SZ. |
Zoey Stark; Léon Franzen; Aaron P. Johnson Insights from a dyslexia simulation font: Can we simulate reading struggles of individuals with dyslexia? Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 228–243, 2022. @article{Stark2022, Individuals with dyslexia struggle at explaining what it is like to have dyslexia and how they perceive letters and words differently. This led the designer Daniel Britton to create a font that aims to simulate the perceptual experience of how effortful reading can be for individuals with dyslexia (http://danielbritton.info/dyslexia). This font removes forty percent of each character stroke with the aim of increasing reading effort, and in turn empathy and understanding for individuals with dyslexia. However, its efficacy has not yet been empirically tested. In the present study, we compared participants without dyslexia reading texts in the dyslexia simulation font to a group of individuals with dyslexia reading the same texts in Times New Roman font. Results suggest that the simulation font amplifies the struggle of reading, surpassing that experienced by adults with dyslexia—as reflected in increased reading time and overall number of eye movements in the majority of typical readers reading in the simulation font. Future research could compare the performance of the Daniel Britton simulation font against a sample of beginning readers with dyslexia as well as seek to design and empirically test an adapted simulation font with an increased preserved percentage of letter strokes. |
Tobias Staudigl; Juri Minxha; Adam N. Mamelak; Katalin M. Gothard; Ueli Rutishauser Saccade-related neural communication in the human medial temporal lobe is modulated by the social relevance of stimuli Journal Article In: Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Staudigl2022, Humans predominantly explore their environment by moving their eyes. To optimally communicate and process visual information, neural activity needs to be coordinated with the execution of eye movements. We investigated the coordination between visual exploration and interareal neural communication by analyzing local field potentials and single neuron activity in patients with epilepsy. We demonstrated that during the free viewing of images, neural communication between the human amygdala and hippocampus is coordinated with the execution of eye movements. The strength and direction of neural communication and hippocampal saccade-related phase alignment were strongest for fixations that landed on human faces. Our results argue that the state of the human medial temporal lobe network is selectively coordinated with motor behavior. Interareal neural communication was facilitated for social stimuli as indexed by the category of the attended information. |
Marianna Stella; Paul E. Engelhardt Use of parsing heuristics in the comprehension of passive sentences: Evidence from dyslexia and individual differences Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Stella2022, This study examined the comprehension of passive sentences in order to investigate whether individuals with dyslexia rely on parsing heuristics in language comprehension to a greater extent than non‐dyslexic readers. One hundred adults (50 dyslexics and 50 controls) read active and passive sentences, and we also manipulated semantic plausibility. Eye movements were monitored, while participants read each sentence, and afterwards, participants answered a comprehension question. We also assessed verbal intelligence and working memory in all participants. Results showed dyslexia status interacted with sentence structure and plausibility, such that participants with dyslexia showed significantly more comprehension errors with passive and implausible sentence. With respect to verbal intelligence and working memory, we found that individuals with lower verbal intelligence were overall more likely to make comprehension errors, and individuals with lower working memory showed particular difficulties with passive and implausible sentences. For reading times, we found that individuals with dyslexia were overall slower readers. These findings suggest that (1) individuals with dyslexia do rely on heuristics to a greater extent than do nondyslexic individuals, and (2) individual differences variables (e.g., verbal intelligence and working memory) are also related to the use of parsing heuristics. For the latter, lower ability individuals tended to be more consistent with heuristic processing (i.e., good‐enough representations). |
Anna Lena Stroh; Konstantin Grin; Frank Rösler; Davide Bottari; José Ossandón; Bruno Rossion; Brigitte Röder Developmental experiences alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual cortex: Evidence from deaf and hearing native signers Journal Article In: European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 1629–1644, 2022. @article{Stroh2022, To date, the extent to which early experience shapes the functional characteristics of neural circuits is still a matter of debate. In the present study, we tested whether congenital deafness and/or the acquisition of a sign language alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual system. Moreover, we investigated whether, assuming cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals, the temporal processing characteristics of possibly reorganised auditory areas resemble those of the visual cortex. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were recorded in congenitally deaf native signers, hearing native signers, and hearing nonsigners. The luminance of the visual stimuli was periodically modulated at 12, 21, and 40 Hz. For hearing nonsigners, the optimal driving rate was 12 Hz. By contrast, for the group of hearing signers, the optimal driving rate was 12 and 21 Hz, whereas for the group of deaf signers, the optimal driving rate was 21 Hz. We did not observe evidence for cross-modal recruitment of auditory cortex in the group of deaf signers. These results suggest a higher preferred neural processing rate as a consequence of the acquisition of a sign language. |
Omer Azriel; Jennifer C. Britton; Chelsea D. Gober; Daniel S. Pine; Yair Bar-Haim Development and validation of the Attention Bias Questionnaire (ABQ) Journal Article In: International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Azriel2022, Objectives: Various psychopathologies are associated with threat-related attention biases, which are typically measured using mechanized behavioral tasks. While useful and objective, behavioral measures do not capture the subjective experience of biased attention in daily-living. To complement extant behavioral measures, we developed and validated a self-report measure of threat-related attention bias – the Attention Bias Questionnaire (ABQ). Methods: The ABQ consists of nine items reflecting the subjective experience of attention bias towards threats. To enable personalized relevance in threat-content, the general term “threat” was used, and respondents were instructed to refer to specific things that threaten them personally. In a set of five studies, the ABQ was developed and validated. Internal consistency, discriminant validity, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity were tested. Results: The ABQ emerged as a coherent and stable measure with two sub-scales: Engagement with Threat and Difficulty to Disengage from Threat. ABQ scores were positively correlated with trait anxiety, social anxiety, PTSD, and depression, as well as behaviorally measured attention bias. Conclusion: Assessing the subjective experience of threat-related attention bias can enrich existing knowledge about the cognitive mechanisms underlying psychopathology and complement extant behavioral bias measures in research and clinical evaluation. |
Chiara Barattieri di San Pietro; Giovanni Girolamo; Claudio Luzzatti; Marco Marelli Agency of subjects and eye movements in schizophrenia spectrum disorders Journal Article In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 1371–1391, 2022. @article{BarattieridiSanPietro2022, People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) show anomalies in language processing with respect to “who is doing what” in an action. This linguistic behavior is suggestive of an atypical representation of the formal concepts of “Agent” in the lexical representation of a verb, i.e., its thematic grid. To test this hypothesis, we administered a silent-reading task with sentences including a semantic violation of the animacy trait of the grammatical subject to 30 people with SSD and 30 healthy control participants (HCs). When the anomalous grammatical subject was the Agent of the event, a significant increase of Gaze Duration was observed in HCs, but not in SSDs. Conversely, when the anomalous subject was a Theme, SSDs displayed an increased probability of go-back movements, unlike HCs. These results are suggestive of a higher tolerability for anomalous Agents in SSD compared to the normal population. The fact that SSD participants did not show a similar tolerability for anomalous Themes rules out the issue of an attention deficit. We suggest that general communication abilities in SSD might benefit from explicit training on deep linguistic structures. |
Doug J. K. Barrett; David Souto; Michael Pilling; David M. Baguley An exploratory investigation of pupillometry as a measure of tinnitus intrusiveness on a test of auditory short-term memory Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1540–1548, 2022. @article{Barrett2022, Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the potential of pupillometry to provide an objective measure of competition between tinnitus and external sounds during a test of auditory short-term memory. Design: Twelve participants with chronic tinnitus and twelve control participants without tinnitus took part in the study. Pretest sessions used an adaptive method to estimate listeners' frequency discrimination threshold on a test of delayed pitch discrimination for pure tones. Target and probe tones were presented at 72 dB SPL and centered on 750 Hz±2 semitones with an additional jitter of 5 to 20 Hz. Test sessions recorded baseline pupil diameter and task-related pupillary responses (TEPRs) during three blocks of delayed pitch discrimination trials. The difference between target and probe tones was set to the individual's frequency detection threshold for 80% response-accuracy. Listeners with tinnitus also completed the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI). Linear mixed effects procedures were applied to examine changes in baseline pupil diameter and TEPRs associated with group (tinnitus versus control), block (1 to 3) and their interaction. The association between THI scores and maximum TEPRs was assessed using simple linear regression. Results: Patterns of baseline pupil dilation across trials diverged in listeners with tinnitus and controls. For controls, baseline pupil dilation remained constant across blocks. For listeners with tinnitus, baseline pupil dilation increased on blocks 2 and 3 compared with block 1. TEPR amplitudes were also larger in listeners with tinnitus than controls. Linear mixed effects models yielded a significant group by block interaction for baseline pupil diameter and a significant main effect of group on maximum TEPR amplitudes. Regression analyses yielded a significant association between THI scores and TEPR amplitude in listeners with tinnitus. Conclusions: Our data indicate measures of baseline pupil diameter, and TEPRs are sensitive to competition between tinnitus and external sounds during a test of auditory short-term memory. This result suggests pupillometry can provide an objective measure of intrusion in tinnitus. Future research will be required to establish whether our findings generalize to listeners across a full range of tinnitus severity. |
Dana Basel; Tamar Aviram; Amit Lazarov Lack of an attention bias away from relatively negative faces in dysphoria is not related to biased emotion identification Journal Article In: Behavior Therapy, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 182–195, 2022. @article{Basel2022, Eye-tracking-based attention research has consistently shown a lack of a normative attentional bias away from dysphoric face stimuli in depression, characterizing the attention system of non-depressed individuals. However, this more equal attention allocation pattern could also be related to biased emotion identification, namely, an inclination of depressed individuals to attribute negative emotions to non-negative stimuli when processing mood-congruent stimuli. Here, we examined emotion identification as a possible mechanism associated with attention allocation when processing emotional faces in depression. Attention allocation and emotion identification of participants with high (HD; n = 30) and low (LD; n = 30) levels of depression symptoms were assessed using two corresponding tasks previously shown to yield significant findings in depression, using the same face stimuli (sad, happy, and neutral faces) across both tasks. We examined group differences on each task and possible between-task associations. Results showed that while LD participants dwelled longer on relatively positive faces compared with relatively negative faces on the attention allocation task, HD participants showed no such bias, dwelling equally on both. Trait anxiety did not affect these results. No group differences were noted for emotion identification, and no between-task associations emerged. Present results suggest that depression is characterized by a lack of a general attention bias toward relatively positive faces over relatively negative faces, which is not related to a corresponding bias in emotion identification. |
Dana Basel; Amit Lazarov Reward functioning from an attentional perspective and obsessive-compulsive symptoms — an eye-tracking study Journal Article In: CNS Spectrums, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Basel2022a, Background. Recently, a novel approach to obsessive-compulsive disorder has emerged, implicating altered reward functioning in the disorder. Yet, no study to date has directly examined the attentional aspect of reward functioning in participants with obsessive- compulsive (OC) symptoms, with past research mostly relying on reaction-time-based tasks. Methods. A reward-based value-modulated attentional capture task was completed by a sample of nonclinical student participants—44 with high (HOC) and 48 with low (LOC) levels ofOC symptoms. We measured the extent to which high and low reward-signaling distractors captured attention and impaired performance on the task, resulting in a lower possibility of obtaining a monetary reward. Attentional capture was indexed via fixation data, and further explored using saccade data. Results. Both groups performed more poorly when a high-reward signaling distractor was present, compared to when a low-reward signaling distractor was present. Importantly, this difference was significantly greater in the HOC group, and was found to be driven by the specific effects of reward-signaling distractors. Similar results emerged when exploring saccade data, and remained significant after controlling for both addiction-related compulsivity and depres- sive symptoms. Conclusions. Current findings suggest that attentional reward-related functioning may be associated with OC symptoms. Different aspects of reward functioning, including attention, should be further explored and incorporated into future research and clinical endeavors. |
Doris Bazzini; Chris Dickinson; Alison N. Cooke; Amanda Pepper; Jessica Udry; Sidney Murray Athletic image type influences women's social physique anxiety and visual attention Journal Article In: Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 123–132, 2022. @article{Bazzini2022, Media images depicting idealized female physiques have been shown to heighten body dissatisfaction and body objectification. A potentially buffering factor in media exposure are depictions of female athletes performing their sports, which are associated with reduced objectification. These findings have not been extended to social physique anxiety (SPA), a heightened concern that one's body does not meet comparative standards of physicality and beauty. Sixty-nine college-aged women reported levels of SPA following exposure to images of the same female professional athletes performing their sport, or in a sexualized pose. Visual attention to body parts on the images was measured via an eye tracker to explore whether fixations corresponded with the experience of SPA. Performance images lowered feelings of SPA relative to sexual images, and induced a lesser percentage of time visually fixating on the head/face, and more time fixating on arms and legs, relative to sexual images of the athletes. No differences emerged for fixations on the torso across conditions. Exploratory mediation models were also conducted to explore the influence of visual attention on the relationship between image type and SPA. These findings are considered in light of the nature of objectifying images of women and the importance of promoting empowering images to audiences. |
Laura Benhaim-Sitbon; Maria Lev; Uri Polat Binocular fusion disorders impair basic visual processing Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{BenhaimSitbon2022, In an era of increasing screen consumption, the requirement for binocular vision is demanding, leading to the emergence of syndromes such as the computer vision syndrome (CVS) or visual discomfort reported by virtual reality (VR) users. Heterophoria (phoria) is a latent eye misalignment (with a prevalence up to 35%) that appears in conditions that disrupt binocular vision and may affect the quality of binocular fusion. Collinear facilitation (CF), the mechanism for grouping contour elements, is a process that reveals lateral interactions by improving the visibility of a target by flankers placed collinearly. An abnormal pattern of CF has been observed in strabismic amblyopia. We hypothesize that phoria may affect CF in the horizontal meridian (HM) due to latent eye misalignment and its impact on binocular fusion. Fully corrected participants (phoria group and controls) completed a standard CF experiment for horizontal and vertical meridians during binocular and monocular viewing. Phoric observers exhibited (1) an asymmetry and an abnormal pattern of CF only for the HM, during both monocular and binocular viewing, (2) poor binocular summation between the monocular inputs, and (3) no binocular advantage of the CF. Phoria affects the CF in a way that is reminiscent of meridional amblyopia without being attributed to abnormal refraction. The abnormal pattern of CF in monocular viewing suggests that phoria could be a binocular developmental disorder that affects monocular spatial interactions. We suggest that the results could contribute to explain the visual discomfort experienced with VR users or symptoms when presenting CVS. |