fMRI / MEG Publications

@article{Wang2016g,

title = {Coupling between theta oscillations and cognitive control network during cross-modal visual and auditory attention: Supramodal vs modality-specific mechanisms},

author = {Wuyi Wang and Shivakumar Viswanathan and Taraz Lee and Scott T. Grafton},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0158465},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {11},

number = {7},

pages = {e0158465},

abstract = {Cortical theta band oscillations (4-8 Hz) in EEG signals have been shown to be important for a variety of different cognitive control operations in visual attention paradigms. However the synchronization source of these signals as defined by fMRI BOLD activity and the extent to which theta oscillations play a role in multimodal attention remains unknown. Here we investigated the extent to which cross-modal visual and auditory attention impacts theta oscillations. Using a simultaneous EEG-fMRI paradigm, healthy human participants performed an attentional vigilance task with six cross-modal conditions using naturalistic stimuli. To assess supramodal mechanisms, modulation of theta oscillation amplitude for attention to either visual or auditory stimuli was correlated with BOLD activity by conjunction analysis. Negative correlation was localized to cortical regions associated with the default mode network and positively with ventral premotor areas. Modality-associated attention to visual stimuli was marked by a positive correlation of theta and BOLD activity in fronto-parietal area that was not observed in the auditory condition. A positive correlation of theta and BOLD activity was observed in auditory cortex, while a negative correlation of theta and BOLD activity was observed in visual cortex during auditory attention. The data support a supramodal interaction of theta activity with of DMN function, and modality-associated processes within fronto-parietal networks related to top-down theta related cognitive control in cross-modal visual attention. On the other hand, in sensory cortices there are opposing effects of theta activity during cross-modal auditory attention.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wang2016h,

title = {Dynamic network communication in the human functional connectome predicts perceptual variability in visual illusion},

author = {Zheng Zhiwei Wang and Kristina Zeljic and Qinying Jiang and Yong Gu and Wei Wang and Zheng Wang},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhw347},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Cerebral Cortex},

volume = {28},

number = {1},

pages = {1–15},

abstract = {The eukaryotic RNA exosome is an essential, multi-subunit complex that catalyzes RNA turnover, maturation, and quality control processes. Its non-catalytic donut-shaped core includes 9 subunits that associate with the 3' to 5' exoribonucleases Rrp6, and Rrp44/Dis3, a subunit that also catalyzes endoribonuclease activity. Although recent structures and biochemical studies of RNA bound exosomes from S. cerevisiae revealed that the Exo9 central channel guides RNA to either Rrp6 or Rrp44 using partially overlapping and mutually exclusive paths, several issues related to RNA recruitment remain. Here, we identify activities for the highly basic Rrp6 C-terminal tail that we term the 'lasso' because it binds RNA and stimulates ribonuclease activities associated with Rrp44 and Rrp6 within the 11-subunit nuclear exosome. Stimulation is dependent on the Exo9 central channel, and the lasso contributes to degradation and processing activities of exosome substrates in vitro and in vivo. Finally, we present evidence that the Rrp6 lasso may be a conserved feature of the eukaryotic RNA exosome.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Warren2016,

title = {Catecholamine-mediated increases in gain enhance the precision of cortical representations},

author = {Christopher M. Warren and Eran Eldar and Ruud L. Brink and Klodiana-Daphne Tona and Nic J. Wee and Eric J. Giltay and Martijn S. Noorden and Jos A. Bosch and Robert C. Wilson and Jonathan D. Cohen and Sander Nieuwenhuis},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3475-15.2016},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {36},

number = {21},

pages = {5699–5708},

abstract = {Neurophysiological evidence suggests that neuromodulators, such as norepinephrine and dopamine, increase neural gain in target brain areas. Computational models and prominent theoretical frameworks indicate that this should enhance the precision of neural represen- tations, but direct empirical evidence for this hypothesis is lacking. In two functional MRI studies, we examine the effect of baseline catecholamine levels (as indexed by pupil diameter and manipulated pharmacologically) on the precision of object representations in the human ventral temporal cortex using angular dispersion, a powerful, multivariate metric of representational similarity (precision). We first report the results of computational model simulations indicating that increasing catecholaminergic gain should reduce the angular dispersion, and thus increase the precision, of object representations from the same category, as well as reduce the angular dispersion of object representations from distinct categories when distinct-category representations overlap. In Study 1 (N?24), we showthat angular dispersion covaries with pupil diameter, an index of baseline catecholamine levels. In Study 2 (N?24), we manipulate catecholamine levels and neural gain using the norepinephrine transporter blocker atomoxetine and demonstrate consistent, causal effects on angular dispersion and brain-wide functional connectivity. Despite the use of very different methods of examining the effect of baseline catecholamine levels, our results show a striking convergence and demonstrate that catecholamines increase the precision of neural representations.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wilf2016,

title = {Diminished auditory responses during NREM sleep correlate with the hierarchy of language processing},

author = {Meytal Wilf and Michal Ramot and Edna Furman-Haran and Anat Arzi and Yechiel Levkovitz and Rafael Malach},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0157143},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {11},

number = {6},

pages = {e0157143},

abstract = {Natural sleep provides a powerful model system for studying the neuronal correlates of awareness and state changes in the human brain. To quantitatively map the nature of sleep-induced modulations in sensory responses we presented participants with auditory stimuli possessing different levels of linguistic complexity. Ten participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the waking state and after falling asleep. Sleep staging was based on heart rate measures validated independently on 20 participants using concurrent EEG and heart rate measurements and the results were confirmed using permutation analysis. Participants were exposed to three types of auditory stimuli: scrambled sounds, meaningless word sentences and comprehensible sentences. During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, we found diminishing brain activation along the hierarchy of language processing, more pronounced in higher processing regions. Specifically, the auditory thalamus showed similar activation levels during sleep and waking states, primary auditory cortex remained activated but showed a significant reduction in auditory responses during sleep, and the high order language-related representation in inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) cortex showed a complete abolishment of responses during NREM sleep. In addition to an overall activation decrease in language processing regions in superior temporal gyrus and IFG, those areas manifested a loss of semantic selectivity during NREM sleep. Our results suggest that the decreased awareness to linguistic auditory stimuli during NREM sleep is linked to diminished activity in high order processing stations.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zimmer2016,

title = {Neuronal interactions in areas of spatial attention reflect avoidance of disgust, but orienting to danger},

author = {Ulrike Zimmer and M H"ofler and Karl Koschutnig and Anja Ischebeck and Margit Höfler and Karl Koschutnig and Anja Ischebeck},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.050},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {134},

pages = {94–104},

abstract = {For survival, it is necessary to attend quickly towards dangerous objects, but to turn away from something that is disgusting. We tested whether fear and disgust sounds direct spatial attention differently. Using fMRI, a sound cue (disgust, fear or neutral) was presented to the left or right ear. The cue was followed by a visual target (a small arrow) which was located on the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) side as the cue. Participants were required to decide whether the arrow pointed up- or downwards while ignoring the sound cue. Behaviorally, responses were faster for invalid compared to valid targets when cued by disgust, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for targets after fearful and neutral sound cues. During target presentation, activity in the visual cortex and IPL increased for targets invalidly cued with disgust, but for targets validly cued with fear which indicated a general modulation of activation due to attention. For the TPJ, an interaction in the opposite direction was observed, consistent with its role in detecting targets at unattended positions and in relocating attention. As a whole our results indicate that a disgusting sound directs spatial attention away from its location, in contrast to fearful and neutral sounds.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zimmermann2016b,

title = {Spatiotopic adaptation in visual areas},

author = {Eckart Zimmermann and Ralph Weidner and R. O. Abdollahi and Gereon R. Fink},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0052-16.2016},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {36},

number = {37},

pages = {9526–9534},

abstract = {The ability to perceive the visual world around us as spatially stable despite frequent eye movements is one of the long-standing mysteries of neuroscience. The existence of neural mechanisms processing spatiotopic information is indispensable for a successful interaction with the external world. However, how the brain handles spatiotopic information remains a matter of debate. We here combined behavioral and fMRI adaptation to investigate the coding of spatiotopic information in the human brain. Subjects were adapted by a prolonged presentation of a tilted grating. Thereafter, they performed a saccade followed by the brief presentation of a probe. This procedure allowed dissociating adaptation aftereffects at retinal and spatiotopic positions. We found significant behavioral and functional adaptation in both retinal and spatiotopic positions, indicating information transfer into a spatiotopic coordinate system. The brain regions involved were located in ventral visual areas V3, V4, and VO. Our findings suggest that spatiotopic representations involved in maintaining visual stability are constructed by dynamically remapping visual feature information between retinotopic regions within early visual areas.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Mok2016,

title = {Behavioral and neural markers of flexible attention over working memory in aging},

author = {Robert M. Mok and Nicholas E. Myers and George Wallis and Anna C. Nobre},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhw011},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Cerebral Cortex},

volume = {26},

number = {4},

pages = {1831–1842},

abstract = {Working memory (WM) declines as we age and, because of its fundamental role in higher order cognition, this can have highly deleterious effects in daily life. We investigated whether older individuals benefit from flexible orienting of attention within WM to mitigate cognitive decline. We measured magnetoencephalography (MEG) in older adults performing a WM precision task with cues during the maintenance period that retroactively predicted the location of the relevant items for performance (retro-cues). WM performance of older adults significantly benefitted from retro-cues. Whereas WM maintenance declined with age, retro-cues conferred strong attentional benefits. A model-based analysis revealed an increase in the probability of recalling the target, a lowered probability of retrieving incorrect items or guessing, and an improvement in memory precision. MEG recordings showed that retro-cues induced a transient lateralization of alpha (8-14 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) oscillatory power. Interestingly, shorter durations of alpha/beta lateralization following retro-cues predicted larger cueing benefits, reinforcing recent ideas about the dynamic nature of access to WM representations. Our results suggest that older adults retain flexible control over WM, but individual differences in control correspond to differences in neural dynamics, possibly reflecting the degree of preservation of control in healthy aging.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Adams2016,

title = {Dynamic causal modelling of eye movements during pursuit: Confirming precision-encoding in V1 using MEG},

author = {Rick A. Adams and Markus Bauer and Dimitris Pinotsis and Karl J. Friston},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.02.055},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Neuroimage},

volume = {132},

pages = {175–189},

publisher = {The Authors},

abstract = {This paper shows that it is possible to estimate the subjective precision (inverse variance) of Bayesian beliefs during oculomotor pursuit. Subjects viewed a sinusoidal target, with or without random fluctuations in its motion. Eye trajectories and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data were recorded concurrently. The target was periodically occluded, such that its reappearance caused a visual evoked response field (ERF). Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) was used to fit models of eye trajectories and the ERFs. The DCM for pursuit was based on predictive coding and active inference, and predicts subjects' eye movements based on their (subjective) Bayesian beliefs about target (and eye) motion. The precisions of these hierarchical beliefs can be inferred from behavioural (pursuit) data. The DCM for MEG data used an established biophysical model of neuronal activity that includes parameters for the gain of superficial pyramidal cells, which is thought to encode precision at the neuronal level. Previous studies (using DCM of pursuit data) suggest that noisy target motion increases subjective precision at the sensory level: i.e., subjects attend more to the target's sensory attributes. We compared (noisy motion-induced) changes in the synaptic gain based on the modelling of MEG data to changes in subjective precision estimated using the pursuit data. We demonstrate that imprecise target motion increases the gain of superficial pyramidal cells in V1 (across subjects). Furthermore, increases in sensory precision – inferred by our behavioural DCM – correlate with the increase in gain in V1, across subjects. This is a step towards a fully integrated model of brain computations, cortical responses and behaviour that may provide a useful clinical tool in conditions like schizophrenia.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{BaboRebelo2016,

title = {Neural responses to heartbeats in the default network encode the self in spontaneous thoughts},

author = {Mariana Babo-Rebelo and Craig G. Richter and Catherine Tallon-Baudry},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0262-16.2016},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {36},

number = {30},

pages = {7829–7840},

abstract = {The default network (DN) has been consistently associated with self-related cognition, but also to bodily state monitoring and autonomic regulation. We hypothesized that these two seemingly disparate functional roles of the DN are functionally coupled, in line with theories proposing that selfhood is grounded in the neural monitoring of internal organs, such as the heart. We measured with magnetoencephalograhy neural responses evoked by heartbeats while human participants freely mind-wandered. When interrupted by a visual stimulus at random intervals, participants scored the self-relatedness of the interrupted thought. They evaluated their involvement as the first-person perspective subject or agent in the thought ("I"), and on another scale to what degree they were thinking about themselves ("Me"). During the interrupted thought, neural responses to heartbeats in two regions of the DN, the ventral precuneus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, covaried, respectively, with the "I" and the "Me" dimensions of the self, even at the single-trial level. No covariation between self-relatedness and peripheral autonomic measures (heart rate, heart rate variability, pupil diameter, electrodermal activity, respiration rate, and phase) or alpha power was observed. Our results reveal a direct link between selfhood and neural responses to heartbeats in the DN and thus directly support theories grounding selfhood in the neural monitoring of visceral inputs. More generally, the tight functional coupling between self-related processing and cardiac monitoring observed here implies that, even in the absence of measured changes in peripheral bodily measures, physiological and cognitive functions have to be considered jointly in the DN.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Campana2016,

title = {Conscious vision proceeds from global to local content in goal-directed tasks and spontaneous vision},

author = {Florence Campana and Ignacio Rebollo and Anne E. Urai and Valentin Wyart and Catherine Tallon-Baudry},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3619-15.2016},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {36},

number = {19},

pages = {5200–5213},

abstract = {The reverse hierarchy theory (Hochstein and Ahissar, 2002) makes strong, but so far untested, predictions on conscious vision. In this theory, local details encoded in lower-order visual areas are unconsciously processed before being automatically and rapidly combined into global information in higher-order visual areas, where conscious percepts emerge. Contingent on current goals, local details can afterward be consciously retrieved. This model therefore predicts that (1) global information is perceived faster than local details, (2) global information is computed regardless of task demands during early visual processing, and (3) spontaneous vision is dominated by global percepts. We designed novel textured stimuli that are, as opposed to the classic Navon's letters, truly hierarchical (i.e., where global information is solely defined by local information but where local and global orientations can still be manipulated separately). In line with the predictions, observers were systematically faster reporting global than local properties of those stimuli. Second, global information could be decoded from magneto-encephalographic data during early visual processing regardless of task demands. Last, spontaneous subjective reports were dominated by global information and the frequency and speed of spontaneous global perception correlated with the accuracy and speed in the global task. No such correlation was observed for local information. We therefore show that information at different levels of the visual hierarchy is not equally likely to become conscious; rather, conscious percepts emerge preferentially at a global level. We further show that spontaneous reports can be reliable and are tightly linked to objective performance at the global level.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Godier2016,

title = {Enhanced early neuronal processing of food pictures in Anorexia Nervosa: A magnetoencephalography study},

author = {Lauren R. Godier and Jessica C. Scaife and Sven Braeutigam and Rebecca J. Park},

doi = {10.1155/2016/1795901},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {Psychiatry Journal},

volume = {2016},

pages = {1–13},

abstract = {Neuroimaging studies in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) have shown increased activation in reward and cognitive control regions in response to food, and a behavioral attentional bias (AB) towards food stimuli is reported. This study aimed to further investigate the neural processing of food using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Participants were 13 females with restricting-type AN, 14 females recovered from restricting-type AN, and 15 female healthy controls. MEG data was acquired whilst participants viewed high- and low-calorie food pictures. Attention was assessed with a reaction time task and eye tracking. Time-series analysis suggested increased neural activity in response to both calorie conditions in the AN groups, consistent with an early AB. Increased activity was observed at 150 ms in the current AN group. Neuronal activity at this latency was at normal level in the recovered group; however, this group exhibited enhanced activity at 320 ms after stimulus. Consistent with previous studies, analysis in source space and behavioral data suggested enhanced attention and cognitive control processes in response to food stimuli in AN. This may enable avoidance of salient food stimuli and maintenance of dietary restraint in AN. A later latency of increased activity in the recovered group may reflect a reversal of this avoidance, with source space and behavioral data indicating increased visual and cognitive processing of food stimuli.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Gregory2016a,

title = {Gamma frequency and the spatial tuning of primary visual cortex},

author = {Sarah Gregory and Marco Fusca and Geraint Rees and D. Samuel Schwarzkopf and Gareth Barnes},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0157374},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {11},

number = {6},

pages = {e0157374},

abstract = {Visual stimulation produces oscillatory gamma responses in human primary visual cortex (V1) that also relate to visual perception. We have shown previously that peak gamma frequency positively correlates with central V1 cortical surface area. We hypothesized that people with larger V1 would have smaller receptive fields and that receptive field size, not V1 are, might explain this relationship. Here we set out to test this hypothesis directly by investigating the relationship between fMRI estimated population receptive field (pRF) size and gamma frequency in V1. We stimulated both the near-centre and periphery of the visual field using both large and small stimuli in each location and replicated our previous finding of a positive correlation between V1 surface area and peak gamma frequency. Counter to our expectation, we found that between participants V1 size (and not pRF size) accounted for most of the variability in gamma frequency. Within-participants we found that gamma frequency increased, rather than decreased, with stimulus eccentricity directly contradicting our initial hypothesis.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Roth2015,

title = {Position and identity information available in fMRI patterns of activity in human visual cortex},

author = {Zvi N. Roth and Ehud Zohary},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0752-15.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-08-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {33},

pages = {11559–11571},

publisher = {Society for Neuroscience},

abstract = {Parietal cortex is often implicated in visual processing of actions. Action understanding is essentially abstract, specific to the type or goal of action, but greatly independent of variations in the perceived position of the action. If certain parietal regions are involved in action understanding, then we expect them to show these generalization and selectivity properties. However, additional functions of parietal cortex, such as self-action control, may impose other demands by requiring an accurate representation of the location of graspable objects. Therefore, the dimensions along which responses are modulated may indicate the functional role of specific parietal regions. Here, we studied the degree of position invariance and hand/object specificity during viewing of tool-grasping actions. To that end, we characterize the information available about location, hand, and tool identity in the patterns of fMRI activation in various cortical areas: early visual cortex, posterior intraparietal sulcus, anterior superior parietal lobule, and the ventral object-specific lateral occipital complex. Our results suggest a gradient within the human dorsal stream: along the posterior-anterior axis, position information is gradually lost, whereas hand and tool identity information is enhanced. This may reflect a gradual transformation of visual input from an initial retinotopic representation in early visual areas to an abstract, position-invariant representation of viewed action in anterior parietal cortex.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Paulus2015,

title = {Fronto-insula network activity explains emotional dysfunctions in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: Combined evidence from pupillometry and fMRI},

author = {Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach and Marius Blanke and Christine Roth and Marcus Belke and Jens Sommer and Laura Müller-Pinzler and Katja Menzler and Andreas Jansen and Felix Rosenow and Frank Bremmer and Wolfgang Einhäuser and Susanne Knake},

doi = {10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0074},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Cortex},

volume = {65},

pages = {219–231},

abstract = {Emotional instability, difficulties in social adjustment, and disinhibited behavior are the most common symptoms of the psychiatric comorbidities in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). This psychopathology has been associated with dysfunctions of mesial-frontal brain circuits. The present work is a first direct test of this link and adapted a paradigm for probing frontal circuits during empathy for pain. Neural and psychophysiological parameters of pain empathy were assessed by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with simultaneous pupillometry in 15 JME patients and 15 matched healthy controls. In JME patients, we observed reduced neural activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the anterior insula (AI), and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). This modulation was paralleled by reduced pupil dilation during empathy for pain in patients. At the same time, pupil dilation was positively related to neural activity of the ACC, AI, and VLPFC. In JME patients, the ACC additionally showed reduced functional connectivity with the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, areas fundamentally implicated in processing the somatic cause of another's pain. Our results provide first evidence that alterations of mesial-frontal circuits directly affect psychosocial functioning in JME patients and draw a link of pupil dynamics with brain activity during emotional processing. The findings of reduced pain empathy related activation of the ACC and AI and aberrant functional integration of the ACC with somatosensory cortex areas provide further evidence for this network's role in social behavior and helps explaining the JME psychopathology and patients' difficulties in social adjustment.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Peters2015,

title = {Activity in human visual and parietal cortex reveals object-based attention in working memory},

author = {Benjamin Peters and Jochen Kaiser and Benjamin Rahm and Christoph Bledowski},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3795-14.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {8},

pages = {3360–3369},

abstract = {Visual attention enables observers to select behaviorally relevant information based on spatial locations, features, or objects. Attentional selection is not limited to physically present visual information, but can also operate on internal representations maintained in working memory (WM) in service of higher-order cognition. However, only little is known about whether attention to WM contents follows the same principles as attention to sensory stimuli. To address this question, we investigated in humans whether the typically observed effects of object-based attention in perception are also evident for object-based attentional selection of internal object representations in WM. In full accordance with effects in visual perception, the key behavioral and neuronal characteristics of object-based attention were observed in WM. Specifically, we found that reaction times were shorter when shifting attention to memory positions located on the currently attended object compared with equidistant positions on a different object. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analysis of visuotopic activity in visual (areas V1-V4) and parietal cortex revealed that directing attention to one position of an object held in WM also enhanced brain activation for other positions on the same object, suggesting that attentional selection in WM activates the entire object. This study demonstrated that all characteristic features of object-based attention are present in WM and thus follows the same principles as in perception.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Saber2015,

title = {Saccade planning evokes topographically specific activity in the dorsal and ventral streams},

author = {Golbarg T. Saber and Franco Pestilli and Clayton E. Curtis},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1687-14.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {1},

pages = {245–252},

abstract = {Saccade planning may invoke spatially-specific feedback signals that bias early visual activity in favor of top-down goals. We tested this hypothesis by measuring cortical activity at the early stages of the dorsal and ventral visual processing streams. Human subjects maintained saccade plans to (prosaccade) or away (antisaccade) from a spatial location over long memory-delays. Results show that cortical activity persists in early visual cortex at the retinotopic location of upcoming saccade goals. Topographically specific activity persists as early as V1, and activity increases along both dorsal (V3A/B, IPS0) and ventral (hV4, VO1) visual areas. Importantly, activity persists when saccade goals are available only via working memory and when visual targets and saccade goals are spatially disassociated. We conclude that top-down signals elicit retinotopically specific activity in visual cortex both in the dorsal and ventral streams. Such activity may underlie mechanisms that prioritize locations of task-relevant objects.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Schuster2015,

title = {Eyes on words: A fixation-related fMRI study of the left occipito-temporal cortex during self-paced silent reading of words and pseudowords},

author = {Sarah Schuster and Stefan Hawelka and Fabio Richlan and Philipp Ludersdorfer and Florian Hutzler},

doi = {10.1038/srep12686},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {5},

pages = {12686},

publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},

abstract = {The predominant finding of studies assessing the response of the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOT) to familiar words and to unfamiliar, but pronounceable letter strings (pseudowords) is higher activation for pseudowords. One explanation for this finding is that readers automatically generate predictions about a letter string's identity – pseudowords mismatch these predictions and the higher vOT activation is interpreted as reflecting the resultant prediction errors. The majority of studies, however, administered tasks which imposed demands above and beyond the intrinsic requirements of visual word recognition. The present study assessed the response of the left vOT to words and pseudowords by using the onset of the first fixation on a stimulus as time point for modeling the BOLD signal (fixation-related fMRI). This method allowed us to assess the neural correlates of self-paced silent reading with minimal task demands and natural exposure durations. In contrast to the predominantly reported higher vOT activation for pseudowords, we found higher activation for words. This finding is at odds with the expectation of higher vOT activation for pseudowords due to automatically generated predictions and the accompanying elevation of prediction errors. Our finding conforms to an alternative explanation which considers such top-down processing to be non-automatic and task-dependent.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tramper2015,

title = {Parallel updating and weighting of multiple spatial maps for visual stability during whole body motion},

author = {J. J. Tramper and W. Pieter Medendorp},

doi = {10.1152/jn.00576.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neurophysiology},

volume = {114},

number = {6},

pages = {3211–3219},

abstract = {It is known that the brain uses multiple reference frames to code spatial information, including eye-centered and body-centered frames. When we move our body in space, these internal representations are no longer in register with external space, unless they are actively updated. Whether the brain updates multiple spatial representations in parallel, or whether it restricts its updating mechanisms to a single reference frame from which other representations are constructed, remains an open question. We developed an optimal integration model to simulate the updating of visual space across body motion in multiple or single reference frames. To test this model, we designed an experiment in which participants had to remember the location of a briefly presented target while being translated sideways. The behavioral responses were in agreement with a model that uses a combination of eye- and body-centered representations, weighted according to the reliability in which the target location is stored, and updated in each reference frame. Our findings suggest that the brain simultaneously updates multiple spatial representations across body motion. Because both representations are kept in sync, they can be optimally combined to provide a more precise estimate of visual locations in space than based on single-frame updating mechanisms.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{VanBergen2015,

title = {Sensory uncertainty decoded from visual cortex predicts behavior Ruben},

author = {Ruben S. Van Bergen and Wei Ji Ma and Michael S. Pratte and Janneke F. M. Jehee},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Nature Neuroscience},

volume = {18},

number = {12},

pages = {1728–1730},

abstract = {Bayesian theories of neural coding propose that sensory uncertainty is represented by a probability distribution encoded in neural population activity, but direct neural evidence supporting this hypothesis is currently lacking. Using fMRI in combination with a generative model-based analysis, we found that probability distributions reflecting sensory uncertainty could reliably be estimated from human visual cortex and, moreover, that observers appeared to use knowledge of this uncertainty in their perceptual decisions.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Visser2015,

title = {Representational similarity analysis offers a preview of the noradrenergic modulation of long-term fear memory at the time of encoding},

author = {Renée M. Visser and Anna E. Kunze and Bianca Westhoff and H. Steven Scholte and Merel Kindt},

doi = {10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.021},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Psychoneuroendocrinology},

volume = {55},

pages = {8–20},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Neuroimaging research on emotional memory has greatly advanced our understanding of the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. While the behavioral expression of fear at the time of encoding does not predict whether an aversive experience will evolve into long-term fear memory, the application of multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) for the analysis of BOLD-MRI data has recently provided a unique marker for memory formation. Here, we aimed to further investigate the utility of this marker by modulating the strength of fear memory with an α2-adrenoceptor antagonist (yohimbine HCl). Fifty-two healthy participants were randomly assigned to two conditions - either receiving 20. mg yohimbine or a placebo pill (double-blind) - prior to differential fear conditioning and MRI-scanning. We examined the strength of fear associations during acquisition and retention of fear (48. h later) by assessing the similarity of BOLD-MRI patterns and pupil dilation responses. Additionally, participants returned for a follow-up test outside the scanner (2-4 weeks), during which we assessed fear-potentiated startle responses. Replicating our previous findings, neural pattern similarity reflected the development of fear associations over time, and unlike average activation or pupil dilation, predicted the later expression of fear memory (pupil dilation 48. h later). While no effect of yohimbine was observed on markers of autonomic arousal, including salivary α-amylase (sAA), we obtained indirect evidence for the noradrenergic enhancement of fear memory consolidation: sAA levels showed a strong increase prior to fMRI scanning, irrespective of whether participants had received yohimbine, and this increase correlated with the subsequent expression of fear (48. h later). Remarkably, this noradrenergic enhancement of fear was associated with changes in neural response patterns at the time of learning. These findings provide further evidence that representational similarity analysis is a sensitive tool for studying (enhanced) memory formation.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Vossel2015,

title = {Cortical coupling reflects Bayesian belief updating in the deployment of spatial attention},

author = {Simone Vossel and Christoph Mathys and Klaas E. Stephan and Karl J. Friston},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1382-15.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {33},

pages = {11532–11542},

abstract = {The deployment of visuospatial attention and the programming of saccades are governed by the inferred likelihood of events. In the present study, we combined computational modeling of psychophysical data with fMRI to characterize the computational and neural mechanisms underlying this flexible attentional control. Sixteen healthy human subjects performed a modified version of Posner's location-cueing paradigm in which the percentage of cue validity varied in time and the targets required saccadic responses. Trialwise estimates of the certainty (precision) of the prediction that the target would appear at the cued location were derived from a hierarchical Bayesian model fitted to individual trialwise saccadic response speeds. Trial-specific model parameters then entered analyses of fMRI data as parametric regressors. Moreover, dynamic causal modeling (DCM) was performed to identify the most likely functional architecture of the attentional reorienting network and its modulation by (Bayes-optimal) precision-dependent attention. While the frontal eye fields (FEFs), intraparietal sulcus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) of both hemispheres showed higher activity on invalid relative to valid trials, reorienting responses in right FEF, TPJ, and the putamen were significantly modulated by precision-dependent attention. Our DCM results suggested that the precision of predictability underlies the attentional modulation of the coupling of TPJ with FEF and the putamen. Our results shed new light on the computational architecture and neuronal network dynamics underlying the context-sensitive deployment of visuospatial attention.$backslash$n$backslash$nSIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Spatial attention and its neural correlates in the human brain have been studied extensively with the help of fMRI and cueing paradigms in which the location of targets is pre-cued on a trial-by-trial basis. One aspect that has so far been neglected concerns the question of how the brain forms attentional expectancies when no a priori probability information is available but needs to be inferred from observations. This study elucidates the computational and neural mechanisms under which probabilistic inference governs attentional deployment. Our results show that Bayesian belief updating explains changes in cortical connectivity; in that directional influences from the temporoparietal junction on the frontal eye fields and the putamen were modulated by (Bayes-optimal) updates.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Yellin2015,

title = {Coupling between pupil fluctuations and resting-state fMRI uncovers a slow build-up of antagonistic responses in the human cortex},

author = {Dov Yellin and Aviva Berkovich-Ohana and Rafael Malach},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.11.034},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {106},

pages = {414–427},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Even in absence of overt tasks, the human cortex manifests rich patterns of spontaneous "resting state" BOLD-fMRI fluctuations. However, the link of these spontaneous fluctuations to behavior is presently unclear. Attempts to directly investigate this link invariably lead to disruptions of the resting state. Here we took advantage of the well-established association between pupil diameter and attentional gain to address this issue by examining the correlation between the resting state BOLD and pupil fluctuations. Our results uncover a spontaneously emerging spatiotemporal pupil-BOLD correlation whereby a slow buildup of activity in default mode areas preceded both pupil dilation and wide-spread BOLD suppression in sensorimotor cortex. Control experiments excluded a role for luminance fluctuations or fixation. Comparing the pupil-correlated patterns to activation maps during visual imagery revealed a substantial overlap. Our results indicate a link between behavior, as indexed by pupil diameter, and resting state BOLD fluctuations. These pupil dilations, assumed to be related to attentional gain, were associated with spontaneously emerging antagonism between fundamental cortical networks.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Myers2015,

title = {Testing sensory evidence against mnemonic templates},

author = {Nicholas E. Myers and Gustavo Rohenkohl and Valentin Wyart and Mark W. Woolrich and Anna C. Nobre and Mark G. Stokes},

doi = {10.7554/eLife.09000.001},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {eLife},

volume = {4},

pages = {1–25},

abstract = {Most perceptual decisions require comparisons between current input and an internal template. Classic studies propose that templates are encoded in sustained activity of sensory neurons. However, stimulus encoding is itself dynamic, tracing a complex trajectory through activity space. Which part of this trajectory is pre-activated to reflect the template? Here we recorded magneto- and electroencephalography during a visual target-detection task, and used pattern analyses to decode template, stimulus, and decision-variable representation. Our findings ran counter to the dominant model of sustained pre-activation. Instead, template information emerged transiently around stimulus onset and quickly subsided. Cross-generalization between stimulus and template coding, indicating a shared neural representation, occurred only briefly. Our results are compatible with the proposal that template representation relies on a matched filter, transforming input into task-appropriate output. This proposal was consistent with a signed difference response at the perceptual decision stage, which can be explained by a simple neural model.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Okazaki2015,

title = {Real-time MEG neurofeedback training of posterior alpha activity modulates subsequent visual detection performance},

author = {Yuka O. Okazaki and Jörn M. Horschig and Lisa Luther and Robert Oostenveld and Ikuya Murakami and Ole Jensen},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.014},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {107},

pages = {323–332},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {It has been demonstrated that alpha activity is lateralized when attention is directed to the left or right visual hemifield. We investigated whether real-time neurofeedback training of the alpha lateralization enhances participants' ability to modulate posterior alpha lateralization and causes subsequent short-term changes in visual detection performance. The experiment consisted of three phases: (i) pre-training assessment, (ii) neurofeedback phase and (iii) post-training assessment. In the pre- and post-training phases we measured the threshold to covertly detect a cued faint Gabor stimulus presented in the left or right hemifield. During magnetoencephalography (MEG) neurofeedback, two face stimuli superimposed with noise were presented bilaterally. Participants were cued to attend to one of the hemifields. The transparency of the superimposed noise and thus the visibility of the stimuli were varied according to the momentary degree of hemispheric alpha lateralization. In a double-blind procedure half of the participants were provided with sham feedback. We found that hemispheric alpha lateralization increased with the neurofeedback training; this was mainly driven by an ipsilateral alpha increase. Surprisingly, comparing pre- to post-training, detection performance decreased for a Gabor stimulus presented in the hemifield that was un-attended during neurofeedback. This effect was not observed in the sham group. Thus, neurofeedback training alters alpha lateralization, which in turn decreases performances in the untrained hemifield. Our findings suggest that alpha oscillations play a causal role for the allocation of attention. Furthermore, our neurofeedback protocol serves to reduce the detection of unattended visual information and could therefore be of potential use for training to reduce distractibility in attention deficit patients, but also highlights that neurofeedback paradigms can have negative impact on behavioral performance and should be applied with caution.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Auksztulewicz2015,

title = {Attentional enhancement of auditory mismatch responses: A DCM/MEG study},

author = {Ryszard Auksztulewicz and Karl J. Friston},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhu323},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Cerebral Cortex},

volume = {25},

number = {11},

pages = {4273–4283},

abstract = {Despite similar behavioral effects, attention and expectation influence evoked responses differently: Attention typically enhances event-related responses, whereas expectation reduces them. This dissociation has been reconciled under predictive coding, where prediction errors are weighted by precision associated with attentional modulation. Here, we tested the predictive coding account of attention and expectation using magnetoencephalography and modeling. Temporal attention and sensory expectation were orthogonally manipulated in an auditory mismatch paradigm, revealing opposing effects on evoked response amplitude. Mismatch negativity (MMN) was enhanced by attention, speaking against its supposedly pre-attentive nature. This interaction effect was modeled in a canonical microcircuit using dynamic causal modeling, comparing models with modulation of extrinsic and intrinsic connectivity at different levels of the auditory hierarchy. While MMN was explained by recursive interplay of sensory predictions and prediction errors, attention was linked to the gain of inhibitory interneurons, consistent with its modulation of sensory precision.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bach2015,

title = {Sustained magnetic responses in temporal cortex reflect instantaneous significance of approaching and receding sounds},

author = {Dominik R. Bach and Nicholas Furl and Gareth Barnes and Raymond J. Dolan},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0134060},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {10},

number = {7},

pages = {e0134060},

abstract = {Rising sound intensity often signals an approaching sound source and can serve as a powerful warning cue, eliciting phasic attention, perception biases and emotional responses. How the evaluation of approaching sounds unfolds over time remains elusive. Here, we capitalised on the temporal resolution of magnetoencephalograpy (MEG) to investigate in humans a dynamic encoding of perceiving approaching and receding sounds. We compared magnetic responses to intensity envelopes of complex sounds to those of white noise sounds, in which intensity change is not perceived as approaching. Sustained magnetic fields over temporal sensors tracked intensity change in complex sounds in an approximately linear fashion, an effect not seen for intensity change in white noise sounds, or for overall intensity. Hence, these fields are likely to track approach/recession, but not the apparent (instantaneous) distance of the sound source, or its intensity as such. As a likely source of this activity, the bilateral inferior temporal gyrus and right temporo-parietal junction emerged. Our results indicate that discrete temporal cortical areas parametrically encode behavioural significance in moving sound sources where the signal unfolded in a manner reminiscent of evidence accumulation. This may help an understanding of how acoustic percepts are evaluated as behaviourally relevant, where our results highlight a crucial role of cortical areas.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Diwakar2015,

title = {Filling in the gaps: Anticipatory control of eye movements in chronic mild traumatic brain injury},

author = {Mithun Diwakar and Deborah L. Harrington and Jun Maruta and Jamshid Ghajar and Fady El-Gabalawy and Laura Muzzatti and Maurizio Corbetta and Ming-Xiong X. Huang and Roland R. Lee},

doi = {10.1016/j.nicl.2015.04.011},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage: Clinical},

volume = {8},

pages = {210–223},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {A barrier in the diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) stems from the lack of measures that are adequately sensitive in detecting mild head injuries. MRI and CT are typically negative in mTBI patients with persistent symptoms of post-concussive syndrome (PCS), and characteristic difficulties in sustaining attention often go undetected on neuropsychological testing, which can be insensitive to momentary lapses in concentration. Conversely, visual tracking strongly depends on sustained attention over time and is impaired in chronic mTBI patients, especially when tracking an occluded target. This finding suggests deficient internal anticipatory control in mTBI, the neural underpinnings of which are poorly understood. The present study investigated the neuronal bases for deficient anticipatory control during visual tracking in 25 chronic mTBI patients with persistent PCS symptoms and 25 healthy control subjects. The task was performed while undergoing magnetoencephalography (MEG), which allowed us to examine whether neural dysfunction associated with anticipatory control deficits was due to altered alpha, beta, and/or gamma activity. Neuropsychological examinations characterized cognition in both groups. During MEG recordings, subjects tracked a predictably moving target that was either continuously visible or randomly occluded (gap condition). MEG source-imaging analyses tested for group differences in alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. The results showed executive functioning, information processing speed, and verbal memory deficits in the mTBI group. Visual tracking was impaired in the mTBI group only in the gap condition. Patients showed greater error than controls before and during target occlusion, and were slower to resynchronize with the target when it reappeared. Impaired tracking concurred with abnormal beta activity, which was suppressed in the parietal cortex, especially the right hemisphere, and enhanced in left caudate and frontaloral areas. Regional beta-amplitude demonstrated high classification accuracy (92%) compared to eye-tracking (65%) and neuropsychological variables (80%). These findings show that deficient internal anticipatory control in mTBI is associated with altered beta activity, which is remarkably sensitive given the heterogeneity of injuries.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{He2015a,

title = {Face processing in the brains of pre-school aged children measured with MEG},

author = {Wei He and Jon Brock and Blake W. Johnson},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.11.029},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {106},

pages = {317–327},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {There are two competing theories concerning the development of face perception: a late maturation account and an early maturation account. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuroimaging holds promise for adjudicating between the two opposing accounts by providing objective neurophysiological measures of face processing, with sufficient temporal resolution to isolate face-specific brain responses from those associated with other sensory, cognitive and motor processes. The current study used a customized child MEG system to measure M100 and M170 brain responses in 15 children aged three to six years while they viewed faces, cars and their phase-scrambled counterparts. Compared to adults tested using the same stimuli in a conventional MEG system, children showed significantly larger and later M100 responses. Children's M170 responses, derived by subtracting the responses to phase-scrambled images from the corresponding images (faces or cars) were delayed in latency but otherwise resembled the adult M170. This component has not been obtained in previous studies of young children tested using conventional adult MEG systems. However children did show a markedly reduced M170 response to cars in comparison to adults. This may reflect children's lack of expertise with cars relative to faces. Taken together, these data are in accord with recent behavioural and neuroimaging data that support early maturation of the basic face processing functions.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{He2015b,

title = {Development of effective connectivity in the core network for face perception},

author = {Wei He and Marta I. Garrido and Paul F. Sowman and Jon Brock and Blake W. Johnson},

doi = {10.1002/hbm.22762},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Human Brain Mapping},

volume = {36},

number = {6},

pages = {2161–2173},

abstract = {This study measured effective connectivity within the core face network in young children using a paediatric magnetoencephalograph (MEG). Dynamic casual modeling (DCM) of brain responses was performed in a group of adults (N = 14) and a group of young children aged from 3 to 6 years (N = 15). Three candidate DCM models were tested, and the fits of the MEG data to the three models were compared at both individual and group levels. The results show that the connectivity structure of the core face network differs significantly between adults and children. Further, the relative strengths of face network connections were differentially modulated by experimental conditions in the two groups. These results support the interpretation that the core face network undergoes significant structural configuration and functional specialization between four years of age and adulthood.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Meyhoefer2015,

title = {Neural mechanisms of smooth pursuit eye movements in schizotypy},

author = {Inga Meyhöfer and Maria Steffens and Anna-Maria Kasparbauer and Phillip Grant and Bernd Weber and Ulrich Ettinger},

doi = {10.1002/hbm.22632},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Human Brain Mapping},

volume = {36},

pages = {340–353},

abstract = {Patients with schizophrenia as well as individuals with high levels of schizotypy are known to have deficits in smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM). Here, we investigated, for the first time, the neural mechanisms underlying SPEM performance in high schizotypy. Thirty-one healthy participants [N = 19 low schizotypes},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Michael2015,

title = {Unreliable evidence: 2 sources of uncertainty during perceptual choice},

author = {Elizabeth Michael and Vincent De Gardelle and Alejo Nevado-Holgado and Christopher Summerfield},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bht287},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Cerebral Cortex},

volume = {25},

number = {4},

pages = {937–947},

abstract = {Perceptual decisions often involve integrating evidence from multiple concurrently available sources. Uncertainty arises when the integrated (mean) evidence fails to support one alternative over another. However, evidence heterogeneity (variability) also provokes uncertainty. Here, we asked whether these 2 sources of uncertainty have independent behavioral and neural effects during choice. Human observers undergoing functional neuroimaging judged the average color or shape of a multielement array. The mean and variance of the feature values exerted independent influences on behavior and brain activity. Surprisingly, BOLD signals in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) showed polar opposite responses to the 2 sources of uncertainty, with the strongest response to ambiguous tallies of evidence (high mean uncertainty) and to homogenous arrays (low variance uncertainty). These findings present a challenge for models that emphasize the role of the dmPFC in detecting conflict, errors, or surprise. We suggest an alternative explanation, whereby evidence is processed with increased gain near the category boundary.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{MuellerPinzler2015,

title = {Neural pathways of embarrassment and their modulation by social anxiety},

author = {L. Müller-Pinzler and V. Gazzola and C. Keysers and Jens Sommer and Andreas Jansen and S. Frässle and Wolfgang Einhäuser and Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.06.036},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {119},

pages = {252–261},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {While being in the center of attention and exposed to other's evaluations humans are prone to experience embarrassment. To characterize the neural underpinnings of such aversive moments, we induced genuine experiences of embarrassment during person-group interactions in a functional neuroimaging study. Using a mock-up scenario with three confederates, we examined how the presence of an audience affected physiological and neural responses and the reported emotional experiences of failures and achievements. The results indicated that publicity induced activations in mentalizing areas and failures led to activations in arousal processing systems. Mentalizing activity as well as attention towards the audience were increased in socially anxious participants. The converging integration of information from mentalizing areas and arousal processing systems within the ventral anterior insula and amygdala forms the neural pathways of embarrassment. Targeting these neural markers of embarrassment in the (para-)limbic system provides new perspectives for developing treatment strategies for social anxiety disorders.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ajina2015,

title = {Motion area V5/MT+ response to global motion in the absence of V1 resembles early visual cortex},

author = {Sara Ajina and Christopher Kennard and Geraint Rees and Holly Bridge},

doi = {10.1093/brain/awu328},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Brain},

volume = {138},

number = {1},

pages = {164–178},

abstract = {Motion area V5/MT+ shows a variety of characteristic visual responses, often linked to perception, which are heavily influenced by its rich connectivity with the primary visual cortex (V1). This human motion area also receives a number of inputs from other visual regions, including direct subcortical connections and callosal connections with the contralateral hemisphere. Little is currently known about such alternative inputs to V5/MT+ and how they may drive and influence its activity. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the response of human V5/MT+ to increasing the proportion of coherent motion was measured in seven patients with unilateral V1 damage acquired during adulthood, and a group of healthy age-matched controls. When V1 was damaged, the typical V5/MT+ response to increasing coherence was lost. Rather, V5/MT+ in patients showed a negative trend with coherence that was similar to coherence-related activity in V1 of healthy control subjects. This shift to a response-pattern more typical of early visual cortex suggests that in the absence of V1, V5/MT+ activity may be shaped by similar direct subcortical input. This is likely to reflect intact residual pathways rather than a change in connectivity, and has important implications for blindsight function. It also confirms predictions that V1 is critically involved in normal V5/MT+ global motion processing, consistent with a convergent model of V1 input to V5/MT+. Historically, most attempts to model cortical visual responses do not consider the contribution of direct subcortical inputs that may bypass striate cortex, such as input to V5/MT+. We have shown that the signal change driven by these non-striate pathways can be measured, and suggest that models of the intact visual system may benefit from considering their contribution.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ajina2015b,

title = {Abnormal contrast responses in the extrastriate cortex of blindsight patients},

author = {Sara Ajina and Geraint Rees and Christopher Kennard and Holly Bridge},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3075-14.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {21},

pages = {8201–8213},

abstract = {When the human primary visual cortex (V1) is damaged, the dominant geniculo-striate pathway can no longer convey visual information to the occipital cortex. However, many patients with such damage retain some residual visual function that must rely on an alternative pathway directly to extrastriate occipital regions. This residual vision is most robust for moving stimuli, suggesting a role for motion area hMT+. However, residual vision also requires high-contrast stimuli, which is inconsistent with hMT+ sensitivity to contrast in which even low-contrast levels elicit near-maximal neural activation. We sought to investigate this discrepancy by measuring behavioral and neural responses to increasing contrast in patients with V1 damage. Eight patients underwent behavioral testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging to record contrast sensitivity in hMT+ of their damaged hemisphere, using Gabor stimuli with a spatial frequency of 1 cycle/degrees. The responses from hMT+ of the blind hemisphere were compared with hMT+ and V1 responses in the sighted hemisphere of patients and a group of age-matched controls. Unlike hMT+, neural responses in V1 tend to increase linearly with increasing contrast, likely reflecting a dominant parvocellular channel input. Across all patients, the responses in hMT+ of the blind hemisphere no longer showed early saturation but increased linearly with contrast. Given the spatiotemporal parameters used in this study and the known direct subcortical projections from the koniocellular layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus to hMT+, we propose that this altered contrast sensitivity in hMT+ could be consistent with input from the koniocellular pathway.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Andoh2015,

title = {Asymmetric interhemispheric transfer in the auditory network: Evidence from TMS, resting-state fMRI, and diffusion imaging},

author = {Jamila Andoh and Reiko Matsushita and Robert J. Zatorre},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2333-15.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {43},

number = {43},

pages = {14602–14611},

abstract = {Hemispheric asymmetries in human auditory cortical function and structure are still highly debated. Brain stimulation approaches can complement correlational techniques by uncovering causal influences. Previous studies have shown asymmetrical effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on task performance, but it is unclear whether these effects are task-specific or reflect intrinsic network properties. To test how modulation of auditory cortex (AC) influences functional networks and whether this influence is asymmetrical, the present study measured resting-state fMRI connectivity networks in 17 healthy volunteers before and immediately after TMS (continuous theta burst stimulation) to the left or right AC, and the vertex as a control. We also examined the relationship between TMS-induced interhemispheric signal propagation and anatomical properties of callosal auditory fibers as measured with diffusion-weighted MRI. We found that TMS to the right AC, but not the left, resulted in widespread connectivity decreases in auditory- and motor-related networks in the resting state. Individual differences in the degree of change in functional connectivity between auditory cortices after TMS applied over the right AC were negatively related to the volume of callosal auditory fibers. The findings show that TMS-induced network modulation occurs, even in the absence of an explicit task, and that the magnitude of the effect differs across individuals as a function of callosal structure, supporting a role for the corpus callosum in mediating functional asymmetry. The findings support theoretical models emphasizing hemispheric differences in network organization and are of practical significance in showing that brain stimulation studies need to take network-level effects into account.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bao2015,

title = {Using an achiasmic human visual system to quantify the relationship between the fMRI BOLD signal and neural response},

author = {Pinglei Bao and Christopher J. Purington and Bosco S. Tjan},

doi = {10.7554/eLife.09600},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {eLife},

volume = {4},

number = {NOVEMBER2015},

pages = {1–21},

abstract = {Achiasma in humans causes gross mis-wiring of the retinal-fugal projection, resulting in overlapped cortical representations of left and right visual hemifields. We show that in areas V1-V3 this overlap is due to two co-located but non-interacting populations of neurons, each with a receptive field serving only one hemifield. Importantly, the two populations share the same local vascular control, resulting in a unique organization useful for quantifying the relationship between neural and fMRI BOLD responses without direct measurement of neural activity. Specifically, we can non-invasively double local neural responses by stimulating both neuronal populations with identical stimuli presented symmetrically across the vertical meridian to both visual hemifields, versus one population by stimulating in one hemifield. Measurements from a series of such doubling experiments show that the amplitude of BOLD response is proportional to approximately 0.5 power of the underlying neural response. Reanalyzing published data shows that this inferred relationship is general.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Brascamp2015,

title = {Negligible fronto-parietal BOLD activity accompanying unreportable switches in bistable perception},

author = {Jan Brascamp and Randolph Blake and Tomas Knapen},

doi = {10.1038/nn.4130},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Nature Neuroscience},

volume = {18},

number = {11},

pages = {1672–1678},

publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},

abstract = {The human brain's executive systems have a vital role in deciding and selecting among actions. Selection among alternatives also occurs in the perceptual domain; for instance, when perception switches between interpretations during perceptual bistability. Whether executive systems also underlie this functionality remains debated, with known fronto-parietal concomitants of perceptual switches being variously interpreted as reflecting the switches' cause or as reflecting their consequences. We developed a procedure in which the two eyes receive different inputs and perception demonstrably switches between these inputs, yet the switches themselves are so inconspicuous as to become unreportable, minimizing their executive consequences. Fronto-parietal fMRI BOLD responses that accompanied perceptual switches were similarly minimized in this procedure, indicating that these reflect the switches' consequences rather than their cause. We conclude that perceptual switches do not always rely on executive brain areas and that processes responsible for selection among alternatives may operate outside the brain's executive systems.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Buyukturkoglu2015,

title = {Self-regulation of anterior insula using real-time fMRI and its behavioral effects in obsessive compulsive disorder: A feasibility study},

author = {Korhan Buyukturkoglu and Hans Roettgers and Jens Sommer and Mohit Rana and Leonie Dietzsch and Ezgi Belkis Arikan and Ralf Veit and Rahim Malekshahi and Tilo Kircher and Niels Birbaumer and Ranganatha Sitaram and Sergio Ruiz},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0135872},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {10},

number = {8},

pages = {e0135872},

abstract = {Introduction: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and chronic condition that can have disabling effects throughout the patient's lifespan. Frequent symptoms among OCD patients include fear of contamination and washing compulsions. Several studies have shown a link between contamination fears, disgust over-reactivity, and insula activation in OCD. In concordance with the role of insula in disgust processing, new neural models based on neuroimaging studies suggest that abnormally high activations of insula could be implicated in OCD psychopathology, at least in the subgroup of patients with contamination fears and washing compulsions. Methods: In the current study, we used a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) based on real-time func- tional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) to aid OCD patients to achieve down-regula- tion of the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in anterior insula. Our first aim was to investigate whether patients with contamination obsessions and washing com- pulsions can learn to volitionally decrease (down-regulate) activity in the insula in the pres- ence of disgust/anxiety provoking stimuli. Our second aimwas to evaluate the effect of down-regulation on clinical, behavioural and physiological changes pertaining to OCD symptoms. Hence, several pre- and post-training measures were performed, i.e., con- fronting the patient with a disgust/anxiety inducing real-world object (Ecological Disgust Test), and subjective rating and physiological responses (heart rate, skin conductance level) of disgust towards provoking pictures. Results: Results of this pilot study, performed in 3 patients (2 females), show that OCD patients can gain self-control of the BOLD activity of insula, albeit to different degrees. In two patients positive changes in behaviour in the EDT were observed following the rtfMRI trainings. Behavioural changes were also confirmed by reductions in the negative valence and in the subjective perception of disgust towards symptom provoking images. Conclusion: Although preliminary, results of this study confirmed that insula down-regulation is possible in patients suffering from OCD, and that volitional decreases of insula activation could be used for symptom alleviation in this disorder.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Caruana2015,

title = {A frontotemporoparietal network common to initiating and responding to joint attention bids},

author = {Nathan Caruana and Jon Brock and Alexandra Woolgar},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.041},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {108},

pages = {34–46},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {Joint attention is a fundamental cognitive ability that supports daily interpersonal relationships and communication. The Parallel Distributed Processing model (PDPM) postulates that responding to (RJA) and initiating (IJA) joint attention are predominantly supported by posterior-parietal and frontal regions respectively. It also argues that these neural networks integrate during development, supporting the parallel processes of self- and other-attention representation during interactions. However, direct evidence for the PDPM is limited due to a lack of ecologically valid experimental paradigms that can capture both RJA and IJA. Building on existing interactive approaches, we developed a virtual reality paradigm where participants engaged in an online interaction to complete a cooperative task. By including tightly controlled baseline conditions to remove activity associated with non-social task demands, we were able to directly contrast the neural correlates of RJA and IJA to determine whether these processes are supported by common brain regions. Both RJA and IJA activated broad frontotemporoparietal networks. Critically, a conjunction analysis identified that a subset of these regions were common to both RJA and IJA. This right-lateralised network included the dorsal portion of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), precentral gyrus, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and precuneus. Additional activation was observed in this network for IJA relative to RJA at MFG, IFG, TPJ and precuneus. This is the first imaging study to directly investigate the neural correlates common to RJA and IJA engagement, and thus support the assumption that a broad integrated network underlies the parallel aspects of both initiating and responding to joint attention.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Choi2015,

title = {Neural correlates of active vision: An fMRI comparison of natural reading and scene viewing},

author = {Wonil Choi and John M. Henderson},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.05.027},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Neuropsychologia},

volume = {75},

pages = {109–118},

publisher = {Elsevier},

abstract = {Theories of eye movement control during active vision tasks such as reading and scene viewing have primarily been developed and tested using data from eye tracking and computational modeling, and little is currently known about the neurocognition of active vision. The current fMRI study was conducted to examine the nature of the cortical networks that are associated with active vision. Subjects were asked to read passages for meaning and view photographs of scenes for a later memory test. The eye movement control network comprising frontal eye field (FEF), supplementary eye fields (SEF), and intraparietal sulcus (IPS), commonly activated during single-saccade eye movement tasks, were also involved in reading and scene viewing, suggesting that a common control network is engaged when eye movements are executed. However, the activated locus of the FEF varied across the two tasks, with medial FEF more activated in scene viewing relative to passage reading and lateral FEF more activated in reading than scene viewing. The results suggest that eye movements during active vision are associated with both domain-general and domain-specific components of the eye movement control network.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Clavagnier2015,

title = {Is the cortical deficit in amblyopia due to reduced cortical magnification, loss of neural resolution, or neural disorganization?},

author = {S. Clavagnier and Serge O. Dumoulin and R. F. Hess},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1101-15.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {35},

number = {44},

pages = {14740–14755},

abstract = {The neural basis of amblyopia is a matter of debate. The following possibilities have been suggested: loss of foveal cells, reduced cortical magnification, loss of spatial resolution of foveal cells, and topographical disarray in the cellular map. To resolve this we undertook a population receptive field (pRF) functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis in the central field in humans with moderate-to-severe amblyopia. We measured the relationship between averaged pRF size and retinal eccentricity in retinotopic visual areas. Results showed that cortical magnification is normal in the foveal field of strabismic amblyopes. However, the pRF sizes are enlarged for the amblyopic eye. We speculate that the pRF enlargement reflects loss of cellular resolution or an increased cellular positional disarray within the representation of the amblyopic eye.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Brouwer2015,

title = {The Müller-Lyer illusion affects visuomotor updating in the dorsal visual stream},

author = {Anouk J. Brouwer and Jeroen B. J. Smeets and Tjerk P. Gutteling and I. Toni and W. Pieter Medendorp},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.08.012},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Neuropsychologia},

volume = {77},

pages = {119–127},

publisher = {Elsevier},

abstract = {To guide our actions, the brain has developed mechanisms to code target locations in egocentric coordinates (i.e., with respect to the observer), and to update these when the observer moves. The latter mechanism, called visuomotor updating, is implemented in the dorsal visual stream of the brain. In contrast, the ventral visual stream is assumed to transform target locations into an allocentric reference frame that is highly sensitive to visual contextual illusions. Here, we tested the effect of the Müller-Lyer illusion on visuomotor updating in a double-step saccade task. Using the same paradigm in a 3T fMRI scanner, we investigated the effect of the illusion on the neural correlate of the updating process. Participants briefly viewed the Brentano version of the Müller-Lyer illusion with a target at its middle vertex, while fixating at one of the two endpoints of the illusion. Shortly after the disappearance of the stimulus, the eyes' fixation point moved to a position outside the illusion. After a delay, participants made a saccade to the remembered position of the target. The landing position of this saccade was systematically displaced in a manner congruent with the perceptual illusion, showing that visuomotor updating is affected by the illusion. fMRI results showed that the BOLD response in the occipito-parietal cortex (area V7) and the intraparietal sulcus related to planning of the saccade to the updated target was also modulated by the configuration of the illusion. This suggests that the dorsal visual stream represents perceived rather than physical locations of remembered saccade targets.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Kloosterman2015,

title = {Top-down modulation in human visual cortex predicts the stability of a perceptual illusion},

author = {Niels A. Kloosterman and Thomas Meindertsma and Arjan Hillebrand and Bob W. Dijk and Victor A. F. Lamme and Tobias H. Donner},

doi = {10.1152/jn.00338.2014},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neurophysiology},

volume = {113},

number = {4},

pages = {1063–1076},

abstract = {Conscious perception sometimes fluctuates strongly, even when the sensory input is constant. For example, in motion-induced blindness (MIB), a salient visual target surrounded by a moving pattern suddenly disappears from perception, only to reappear after some variable time. Whereas such changes of perception result from fluctuations of neural activity, mounting evidence suggests that the perceptual changes, in turn, may also cause modulations of activity in several brain areas, including visual cortex. In this study, we asked whether these latter modulations might affect the subsequent dynamics of perception. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure modulations in cortical population activity during MIB. We observed a transient, retinotopically widespread modulation of beta (12-30 Hz)-frequency power over visual cortex that was closely linked to the time of subjects' behavioral report of the target disappearance. This beta modulation was a top-down signal, decoupled from both the physical stimulus properties and the motor response but contingent on the behavioral relevance of the perceptual change. Critically, the modulation amplitude predicted the duration of the subsequent target disappearance. We propose that the transformation of the perceptual change into a report triggers a top-down mechanism that stabilizes the newly selected perceptual interpretation.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tan2015,

title = {MEG-measured auditory steady-state oscillations show high test-retest reliability: A sensor and source-space analysis},

author = {Heng Ru May Tan and Joachim Gross and P. J. Uhlhaas},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.07.055},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {122},

pages = {417–426},

publisher = {The Authors},

abstract = {Stability of oscillatory signatures across magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurements is an important prerequisite for basic and clinical research that has been insufficiently addressed. Here, we evaluated the test-retest reliability of auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) over two MEG sessions. The study required participants (N. = 13) to detect the rare occurrence of pure tones interspersed within a stream of 5. Hz or 40. Hz amplitude-modulated (AM) tones. Intraclass correlations (ICC; Shrout and Fleiss, 1979) were derived to assess stability of spectral power changes and the inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) of task-elicited neural responses. ASSRs source activity was estimated using eLORETA beamforming from bilateral auditory cortex. ASSRs to 40. Hz AM stimuli evoked stronger power modulation and phase-locking than 5. Hz stimulation. Overall, spectral power and ITPC values at both sensor- and source-level showed robust ICC values. Notably, ITPC measures yielded higher ICCs (~. 0.86-0.96) between sessions compared to the assessment of spectral power change (~. 0.61-0.82). Our data indicate that spectral modulations and phase consistency of ASSRs in MEG data are highly reproducible, providing support for MEG-measured oscillatory parameters in basic and clinical research.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wassenhove2015,

title = {Visual-induced expectations modulate auditory cortical responses},

author = {Virginie Wassenhove and Lukasz Grzeczkowski},

doi = {10.3389/fnins.2015.00011},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Neuroscience},

volume = {9},

pages = {11},

abstract = {Active sensing has important consequences on multisensory processing (Schroeder et al., 2010). Here, we asked whether in the absence of saccades, the position of the eyes and the timing of transient color changes of visual stimuli could selectively affect the excitability of auditory cortex by predicting the "where" and the "when" of a sound, respectively. Human participants were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) while maintaining the position of their eyes on the left, right, or center of the screen. Participants counted color changes of the fixation cross while neglecting sounds which could be presented to the left, right, or both ears. First, clear alpha power increases were observed in auditory cortices, consistent with participants' attention directed to visual inputs. Second, color changes elicited robust modulations of auditory cortex responses ("when" prediction) seen as ramping activity, early alpha phase-locked responses, and enhanced high-gamma band responses in the contralateral side of sound presentation. Third, no modulations of auditory evoked or oscillatory activity were found to be specific to eye position. Altogether, our results suggest that visual transience can automatically elicit a prediction of "when" a sound will occur by changing the excitability of auditory cortices irrespective of the attended modality, eye position or spatial congruency of auditory and visual events. To the contrary, auditory cortical responses were not significantly affected by eye position suggesting that "where" predictions may require active sensing or saccadic reset to modulate auditory cortex responses, notably in the absence of spatial orientation to sounds.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wallis2015a,

title = {Frontoparietal and cingulo-opercular networks play dissociable roles in control of working memory},

author = {George Wallis and Mark Stokes and Helena Cousijn and Mark W. Woolrich and Anna C. Nobre},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience},

volume = {27},

pages = {2019–2034},

abstract = {We used magnetoencephalography to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical activity during top–down control of working memory (WM). fMRI studies have previously implicated both the frontoparietal and cingulo-opercular networks in control over WM, but their respective contributions are unclear. In our task, spatial cues indicating the relevant item in a WM array occurred either before the memory array or during the maintenance period, providing a direct comparison between prospective and retrospective control of WM. We found that in both cases a frontoparietal network activated following the cue, but following retrocues this activation was transient and was succeeded by a cinguloopercular network activation. We also characterized the time course of top–down modulation of alpha activity in visual/parietal cortex. This modulation was transient following retrocues, occurring in parallel with the frontoparietal network activation. We suggest that the frontoparietal network is responsible for top–down modulation of activity in sensory cortex during both preparatory attention and orienting within memory. In contrast, the cinguloopercular network plays a more downstream role in cognitive control, perhaps associated with output gating of memory},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Kauppi2015,

title = {Towards brain-activity-controlled information retrieval: Decoding image relevance from MEG signals},

author = {Jukka Pekka Kauppi and Melih Kandemir and Veli Matti Saarinen and Lotta Hirvenkari and Lauri Parkkonen and Arto Klami and Riitta Hari and Samuel Kaski},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.079},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {112},

pages = {288–298},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {We hypothesize that brain activity can be used to control future information retrieval systems. To this end, we conducted a feasibility study on predicting the relevance of visual objects from brain activity. We analyze both magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and gaze signals from nine subjects who were viewing image collages, a subset of which was relevant to a predetermined task. We report three findings: i) the relevance of an image a subject looks at can be decoded from MEG signals with performance significantly better than chance, ii) fusion of gaze-based and MEG-based classifiers significantly improves the prediction performance compared to using either signal alone, and iii) non-linear classification of the MEG signals using Gaussian process classifiers outperforms linear classification. These findings break new ground for building brain-activity-based interactive image retrieval systems, as well as for systems utilizing feedback both from brain activity and eye movements.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Horschig2015,

title = {Modulation of posterior alpha activity by spatial attention allows for controlling a continuous brain–computer interface},

author = {Jörn M. Horschig and Wouter Oosterheert and Robert Oostenveld and Ole Jensen},

doi = {10.1007/s10548-014-0401-7},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Brain Topography},

volume = {28},

number = {6},

pages = {852–864},

abstract = {Here we report that the modulation of alpha activity by covert attention can be used as a control signal in an online brain-computer interface, that it is reliable, and that it is robust. Subjects were instructed to orient covert visual attention to the left or right hemifield. We decoded the direction of attention from the magnetoencephalogram by a template matching classifier and provided the classification outcome to the subject in real-time using a novel graphical user interface. Training data for the templates were obtained from a Posner-cueing task conducted just before the BCI task. Eleven subjects participated in four sessions each. Eight of the subjects achieved classification rates significantly above chance level. Subjects were able to significantly increase their performance from the first to the second session. Individual patterns of posterior alpha power remained stable throughout the four sessions and did not change with increased performance. We conclude that posterior alpha power can successfully be used as a control signal in brain-computer interfaces. We also discuss several ideas for further improving the setup and propose future research based on solid hypotheses about behavioral consequences of modulating neuronal oscillations by brain computer interfacing.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Marx2015,

title = {Reward modulates perception in binocular rivalry},

author = {Svenja Marx and Wolfgang Einhäuser},

doi = {10.1167/15.1.11},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Vision},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {1–13},

abstract = {Our perception does not provide us with an exact imprint of the outside world, but is continuously adapted to our internal expectations, task sets, and behavioral goals. Although effects of reward—or value in general—on perception therefore seem likely, how valuation modulates perception and how such modulation relates to attention is largely unknown. We probed effects of reward on perception by using a binocular-rivalry paradigm. Distinct gratings drifting in opposite directions were presented to each observer's eyes. To objectify their subjective perceptual experience, the optokinetic nystagmus was used as measure of current perceptual dominance. In a first experiment, one of the percepts was either rewarded or attended. We found that reward and attention similarly biased perception. In a second experiment, observers performed an attentionally demanding task either on the rewarded stimulus, the other stimulus, or both. We found that—on top of an attentional effect on perception—at each level of attentional load, reward still modulated perception by increasing the dominance of the rewarded percept. Similarly, penalizing one percept increased dominance of the other at each level of attentional load. In turn, rewarding—and similarly nonpunishing—a percept yielded performance benefits that are typically associated with selective attention. In conclusion, our data show that value modulates perception in a similar way as the volitional deployment of attention, even though the relative effect of value is largely unaffected by an attention task.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Leiken2015,

title = {Filling predictable and unpredictable gaps, with and without similarity-based interference: Evidence for LIFG effects of dependency processing},

author = {Kimberly Leiken and Brian McElree and Liina Pylkkänen},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01739},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {6},

pages = {1739},

abstract = {One of the most replicated findings in neurolinguistic literature on syntax is the increase of hemodynamic activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) in response to object relative (OR) clauses compared to subject relative clauses. However, behavioral studies have shown that ORs are primarily only costly when similarity-based interference is involved and recently, Leiken and Pylkkänen (2014) showed with magnetoencephalography (MEG) that an LIFG increase at an OR gap is also dependent on such interference. However, since ORs always involve a cue indicating an upcoming dependency formation, OR dependencies could be processed already prior to the gap-site and thus show no sheer dependency effects at the gap itself. To investigate the role of gap predictability in LIFG dependency effects, this MEG study compared ORs to verb phrase ellipsis (VPE), which was used as an example of a non-predictable dependency. Additionally, we explored LIFG sensitivity to filler-gap order by including right node raising structures, in which the order of filler and gap is reverse to that of ORs and VPE. Half of the stimuli invoked similarity-based interference and half did not. Our results demonstrate that LIFG effects of dependency can be elicited regardless of whether the dependency is predictable, the stimulus materials evoke similarity-based interference, or the filler precedes the gap. Thus, contrary to our own prior data, the current findings suggest a highly general role for the LIFG in dependency interpretation that is not limited to environments involving similarity-based interference. Additionally, the millisecond time-resolution of MEG allowed for a detailed characterization of the temporal profiles of LIFG dependency effects across our three constructions, revealing that the timing of these effects is somewhat construction-specific.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Mandel2015,

title = {Brain responds to another person's eye blinks in a natural setting-the more empathetic the viewer the stronger the responses},

author = {Anne Mandel and Siiri Helokunnas and Elina Pihko and Riitta Hari},

doi = {10.1111/ejn.13011},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {European Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {42},

number = {8},

pages = {2508–2514},

abstract = {An observer's brain is known to respond to another person's small nonverbal signals, such as gaze shifts and eye blinks. Here we aimed to find out how an observer's brain reacts to a speaker's eye blinks in the presence of other audiovisual information. Magnetoencephalographic brain responses along with eye gaze were recorded from 13 adults who watched a video of a person telling a story. The video was presented first without sound (visual), then with sound (audiovisual), and finally the audio story was presented with a still-frame picture on the screen (audio control). The viewers mainly gazed at the eye region of the speaker. Their saccades were suppressed at about 180 ms after the start of the speaker's blinks, a subsequent increase of saccade occurence to the base level, or higher, at around 340 ms. The suppression occurred in visual and audiovisual conditions but not during the control audio presentation. Prominent brain responses to blinks peaked in the viewer's occipital cortex at about 250 ms, with no differences in mean peak amplitudes or latencies between visual and audiovisual conditions. During the audiovisual, but not visual-only, presentation, the responses were the stronger the more empathetic the subject was according to the Empathic Concern score of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire (Spearman's rank correlation, 0.73). The other person's eye blinks, nonverbal signs that often go unnoticed, thus elicited clear brain responses even in the presence of attention-attracting audiovisual information from the narrative, with stronger responses in people with higher empathy scores.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Elkhetali2015,

title = {Early visual cortex reflects initiation and maintenance of task set},

author = {Abdurahman S. Elkhetali and Ryan J. Vaden and Sean M. Pool and Kristina M. Visscher},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.11.061},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {107},

pages = {277–288},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {The human brain is able to process information flexibly, depending on a person's task. The mechanisms underlying this ability to initiate and maintain a task set are not well understood, but they are important for understanding the flexibility of human behavior and developing therapies for disorders involving attention. Here we investigate the differential roles of early visual cortical areas in initiating and maintaining a task set.Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we characterized three different components of task set-related, but trial-independent activity in retinotopically mapped areas of early visual cortex, while human participants performed attention demanding visual or auditory tasks. These trial-independent effects reflected: (1) maintenance of attention over a long duration, (2) orienting to a cue, and (3) initiation of a task set. Participants performed tasks that differed in the modality of stimulus to be attended (auditory or visual) and in whether there was a simultaneous distractor (auditory only, visual only, or simultaneous auditory and visual). We found that patterns of trial-independent activity in early visual areas (V1, V2, V3, hV4) depend on attended modality, but not on stimuli. Further, different early visual areas play distinct roles in the initiation of a task set. In addition, activity associated with maintaining a task set tracks with a participant's behavior. These results show that trial-independent activity in early visual cortex reflects initiation and maintenance of a person's task set.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Griffis2015,

title = {Distinct effects of trial-driven and task set-related control in primary visual cortex},

author = {Joseph C. Griffis and Abdurahman S. Elkhetali and Ryan J. Vaden and Kristina M. Visscher},

doi = {10.1007/s10995-015-1800-4.Alcohol},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {120},

pages = {285–297},

abstract = {Task sets are task-specific configurations of cognitive processes that facilitate task-appropriate reactions to stimuli. While it is established that the trial-by-trial deployment of visual attention to expected stimuli influences neural responses in primary visual cortex (V1) in a retinotopically specific manner, it is not clear whether the mechanisms that help maintain a task set over many trials also operate with similar retinotopic specificity. Here, we address this question by using BOLD fMRI to characterize how portions of V1 that are specialized for different eccentricities respond during distinct components of an attention-demanding discrimination task: cue-driven preparation for a trial, trial-driven processing, task-initiation at the beginning of a block of trials, and task-maintenance throughout a block of trials. Tasks required either unimodal attention to an auditory or a visual stimulus or selective intermodal attention to the visual or auditory component of simultaneously presented visual and auditory stimuli. We found that while the retinotopic patterns of trial-driven and cue-driven activity depended on the attended stimulus, the retinotopic patterns of task-initiation and task-maintenance activity did not. Further, only the retinotopic patterns of trial-driven activity were found to depend on the presence of inter-modal distraction. Participants who performed well on the intermodal selective attention tasks showed strong task-specific modulations of both trial-driven and task-maintenance activity. Importantly, task-related modulations of trial-driven and task-maintenance activity were in opposite directions. Together, these results confirm that there are (at least) two different processes for top-down control of V1: One, working trial-by-trial, differently modulates activity across different eccentricity sectors - portions of V1 corresponding to different visual eccentricities. The second process works across longer epochs of task performance, and does not differ among eccentricity sectors. These results are discussed in the context of previous literature examining top-down control of visual cortical areas.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Grueschow2015,

title = {Automatic versus choice-dependent value representations in the human brain},

author = {Marcus Grueschow and Rafael Polania and Todd A. Hare and Christian C. Ruff},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuron.2014.12.054},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Neuron},

volume = {85},

number = {4},

pages = {874–885},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {The subjective values of choice options can impact on behavior in two fundamentally different types of situations: first, when people explicitly base their actions on such values, and second, when values attract attention despite being irrelevant for current behavior. Here we show with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that these two behavioral functions of values are encoded in distinct regions of the human brain. In the medial prefrontal cortex, value-related activity is enhanced when subjective value becomes choice-relevant, and the magnitude of this increase relates directly to the outcome and reliability of the value-based choice. In contrast, activity in the posterior cingulate cortex represents values similarly when they are relevant or irrelevant for the present choice, and the strength of this representation predicts attentional capture by choice-irrelevant values. Our results suggest that distinct components of the brain's valuation network encode value in context-dependent manners that serve fundamentally different behavioral aims.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Heikkinen2015,

title = {Feedback to distal dendrites links fMRI signals to neural receptive fields in a spiking network model of the visual cortex},

author = {Hanna Heikkinen and Fariba Sharifian and Ricardo Vigario and Simo Vanni},

doi = {10.1152/jn.00169.2015},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neurophysiology},

volume = {114},

number = {1},

pages = {57–69},

abstract = {The blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response has been strongly associated with neuronal activity in the brain. However, some neuronal tuning properties are consistently different from the BOLD response. We studied the spatial extent of neural and hemodynamic responses in the primary visual cortex, where the BOLD responses spread and interact over much longer distances than the small receptive fields of individual neurons would predict. Our model shows that a feedforward-feedback loop between V1 and a higher visual area can account for the observed spread of the BOLD response. In particular, anisotropic landing of inputs to compartmental neurons were necessary to account for the BOLD signal spread, while retaining realistic spiking responses. Our work shows that simple dendrites can separate tuning at the synapses and at the action potential output, thus bridging the BOLD signal to the neural receptive fields with high fidelity.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Henderson2015,

title = {Neural correlates of fixation duration during real-world scene viewing: Evidence from fixation-related (FIRE) fMRI},

author = {John M. Henderson and Wonil Choi},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience},

volume = {27},

number = {6},

pages = {1137–1145},

abstract = {During active scene perception, our eyes move from one location to another via saccadic eye movements, with the eyes fixating objects and scene elements for varying amounts of time. Much of the variability in fixation duration is accounted for by attentional, perceptual, and cognitive processes associated with scene analysis and comprehension. For this reason, current theories of active scene viewing attempt to account for the influence of attention and cognition on fixation duration. Yet almost nothing is known about the neurocognitive systems associated with variation in fixation duration during scene viewing. We addressed this topic using fixation-related fMRI, which involves coregistering high-resolution eye tracking and magnetic resonance scanning to conduct event-related fMRI analysis based on characteristics of eye movements. We observed that activation in visual and prefrontal executive control areas was positively correlated with fixation duration, whereas activation in ventral areas associated with scene en- coding and medial superior frontal and paracentral regions associated with changing action plans was negatively correlated with fixation duration. The results suggest that fixation duration in scene viewing is controlled by cognitive processes associated with real-time scene analysis interacting with motor planning, consistent with current computational models of active vision for scene perception.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Henderson2015a,

title = {Neural correlates of fixation duration in natural reading: Evidence from fixation-related fMRI},

author = {John M. Henderson and Wonil Choi and Steven G. Luke and Rutvik H. Desai},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.06.072},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {119},

pages = {390–397},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {A key assumption of current theories of natural reading is that fixation duration reflects underlying attentional, language, and cognitive processes associated with text comprehension. The neurocognitive correlates of this relationship are currently unknown. To investigate this relationship, we compared neural activation associated with fixation duration in passage reading and a pseudo-reading control condition. The results showed that fixation duration was associated with activation in oculomotor and language areas during text reading. Fixation duration during pseudo-reading, on the other hand, showed greater involvement of frontal control regions, suggesting flexibility and task dependency of the eye movement network. Consistent with current models, these results provide support for the hypothesis that fixation duration in reading reflects attentional engagement and language processing. The results also demonstrate that fixation-related fMRI provides a method for investigating the neurocognitive bases of natural reading.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Jamadar2015,

title = {Behavioral and neural plasticity of ocular motor control: Changes in performance and fMRI activity following antisaccade training},

author = {Sharna D. Jamadar and Beth P. Johnson and Meaghan Clough and Gary F. Egan and Joanne Fielding},

doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2015.00653},

year  = {2015},

date = {2015-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},

volume = {9},

number = {653},

pages = {1–13},

abstract = {The antisaccade task provides a model paradigm that sets the inhibition of a reflexively driven behavior against the volitional control of a goal-directed behavior. The stability and adaptability of antisaccade performance was investigated in 23 neurologically healthy individuals. Behavior and brain function were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) prior to and immediately following 2 weeks of daily antisaccade training. Participants performed antisaccade trials faster with no change in directional error rate following 2 weeks of training; however this increased speed came at the cost of the spatial accuracy of the saccade (gain) which became more hypometric following training. Training on the antisaccade task resulted in increases in fMRI activity in the fronto-basal ganglia-parietal-cerebellar ocular motor network. Following training, antisaccade latency was positively associated with fMRI activity in the frontal and supplementary eye fields, anterior cingulate and intraparietal sulcus; antisaccade gain was negatively associated with fMRI activity in supplementary eye fields, anterior cingulate, intraparietal sulcus, and cerebellar vermis. In sum, the results suggest that following training, larger antisaccade latency is associated with larger activity in fronto-parietal-cerebellar ocular motor regions, and smaller antisaccade gain is associated with larger activity in fronto-parietal ocular motor regions.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Aamand2014,

title = {Dietary nitrate facilitates an acetazolamide-induced increase in cerebral blood flow during visual stimulation},

author = {Rasmus Aamand and Yi-Ching Lynn Ho and Thomas Dalsgaard and Andreas Roepstorff and Torben E. Lund},

doi = {10.1152/japplphysiol.00797.2013},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-02-01},

journal = {Journal of Applied Physiology},

volume = {116},

number = {3},

pages = {267–273},

abstract = {The carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibitor acetazolamide (AZ) is used routinely to estimate cerebrovascular reserve capacity in patients, as it reliably increases cerebral blood flow (CBF). However, the mechanism by which AZ accomplishes this CBF increase is not entirely understood. We recently discovered that CA can produce nitric oxide (NO) from nitrite, and that AZ enhances this NO production in vitro. In fact, this interaction between AZ and CA accounted for a large part of AZ's vasodilatory action, which fits well with the known vasodilatory potency of NO. The present study aimed to assess whether AZ acts similarly in vivo in the human cerebrovascular system. Hence, we increased or minimized the dietary intake of nitrate in 20 healthy male participants, showed them a full-field flickering dartboard, and measured their CBF response to this visual stimulus with arterial spin labeling. Doing so, we found a significant positive interaction between the dietary intake of nitrate and the CBF modulation afforded by AZ during visual stimulation. In addition, but contrary to studies conducted in elderly participants, we report no effect of nitrate intake on resting CBF in healthy human participants. The present study provides in vivo support for an enhancing effect of AZ on the NO production from nitrite catalyzed by CA in the cerebrovascular system. Furthermore, our results, in combination with the results of other groups, indicate that nitrate may have significant importance to vascular function when the cerebrovascular system is challenged by age or disease.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Meuwese2014,

title = {Latent memory of unattended stimuli reactivated by practice: An fMRI study on the role of consciousness and attention in learning},

author = {Julia D. I. Meuwese and H. Steven Scholte and Victor A. F. Lamme},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0090098},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {9},

number = {3},

pages = {e90098},

abstract = {Although we can only report about what is in the focus of our attention, much more than that is actually processed. And even when attended, stimuli may not always be reportable, for instance when they are masked. A stimulus can thus be unreportable for different reasons: the absence of attention or the absence of a conscious percept. But to what extent does the brain learn from exposure to these unreportable stimuli? In this fMRI experiment subjects were exposed to textured figure-ground stimuli, of which reportability was manipulated either by masking (which only interferes with consciousness) or with an inattention paradigm (which only interferes with attention). One day later learning was assessed neurally and behaviorally. Positive neural learning effects were found for stimuli presented in the inattention paradigm; for attended yet masked stimuli negative adaptation effects were found. Interestingly, these inattentional learning effects only became apparent in a second session after a behavioral detection task had been administered during which performance feedback was provided. This suggests that the memory trace that is formed during inattention is latent until reactivated by behavioral practice. However, no behavioral learning effects were found, therefore we cannot conclude that perceptual learning has taken place for these unattended stimuli.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Miall2014,

title = {The influence of stimulus format on drawing-a functional imaging study of decision making in portrait drawing},

author = {R. Chris Miall and Se-Ho Nam and J. Tchalenko},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.015},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {102},

pages = {608–619},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {To copy a natural visual image as a line drawing, visual identification and extraction of features in the image must be guided by top-down decisions, and is usually influenced by prior knowledge. In parallel with other behavioral studies testing the relationship between eye and hand movements when drawing, we report here a functional brain imaging study in which we compared drawing of faces and abstract objects: the former can be strongly guided by prior knowledge, the latter less so. To manipulate the difficulty in extracting features to be drawn, each original image was presented in four formats including high contrast line drawings and silhouettes, and as high and low contrast photographic images. We confirmed the detailed eye-hand interaction measures reported in our other behavioral studies by using in-scanner eye-tracking and recording of pen movements with a touch screen. We also show that the brain activation pattern reflects the changes in presentation formats. In particular, by identifying the ventral and lateral occipital areas that were more highly activated during drawing of faces than abstract objects, we found a systematic increase in differential activation for the face-drawing condition, as the presentation format made the decisions more challenging. This study therefore supports theoretical models of how prior knowledge may influence perception in untrained participants, and lead to experience-driven perceptual modulation by trained artists.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Barany2014,

title = {Feature Iinteractions enable decoding of sensorimotor transformations for goal-directed movement},

author = {D. A. Barany and V. Della-Maggiore and Shivakumar Viswanathan and M. Cieslak and Scott T. Grafton},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5173-13.2014},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {34},

number = {20},

pages = {6860–6873},

abstract = {Neurophysiology and neuroimaging evidence shows that the brain represents multiple environmental and body-related features to compute transformations from sensory input to motor output. However, it is unclear how these features interact during goal-directed movement. To investigate this issue, we examined the representations of sensory and motor features of human hand movements within the left-hemisphere motor network. In a rapid event-related fMRI design, we measured cortical activity as participants performed right-handed movements at the wrist, with either of two postures and two amplitudes, to move a cursor to targets at different locations. Using a multivoxel analysis technique with rigorous generalization tests, we reliably distinguished representations of task-related features (primarily target location, movement direction, and posture) in multiple regions. In particular, we identified an interaction between target location and movement direction in the superior parietal lobule, which may underlie a transformation from the location of the target in space to a movement vector. In addition, we found an influence of posture on primary motor, premotor, and parietal regions. Together, these results reveal the complex interactions between different sensory and motor features that drive the computation of sensorimotor transformations.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bridge2014,

title = {Hippocampal binding of novel information with dominant memory traces can support both memory stability and change},

author = {D. J. Bridge and Joel L. Voss},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3819-13.2014},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {34},

number = {6},

pages = {2203–2213},

abstract = {Memory stability and change are considered opposite outcomes. We tested the counterintuitive notion that both depend on one process: hippocampal binding of memory features to associatively novel information, or associative novelty binding (ANB). Building on the idea that dominant memory features, or “traces,” are most susceptible to modification, we hypothesized that ANB would selectively involve dominant traces. Therefore, memory stability versus change should depend on whether the currently dominant trace is old versus updated; in either case, novel information will be bound with it, causing either maintenance (when old) or change (when updated). People in our experiment studied objects at locations within scenes (contexts). During reactivation in a new context, subjects moved studied objects to new locations either via active location recall or by passively dragging objects to predetermined locations. After active reactivation, the new object location became dominant in memory, whereas after passive reactivation, the old object location maintained dominance. In both cases, hippocampal ANB bound the currently dominant object-location memory with a context with which it was not paired previously (i.e., associatively novel). Stability occurred in the passive condition when ANB united the dominant original location trace with an associatively novel newer context. Change occurred in the active condition when ANB united the dominant updated object location with an associatively novel and older context. Hippocampal ANB of the currently dominant trace with associatively novel contextual information thus provides a single mechanism to support memory stability and change, with shifts in trace dominance during reactivation dictating the outcome.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Choi2014c,

title = {The neural substrates of natural reading: A comparison of normal and nonword text using eyetracking and fMRI},

author = {Wonil Choi and Rutvik H. Desai and John M. Henderson},

doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2014.01024},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},

volume = {8},

pages = {1024},

abstract = {Most previous studies investigating the neural correlates of reading have presented text using serial visual presentation (SVP), which may not fully reflect the underlying processes of natural reading. In the present study, eye movements and BOLD data were collected while subjects either read normal paragraphs naturally or moved their eyes through "paragraphs" of pseudo-text (pronounceable pseudowords or consonant letter strings) in two pseudo-reading conditions. Eye movement data established that subjects were reading and scanning the stimuli normally. A conjunction fMRI analysis across natural- and pseudo-reading showed that a common eye-movement network including frontal eye fields (FEF), supplementary eye fields (SEF), and intraparietal sulci was activated, consistent with previous studies using simpler eye movement tasks. In addition, natural reading versus pseudo-reading showed different patterns of brain activation: normal reading produced activation in a well-established language network that included superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, middle temporal gyrus (MTG), angular gyrus (AG), inferior frontal gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus, whereas pseudo-reading produced activation in an attentional network that included anterior/posterior cingulate and parietal cortex. These results are consistent with results found in previous single-saccade eye movement tasks and SVP reading studies, suggesting that component processes of eye-movement control and language processing observed in past fMRI research generalize to natural reading. The results also suggest that combining eyetracking and fMRI is a suitable method for investigating the component processes of natural reading in fMRI research.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Henderson2014a,

title = {Morphology of primary visual cortex predicts individual differences in fixation duration during text reading},

author = {John M. Henderson and Wonil Choi and Steven G. Luke},

doi = {10.1162/jocn_a_00668},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience},

volume = {26},

number = {12},

pages = {2880–2888},

abstract = {In skilled reading, fixations are brief periods of time in which the eyes settle on words. E-Z Reader, a computational model of dynamic reading, posits that fixation durations are under realtime control of lexical processing. Lexical processing, in turn, requires efficient visual encoding. Here we tested the hypothesis that individual differences in fixation durations are related to individual differences in the efficiency of early visual encoding. To test this hypothesis, we recorded participantsʼ eye movements during reading. We then examined individual differences in fixation duration distributions as a function of individual differences in the morphology of primary visual cortex measured from MRI scans. The results showed that greater gray matter surface area and volume in visual cortex predicted shorter and less variable fixation durations in reading. These results suggest that individual differences in eye movements during skilled reading are related to initial visual encoding, consistent with models such as E-Z Reader that emphasize lexical control over fixation time.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Herweg2014,

title = {Functional magnetic resonance imaging of sensorimotor transformations in saccades and antisaccades},

author = {Nora A. Herweg and Bernd Weber and Anna-Maria Kasparbauer and Inga Meyhöfer and Maria Steffens and Nikolaos Smyrnis and Ulrich Ettinger},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.033},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {102},

pages = {848–860},

abstract = {Saccades to peripheral targets require a direct visuomotor transformation. In contrast, antisaccades, saccades in opposite direction of a peripheral target, require more complex transformation processes due to the inversion of the spatial vector. Here, the differential neural mechanisms underlying sensorimotor control in saccades and antisaccades were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3. T field strength in 22 human volunteers. We combined a task factor (prosaccades: look towards target; antisaccades: look away from target) with a parametric factor of transformation demand (single vs. multiple peripheral targets) in a two-factorial block design. Behaviorally, a greater number of peripheral targets resulted in decreased spatial accuracy and increased reaction times in antisaccades. No effects were seen on the percentage of antisaccade direction errors or on any prosaccade measures. Neurally, a greater number of targets led to increased BOLD signal in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) bilaterally. This effect was partially qualified by an interaction that extended into somatosensory cortex, indicating greater increases during antisaccades than prosaccades. The results implicate the PPC as a sensorimotor interface that is especially important in nonstandard mapping for antisaccades and point to a supportive role of somatosensory areas in antisaccade sensorimotor control, possibly by means of proprioceptive processes.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lahnakoski2014,

title = {Synchronous brain activity across individuals underlies shared psychological perspectives},

author = {Juha M. Lahnakoski and Enrico Glerean and Iiro P. Jääskeläinen and Jukka Hyönä and Riitta Hari and Mikko Sams and Lauri Nummenmaa},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.06.022},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {100},

pages = {316–324},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {For successful communication, we need to understand the external world consistently with others. This task requires sufficiently similar cognitive schemas or psychological perspectives that act as filters to guide the selection, interpretation and storage of sensory information, perceptual objects and events. Here we show that when individuals adopt a similar psychological perspective during natural viewing, their brain activity becomes synchronized in specific brain regions. We measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from 33 healthy participants who viewed a 10-min movie twice, assuming once a 'social' (detective) and once a 'non-social' (interior decorator) perspective to the movie events. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to derive multisubject voxelwise similarity measures (inter-subject correlations; ISCs) of functional MRI data. We used k-nearest-neighbor and support vector machine classifiers as well as a Mantel test on the ISC matrices to reveal brain areas wherein ISC predicted the participants' current perspective. ISC was stronger in several brain regions-most robustly in the parahippocampal gyrus, posterior parietal cortex and lateral occipital cortex-when the participants viewed the movie with similar rather than different perspectives. Synchronization was not explained by differences in visual sampling of the movies, as estimated by eye gaze. We propose that synchronous brain activity across individuals adopting similar psychological perspectives could be an important neural mechanism supporting shared understanding of the environment.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lawson2014,

title = {The habenula encodes negative motivational value associated with primary punishment in humans},

author = {Rebecca P. Lawson and Ben Seymour and Eleanor Loh and Antoine Lutti and Raymond J. Dolan and Peter Dayan and Nikolaus Weiskopf and Jonathan P. Roiser},

doi = {10.1073/pnas.1323586111},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},

volume = {111},

number = {32},

pages = {11858–11863},

abstract = {Learning what to approach, and what to avoid, involves assigning value to environmental cues that predict positive and negative events. Studies in animals indicate that the lateral habenula encodes the previously learned negative motivational value of stimuli. However, involvement of the habenula in dynamic trial-by-trial aversive learning has not been assessed, and the functional role of this structure in humans remains poorly characterized, in part, due to its small size. Using high-resolution functional neuroimaging and computational modeling of reinforcement learning, we demonstrate positive habenula responses to the dynamically changing values of cues signaling painful electric shocks, which predict behavioral suppression of responses to those cues across individuals. By contrast, negative habenula responses to monetary reward cue values predict behavioral invigoration. Our findings show that the habenula plays a key role in an online aversive learning system and in generating associated motivated behavior in humans.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lukasova2014,

title = {Test-retest reliability of fMRI activation generated by different saccade tasks},

author = {Katerina Lukasova and Jens Sommer and Mariana P. Nucci-Da-Silva and Gilson Vieira and Marius Blanke and Frank Bremmer and João R. Sato and Tilo Kircher and Edson Amaro},

doi = {10.1002/jmri.24369},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging},

volume = {40},

number = {1},

pages = {37–46},

abstract = {PURPOSE: To assess the reproducibility of brain-activation and eye-movement patterns in a saccade paradigm when comparing subjects, tasks, and magnetic resonance (MR) systems. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-five healthy adults at two different sites (n = 45) performed saccade tasks with varying levels of target predictability: predictable (PRED), position predictable (pPRED), time predictable (tPRED), and prosaccade (SAC). Eye-movement pattern was tested with a repeated-measures analysis of variance. Activation maps reproducibility were estimated with the cluster overlap Jaccard index and signal variance coefficient of determination for within-subjects test-retest data, and for between-subjects data from the same and different sites. RESULTS: In all groups latencies increased with decreasing target predictability: PRED < pPRED < tPRED < SAC (P < 0,001). Activation overlap was good to fair (>0.40) in all tasks in the within-subjects test-retest comparisons and poor (<0.40) in the tPRED for different subjects. The overlap of the different tasks for within-groups data was higher (0.40-0.68) than for the between-groups data (0.30-0.50). Activation consistency was 60-85% in the same subjects, 50-79% in different subjects, and 50-80% in different sites. In SAC, the activation found in the same and in different subjects was more consistent than in other tasks (50-80%). CONCLUSION: The predictive saccade tasks produced evidence for brain-activation and eye-movement reproducibility},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Maloney2014,

title = {Determinants of motion response anisotropies in human early visual cortex: The role of configuration and eccentricity},

author = {Ryan T. Maloney and Tamara L. Watson and Colin W. G. Clifford},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.06.057},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {100},

pages = {564–579},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Anisotropies in the cortical representation of various stimulus parameters can reveal the fundamental mechanisms by which sensory properties are analysed and coded by the brain. One example is the preference for motion radial to the point of fixation (i.e. centripetal or centrifugal) exhibited in mammalian visual cortex. In two experiments, this study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the determinants of these radial biases for motion in functionally-defined areas of human early visual cortex, and in particular their dependence upon eccentricity which has been indicated in recent reports. In one experiment, the cortical response to wide-field random dot kinematograms forming 16 different complex motion patterns (including centrifugal, centripetal, rotational and spiral motion) was measured. The response was analysed according to preferred eccentricity within four different eccentricity ranges. Response anisotropies were characterised by enhanced activity for centripetal or centrifugal patterns that changed systematically with eccentricity in visual areas V1-V3 and hV4 (but not V3A/B or V5/MT. +). Responses evolved from a preference for centrifugal over centripetal patterns close to the fovea, to a preference for centripetal over centrifugal at the most peripheral region stimulated, in agreement with previous work. These effects were strongest in V2 and V3. In a second experiment, the stimuli were restricted to within narrow annuli either close to the fovea (0.75-1.88°) or further in the periphery (4.82-6.28°), in a way that preserved the local motion information available in the first experiment. In this configuration a preference for radial motion (centripetal or centrifugal) persisted but the dependence upon eccentricity disappeared. Again this was clearest in V2 and V3. A novel interpretation of the dependence upon eccentricity of motion anisotropies in early visual cortex is offered that takes into account the spatiotemporal "predictability" of the moving pattern. Such stimulus predictability, and its relationship to models of predictive coding, has found considerable support in recent years in accounting for a number of other perceptual and neural phenomena.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Pfeiffer2014a,

title = {Why we interact: On the functional role of the striatum in the subjective experience of social interaction},

author = {Ulrich J. Pfeiffer and Leonhard Schilbach and Bert Timmermans and Bojana Kuzmanovic and Alexandra L. Georgescu and Gary Bente and Kai Vogeley},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.06.061},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {101},

pages = {124–137},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {There is ample evidence that human primates strive for social contact and experience interactions with conspecifics as intrinsically rewarding. Focusing on gaze behavior as a crucial means of human interaction, this study employed a unique combination of neuroimaging, eye-tracking, and computer-animated virtual agents to assess the neural mechanisms underlying this component of behavior. In the interaction task, participants believed that during each interaction the agent's gaze behavior could either be controlled by another participant or by a computer program. Their task was to indicate whether they experienced a given interaction as an interaction with another human participant or the computer program based on the agent's reaction. Unbeknownst to them, the agent was always controlled by a computer to enable a systematic manipulation of gaze reactions by varying the degree to which the agent engaged in joint attention. This allowed creating a tool to distinguish neural activity underlying the subjective experience of being engaged in social and non-social interaction. In contrast to previous research, this allows measuring neural activity while participants experience active engagement in real-time social interactions. Results demonstrate that gaze-based interactions with a perceived human partner are associated with activity in the ventral striatum, a core component of reward-related neurocircuitry. In contrast, interactions with a computer-driven agent activate attention networks. Comparisons of neural activity during interaction with behaviorally naïve and explicitly cooperative partners demonstrate different temporal dynamics of the reward system and indicate that the mere experience of engagement in social interaction is sufficient to recruit this system.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Richlan2014,

title = {Fixation-related fMRI analysis in the domain of reading research: Using self-paced eye movements as markers for hemodynamic brain responses during visual letter string processing},

author = {Fabio Richlan and Benjamin Gagl and Stefan Hawelka and Mario Braun and Matthias Schurz and Martin Kronbichler and Florian Hutzler},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bht117},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Cerebral Cortex},

volume = {24},

number = {10},

pages = {2647–2656},

abstract = {The present study investigated the feasibility of using self-paced eye movements during reading (measured by an eye tracker) as markers for calculating hemodynamic brain responses measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Specifically, we were interested in whether the fixation-related fMRI analysis approach was sensitive enough to detect activation differences between reading material (words and pseudowords) and nonreading material (line and unfamiliar Hebrew strings). Reliable reading-related activation was identified in left hemisphere superior temporal, middle temporal, and occipito-temporal regions including the visual word form area (VWFA). The results of the present study are encouraging insofar as fixation-related analysis could be used in future fMRI studies to clarify some of the inconsistent findings in the literature regarding the VWFA. Our study is the first step in investigating specific visual word recognition processes during self-paced natural sentence reading via simultaneous eye tracking and fMRI, thus aiming at an ecologically valid measurement of reading processes. We provided the proof of concept and methodological framework for the analysis of fixation-related fMRI activation in the domain of reading research.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Schneider2014a,

title = {Implicit false-belief processing in the human brain},

author = {Dana Schneider and Virginia P. Slaughter and Stefanie I. Becker and Paul E. Dux},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.07.014},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {101},

pages = {268–275},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Eye-movement patterns in 'Sally-Anne' tasks reflect humans' ability to implicitly process the mental states of others, particularly false-beliefs - a key theory of mind (ToM) operation. It has recently been proposed that an efficient ToM system, which operates in the absence of awareness (implicit ToM, iToM), subserves the analysis of belief-like states. This contrasts to consciously available belief processing, performed by the explicit ToM system (eToM). The frontal, temporal and parietal cortices are engaged when humans explicitly 'mentalize' about others' beliefs. However, the neural underpinnings of implicit false-belief processing and the extent to which they draw on networks involved in explicit general-belief processing are unknown. Here, participants watched 'Sally-Anne' movies while fMRI and eye-tracking measures were acquired simultaneously. Participants displayed eye-movements consistent with implicit false-belief processing. After independently localizing the brain areas involved in explicit general-belief processing, only the left anterior superior temporal sulcus and precuneus revealed greater blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity for false- relative to true-belief trials in our iToM paradigm. No such difference was found for the right temporal-parietal junction despite significant activity in this area. These findings fractionate brain regions that are associated with explicit general ToM reasoning and false-belief processing in the absence of awareness.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Elk2014,

title = {The left inferior parietal lobe represents stored hand-postures for object use and action prediction},

author = {Michiel Elk and Michiel Elk},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00333},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {5},

pages = {333},

abstract = {Action semantics enables us to plan actions with objects and to predict others' object-directed actions as well. Previous studies have suggested that action semantics are represented in a fronto-parietal action network that has also been implicated to play a role in action observation. In the present fMRI study it was investigated how activity within this network changes as a function of the predictability of an action involving multiple objects and requiring the use of action semantics. Participants performed an action prediction task in which they were required to anticipate the use of a centrally presented object that could be moved to an associated target object (e.g., hammer-nail). The availability of actor information (i.e., presenting a hand grasping the central object) and the number of possible target objects (i.e., 0, 1, or 2 target objects) were independently manipulated, resulting in different levels of predictability. It was found that making an action prediction based on actor information resulted in an increased activation in the extrastriate body area (EBA) and the fronto-parietal action observation network (AON). Predicting actions involving a target object resulted in increased activation in the bilateral IPL and frontal motor areas. Within the AON, activity in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and the left premotor cortex (PMC) increased as a function of the level of action predictability. Together these findings suggest that the left IPL represents stored hand-postures that can be used for planning object-directed actions and for predicting other's actions as well.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wang2014h,

title = {Motion direction biases and decoding in human visual cortex},

author = {H. X. Wang and Elisha P. Merriam and Jeremy Freeman and David J. Heeger},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1034-14.2014},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {34},

number = {37},

pages = {12601–12615},

abstract = {Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have relied on multivariate analysis methods to decode visual motion direction from measurements of cortical activity. Above-chance decoding has been commonly used to infer the motion-selective response properties of the underlying neural populations. Moreover, patterns of reliable response biases across voxels that underlie decoding have been interpreted to reflect maps of functional architecture. Using fMRI, we identified a direction-selective response bias in human visual cortex that: (1) predicted motion-decoding accuracy; (2) depended on the shape of the stimulus aperture rather than the absolute direction of motion, such that response amplitudes gradually decreased with distance from the stimulus aperture edge corresponding to motion origin; and 3) was present in V1, V2, V3, but not evident in MT+, explaining the higher motion-decoding accuracies reported previously in early visual cortex. These results demonstrate that fMRI-based motion decoding has little or no dependence on the underlying functional organization of motion selectivity.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Baldauf2014,

title = {Neural mechanisms of object-based attention},

author = {Daniel Baldauf and Robert Desimone},

doi = {10.1126/science.1247003},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Science},

volume = {344},

number = {6182},

pages = {424–427},

abstract = {How we attend to objects and their features that cannot be separated by location is not understood. We presented two temporally and spatially overlapping streams of objects, faces versus houses, and used magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to separate neuronal responses to attended and unattended objects. Attention to faces versus houses enhanced the sensory responses in the fusiform face area (FFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA), respectively. The increases in sensory responses were accompanied by induced gamma synchrony between the inferior frontal junction, IFJ, and either FFA or PPA, depending on which object was attended. The IFJ appeared to be the driver of the synchrony, as gamma phases were advanced by 20 ms in IFJ compared to FFA or PPA. Thus, the IFJ may direct the flow of visual processing during object-based attention, at least in part through coupled oscillations with specialized areas such as FFA and PPA. W},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{He2014,

title = {Face-sensitive brain responses measured from a four-year-old child with a custom-sized child MEG system},

author = {Wei He and Jon Brock and Blake W. Johnson},

doi = {10.1016/j.jneumeth.2013.11.020},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience Methods},

volume = {222},

pages = {213–217},

publisher = {222},

abstract = {Background: Previous magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have failed to find a facesensitive, brain response-M170 in children. If this is the case, this suggests that the developmental trajectory of the M170 is different from that of its electrical equivalent, the N170. We investigated the alternative possibility that the child M170 may not be detectable in conventional adult-sized MEG systems. New method: Brain responses to pictures of faces and well controlled stimuli were measured from the same four-year-old child with a custom child MEG system and an adult-sized MEG system. Results: The goodness of fit of the child's head was about the same over the occipital head surface in both systems, but was much worse over all other parts of the head surface in the adult MEG system compared to the child MEG system. The face-sensitive M170 was measured from the child in both MEG systems, but was larger in amplitude, clearer in morphology, and had a more accurate source localization when measured in the child MEG system. Comparison with existing method: The custom-sized child MEG system is superior for measuring the face-sensitive M170 brain response in children than the conventional adult MEG system. Conclusions: The present results show that the face-sensitive M170 brain response can be elicited in a four-year-old child. This provides new evidence for early maturation of face processing brain mechanisms in humans, and offers new opportunities for the study of neurodevelopmental disorders that show atypical face processing capabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Park2014a,

title = {Spontaneous fluctuations in neural responses to heartbeats predict visual detection},

author = {Hyeong Dong Park and Stéphanie Correia and Antoine Ducorps and Catherine Tallon-Baudry},

doi = {10.1038/nn.3671},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Nature Neuroscience},

volume = {17},

number = {4},

pages = {612–618},

abstract = {Spontaneous fluctuations of ongoing neural activity substantially affect sensory and cognitive performance. Because bodily signals are constantly relayed up to the neocortex, neural responses to bodily signals are likely to shape ongoing activity. Here, using magnetoencephalography, we show that in humans, neural events locked to heartbeats before stimulus onset predict the detection of a faint visual grating in the posterior right inferior parietal lobule and the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, two regions that have multiple functional correlates and that belong to the same resting-state network. Neither fluctuations in measured bodily parameters nor overall cortical excitability could account for this finding. Neural events locked to heartbeats therefore shape visual conscious experience, potentially by contributing to the neural maps of the organism that might underlie subjectivity. Beyond conscious vision, our results show that neural events locked to a basic physiological input such as heartbeats underlie behaviorally relevant differential activation in multifunctional cortical areas.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Isik2014,

title = {The dynamics of invariant object recognition in the human visual system},

author = {Leyla Isik and Ethan M. Meyers and Joel Z. Leibo and Tomaso Poggio},

doi = {10.1152/jn.00394.2013},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neurophysiology},

volume = {111},

number = {1},

pages = {91–102},

abstract = {The human visual system can rapidly recognize objects despite transformations that alter their appearance. The precise timing of when the brain computes neural representations that are invariant to particular transformations, however, has not been mapped in humans. Here we employ magnetoencephalography decoding analysis to measure the dynamics of size- and position-invariant visual information development in the ventral visual stream. With this method we can read out the identity of objects beginning as early as 60 ms. Size- and position-invariant visual information appear around 125 ms and 150 ms, respectively, and both develop in stages, with invariance to smaller transformations arising before invariance to larger transformations. Additionally, the magnetoencephalography sensor activity localizes to neural sources that are in the most posterior occipital regions at the early decoding times and then move temporally as invariant information develops. These results provide previously unknown latencies for key stages of human-invariant object recognition, as well as new and compelling evidence for a feed-forward hierarchical model of invariant object recognition where invariance increases at each successive visual area along the ventral stream.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Pylkkaenen2014,

title = {Building phrases in language production: An MEG study of simple composition},

author = {Liina Pylkkänen and Douglas K. Bemis and Estibaliz Blanco Elorrieta},

doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.001},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Cognition},

volume = {133},

number = {2},

pages = {371–384},

abstract = {Although research on language production has developed detailed maps of the brain basis of single word production in both time and space, little is known about the spatiotemporal dynamics of the processes that combine individual words into larger representations during production. Studying composition in production is challenging due to difficulties both in controlling produced utterances and in measuring the associated brain responses. Here, we circumvent both problems using a minimal composition paradigm combined with the high temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG). With MEG, we measured the planning stages of simple adjective-noun phrases ('red tree'), matched list controls ('red, blue'), and individual nouns ('tree') and adjectives ('red'), with results indicating combinatorial processing in the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and left anterior temporal lobe (LATL), two regions previously implicated for the comprehension of similar phrases. These effects began relatively quickly (~180 ms) after the presentation of a production prompt, suggesting that combination commences with initial lexical access. Further, while in comprehension, vmPFC effects have followed LATL effects, in this production paradigm vmPFC effects occurred mostly in parallel with LATL effects, suggesting that a late process in comprehension is an early process in production. Thus, our results provide a novel neural bridge between psycholinguistic models of comprehension and production that posit functionally similar combinatorial mechanisms operating in reversed order.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Westerlund2014,

title = {The role of the left anterior temporal lobe in semantic composition vs. semantic memory},

author = {Masha Westerlund and Liina Pylkkänen},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.03.001},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Neuropsychologia},

volume = {57},

number = {1},

pages = {59–70},

publisher = {Elsevier},

abstract = {The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is robustly implicated in semantic processing by a growing body of literature. However, these results have emerged from two distinct bodies of work, addressing two different processing levels. On the one hand, the LATL has been characterized as a 'semantic hub׳ that binds features of concepts across a distributed network, based on results from semantic dementia and hemodynamic findings on the categorization of specific compared to basic exemplars. On the other, the LATL has been implicated in combinatorial operations in language, as shown by increased activity in this region associated with the processing of sentences and of basic phrases. The present work aimed to reconcile these two literatures by independently manipulating combination and concept specificity within a minimal MEG paradigm. Participants viewed simple nouns that denoted either low specificity (fish) or high specificity categories (trout) presented in either combinatorial (spotted fish/trout) or non-combinatorial contexts (xhsl fish/trout). By combining these paradigms from the two literatures, we directly compared the engagement of the LATL in semantic memory vs. semantic composition. Our results indicate that although noun specificity subtly modulates the LATL activity elicited by single nouns, it most robustly affects the size of the composition effect when these nouns are adjectivally modified, with low specificity nouns eliciting a much larger effect. We conclude that these findings are compatible with an account in which the specificity and composition effects arise from a shared mechanism of meaning specification.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Horschig2014,

title = {Alpha activity reflects individual abilities to adapt to the environment},

author = {Jörn M. Horschig and Ole Jensen and Martine R. Schouwenburg and Roshan Cools and Mathilde Bonnefond},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.12.018},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {89},

pages = {235–243},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Recent findings suggest that oscillatory alpha activity (7-13. Hz) is associated with functional inhibition of sensory regions by filtering incoming information. Accordingly the alpha power in visual regions varies in anticipation of upcoming, predictable stimuli which has consequences for visual processing and subsequent behavior. In covert spatial attention studies it has been demonstrated that performance correlates with the adaptation of alpha power in response to explicit spatial cueing. However it remains unknown whether such an adaptation also occurs in response to implicit statistical properties of a task. In a covert attention switching paradigm, we here show evidence that individuals differ on how they adapt to implicit statistical properties of the task. Subjects whose behavioral performance reflects the implicit change in switch trial likelihood show strong adjustment of anticipatory alpha power lateralization. Most importantly, the stronger the behavioral adjustment to the switch trial likelihood was, the stronger the adjustment of anticipatory posterior alpha lateralization. We conclude that anticipatory spatial attention is reflected in the distribution of posterior alpha band power which is predictive of individual detection performance in response to the implicit statistical properties of the task.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Riggs2014,

title = {Association with emotional information alters subsequent processing of neutral faces},

author = {Lily Riggs and Takako Fujioka and Jessica Chan and Douglas A. McQuiggan and Adam K. Anderson and Jennifer D. Ryan},

doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2014.01001},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},

volume = {8},

pages = {1001},

abstract = {The processing of emotional as compared to neutral information is associated with different patterns in eye movement and neural activity. However, the 'emotionality' of a stimulus can be conveyed not only by its physical properties, but also by the information that is presented with it. There is very limited work examining the how emotional information may influence the immediate perceptual processing of otherwise neutral information. We examined how presenting an emotion label for a neutral face may influence subsequent processing by using eye movement monitoring (EMM) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) simultaneously. Participants viewed a series of faces with neutral expressions. Each face was followed by a unique negative or neutral sentence to describe that person, and then the same face was presented in isolation again. Viewing of faces paired with a negative sentence was associated with increased early viewing of the eye region and increased neural activity between 600 and 1200 ms in emotion processing regions such as the cingulate, medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala, as well as posterior regions such as the precuneus and occipital cortex. Viewing of faces paired with a neutral sentence was associated with increased activity in the parahippocampal gyrus during the same time window. By monitoring behavior and neural activity within the same paradigm, these findings demonstrate that emotional information alters subsequent visual scanning and the neural systems that are presumably invoked to maintain a representation of the neutral information along with its emotional details.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Shigihara2014,

title = {Parallel processing of face and house stimuli by V1 and specialized visual areas: A magnetoencephalographic (MEG) study},

author = {Yoshihito Shigihara and Semir Zeki},

doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2014.00901},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},

volume = {8},

pages = {901},

abstract = {We used easily distinguishable stimuli of faces and houses constituted from straight lines, with the aim of learning whether they activate V1 on the one hand, and the specialized areas that are critical for the processing of faces and houses on the other, with similar latencies. Eighteen subjects took part in the experiment, which used magnetoencephalography (MEG) coupled to analytical methods to detect the time course of the earliest responses which these stimuli provoke in these cortical areas. Both categories of stimuli activated V1 and areas of the visual cortex outside it at around 40 ms after stimulus onset, and the amplitude elicited by face stimuli was significantly larger than that elicited by house stimuli. These results suggest that "low-level" and "high-level" features of form stimuli are processed in parallel by V1 and visual areas outside it. Taken together with our previous results on the processing of simple geometric forms (Shgihara and Zeki, 2013; Shigihara and Zeki, 2014), the present ones reinforce the conclusion that parallel processing is an important component in the strategy used by the brain to process and construct forms.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Spaak2014,

title = {Local entrainment of alpha oscillations by visual stimuli causes cyclic modulation of perception},

author = {Eelke Spaak and Floris P. Lange and Ole Jensen},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4385-13.2014},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {34},

number = {10},

pages = {3536–3544},

abstract = {Prestimulus oscillatory neural activity in the visual cortex has large consequences for perception and can be influenced by top-down control from higher-order brain regions. Making a causal claim about the mechanistic role of oscillatory activity requires that oscillations be directly manipulated independently of cognitive instructions. There are indications that a direct manipulation, or entrainment, of visual alpha activity is possible through visual stimulation. However, three important questions remain: (1) Can the entrained alpha activity be endogenously maintained in the absence of continuous stimulation?; (2) Does entrainment of alpha activity reflect a global or a local process?; and (3) Does the entrained alpha activity influence perception? To address these questions, we presented human subjects with rhythmic stimuli in one visual hemifield, and arhythmic stimuli in the other. After rhythmic entrainment, we found a periodic pattern in detection performance of near-threshold targets specific to the entrained hemifield. Using magnetoencephalograhy to measure ongoing brain activity, we observed strong alpha activity contralateral to the rhythmic stimulation outlasting the stimulation by several cycles. This entrained alpha activity was produced locally in early visual cortex, as revealed by source analysis. Importantly, stronger alpha entrainment predicted a stronger phasic modulation of detection performance in the entrained hemifield. These findings argue for a cortically focal entrainment of ongoing alpha oscillations by visual stimulation, with concomitant consequences for perception. Our results support the notion that oscillatory brain activity in the alpha band provides a causal mechanism for the temporal organization of visual perception.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Leffel2014,

title = {Restrictive vs. non-restrictive composition: A magnetoencephalography study},

author = {Timothy Leffel and Miriam Lauter and Masha Westerlund and Liina Pylkkänen},

doi = {10.1080/23273798.2014.956765},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

journal = {Language, Cognition and Neuroscience},

volume = {29},

number = {10},

pages = {1191–1204},

abstract = {Recent research on the brain mechanisms underlying language processing has implicated the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) as a central region for the composition of simple phrases. Because these studies typically present their critical stimuli without contextual information, the sensitivity of LATL responses to contextual factors is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we employed a simple question-answer paradigm to manipulate whether a prenominal adjective or determiner is interpreted restrictively, i.e., as limiting the set of entities under discussion. Our results show that the LATL is sensitive to restriction, with restrictive composition eliciting higher responses than non-restrictive composition. However, this effect was only observed when the restricting element was a determiner, adjectival stimuli showing the opposite pattern, which we hypothesise to be driven by the special pragmatic properties of non-restrictive adjectives. Overall, our results demonstrate a robust sensitivity of the LATL to high level contextual and potentially also pragmatic factors.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Aamand2013,

title = {A NO way to BOLD?: Dietary nitrate alters the hemodynamic response to visual stimulation},

author = {Rasmus Aamand and Thomas Dalsgaard and Yi-Ching Lynn Ho and Arne Møller and Andreas Roepstorff and Torben E. Lund},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.06.069},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-12-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {83},

pages = {397–407},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Neurovascular coupling links neuronal activity to vasodilation. Nitric oxide (NO) is a potent vasodilator, and in neurovascular coupling NO production from NO synthases plays an important role. However, another pathway for NO production also exists, namely the nitrate-nitrite-NO pathway. On this basis, we hypothesized that dietary nitrate (NO3-) could influence the brain's hemodynamic response to neuronal stimulation. In the present study, 20 healthy male participants were given either sodium nitrate (NaNO3) or sodium chloride (NaCl) (saline placebo) in a crossover study and were shown visual stimuli based on the retinotopic characteristics of the visual cortex. Our primary measure of the hemodynamic response was the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response measured with high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (0.64×0.64×1.8mm) in the visual cortex. From this response, we made a direct estimate of key parameters characterizing the shape of the BOLD response (i.e. lag and amplitude). During elevated nitrate intake, corresponding to the nitrate content of a large plate of salad, both the hemodynamic lag and the BOLD amplitude decreased significantly (7.0±2% and 7.9±4%, respectively), and the variation across activated voxels of both measures decreased (12.3±4% and 15.3±7%, respectively). The baseline cerebral blood flow was not affected by nitrate. Ourexperiments demonstrate, for the first time, that dietary nitrate may modulate the local cerebral hemodynamic response to stimuli. A faster and smaller BOLD response, with less variation across local cortex, is consistent with an enhanced hemodynamic coupling during elevated nitrate intake. These findings suggest that dietary patterns, via the nitrate-nitrite-NO pathway, may be a potential way to affect key properties of neurovascular coupling. This could have major clinical implications, which remain to be explored.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Merriam2013,

title = {Modulation of visual responses by gaze direction in human visual cortex},

author = {Elisha P. Merriam and Justin L. Gardner and J. Anthony Movshon and David J. Heeger},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0500-12.2013},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {33},

number = {24},

pages = {9879–9889},

abstract = {To locate visual objects, the brain combines information about retinal location and direction of gaze. Studies in monkeys have demon-strated that eye position modulates the gain of visual signals with " gain fields, " so that single neurons represent both retinotopic location and eye position. We wished to know whether eye position and retinotopic stimulus location are both represented in human visual cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured separately for each of several different gaze positions cortical responses to stimuli that varied periodically in retinal locus. Visually evoked responses were periodic following the periodic retinotopic stimulation. Only the response amplitudes depended on eye position; response phases were indistinguishable across eye positions. We used multi-voxel pattern analysis to decode eye position from the spatial pattern of response amplitudes. The decoder reliably discriminated eye position in five of the early visual cortical areas by taking advantage of a spatially heterogeneous eye position-dependent modulation of cortical activity. We conclude that responses in retinotopically organized visual cortical areas are modulated by gain fields qualitatively similar to those previously observed neurophysiologically.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{OReilly2013,

title = {Dissociable effects of surprise and model update in parietal and anterior cingulate cortex},

author = {Jill X. O'Reilly and Urs Schuffelgen and Steven F. Cuell and Timothy E. J. Behrens and Rogier B. Mars and Matthew F. S. Rushworth},

doi = {10.1073/pnas.1305373110},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},

volume = {110},

number = {38},

pages = {E3660–E3669},

abstract = {Brains use predictive models to facilitate the processing of expected stimuli or planned actions. Under a predictive model, surprising (low probability) stimuli or actions necessitate the immediate reallocation of processing resources, but they can also signal the need to update the underlying predictive model to reflect changes in the environment. Surprise and updating are often correlated in experimental paradigms but are, in fact, distinct constructs that can be formally defined as the Shannon information (IS) and Kullback-Leibler divergence (DKL) associated with an observation. In a saccadic planning task, we observed that distinct behaviors and brain regions are associated with surprise/IS and updating/DKL. Although surprise/IS was associated with behavioral reprogramming as indexed by slower reaction times, as well as with activity in the posterior parietal cortex [human lateral intraparietal area (LIP)], the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was specifically activated during updating of the predictive model (DKL). A second saccade-sensitive region in the inferior posterior parietal cortex (human 7a), which has connections to both LIP and ACC, was activated by surprise and modulated by updating. Pupillometry revealed a further dissociation between surprise and updating with an early positive effect of surprise and late negative effect of updating on pupil area. These results give a computational account of the roles of the ACC and two parietal saccade regions, LIP and 7a, by which their involvement in diverse tasks can be understood mechanistically. The dissociation of functional roles between regions within the reorienting/reprogramming network may also inform models of neurological phenomena, such as extinction and Balint syndrome, and neglect.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bender2013,

title = {Differential roles of the frontal and parietal cortices in the control of saccades},

author = {Julia Bender and Kyeong Jin Tark and Benedikt Reuter and Norbert Kathmann and Clayton E. Curtis},

doi = {10.1016/j.bandc.2013.06.005},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Brain and Cognition},

volume = {83},

number = {1},

pages = {1–9},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Although externally as well as internally-guided eye movements allow us to flexibly explore the visual environment, their differential neural mechanisms remain elusive. A better understanding of these neural mechanisms will help us to understand the control of action and to elucidate the nature of cognitive deficits in certain psychiatric populations (e.g. schizophrenia) that show increased latencies in volitional but not visually-guided saccades. Both the superior precentral sulcus (sPCS) and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) are implicated in the control of eye movements. However, it remains unknown what differential contributions the two areas make to the programming of visually-guided and internally-guided saccades. In this study we tested the hypotheses that sPCS and IPS distinctly encode internally-guided saccades and visually-guided saccades. We scanned subjects with fMRI while they generated visually-guided and internally-guided delayed saccades. We used multi-voxel pattern analysis to test whether patterns of cue related, preparatory and saccade related activation could be used to predict the direction of the planned eye movement. Results indicate that patterns in the human sPCS predicted internally-guided saccades but not visually-guided saccades in all trial periods and patterns in the IPS predicted internally-guided saccades and visually-guided saccades equally well. The results support the hypothesis that the human sPCS and IPS make distinct contributions to the control of volitional eye movements.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ferri2013,

title = {Neural correlates of attentional deployment within unpleasant pictures},

author = {Jamie Ferri and Joseph Schmidt and Greg Hajcak and Turhan Canli},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.12.030},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {70},

pages = {268–277},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Attentional deployment is an emotion regulation strategy that involves shifting attentional focus towards or away from particular aspects of emotional stimuli. Previous studies have highlighted the prevalence of attentional deployment and demonstrated that it can have a significant impact on brain activity and behavior. However, little is known about the neural correlates of this strategy. The goal of the present studies was to examine the effect of attentional deployment on neural activity by directing attention to more or less arousing portions of unpleasant images. In Studies 1 and 2, participants passively viewed counterbalanced blocks of unpleasant images without a focus, unpleasant images with an arousing focus, unpleasant images with a non-arousing focus, neutral images without a focus, and neutral images with a non-arousing focus for 4000. ms each. In Study 2, eye-tracking data were collected on all participants during image acquisition. In both studies, affect ratings following each block indicated that participants felt significantly less negative affect after viewing unpleasant images with a non-arousing focus compared to unpleasant images with an arousing focus. In both studies, the unpleasant non-arousing focus condition compared to the unpleasant arousing focus condition was associated with increased activity in frontal and parietal regions implicated in inhibitory control and visual attention. In Study 2, the unpleasant non-arousing focus condition compared to the unpleasant arousing focus condition was associated with reduced activity in the amygdala and visual cortex. Collectively these data suggest that attending to a non-arousing portion of an unpleasant image successfully reduces subjective negative affect and recruits fronto-parietal networks implicated in inhibitory control. Moreover, when ensuring task compliance by monitoring eye movements, attentional deployment modulates amygdala activity.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Freeman2013,

title = {Coarse-scale biases for spirals and orientation in human visual cortex},

author = {Jeremy Freeman and David J. Heeger and Elisha P. Merriam},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0889-13.2013},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {33},

number = {50},

pages = {19695–19703},

abstract = {Multivariate decoding analyses are widely applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, but there is controversy over their interpretation. Orientation decoding in primary visual cortex (V1) reflects coarse-scale biases, including an over-representation of radial orientations. But fMRI responses to clockwise and counter-clockwise spirals can also be decoded. Because these stimuli are matched for radial orientation, while differing in local orientation, it has been argued that fine-scale columnar selectivity for orientation contributes to orientation decoding. We measured fMRI responses in human V1 to both oriented gratings and spirals. Responses to oriented gratings exhibited a complex topography, including a radial bias that was most pronounced in the peripheral representation, and a near-vertical bias that was most pronounced near the foveal representation. Responses to clockwise and counter-clockwise spirals also exhibited coarse-scale organization, at the scale of entire visual quadrants. The preference of each voxel for clockwise or counter-clockwise spirals was predicted from the preferences of that voxel for orientation and spatial position (i.e., within the retinotopic map). Our results demonstrate a bias for local stimulus orientation that has a coarse spatial scale, is robust across stimulus classes (spirals and gratings), and suffices to explain decoding from fMRI responses in V1.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Greenberg2013,

title = {Neural reactivity tracks fear generalization gradients},

author = {Tsafrir Greenberg and Joshua M. Carlson and Jiook Cha and Greg Hajcak and Lilianne R. Mujica-Parodi},

doi = {10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.12.007},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Biological Psychology},

volume = {92},

number = {1},

pages = {2–8},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {Recent studies on fear generalization have demonstrated that fear-potentiated startle and skin conductance responses to a conditioned stimulus (CS) generalize to similar stimuli, with the strength of the fear response linked to perceptual similarity to the CS. The aim of the present study was to extend this work by examining neural correlates of fear generalization. An initial experiment (N= 8) revealed that insula reactivity tracks the conditioned fear gradient. We then replicated this effect in a larger independent sample (N= 25). Activation in the insula, anterior cingulate, right supplementary motor cortex and caudate increased reactivity as generalization stimuli (GS) were more similar to the CS, consistent with participants' overall ratings of perceived shock likelihood and pupillary response to each stimulus.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Greenberg2013a,

title = {Ventromedial prefrontal cortex reactivity is altered in generalized anxiety disorder during fear generalization},

author = {Tsafrir Greenberg and Joshua M. Carlson and Jiook Cha and Greg Hajcak and Lilianne R. Mujica-Parodi},

doi = {10.1002/da.22016},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Depression and Anxiety},

volume = {30},

number = {3},

pages = {242–250},

abstract = {BACKGROUND: Fear generalization is thought to contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety symptoms and accordingly has been the focus of recent research. Previously, we reported that in healthy individuals (N = 25) neural reactivity in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), supplementary motor area (SMA), and caudate follow a generalization gradient with a peak response to a conditioned stimulus (CS) that declines with greater perceptual dissimilarity of generalization stimuli (GS) to the CS. In contrast, reactivity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a region linked to fear inhibition, showed an opposite response pattern. The aim of the current study was to examine whether neural responses to fear generalization differ in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). A second aim was to examine connectivity of primary regions engaged by the generalization task in the GAD group versus healthy group, using psychophysiological interaction analysis. METHODS: Thirty-two women diagnosed with GAD were scanned using the same generalization task as our healthy group. RESULTS: Individuals with GAD exhibited a less discriminant vmPFC response pattern suggestive of deficient recruitment of vmPFC during fear inhibition. Across participants, there was enhanced anterior insula (aINS) coupling with the posterior insula, ACC, SMA, and amygdala during presentation of the CS, consistent with a modulatory role for the aINS in the execution of fear responses. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that deficits in fear regulation, rather than in the excitatory response itself, are more critical to the pathophysiology of GAD in the context of fear generalization.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Shigihara2013,

title = {Parallelism in the brain's visual form system},

author = {Yoshihito Shigihara and Semir Zeki},

doi = {10.1111/ejn.12371},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {European Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {38},

number = {12},

pages = {3712–3720},

abstract = {We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine whether increasingly complex forms constituted from the same elements (lines) activate visual cortex with the same or different latencies. Twenty right-handed healthy adult volunteers viewed two different forms, lines and rhomboids, representing two levels of complexity. Our results showed that the earliest responses produced by lines and rhomboids in both striate and prestriate cortex had similar peak latencies (40 ms) although lines produced stronger responses than rhomboids. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) showed that a parallel multiple input model to striate and prestriate cortex accounts best for the MEG response data. These results lead us to conclude that the perceptual hierarchy between lines and rhomboids is not mirrored by a temporal hierarchy in latency of activation and thus that a strategy of parallel processing appears to be used to construct forms, without implying that a hierarchical strategy may not be used in separate visual areas, in parallel.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{VanPelt2013,

title = {Visual stimulus eccentricity affects human gamma peak frequency},

author = {Stan Van Pelt and Pascal Fries},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.04.040},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {78},

pages = {439–447},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {The peak frequency of neuronal gamma-band synchronization has received much attention in recent years. Gamma peak frequency shifts to higher frequency values for higher contrast, faster moving, and attended stimuli. In monkey V1, gamma peak frequency for a drifting grating is higher for a parafoveal as compared to an eccentric stimulus (Lima et al., 2010). This effect might be due to the cortical magnification factor: the higher cortical magnification for parafoveal stimuli increases the velocity with which the cortical representations of the moving grating stripes move across the cortical surface. Since faster moving stimuli lead to higher gamma frequency, a faster moving cortical representation might do the same. This explanation predicts that the eccentricity effect on gamma peak frequency is absent for stationary stimuli. To test this, we investigated the effect of eccentricity on gamma peak frequency by recording magnetoencephalography in human subjects while they viewed moving or stationary gratings. We found that both the moving and the stationary stimuli induced lower peak frequencies for larger eccentricities, arguing against an explanation based on the cortical magnification factor. We further investigated whether this eccentricity effect was explained by differences in the size or the spatial frequency of the expected cortical activation. Neither of those explained the eccentricity effect. We propose that the different stimulus and top-down factors leading to higher gamma peak frequency all result in higher stimulus salience, that salience is translated into gamma peak frequency, and that gamma peak frequency might subserve the preferential processing of neuronal activity induced by salient stimuli.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Roijendijk2013,

title = {Exploring the impact of target eccentricity and task difficulty on covert visual spatial attention and its implications for brain computer interfacing},

author = {Linsey Roijendijk and Jason Farquhar and Marcel A. J. Gerven and Ole Jensen and Stan Gielen},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0080489},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {8},

number = {12},

pages = {e80489},

abstract = {OBJECTIVE: Covert visual spatial attention is a relatively new task used in brain computer interfaces (BCIs) and little is known about the characteristics which may affect performance in BCI tasks. We investigated whether eccentricity and task difficulty affect alpha lateralization and BCI performance. APPROACH: We conducted a magnetoencephalography study with 14 participants who performed a covert orientation discrimination task at an easy or difficult stimulus contrast at either a near (3.5°) or far (7°) eccentricity. Task difficulty was manipulated block wise and subjects were aware of the difficulty level of each block. MAIN RESULTS: Grand average analyses revealed a significantly larger hemispheric lateralization of posterior alpha power in the difficult condition than in the easy condition, while surprisingly no difference was found for eccentricity. The difference between task difficulty levels was significant in the interval between 1.85 s and 2.25 s after cue onset and originated from a stronger decrease in the contralateral hemisphere. No significant effect of eccentricity was found. Additionally, single-trial classification analysis revealed a higher classification rate in the difficult (65.9%) than in the easy task condition (61.1%). No effect of eccentricity was found in classification rate. SIGNIFICANCE: Our results indicate that manipulating the difficulty of a task gives rise to variations in alpha lateralization and that using a more difficult task improves covert visual spatial attention BCI performance. The variations in the alpha lateralization could be caused by different factors such as an increased mental effort or a higher visual attentional demand. Further research is necessary to discriminate between them. We did not discover any effect of eccentricity in contrast to results of previous research.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Nieuwenhuijzen2013,

title = {MEG-based decoding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of visual category perception},

author = {Marieke E. Nieuwenhuijzen and A. R. Backus and A. Bahramisharif and Christian F. Doeller and Ole Jensen and Marcel A. J. Gerven},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.075},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {83},

pages = {1063–1073},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Visual processing is a complex task which is best investigated using sensitive multivariate analysis methods that can capture representation-specific brain activity over both time and space. In this study, we applied a multivariate decoding algorithm to MEG data of subjects engaged in passive viewing of images of faces, scenes, bodies and tools. We used reconstructed source-space time courses as input to the algorithm in order to localize brain regions involved in optimal image discrimination. Applying this method to the interval of 115 to 315. ms after stimulus onset, we show a focal localization of regression coefficients in the inferior occipital, middle occipital, and lingual gyrus that drive decoding of the different perceived image categories. Classifier accuracy was highest (over 90% correctly classified trials, compared to a chance level accuracy of 50%) when dissociating the perception of faces from perception of other object categories. Furthermore, we applied this method to each single time point to extract the temporal evolution of visual perception. This allowed for the detection of differences in visual category perception as early as 85. ms after stimulus onset. Furthermore, localizing the corresponding regression coefficients of each time point allowed us to capture the spatiotemporal dynamics of visual category perception. This revealed initial involvement of sources in the inferior occipital, inferior temporal and superior occipital gyrus. During sustained stimulation additional sources in the anterior inferior temporal gyrus and superior parietal gyrus became involved. We conclude that decoding of source-space MEG data provides a suitable method to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of ongoing cognitive processing.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ramkumar2013,

title = {Feature-specific information processing precedes concerted activation in human visual cortex},

author = {Pavan Ramkumar and Mainak Jas and Sebastian Pannasch and Riitta Hari and Lauri Parkkonen},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3905-12.2013},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {33},

number = {18},

pages = {7691–7699},

abstract = {Current knowledge about the precise timing of visual input to the cortex relies largely on spike timings in monkeys and evoked-response latencies in humans. However, quantifying the activation onset does not unambiguously describe the timing of stimulus-feature-specific information processing. Here, we investigated the information content of the early human visual cortical activity by decoding low-level visual features from single-trial magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses. MEG was measured from nine healthy subjects as they viewed annular sinusoidal gratings (spanning the visual field from 2 to 10° for a duration of 1 s), characterized by spatial frequency (0.33 cycles/degree or 1.33 cycles/degree) and orientation (45° or 135°); gratings were either static or rotated clockwise or anticlockwise from 0 to 180°. Time-resolved classifiers using a 20 ms moving window exceeded chance level at 51 ms (the later edge of the window) for spatial frequency, 65 ms for orientation, and 98 ms for rotation direction. Decoding accuracies of spatial frequency and orientation peaked at 70 and 90 ms, respectively, coinciding with the peaks of the onset evoked responses. Within-subject time-insensitive pattern classifiers decoded spatial frequency and orientation simultaneously (mean accuracy 64%, chance 25%) and rotation direction (mean 82%, chance 50%). Classifiers trained on data from other subjects decoded the spatial frequency (73%), but not the orientation, nor the rotation direction. Our results indicate that unaveraged brain responses contain decodable information about low-level visual features already at the time of the earliest cortical evoked responses, and that representations of spatial frequency are highly robust across individuals.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tan2013,

title = {Gearing up for action: Attentive tracking dynamically tunes sensory and motor oscillations in the alpha and beta band},

author = {Heng Ru May Tan and Hartmut Leuthold and Joachim Gross},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.04.120},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-01-01},

journal = {NeuroImage},

volume = {82},

pages = {634–644},

publisher = {The Authors},

abstract = {Allocation of attention during goal-directed behavior entails simultaneous processing of relevant and attenuation of irrelevant information. How the brain delegates such processes when confronted with dynamic (biological motion) stimuli and harnesses relevant sensory information for sculpting prospective responses remains unclear. We analyzed neuromagnetic signals that were recorded while participants attentively tracked an actor's pointing movement that ended at the location where subsequently the response-cue indicated the required response. We found the observers' spatial allocation of attention to be dynamically reflected in lateralized parieto-occipital alpha (8-12. Hz) activity and to have a lasting influence on motor preparation. Specifically, beta (16-25. Hz) power modulation reflected observers' tendency to selectively prepare for a spatially compatible response even before knowing the required one. We discuss the observed frequency-specific and temporally evolving neural activity within a framework of integrated visuomotor processing and point towards possible implications about the mechanisms involved in action observation.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}