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2022 |
Ehsan Sedaghat-Nejad; Jay S. Pi; Paul Hage; Mohammad Amin Fakharian; Reza Shadmehr Synchronous spiking of cerebellar Purkinje cells during control of movements Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 14, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{SedaghatNejad2022, The ability of the brain to accurately control a movement depends on the cerebellum. Yet, how the cerebellar neurons encode information relevant for this control remains poorly understood. The computations that are performed in the cerebellar cortex are transmitted to its nuclei via Purkinje cells (P cells), which are inhibitory neurons. How- ever, if the spiking activity within P cell populations were temporally synchronized, that inhibition would entrain nucleus neurons, making them fire. Do P cells transmit information by synchronously timing their spikes? We simultaneously recorded from multiple P cells while marmosets performed saccadic eye movements, and organized the neurons into populations that shared a complex spike response to error. Before move- ment onset, this population ofP cells increased their simple spike activity with a magni- tude that depended on the velocity of the upcoming saccade, and then sharply reduced their activity below baseline at saccade onset. During deceleration, the spikes became temporally aligned within the population. Thus, the P cells relied on disinhibition, combined with spike synchronization, to convey to the nucleus when to decelerate and potentially stop the movement. |
Natela M. Shanidze; Zachary Lively; Rachel Lee; Preeti Verghese Saccadic contributions to smooth pursuit in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 200, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Shanidze2022, Saccades during smooth pursuit can help bring the fovea on target, particularly in cases of low pursuit gain. Individuals with macular degeneration often suffer damage to the central retina including the fovea, which impacts oculomotor function such as fixation, saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. We hypothesized that these oculomotor changes in macular degeneration (MD) would make saccades less appropriately directed (even if more numerous). To investigate saccades during pursuit in MD, we conducted a quantitative analysis of smooth pursuit eye movement data from a prior study, Vision Research 141 (2017) 181–190. Here we examined saccade frequency, magnitude, and direction across viewing conditions for MD and control participants during pursuit of a target moving in a modified step-ramp paradigm. Individuals with MD had more variability in saccade directions that included directions orthogonal to the target trajectory. PRL eccentricity significantly correlated with increases in saccades in non-target directions during smooth pursuit. These results suggest that a large number of saccades during pursuit in MD participants are unlikely to be catch-up saccades that serve to keep the eye on the target. |
Xiaoyu Tang; Mengying Yuan; Zhongyu Shi; Min Gao; Rongxia Ren; Wei Ming; Yulin Gao Multisensory integration attenuates visually induced oculomotor inhibition of return Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Tang2022, Inhibition of return (IOR) is a mechanism of the attention system involving bias toward novel stimuli and delayed generation of responses to targets at previously attended locations. According to the two-component theory, IOR consists of a perceptual component and an oculomotor component (oculomotor IOR [O-IOR]) depending on whether the eye movement system is activated. Previous studies have shown that multisensory integration weakens IOR when paying attention to both visual and auditory modalities. However, it remains unclear whether the O-IOR effect attenuated by multisensory integration also occurs when the oculomotor system is activated. Here, using two eye movement experiments, we investigated the effect of multisensory integration on O-IOR using the exogenous spatial cueing paradigm. In Experiment 1, we found a greater visual O-IOR effect compared with audiovisual and auditory O-IOR in divided modality attention. The relative multisensory response enhancement (rMRE) and violations of Miller's bound showed a greater magnitude of multisensory integration in the cued location compared with the uncued location. In Experiment 2, the magnitude of the audiovisual O-IOR effect was significantly less than that of the visual O-IOR in single visual modality selective attention. Implications for the effect of multisensory integration on O-IOR were discussed under conditions of oculomotor system activation, shedding new light on the two-component theory of IOR. |
Susanne M. Veen; Alexander Stamenkovic; James S. Thomas; Peter E. Pidcoe Skill-related adaptive modifications of gaze stabilization in elite and non-elite athletes Journal Article In: Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, vol. 4, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Veen2022, The vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) provides gaze stability during head movements by driving eye movements in a direction opposing head motion. Although vestibular-based rehabilitation strategies are available, it is still unclear whether VOR can be modulated by training. By examining adaptations in gaze stabilization mechanisms in a population with distinct visuomotor requirements for task success (i.e., gymnasts), this study was designed to determine whether experience level (as a proxy of training potential) was associated with gaze stabilization modifications during fixed target (VOR promoting) and fixed-to-head-movement target (VOR suppressing) tasks. Thirteen gymnasts of different skill levels participated in VOR and VOR suppression tasks. The gain between head and eye movements was calculated and compared between skill levels using an analysis of covariance. Across experience levels, there was a similar degradation in VOR gain away from −1 at higher movement speeds. However, during the suppression tasks, more experienced participants were able to maintain VOR gain closer to 0 across movement speeds, whereas novice participants showed greater variability in task execution regardless of movement speed. Changes in adaptive modifications to gaze stability associated with experience level suggest that the mechanisms impacting gaze stabilization can be manipulated through training. |
Elle Heusden; Wieske Zoest; Mieke Donk; Christian N. L. Olivers An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, pp. 1327–1337, 2022. @article{Heusden2022, Human vision involves selectively directing the eyes to potential objects of interest. According to most prominent theories, selection is the quantal outcome of an ongoing competition between saliency-driven signals on the one hand, and relevance-driven signals on the other, with both types of signals continuously and concurrently projecting onto a common priority map. Here, we challenge this view. We asked participants to make a speeded eye movement towards a target orientation, which was presented together with a non-target of opposing tilt. In addition to the difference in relevance, the target and non-target also differed in saliency, with the target being either more or less salient than the non-target. We demonstrate that saliency- and relevance-driven eye movements have highly idiosyncratic temporal profiles, with saliency-driven eye movements occurring rapidly after display onset while relevance-driven eye movements occur only later. Remarkably, these types of eye movements can be fully separated in time: We find that around 250 ms after display onset, eye movements are no longer driven by saliency differences between potential targets, but also not yet driven by relevance information, resulting in a period of non-selectivity, which we refer to as the attentional limbo. Binomial modeling further confirmed that visual selection is not necessarily the outcome of a direct battle between saliency- and relevance-driven signals. Instead, selection reflects the dynamic changes in the underlying saliency- and relevance-driven processes themselves, and the time at which an action is initiated then determines which of the two will emerge as the driving force of behavior. |
Valentina Vencato; Mark Harwood; Laurent Madelain Saccadic initiation biased by fixational activity Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Vencato2022, Both the gap and overlap paradigm may reveal the interaction between fixating and moving the eyes, but the effects of the overlap paradigm have not been fully characterized yet. Here we present a series of experiments probing how an overlap paradigm, combined with the manipulation of stimuli durations, saliency and transient changes might modulate saccadic reaction time distributions. We recorded saccadic reaction time in four participants in six experiments in which a saccade-target appeared at a pseudo-random amplitude after a fixation period. First, we parametrically manipulated the duration of the overlap using a range of intervals (from 0 to 200 ms). In a second experiment we probed the interaction of various foreperiod intervals (i.e. the duration of the fixation period prior to saccade-target onset) and overlap using two overlap intervals (20 or 140 ms). In two additional experiments we manipulated either the stimuli sizes or their contrast ratio in overlap paradigms (20 or 140 ms). Lastly, we introduced a visual transient during the overlap interval via two manipulations (both with a range of SOA): either a distractor ring appeared around the fixation-target, or a dynamic random noise patch replaced the fixation-target. Results show reliable modifications in the latency distributions depending on the overlap interval as well as idiosyncratic differences. Additional experimental manipulations also affected the latency distributions revealing strong interacting inhibitory processes. We conclude that the effects of overlap intervals may combine with the influence of other stimuli properties affecting decision process. |
Jason E. Vice; Mandy K. Biles; Marcello Maniglia; Kristina M. Visscher Oculomotor changes following learned use of an eccentric retinal locus Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Vice2022, People with bilateral central vision loss sometimes develop a new point of oculomotor reference called a preferred retinal locus (PRL) that is used for fixating and planning saccadic eye movements. How individuals develop and learn to effectively use a PRL is still debated; in particular, the time course of learning to plan saccades using a PRL and learning to stabilize peripheral fixation at the desired location. Here we address knowledge limitations through research describing how eye movements change as a person learns to adopt an eccentric retinal locus. Using a gaze-contingent, eye tracking-guided paradigm to simulate central vision loss, 40 participants developed a PRL by engaging in an oculomotor and visual recognition task. After 12 training sessions, significant improvements were observed in six eye movement metrics addressing different aspects involved in learning to use a PRL: first saccade landing dispersion, saccadic re-referencing, saccadic precision, saccadic latency, percentage of useful trials, and fixation stability. Importantly, our analyses allowed separate examination of the stability of target fixation separately from the dispersion and precision of the landing location of saccades. These measures explained 50% of the across-subject variance in accuracy. Fixation stability and saccadic precision showed a strong, positive correlation. Although there was no statistically significant difference in rate of learning, individuals did tend to learn saccadic precision faster than fixation stability. Saccadic precision was also more associated with accuracy than fixation stability for the behavioral task. This suggests effective intervention strategies in low vision should address both fixation stability and saccadic precision. |
Manuel Vidal; Françoise Vitu In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1–30, 2022. @article{Vidal2022, Throughout the day, humans react to multisensory events conveying both visual and auditory signals by rapidly reorienting their gaze. Several studies showed that sounds can impact the latency of visually guided saccades depending on when and where they are delivered. We found that unlocalized beeps delivered near the onset time of a visual target reduce latencies, more for early beeps and less for late beeps, however, this modulation is far weaker than for perceptual temporal judgments. Here we tested our previous assumption that beeps shift the perceived timing of target onset and result in two competing effects on saccade latencies: a multisensory modulation in line with the expected perceptual effect and an illusory gap/overlap effect, resulting from target appearance being perceived later/closer in time than fixation offset and shortening/lengthening saccade latencies. Gap/overlap effects involve an oculomotor component associated with neuronal activity in the superior colliculus (SC), a multisensory subcortical structure devoted to sensory-motor transformation. We therefore predicted that the interfering illusory gap/overlap effect would be weaker for manual responses, which involve distinct multisensory areas. In three experiments we manipulated the delay between target onset and an irrelevant auditory beep (stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA) and between target onset and fixation offset (real gap/overlap). Targets appeared left/right of fixation and participants were instructed to make quick saccades or button presses towards the targets. Adding a real overlap/gap (50% of SOA) compensated for the illusory gap/overlap by increasing the beep-related modulation of saccade latencies across the entire SOA range, whereas it barely affected manual responses. However, although auditory and gap/overlap effects modulated saccade latencies in similar ways, these were additive and could saturate, suggesting that they reflect independent mechanisms. Therefore, multisensory temporal binding affects perception and oculomotor control differently, likely due to the implication of the SC in saccade programming and multisensory integration. |
Cécile Vullings; Zachary Lively; Preeti Verghese Saccades during visual search in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Vullings2022, Macular degeneration (MD) compromises both high-acuity vision and eye movements when the foveal regions of both eyes are affected. Individuals with MD adapt to central field loss by adopting a preferred retinal locus (PRL) for fixation. Here, we investigate how individuals with bilateral MD use eye movements to search for targets in a visual scene under realistic binocular viewing conditions. Five individuals with binocular scotomata, 3 individuals with monocular scotomata and 6 age-matched controls participated in our study. We first extensively mapped the binocular scotoma with an eyetracker, while fixation was carefully monitored (Vullings & Verghese, 2020). Participants then completed a visual search task where 0, 1, or 2 Gaussian blobs were distributed randomly across a natural scene. Participants were given 10 s to actively search the display and report the number of blobs. An analysis of saccade characteristics showed that individuals with binocular scotomata made more saccades in the direction of their scotoma than controls for the same directions. Saccades in the direction of the scotoma were typically of small amplitude, and did not fully uncover the region previously hidden by the scotoma. Rather than make more saccades to explore this hidden region, participants frequently made saccades back toward newly uncovered regions. Backward saccades likely serve a similar purpose to regressive saccades exhibited during reading in MD, by inspecting previously covered regions near the direction of gaze. Our analysis suggests that the higher prevalence of backward saccades in individuals with binocular scotomata might be related to the PRL being adjacent to the scotoma. |
Chin-an Wang; Brian White; Douglas P. Munoz Pupil-linked arousal signals in the midbrain superior colliculus Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 1340–1354, 2022. @article{Wang2022b, The orienting response evoked by the appearance of a salient stimulus is modulated by arousal; however, neural under- pinnings for the interplay between orienting and arousal are not well understood. The superior colliculus (SC), causally involved in multiple components of the orienting response including gaze and attention shifts, receives not only multisensory and cognitive inputs but also arousal-regulated inputs from various cortical and subcortical structures. To investigate the impact of moment-by-moment fluctuations in arousal on orienting saccade responses, we used microstimulation of the monkey SC to trigger saccade responses, and we used pupil size and velocity to index the level ofarousal at stimulation onset because these measures correlate with changes in brain states and locus coeruleus activity. Saccades induced by SC microstimulation correlated with prestimulation pupil velocity, with higher pupil velocities on trials without evoked saccades than with evoked saccades. In contrast, prestimulation absolute pupil size did not correlate with saccade behavior. Moreover, pupil velocity correlated with evoked saccade latency and metrics. Together, our results demonstrated that small fluctuations in arousal, indexed by pupil velocity, can modulate the saccade response evoked by SC microstimulation in awake behaving monkeys. |
Ying Wang; Hai-Long Lyu; Xiao-Han Tian; Bing Lang; Xiao-Yi Wang; David St Clair; Renrong Wu; Jingping Zhao The similar eye movement dysfunction between major depressive disorder, bipolar depression and bipolar mania Journal Article In: The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 689–702, 2022. @article{Wang2022i, Objective: To find eye movement characteristics in patients with affective disorders. Method: The demographic and clinical evaluation data of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BPD), and healthy control (HC) were collected. EyeLink 1000 eye tracker was used to collect eye movement data. Chi-squared test and independent sample t-test were used for demographics and clinical characteristics. The Mann–Whitney U-test was used to compare the eye movement variables among four groups, and the FDR method was used for multiple comparison correction. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyse the relationship between clinical symptoms and eye movement variables. Results: Patients with affective disorders showed smaller saccade amplitude under free-viewing task, more fixations and saccades, shorter fixation duration, longer saccade duration under fixation stability and smooth pursuit tasks (all, p < 0.05) when compared to HC, but there was no significant difference in all eye movement variables among patients in the three groups. Also, all eye movement variables under the three paradigms had no significant correlation with clinical scale scores. Conclusion: Patients with major depression, bipolar depression and bipolar mania share similar eye movement dysfunction under free-viewing, fixation stability and smooth pursuit tasks. |
Abigail L. M. Webb; Jordi M. Asher; Paul B. Hibbard Saccadic eye movements are deployed faster for salient facial stimuli, but are relatively indifferent to their emotional content Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 198, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Webb2022, The present study explores the threat bias for fearful facial expressions using saccadic latency, with a particular focus on the role of low-level facial information, including spatial frequency and contrast. In a simple localisation task, participants were presented with spatially-filtered versions of neutral, fearful, angry and happy faces. Together, our findings show that saccadic responses are not biased toward fearful expressions compared to neutral, angry or happy counterparts, regardless of their spatial frequency content. Saccadic response times are, however, significantly influenced by the spatial frequency and contrast of facial stimuli. We discuss the implications of these findings for the threat bias literature, and the extent to which image processing can be expected to influence behavioural responses to socially-relevant facial stimuli. |
Laura Benhaim-Sitbon; Maria Lev; Uri Polat Binocular fusion disorders impair basic visual processing Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{BenhaimSitbon2022, In an era of increasing screen consumption, the requirement for binocular vision is demanding, leading to the emergence of syndromes such as the computer vision syndrome (CVS) or visual discomfort reported by virtual reality (VR) users. Heterophoria (phoria) is a latent eye misalignment (with a prevalence up to 35%) that appears in conditions that disrupt binocular vision and may affect the quality of binocular fusion. Collinear facilitation (CF), the mechanism for grouping contour elements, is a process that reveals lateral interactions by improving the visibility of a target by flankers placed collinearly. An abnormal pattern of CF has been observed in strabismic amblyopia. We hypothesize that phoria may affect CF in the horizontal meridian (HM) due to latent eye misalignment and its impact on binocular fusion. Fully corrected participants (phoria group and controls) completed a standard CF experiment for horizontal and vertical meridians during binocular and monocular viewing. Phoric observers exhibited (1) an asymmetry and an abnormal pattern of CF only for the HM, during both monocular and binocular viewing, (2) poor binocular summation between the monocular inputs, and (3) no binocular advantage of the CF. Phoria affects the CF in a way that is reminiscent of meridional amblyopia without being attributed to abnormal refraction. The abnormal pattern of CF in monocular viewing suggests that phoria could be a binocular developmental disorder that affects monocular spatial interactions. We suggest that the results could contribute to explain the visual discomfort experienced with VR users or symptoms when presenting CVS. |
Isha Bhutada; Peggy Skelly; Jonathan Jacobs; Jordan Murray; Aasef G. Shaikh; Fatema F. Ghasia Reading difficulties in amblyopia: Consequence of visual sensory and oculomotor dysfunction Journal Article In: Journal of the Neurological Sciences, vol. 442, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Bhutada2022, Introduction: Reading is a vision-reliant task, requiring sequential eye movements. Binocularly discordant input results in visual sensory and oculomotor dysfunction in amblyopia, which may contribute to reading difficulties. This study aims to determine the contributions of fixation eye movement (FEM) abnormalities, clinical type and severity of amblyopia to reading performance under binocular and monocular viewing conditions. Methods: Twenty-three amblyopic patients and nine healthy controls were recruited. Eye movements elicited during fixation and reading of preselected passages were collected for each subject using infrared video- oculography. Subjects were classified as having no nystagmus (n = 9), fusion maldevelopment nystagmus (FMN |
Carola Bloch; Ralf Tepest; Mathis Jording; Kai Vogeley; Christine M. Falter-Wagner Intrapersonal synchrony analysis reveals a weaker temporal coherence between gaze and gestures in adults with autism spectrum disorder Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Bloch2022, The temporal encoding of nonverbal signals within individuals, referred to as intrapersonal synchrony (IaPS), is an implicit process and essential feature of human communication. Based on existing evidence, IaPS is thought to be a marker of nonverbal behavior characteristics in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but there is a lack of empirical evidence. The aim of this study was to quantify IaPS in adults during an experimentally controlled real-life interaction task. A sample of adults with a confirmed ASD diagnosis and a matched sample of typically-developed adults were tested (N = 48). Participants were required to indicate the appearance of a target invisible to their interaction partner nonverbally through gaze and pointing gestures. Special eye-tracking software allowed automated extraction of temporal delays between nonverbal signals and their intrapersonal variability with millisecond temporal resolution as indices for IaPS. Likelihood ratio tests of multilevel models showed enlarged delays between nonverbal signals in ASD. Larger delays were associated with greater intrapersonal variability in delays. The results provide a quantitative constraint on nonverbal temporality in typically-developed adults and suggest weaker temporal coherence between nonverbal signals in adults with ASD. The results provide a potential diagnostic marker and inspire predictive coding theories about the role of IaPS in interpersonal synchronization processes. |
Ariel Boyle; Aaron Johnson; Mark Ellenbogen Intranasal oxytocin alters attention to emotional facial expressions, particularly for males and those with depressive symptoms Journal Article In: Psychoneuroendocrinology, vol. 142, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Boyle2022, Intranasal oxytocin (OT) can enhance emotion recognition, perhaps by promoting increased attention to social cues. Some studies indicate that individuals with difficulties processing social information, including those with psychopathology, show more pronounced effects in response to OT. As such, there is interest in the potential therapeutic use of OT in populations with deficits in social cognition. The present study examined the effects of intranasal OT on the processing of facial features and selective attention to emotional facial expressions, as well as whether individual differences in depressive symptom severity predict sensitivity to intranasal OT. In a double-blind placebo-controlled within-subject design, eye tracking was used to measure attention to facial features in an emotional expression appraisal task, and attention to emotional expressions in a free-viewing task with a quadrant of multiple faces. OT facilitated the processing of positive cues, enhancing the maintenance of attention to the mouth region of happy faces and to happy faces within a quadrant, with similar effect sizes, despite the latter effect not being statistically significant. Further, persons with depressive symptoms, and particularly males, were sensitive to OT's effects. For males only, OT, relative to placebo, increased attentional focus to the mouth region of all faces. Individuals with depressive symptoms showed less attentional focus on angry (males only) and sad facial expressions, and more attention to happy faces (particularly for males). Results indicate increased sensitivity to OT in males and persons at risk for depression, with OT administration promoting a positive bias in selective attention to social stimuli. |
Sven Braeutigam; Jessica Clare Scaife; Tipu Aziz; Rebecca J. Park A longitudinal magnetoencephalographic study of the effects of deep brain stimulation on neuronal dynamics in severe anorexia nervosa Journal Article In: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Braeutigam2022, Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a debilitating psychiatric disorder characterized by the relentless pursuit of thinness, leading to severe emaciation. Magnetoencephalography (MEG)was used to record the neuronal response in seven patients with treatment-resistant AN while completing a disorder-relevant food wanting task. The patients underwent a 15-month protocol, where MEG scans were conducted pre-operatively, post-operatively prior to deep brain stimulation (DBS) switch on, twice during a blind on/off month and at protocol end. Electrodes were implanted bilaterally into the nucleus accumbens with stimulation at the anterior limb of the internal capsule using rechargeable implantable pulse generators. Three patients met criteria as responders at 12 months of stimulation, showing reductions of eating disorder psychopathology of over 35%. An increase in alpha power, as well as evoked power at latencies typically associated with visual processing, working memory, and contextual integration was observed in ON compared to OFF sessions across all seven patients. Moreover, an increase in evoked power at P600-like latencies as well as an increase in γ-band phase-locking over anterior-to-posterior regions were observed for high- compared to low-calorie food image only in ON sessions. These findings indicate that DBS modulates neuronal process in regions far outside the stimulation target site and at latencies possibly reflecting task specific processing, thereby providing further evidence that deep brain stimulation can play a role in the treatment of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders. |
Jana Bretthauer; Daniela Canu; Ulf Thiemann; Christian Fleischhaker; Heike Brauner; Katharina Müller; Nikolaos Smyrnis; Monica Biscaldi; Stephan Bender; Christoph Klein Attention for emotion—How young adults with neurodevelopmental disorders look at facial expressions of affect Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Bretthauer2022, While Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Schizophrenia (SCZ) differ in many clinically relevant features such as symptomatology and course, they may also share genetic underpinnings, affective problems, deviancies in social interactions, and are all characterized by some kind of cognitive impairment. This situation calls for a joint investigation of the specifics of cognitive (dys-)functions of the three disorders. Such endeavor should focus, among other domains, on the intersection of processing cognitive, affective and social information that is crucial in effective real-life interactions and can be accomplished when attentional preferences for human facial expressions of emotions is studied. To that end, attention to facial expressions of basic emotions was examined in young adults with ASD, ADHD, or SCZ in the present study. The three clinical groups were compared with an age-matched group of typically-developing participants (TD) during the free contemplation of five different facial emotions presented simultaneously, by varying identities, through the registration of eye movements. We showed, that dwell times and fixation counts differed for the different emotions in TD and in a highly similar way in ADHD. Patients with ASD differed from TD by showing a stronger differentiation between emotions and partially different attentional preferences. In contrast, the SCZ group showed an overall more restricted scanning behavior and a lack of differentiation between emotions. The ADHD group, showed an emotion-specific gazing pattern that was highly similar to that of controls. Thus, by analyzing eye movements, we were able to differentiate three different viewing patterns that allowed us to distinguish between the three clinical groups. This outcome suggests that attention for emotion may not tap into common pathophysiological processes and argues for a multi-dimensional approach to the grouping of disorders with neurodevelopmental etiology. |
Daniela Canu; Chara Ioannou; Katarina Müller; Berthold Martin; Christian Fleischhaker; Monica Biscaldi; André Beauducel; Nikolaos Smyrnis; Ludger Tebartz Elst; Christoph Klein Visual search in neurodevelopmental disorders: Evidence towards a continuum of impairment Journal Article In: European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 31, no. 8, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Canu2022a, Disorders with neurodevelopmental aetiology such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Schizophrenia share commonalities at many levels of investigation despite phenotypic differences. Evidence of genetic overlap has led to the concept of a continuum of neurodevelopmental impairment along which these disorders can be positioned in aetiological, pathophysiological and developmental features. This concept requires their simultaneous comparison at different levels, which has not been accomplished so far. Given that cognitive impairments are core to the pathophysiology of these disorders, we provide for the first time differentiated head-to-head comparisons in a complex cognitive function, visual search, decomposing the task with eye movement-based process analyses. N = 103 late-adolescents with schizophrenia, ADHD, ASD and healthy controls took a serial visual search task, while their eye movements were recorded. Patients with schizophrenia presented the greatest level of impairment across different phases of search, followed by patients with ADHD, who shared with patients with schizophrenia elevated intra-subject variability in the pre-search stage. ASD was the least impaired group, but similar to schizophrenia in post-search processes and to schizophrenia and ADHD in pre-search processes and fixation duration while scanning the items. Importantly, the profiles of deviancy from controls were highly correlated between all three clinical groups, in line with the continuum idea. Findings suggest the existence of one common neurodevelopmental continuum of performance for the three disorders, while quantitative differences appear in the level of impairment. Given the relevance of cognitive impairments in these three disorders, we argue in favour of overlapping pathophysiological mechanisms. |
Daniela Canu; Chara Ioannou; Katarina Müller; Berthold Martin; Christian Fleischhaker; Monica Biscaldi; André Beauducel; Nikolaos Smyrnis; Ludger Tebartz Elst; Christoph Klein Evidence towards a continuum of impairment across neurodevelopmental disorders from basic ocular-motor tasks Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Canu2022, Findings of genetic overlap between Schizophrenia, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) contributed to a renewed conceptualization of these disorders as laying on a continuum based on aetiological, pathophysiological and neurodevelopmental features. Given that cognitive impairments are core to their pathophysiology, we compared patients with schizophrenia, ADHD, ASD, and controls on ocular-motor and manual-motor tasks, challenging crucial cognitive processes. Group comparisons revealed inhibition deficits common to all disorders, increased intra-subject variability in schizophrenia and, to a lesser extent, ADHD as well as slowed processing in schizophrenia. Patterns of deviancies from controls exhibited strong correlations, along with differences that posited schizophrenia as the most impaired group, followed by ASD and ADHD. While vector correlations point towards a common neurodevelopmental continuum of impairment, vector levels suggest differences in the severity of such impairment. These findings argue towards a dimensional approach to Neurodevelopmental Disorders' pathophysiological mechanisms. |
Matthew R. Cavanaugh; Duje Tadin; Marisa Carrasco; Krystel R. Huxlin Benefits of endogenous spatial attention during visual double-training in cortically-blinded fields Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Cavanaugh2022, Recovery of visual discrimination thresholds inside cortically-blinded (CB) fields is most commonly attained at a single, trained location at a time, with iterative progress deeper into the blind field as performance improves over several months. As such, training is slow, inefficient, burdensome, and often frustrating for patients. Here, we investigated whether double-location training, coupled with a covert spatial-attention (SA) pre-cue, could improve the efficiency of training. Nine CB participants completed a randomized, training assignment with either a spatial attention or neutral pre-cue. All trained for a similar length of time on a fine direction discrimination task at two blind field locations simultaneously. Training stimuli and tasks for both cohorts were identical, save for the presence of a central pre-cue, to manipulate endogenous (voluntary) SA, or a Neutral pre-cue. Participants in the SA training cohort demonstrated marked improvements in direction discrimination thresholds, albeit not to normal/intact-field levels; participants in the Neutral training cohort remained impaired. Thus, double-training within cortically blind fields, when coupled with SA pre-cues can significantly improve direction discrimination thresholds at two locations simultaneously, offering a new method to improve performance and reduce the training burden for CB patients. Double-training without SA pre-cues revealed a hitherto unrecognized limitation of cortically-blind visual systems' ability to improve while processing two stimuli simultaneously. These data could potentially explain why exposure to the typically complex visual environments encountered in everyday life is insufficient to induce visual recovery in CB patients. It is hoped that these new insights will direct both research and therapeutic developments toward methods that can attain better, faster recovery of vision in CB fields. |
Alexis Cheviet; Jana Masselink; Eric Koun; Roméo Salemme; Markus Lappe; Caroline Froment-Tilikete; Denis Pélisson Cerebellar signals drive motor adjustments and visual perceptual changes during forward and backward adaptation of reactive saccades Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, no. 18, pp. 3896–3916, 2022. @article{Cheviet2022, Saccadic adaptation (SA) is a cerebellar-dependent learning of motor commands (MC), which aims at preserving saccade accuracy. Since SA alters visual localization during fixation and even more so across saccades, it could also involve changes of target and/or saccade visuospatial representations, the latter (CDv) resulting from a motor-to-visual transformation (forward dynamics model) of the corollary discharge of the MC. In the present study, we investigated if, in addition to its established role in adaptive adjustment of MC, the cerebellum could contribute to the adaptation-associated perceptual changes. Transfer of backward and forward adaptation to spatial perceptual performance (during ocular fixation and trans-saccadically) was assessed in eight cerebellar patients and eight healthy volunteers. In healthy participants, both types of SA altered MC as well as internal representations of the saccade target and of the saccadic eye displacement. In patients, adaptation-related adjustments of MC and adaptation transfer to localization were strongly reduced relative to healthy participants, unraveling abnormal adaptation-related changes of target and CDv. Importantly, the estimated changes of CDv were totally abolished following forward session but mainly preserved in backward session, suggesting that an internal model ensuring trans-saccadic localization could be located in the adaptation-related cerebellar networks or in downstream networks, respectively. |
Francesco Cimminella; Giorgia D'Innocenzo; Sergio Della Sala; Alessandro Iavarone; Caterina Musella; Moreno I. Coco Preserved extra-foveal processing of object semantics in Alzheimer's disease Journal Article In: Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 418–433, 2022. @article{Cimminella2022, Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients underperform on a range of tasks requiring semantic processing, but it is unclear whether this impairment is due to a generalised loss of semantic knowledge or to issues in accessing and selecting such information from memory. The objective of this eye-tracking visual search study was to determine whether semantic expectancy mechanisms known to support object recognition in healthy adults are preserved in AD patients. Furthermore, as AD patients are often reported to be impaired in accessing information in extra-foveal vision, we investigated whether that was also the case in our study. Twenty AD patients and 20 age-matched controls searched for a target object among an array of distractors presented extra-foveally. The distractors were either semantically related or unrelated to the target (e.g., a car in an array with other vehicles or kitchen items). Results showed that semantically related objects were detected with more difficulty than semantically unrelated objects by both groups, but more markedly by the AD group. Participants looked earlier and for longer at the critical objects when these were semantically unrelated to the distractors. Our findings show that AD patients can process the semantics of objects and access it in extra-foveal vision. This suggests that their impairments in semantic processing may reflect difficulties in accessing semantic information rather than a generalised loss of semantic memory. |
Shuai Wang; Jialing Li; Siyu Wang; Can Mi; Wei Wang; Zhengjia Xu; Wenjing Xiong; Longxing Tang; Yanzhang Li Escapism-based motivation affected the psychological performances of high-risk internet gaming disorder individuals Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Wang2022g, Background: Escapism-based motivation (EBM) is considered as one of the diagnostic criteria for internet gaming disorder (IGD). However, how EBM affects the high risk of IGD (HIGD) population remains unclear. Methods: An initial number of 789 college students participated in the general, internet gaming behavior, and motivation surveys. After multiple evaluations, 57 individuals were identified as HIGD (25 with EBM, H-EBM; 32 with non-EBM, H-nEBM). In addition, 51 no-gaming individuals were included as the control group (CONTR). The cohorts completed the psychological assessments and eye-tracking tests, and analyses of group differences, correlations, and influencing factors of the indicators were performed. Results: The Barratt impulsiveness score of H-nEBM and H-EBM was significantly higher than that of CONTR (MD = 3.605 |
Shuai Wang; Jialing Li; Siyu Wang; Wei Wang; Can Mi; Wenjing Xiong; Zhengjia Xu; Longxing Tang; Yanzhang Li In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Wang2022h, Individuals with high risk of internet gaming disorder (HIGD) showed abnormal psychological performances in response inhibition, impulse control, and emotion regulation, and are considered the high-risk stage of internet gaming disorder (IGD). The identification of this population mainly relies on clinical scales, which are less accurate. This study aimed to explore whether these performances have highly accurate for discriminating HIGD from low-risk ones. Eye tracking based anti-saccade task, Barratt impulsiveness scale (BIS), and Wong and Law emotional intelligence scale (WLEIS) were used to evaluate psychological performances in 57 individuals with HIGD and 52 matched low risk of internet gaming disorder (LIGD). HIGD group showed significantly increased BIS total (t = −2.875 |
Jaimie C. Wilkie; Nathan A. Ryckman; Lynette J. Tippett; Anthony J. Lambert A test of the unified model of vision and attention: Effects of parietal-occipital damage on visual orienting Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 168, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Wilkie2022, Visual orienting was studied in a patient (FM) with parietal-occipital damage due to oligodendroglioma and associated surgery, and in eighteen control participants. The ability of FM and control participants to shift attention in response to spatial landmark cues, and in response to cues that recruit endogenous orienting via encoding of cue identity, were assessed. According to the unified model of vision and attention (Lambert, A. et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 44, 412–432) FM should find it difficult to orient attention in response to spatial landmarks due to impaired functioning of the dorsal visual stream; but shifting attention in response to cue identity, encoded via the ventral visual stream, should be spared. Consistent with these predictions, FM was unable to shift attention in the landmark cueing task, but shifted attention effectively in response to identity cues; and her visual orienting performance differed reliably from controls. These findings complement our earlier observation of preserved orienting towards landmark cues in a patient with bilateral damage to the ventral visual stream, and add to a growing body of evidence in support of the unified model of vision and attention. |
Chen Xing; Yajuan Zhang; Hongliang Lu; Xia Zhu; Danmin Miao Trait anxiety affects attentional bias to emotional stimuli across time: A growth curve analysis Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Xing2022, Many studies have illustrated the close relationship between anxiety disorders and attentional functioning, but the relationship between trait anxiety and attentional bias remains controversial. This study examines the effect of trait anxiety on the time course of attention to emotional stimuli using materials from the International Affective Picture System. Participants with high vs. low trait anxiety (HTA vs. LTA) viewed four categories of pictures simultaneously: dysphoric, threatening, positive, and neutral. Their eye-movements for each emotional stimulus were recorded for static and dynamic analysis. Data were analyzed using a mixed linear model and growth curve analysis. Specifically, the HTA group showed a greater tendency to avoid threatening stimuli and more pupil diameter variation in the early period of stimulus presentation (0–7.9 s). The HTA group also showed a stronger attentional bias toward positive and dysphoric stimuli in the middle and late period of stimulus presentation (7.9–30 s). These results suggest that trait anxiety has a significant temporal effect on attention to emotional stimuli, and that this effect mainly manifests after 7 s. In finding stronger attentional avoidance of threatening stimuli and more changes in neural activity, as well as a stronger attentional bias toward positive stimuli, this study provides novel insights on the relationship between trait anxiety and selective attention. |
Farnaz Zamani Esfahlani; Lisa Byrge; Jacob Tanner; Olaf Sporns; Daniel P. Kennedy; Richard F. Betzel Edge-centric analysis of time-varying functional brain networks with applications in autism spectrum disorder Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 263, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{ZamaniEsfahlani2022, The interaction between brain regions changes over time, which can be characterized using time-varying functional connectivity (tvFC). The common approach to estimate tvFC uses sliding windows and offers limited temporal resolution. An alternative method is to use the recently proposed edge-centric approach, which enables the tracking of moment-to-moment changes in co-fluctuation patterns between pairs of brain regions. Here, we first examined the dynamic features of edge time series and compared them to those in the sliding window tvFC (sw-tvFC). Then, we used edge time series to compare subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and healthy controls (CN). Our results indicate that relative to sw-tvFC, edge time series captured rapid and bursty network-level fluctuations that synchronize across subjects during movie-watching. The results from the second part of the study suggested that the magnitude of peak amplitude in the collective co-fluctuations of brain regions (estimated as root sum square (RSS) of edge time series) is similar in CN and ASD. However, the trough-to-trough duration in RSS signal is greater in ASD, compared to CN. Furthermore, an edge-wise comparison of high-amplitude co-fluctuations showed that the within-network edges exhibited greater magnitude fluctuations in CN. Our findings suggest that high-amplitude co-fluctuations captured by edge time series provide details about the disruption of functional brain dynamics that could potentially be used in developing new biomarkers of mental disorders. |
TianHong Zhang; YingYu Yang; LiHua Xu; XiaoChen Tang; YeGang Hu; Xin Xiong; YanYan Wei; HuiRu Ru Cui; YingYing Tang; HaiChun Liu; Tao Chen; Zhi Liu; Li Hui; ChunBo Li; XiaoLi Guo; JiJun Wang Inefficient integration during multiple facial processing in pre-morbid and early phases of psychosis Journal Article In: The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Zhang2022j, Objectives: We used eye-tracking to evaluate multiple facial context processing and event-related potential (ERP) to evaluate multiple facial recognition in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Methods: In total, 173 subjects (83 CHRs and 90 healthy controls [HCs]) were included and their emotion perception performances were accessed. A total of 40 CHRs and 40 well-matched HCs completed an eye-tracking task where they viewed pictures depicting a person in the foreground, presented as context-free, context-compatible, and context-incompatible. During the two-year follow-up, 26 CHRs developed psychosis, including 17 individuals who developed first-episode schizophrenia (FES). Eighteen well-matched HCs were made to complete the face number detection ERP task with image stimuli of one, two, or three faces. Results: Compared to the HC group, the CHR group showed reduced visual attention to contextual processing when viewing multiple faces. With the increasing complexity of contextual faces, the differences in eye-tracking characteristics also increased. In the ERP task, the N170 amplitude decreased with a higher face number in FES patients, while it increased with a higher face number in HCs. Conclusions: Individuals in the very early phase of psychosis showed facial processing deficits with supporting evidence of different scan paths during context processing and disruption of N170 during multiple facial recognition. |
Hong Zhou; Yunchuang Sun; Luhua Wei; Xia Wang; Yanyan Jiang; Fan Li; Jing Chen; Wei Sun; Lin Zhang; Guiping Zhao; Zhaoxia Wang Quantitative assessment of oculomotor function by videonystagmography in multiple system atrophy Journal Article In: Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 141, pp. 15–23, 2022. @article{Zhou2022b, Objective: To quantitatively assess oculomotor impairments in multiple system atrophy (MSA) and to explore their correlation with clinical characteristics. Methods: We recruited 45 patients with MSA, including 21 with dominant ataxia (MSA-C), 24 with dominant parkinsonism (MSA-P), and 40 age-matched healthy controls. Detailed oculomotor performance in the horizontal direction was measured using videonystagmography (VNG). Results: We found that the proportion of abnormal eye movements in patients with MSA was 93.3% (37.7%, 51.1%, 73.3%, 71.1%, and 37.8% on fixation and gaze-holding, without fixation, saccade, smooth pursuit, and optokinetic nystagmus tests, respectively). Patients with MSA-C showed significantly lower gains in smooth pursuit test and optokinetic nystagmus test, and a higher incidence of hypermetria in the saccade test than patients with MSA-P (all P < 0.05). No oculomotor deficits were correlated with age, age of onset, sex, disease duration, or Unified Multiple System Atrophy Rating Scale (USMARS) (all r < 0.25, P > 0.1). Conclusions: An extremely high incidence of oculomotor impairments could be observed using VNG in both the MSA-C and MSA-P subtypes, although there were some differences between them. Significance: A comprehensive oculomotor examination could serve as a valuable tool in the diagnostic workup of patients with MSA. |
Junyi Zhou; Lulu Wang Differences in the effects of reading and aerobic exercise interventions on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Zhou2022c, Although many previous studies have shown that short-time moderate-intensity aerobic exercise can improve one's inhibitory control, some researchers suggested that its effect on inhibitory control is small. Meanwhile, some studies have shown that reading has a positive effect on inhibitory control. Since many studies examining the effect of exercise on inhibitory control used reading as a filler task, it is important to compare their effects. The present study used the antisaccade task as a tool to examine the differences in the effects of aerobic exercise and reading on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction. Thirty healthy college students with mobile phone addiction (range: 17–20 years, mean: 19.2 years) took part in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to an aerobic exercise group and a reading group. For the aerobic exercise group, participants were asked to perform moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for 15 min. For the reading group, participants were asked to sit quietly and read articles from newspapers for 15 min. Each participant's inhibitory control was examined pre- and post-intervention using the antisaccade task. In the antisaccade task, they have to direct their gaze toward the mirror image location of the target appearing parafoveally as quickly and as accurately as possible. The results showed significant main effects of Time (pre-test vs. post-test) on antisaccade latency and error rate. More importantly, a significant interaction of Time (pre-test vs. post-test) and Group (aerobic exercise vs. reading) was found on antisaccade latency. Specifically, the antisaccade latencies in the post-test were significantly shorter than those in the pre-test for the reading group, but the antisaccade latencies in the post-test and pre-test were comparable for the aerobic exercise group. The results of the present study imply that although both exercise and reading have effects on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction, the effect of reading may be somehow superior to exercise. Moreover, the current results also imply that researchers should be cautious when using reading as a filler task in future studies regarding the effect of aerobic exercise. The limitations of the present study were discussed. |
Li Zhou; Li Zhang; Yuening Xu; Fuyi Yang; Valerie Benson Attentional engagement and disengagement differences for circumscribed interest objects in young Chinese children with autism Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Zhou2022d, The current study aimed to investigate attentional processing differences for circumscribed interest (CI) and non-CI objects in young Chinese children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) and typically developing (TD) controls. In Experiment 1, a visual preference task explored attentional allocation to cartoon CI and non-CI materials between the two groups. We found that ASC children (n = 22, 4.95 ± 0.59 years) exhibited a preference for CI-related objects compared to non-CI objects, and this effect was absent in the TD children (n = 22, 5.14 ± 0.44 years). Experiment 2 utilized the traditional gap-overlap paradigm (GOP) to investigate attentional disengagement from CI or non-CI items in both groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.92 ± 1.13 years; TD: n = 25, 5.77 ± 0.77 years). There were no group or stimulus interactions in this study. Experiment 3 adopted a modified GOP (MGOP) to further explore disengagement in the two groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.54 ± 0.95 years; TD: n = 24, 5.75 ± 0.52 years), and the results suggested that exogenous disengagement performance was preserved in the ASC group, but the children with ASC exhibited increased endogenous attentional disengagement compared to TD peers. Moreover, endogenous disengagement was influenced further in the presence of CI-related objects in the ASC children. The current results have implications for understanding how the nature of engagement and disengagement processes can contribute to differences in the development of core cognitive skills in young children with ASC. |
Jing Zhu; Shiqing Wei; Xiannian Xie; Changlin Yang; Yizhou Li; Xiaowei Li; Bin Hu Content-based multiple evidence fusion on EEG and eye movements for mild depression recognition Journal Article In: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 226, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zhu2022a, Background and objective: Depression is a serious neurological disorder that has become a major health problem worldwide. The detection of mild depression is important for the diagnosis of depression in early stages. This research seeks to find a more accurate fusion model which can be used for mild depression detection using Electroencephalography and eye movement data. Methods: This study proposes a content-based multiple evidence fusion (CBMEF) method, which fuses EEG and eye movement data at decision level. The method mainly includes two modules, the classification performance matrix module and the dual-weight fusion module. The classification performance matrices of different modalities are estimated by Bayesian rule based on confusion matrix and Mahalanobis distance, and the matrices were used to correct the classification results. Then the relative conflict degree of each modality is calculated, and different weights are assigned to the above modalities at the decision fusion layer according to this conflict degree. Results: The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other fusion methods as well as the single modality results. The highest accuracies achieved 91.12%, and sensitivity, specificity and precision were 89.20%, 93.03%, 92.76%. Conclusions: The promising results showed the potential of the proposed approach for the detection of mild depression. The idea of introducing the classification performance matrix and the dual-weight model to multimodal biosignals fusion casts a new light on the researches of depression recognition. |
Jing Zhu; Changlin Yang; Xiannian Xie; Shiqing Wei; Yizhou Li; Xiaowei Li; Bin Hu Mutual Information Based Fusion Model (MIBFM): Mild depression recognition using EEG and pupil area signals Journal Article In: Journal of LATEX Class Files, vol. 3045, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Zhu2022b, The detection of mild depression is conducive to the early intervention and treatment of depression. This study explored the fusion of electroencephalography (EEG) and pupil area signals to build an effective and convenient mild depression recognition model. We proposed Mutual Information Based Fusion Model (MIBFM), which innovatively used pupil area signals to select EEG electrodes based on mutual information. Then we extracted features from EEG and pupil area signals in different bands, and fused bimodal features using the denoising autoencoder. Experimental results showed that MIBFM could obtain the highest accuracy of 87.03%. And MIBFM exhibited better performance than other existing methods. Our findings validate the effectiveness of the use of pupil area as signals, which makes eye movement signals can be easily obtained using high resolution camera, and the EEG electrode selection scheme based on mutual information is also proved to be an applicable solution for data dimension reduction and multimodal complementary information screening. This study casts a new light for mild depression recognition using multimodal data of EEG and pupil area signals, and provides a theoretical basis for the development of portable and universal application systems. |
Ehud Zohary; Daniel Harari; Shimon Ullman; Itay Ben-Zion; Ravid Doron; Sara Attias; Yuval Porat; Asael Y. Sklar; Ayelet McKyton Gaze following requires early visual experience Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 20, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zohary2022, Gaze understanding-a suggested precursor for understanding others' intentions-requires recovery of gaze direction from the observed person's head and eye position. This challenging computation is naturally acquired at infancy without explicit external guidance, but can it be learned later if vision is extremely poor throughout early childhood? We addressed this question by studying gaze following in Ethiopian patients with early bilateral congenital cataracts diagnosed and treated by us only at late childhood. This sight restoration provided a unique opportunity to directly address basic issues on the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in development, as it caused a selective perturbation to the natural process, eliminating some gaze-direction cues while leaving others still available. Following surgery, the patients' visual acuity typically improved substantially, allowing discrimination of pupil position in the eye. Yet, the patients failed to show eye gaze-following effects and fixated less than controls on the eyes-two spontaneous behaviors typically seen in controls. Our model for unsupervised learning of gaze direction explains how head-based gaze following can develop under severe image blur, resembling preoperative conditions. It also suggests why, despite acquiring sufficient resolution to extract eye position, automatic eye gaze following is not established after surgery due to lack of detailed early visual experience. We suggest that visual skills acquired in infancy in an unsupervised manner will be difficult or impossible to acquire when internal guidance is no longer available, even when sufficient image resolution for the task is restored. This creates fundamental barriers to spontaneous vision recovery following prolonged deprivation in early age. |
Jingqi Jiang; Yiqin Zhu; Marcus A. Rodriguez; Xu Wen; Mingyi Qian Social anxiety does not impair attention inhibition: An emotion anti-saccade task Journal Article In: Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, vol. 77, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Jiang2022, Background and objectives: Attention avoidance and attention vigilance are two typical attentional biases in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Attention inhibition is a type of attention control, which may be the key factor affecting attention vigilance and attention avoidance. However, previous studies have not examined the difference between the attention inhibition in individuals with SAD and healthy controls. Methods: To further explore this question, the current study used the single anti-saccade task with emotional facial stimuli to assess attention inhibition in 27 individuals with SAD and 22 healthy controls. Results: Regardless of the emotional valence of the facial stimuli, error rates in the social anxiety group were lower than that of the healthy control group, but there was no significant group difference in the saccade latency. Limitations: This research only examined the attentional inhibition process highly related to attention avoidance and attention vigilance. Future research may benefit from adopting different research paradigms for more robust and generalizable conclusions. Conclusions: Results suggest that individuals with SAD have better attention inhibition abilities than healthy control. Such enhanced attention inhibition may underlie their avoidance of threatening social cues. |
Martin E. Johansson; Ian G. M. Cameron; Nicolien M. Van der Kolk; Nienke M. Vries; Eva Klimars; Ivan Toni; Bastiaan R. Bloem; Rick C. Helmich Aerobic exercise alters brain function and structure in Parkinson's disease: A randomized controlled trial Journal Article In: Annals of Neurology, vol. 91, pp. 203–216, 2022. @article{Johansson2022, Objective: Randomized clinical trials have shown that aerobic exercise attenuates motor symptom progression in Parkinson's disease, but the underlying neural mechanisms are unclear. Here, we investigated how aerobic exercise influences disease-related functional and structural changes in the corticostriatal sensorimotor network, which is involved in the emergence of motor deficits in Parkinson's disease. Additionally, we explored effects of aerobic exercise on tissue integrity of the substantia nigra, and on behavioral and cerebral indices of cognitive control. Methods: The Park-in-Shape trial is a single-center, double-blind randomized controlled trial in 130 Parkinson's disease patients who were randomly assigned (1:1 ratio) to aerobic exercise (stationary home trainer) or stretching (active control) interventions (duration = 6 months). An unselected subset from this trial (exercise |
Holly Joseph; Daisy Powell Does a specialist typeface affect how fluently children with and without dyslexia process letters, words, and passages? Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 448–470, 2022. @article{Joseph2022, Children with dyslexia are at risk of poor academic attainment and lower life chances if they do not receive the support they need. Alongside phonics-based interventions which already have a strong evidence base, specialist dyslexia typefaces have been offered as an additional or alternative form of support. The current study examined whether one such typeface, Dyslexie, had a benefit over a standard typeface in identifying letters, reading words, and reading passages. 71 children, aged 8–12 years, 37 of whom had a diagnosis of dyslexia, completed a rapid letter naming task, a word reading efficiency task, and a passage reading task in two typefaces, Dyslexie and Calibri. Spacing between letters and words was kept constant. Results showed no differences in word or passage reading between the two typesfaces, but letter naming did appear to be more fluent when letters were presented in Dyslexie rather than Calibri text for all children. The results suggest that a typeface in which letters are designed to be distinctive from one another may be beneficial for letter identification and that an intervention in which children are taught letters in a specialist typeface is worthy of consideration. |
B. C. Kaufmann; D. Cazzoli; P. Bartolomeo; J. Frey; T. Pflugshaupt; S. E. J. Knobel; T. Nef; R. M. Müri; T. Nyffeler Auditory spatial cueing reduces neglect after right-hemispheric stroke: A proof of concept study Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 148, pp. 152–167, 2022. @article{Kaufmann2022, Spatial neglect after right-hemispheric stroke, characterized by the failure to attend or respond to the contralesional space, is a strong negative outcome predictor. Neglect is a supramodal syndrome affecting not only the visual but also the auditory modality. Preliminary studies used this audio-visual cross-modal effect to show short-lasting effects on attention towards the neglected space. The aim of the present study was to introduce a new technique of auditory stimulation combining the unspecific effect of music (i.e., patients choose their preferred music) with the effects of auditory spatial cueing (i.e., the music is presented dynamically as moving from right to left). The effect of this new auditory stimulation technique was investigated in two proof-of-concept experiments using repeated-measures, cross-over designs including 21 patients with visual neglect after a first right-hemispheric stroke. In Experiment I (n = 9), neglect patients showed a significantly larger improvement in Letter Cancellation after listening to preferred music with than without auditory spatial cueing. After granting the feasibility of this new auditory stimulation technique, we investigated the long-term aftereffects in Experiment II (n = 12). Herefore, we used video-oculography during Free Visual Exploration, a sensitive and reliable tool to assess spatial attention over time. Listening to music with auditory spatial cueing – as compared to music without auditory spatial cueing – significantly improved neglect severity in terms of visual exploration behaviour for up to 3h. A voxel-based-lesion-symptom mapping analysis over all patients revealed that the response variability in listening to music with auditory spatial cueing is determined by the integrity of the right inferior parietal lobule, the second branch of the superior longitudinal fascicle, and parieto-parietal callosal fibres. Our study shows that listening to music with auditory spatial cueing significantly reduces neglect severity and has the potential to be used as an add-on in the neurorehabilitation of neglect. |
Hassen Kerkeni; Dominik Brügger; Georgios Mantokoudis; Mathias Abegg; David S. Zee Pharmacological and behavioral strategies to improve vision in acquired pendular nystagmus Journal Article In: American Journal of Case Reports, vol. 23, pp. 1–5, 2022. @article{Kerkeni2022, Objective: Unusual setting of medical care. Background: Acquired pendular nystagmus (APN) is a back and forth, oscillatory eye movement in which the 2 oppositely directed slow phases have similar waveforms. APN occurs commonly in multiple sclerosis and causes a disabling oscillopsia that impairs vision. Previous studies have proven that symptomatic therapy with gabapentin or me-mantine can reduce the nystagmus amplitude or frequency. However, the effect of these medications on visual acuity (VA) is less known and to our knowledge the impact of non-pharmacological strategies such as blinking on VA has not been reported. This is a single observational study without controls (Class IV) and is meant to suggest a future strategy for study of vision in patients with disabling nystagmus and impaired vision. Case Report: A 49-year-old woman with primary progressive multiple sclerosis with spastic paraparesis and a history of optic atrophy presented with asymmetrical binocular APN and bothersome oscillopsia. We found that in the eye with greater APN her visual acuity improved by 1 line (from 0.063 to 0.08 decimals) immediately after blinking. During treatment with memantine, her VA without blinking increased by 2 lines, from 0.063 to 0.12, but improved even more (from 0.12 to 0.16) after blinking. In the contralateral eye with a barely visible nystagmus, VA was reduced by 1 line briefly (~500 ms) after blinking. Conclusions: In a patient with APN, blinking transiently improved vision. The combination of pharmacological treatment with memantine and the blinking strategy may induce better VA and less oscillopsia than either alone. |
Julie A. Kirkby; Rhiannon S. Barrington; Denis Drieghe; Simon P. Liversedge Parafoveal processing and transposed-letter effects in dyslexic reading Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, pp. 359–374, 2022. @article{Kirkby2022, During parafoveal processing, skilled readers encode letter identity independently of letter position (Johnson et al., 2007). In the current experiment, we examined orthographic parafoveal processing in readers with dyslexia. Specifically, the eye movements of skilled readers and adult readers with dyslexia were recorded during a boundary paradigm experiment (Rayner, 1975). Parafoveal previews were either identical to the target word (e.g., nearly), a transposed-letter preview (e.g., enarly), or a substituted-letter preview (e.g., acarly). Dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers demonstrated orthographic parafoveal preview benefits during silent sentence reading and both reading groups encoded letter identity and letter position information parafoveally. However, dyslexic adults showed, that very early in lexical processing, during parafoveal preview, the positional information of a word's initial letters were encoded less flexibly compared to during skilled adult reading. We suggest that dyslexic readers are less able to benefit from correct letter identity information (i.e., in the letter transposition previews) due to the lack of direct mapping of orthography to phonology. The current findings demonstrate that dyslexic readers show consistent and dyslexic-specific reading difficulties in foveal and parafoveal processing during silent sentence reading. |
Alexander Kolevzon; Tess Levy; Sarah Barkley; Sandra Bedrosian-Sermone; Matthew Davis; Jennifer Foss-Feig; Danielle Halpern; Katherine Keller; Ana Kostic; Christina Layton; Rebecca Lee; Bonnie Lerman; Matthew Might; Sven Sandin; Paige M. Siper; Laura G. Sloofman; Hannah Walker; Jessica Zweifach; Joseph D. Buxbaum An open-label study evaluating the safety, behavioral, and electrophysiological outcomes of low-dose ketamine in children with ADNP syndrome Journal Article In: Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Kolevzon2022, Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP) syndrome is a rare genetic condition associated with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. Preclinical evidence suggests that low-dose ketamine may induce expression of ADNP and that neuroprotective effects of ketamine may be mediated by ADNP. The goal of the proposed research was to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and behavioral outcomes of low-dose ketamine in children with ADNP syndrome. We also sought to explore the feasibility of using electrophysiological markers of auditory steady-state response and computerized eye tracking to assess biomarker sensitivity to treatment. This study utilized a single-dose (0.5 mg/kg), open-label design, with ketamine infused intravenously over 40 min. Ten children with ADNP syndrome ages 6 to 12 years were enrolled. Ketamine was generally well tolerated, and there were no serious adverse events. The most common adverse events were elation/silliness (50%), fatigue (40%), and increased aggression (40%). Using parent-report instruments to assess treatment effects, ketamine was associated with nominally significant improvement in a wide array of domains, including social behavior, attention deficit and hyperactivity, restricted and repetitive behaviors, and sensory sensitivities, a week after administration. Results derived from clinician-rated assessments aligned with findings from the parent reports. Overall, nominal improvement was evident based on the Clinical Global Impressions - Improvement scale, in addition to clinician-based scales reflecting key domains of social communication, attention deficit and hyperactivity, restricted and repetitive behaviors, speech, thinking, and learning, activities of daily living, and sensory sensitivities. Results also highlight the potential utility of electrophysiological measurement of auditory steady-state response and eye-tracking to index change with ketamine treatment. Findings are intended to be hypothesis generating and provide preliminary support for the safety and efficacy of ketamine in ADNP syndrome in addition to identifying useful endpoints for a ketamine clinical development program. However, results must be interpreted with caution given limitations of this study, most importantly the small sample size and absence of a placebo-control group. |
Emma Gowen; Ellen Poliakoff; Hayley Shepherd; Waltraud Stadler Measuring the prediction of observed actions using an occlusion paradigm: Comparing autistic and non-autistic adults Journal Article In: Autism Research, vol. 15, pp. 1636–1648, 2022. @article{Gowen2022, Action prediction involves observing and predicting the actions of others and plays an important role in social cognition and interacting with others. It is thought to use simulation, whereby the observers use their own motor system to predict the observed actions. As individuals diagnosed with autism are characterized by difficulties understanding the actions of others and motor coordination issues, it is possible that action prediction ability is altered in this population. This study compared action prediction ability between 20 autistic and 22 non-autistic adults using an occlusion paradigm. Participants watched different videos of a female actor carrying out everyday actions. During each video, the action was transiently occluded by a gray rectangle for 1000 ms. During occlusions, the video was allowed to continue as normal or was moved forward (i.e., appearing to continue too far ahead) or moved backwards (i.e., appearing to continue too far behind). Participants were asked to indicate after each occlusion whether the action continued with the correct timing or was too far ahead/behind. Autistic individuals were less accurate than non-autistic individuals, particularly when the video was too far behind. A trend analysis suggested that autistic participants were more likely to judge too far behind occlusions as being in time. These preliminary results suggest that prediction ability may be altered in autistic adults, potentially due to slower simulation or a delayed onset of these processes. Lay Summary: When we observe other people performing everyday actions, we use their movements to help us understand and predict what they are doing. In this study, we found that autistic compared to non-autistic adults were slightly less accurate at predicting other people's actions. These findings help to unpick the different ways that social understanding is affected in autism. |
Andrea Helo; Ernesto Guerra; Carmen Julia Coloma; Paulina Aravena-Bravo; Pia Rämä In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Helo2022, Our visual environment is highly predictable in terms of where and in which locations objects can be found. Based on visual experience, children extract rules about visual scene configurations, allowing them to generate scene knowledge. Similarly, children extract the linguistic rules from relatively predictable linguistic contexts. It has been proposed that the capacity of extracting rules from both domains might share some underlying cognitive mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated the link between language and scene knowledge development. To do so, we assessed whether preschool children (age range = 5;4–6;6) with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), who present several difficulties in the linguistic domain, are equally attracted to object-scene inconsistencies in a visual free-viewing task in comparison with age-matched children with Typical Language Development (TLD). All children explored visual scenes containing semantic (e.g., soap on a breakfast table), syntactic (e.g., bread on the chair back), or both inconsistencies (e.g., soap on the chair back). Since scene knowledge interacts with image properties (i.e., saliency) to guide gaze allocation during visual exploration from the early stages of development, we also included the objects' saliency rank in the analysis. The results showed that children with DLD were less attracted to semantic and syntactic inconsistencies than children with TLD. In addition, saliency modulated syntactic effect only in the group of children with TLD. Our findings indicate that children with DLD do not activate scene knowledge to guide visual attention as efficiently as children with TLD, especially at the syntactic level, suggesting a link between scene knowledge and language development. |
Andrea Helo; Ernesto Guerra; Carmen Julia Coloma; María Antonia Reyes; Pia Rämä Objects shape activation during spoken word recognition in preschoolers with typical and atypical language development: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Language Learning and Development, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 324–351, 2022. @article{Helo2022a, Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children. |
Ashley C. Parr; Olivia G. Calancie; Brian C. Coe; Sarosh Khalid-Khan; Douglas P. Munoz Impulsivity and emotional dysregulation predict choice behavior during a mixed-strategy game in adolescents with borderline personality disorder Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, pp. 1–21, 2022. @article{Parr2022, Impulsivity and emotional dysregulation are two core features of borderline personality disorder (BPD), and the neural mechanisms recruited during mixed-strategy interactions overlap with frontolimbic networks that have been implicated in BPD. We investigated strategic choice patterns during the classic two-player game, Matching Pennies, where the most efficient strategy is to choose each option randomly from trial-to-trial to avoid exploitation by one's opponent. Twenty-seven female adolescents with BPD (mean age: 16 years) and twenty-seven age-matched female controls (mean age: 16 years) participated in an experiment that explored the relationship between strategic choice behavior and impulsivity in both groups and emotional dysregulation in BPD. Relative to controls, BPD participants showed marginally fewer reinforcement learning biases, particularly decreased lose-shift biases, increased variability in reaction times (coefficient of variation; CV), and a greater percentage of anticipatory decisions. A subset of BPD participants with high levels of impulsivity showed higher overall reward rates, and greater modulation of reaction times by outcome, particularly following loss trials, relative to control and BPD participants with lower levels of impulsivity. Additionally, BPD participants with higher levels of emotional dysregulation showed marginally increased reward rate and increased entropy in choice patterns. Together, our preliminary results suggest that impulsivity and emotional dysregulation may contribute to variability in mixed-strategy decision-making in female adolescents with BPD. |
Olga Parshina; Anastasiya Lopukhina; Sofya Goldina; Ekaterina Iskra; Margarita Serebryakova; Vladislava Staroverova; Nina Zdorova; Olga Dragoy Global reading processes in children with high risk of dyslexia: A scanpath analysis Journal Article In: Annals of Dyslexia, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 403–425, 2022. @article{Parshina2022, The study presents the first systematic comparison of the global reading processes via scanpath analysis in Russian-speaking children with and without reading difficulties. First, we compared basic eye-movement characteristics in reading sentences in two groups of children in grades 1 to 5 (N = 72 in high risk of developmental dyslexia group and N = 72 in the control group). Next, using the scanpath method, we investigated which global reading processes these children adopt to read the entire sentence and how these processes differ between the groups. Finally, we were interested in the timeframe of the change in the global reading processes from the 1st to the 5th grades for both groups. We found that the main difference in word-level measures between groups was the reading speed reflected in fixation durations. However, the examination of the five identified global reading processes revealed qualitative similarities in reading patterns between groups. Children in the control group progressed quickly and by the 4th grade engaged in an adult-like fluent reading process. The high-risk group started with the beginner reading process, then similar to first graders in the control group, engaged mostly in the intermediate and upper-intermediate reading processes in 2nd to 4th grades. They reach the advanced process in the 5th grade, the same pattern preferred by the control group second graders. Overall, the scanpath analysis reveals that although there are quantitative differences in the word-level eye-tracking measures between groups, qualitatively children in the high-risk group read on par with typically developing peers but with a 3-year reading delay. |
Charlotte Elisabeth Piechaczek; Pia Theresa Schröder; Lisa Feldmann; Gerd Schulte-Körne; Ellen Greimel The effects of attentional deployment on reinterpretation in depressed adolescents: Evidence from an eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Cognitive Therapy and Research, vol. 46, pp. 967–982, 2022. @article{Piechaczek2022, Background: Individuals with major depression have difficulties employing cognitive reappraisal. Most prior studies have not accounted for attentional deployment, which seems to be involved in this process. Methods: We investigated the cognitive reappraisal tactic reinterpretation in 20 depressed and 28 healthy youths and assessed regulation success in response to negative pictures via self-report. To investigate attentional deployment during reinterpretation, we applied eye-tracking and manipulated gaze focus by instructing participants to direct their attention towards/away from emotional picture aspects. Results: Depressed adolescents, compared with healthy youths, had a diminished regulation success when their gaze was focused on emotional aspects. Both depressed and healthy adolescents spent less time fixating on emotional facets of negative pictures when using reinterpretation as compared with simply attending to the pictures. Conclusions: Results from this study suggest that adolescents with major depression have emotion regulation deficits when being confronted with negative emotional facets, while showing intact overt attentional processes. The findings provide important starting points for future research investigating the role of other factors which might impact on emotion regulation processes in this patient group, such as cognitive control deficits. |
Barbara L. Pitts; Michelle L. Eisenberg; Heather R. Bailey; Jeffrey M. Zacks PTSD is associated with impaired event processing and memory for everyday events Journal Article In: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, vol. 7, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Pitts2022, Current theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) propose that memory abnormalities are central to the development and persistence of symptoms. While the most notable memory disturbances in PTSD involve memory for the trauma itself, individuals often have trouble remembering aspects of everyday life. Further, people with PTSD may have difficulty segmenting ongoing activity into discrete units, which is important for our perception and later memory of the activity. The current study investigated whether PTSD diagnosis and symptom severity predicted event segmentation and memory for everyday activities. To do so, 63 people with PTSD and 64 controls with a trauma history watched, segmented, and recalled videos of everyday activities. Viewers with higher PTSD symptom severity showed lower agreement on locations of event boundaries and recalled fewer fine-grained actions than did those with lower symptom severity. These results suggest that PTSD symptoms alter event segmentation, which may contribute to subsequent memory disturbances. |
Sophia Antonia Press; Stefanie C. Biehl; C. Carolyn Vatheuer; Gregor Domes; Jennifer Svaldi Neural correlates of body image processing in binge eating disorder Journal Article In: Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, vol. 131, no. 4, pp. 350–364, 2022. @article{Press2022, Although body image disturbances play a central role in the development, maintenance and relapse of binge eating disorder (BED), studies investigating the neural basis underlying body processing in BED are still missing. To address this gap, we conducted a preregistered (German Clinical Trials Register [Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien; DRKS], Registration DRKS00008107) combined functional magnetic resonance (fMRI)/eye tracking study in which 38 women with BED and 22 healthy controls weight-matched for overall equivalence processed images of their own bodies, an unfamiliar weight- matched body, and visually matched nonbody control stimuli while performing a one-back task. Women with BED responded with higher left fusiform body area (FBA) activity than controls during body image processing. Despite higher levels of self-reported body dissatisfaction, women with BED did not show overactivation in emotion-processing areas in response to their own body. The eye-track- ing results indicated that visual attention toward the presented stimuli was associated with increased ac- tivity in the extrastriate body area (EBA) and FBA across groups. Our results thus provide evidence for an aberrant neural processing of body images in BED and highlight the importance of controlling for visual attention in future studies assessing neuronal body processing. |
Jonathan E. Prunty; Jolie R. Keemink; David J. Kelly Infants show pupil dilatory responses to happy and angry facial expressions Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Prunty2022, Facial expressions are one way in which infants and adults communicate emotion. Infants scan expressions similarly to adults, yet it remains unclear whether they are receptive to the affective information they convey. The current study investigates 6-, 9- and 12-month infants' (N = 146) pupillary responses to the six “basic” emotional expressions (happy, sad, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust). To do this we use dynamic stimuli and gaze-contingent eye-tracking to simulate brief interactive exchanges, alongside a static control condition. Infants' arousal responses were stronger for dynamic compared to static stimuli. And for dynamic stimuli we found that, compared to neutral, infants showed dilatory responses for happy and angry expressions only. Although previous work has shown infants can discriminate perceptually between facial expressions, our data suggest that sensitivity to the affective content of all six basic emotional expressions may not fully emerge until later in ontogeny. |
Xiao-jing Qin; Jia-li Liu; Ji-fang Cui; Hai-song Shi; Jun-yan Ye; Tian-xiao Yang; Ya Wang Prospective memory performance and its improvement in individuals with high schizotypal traits: Evidence from eye-tracking studies Journal Article In: Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 143, pp. 133–142, 2022. @article{Qin2022, Objective: This study aimed to examine prospective memory (PM) performance and the potential effect of implementation intention on PM performance and the underlying mechanisms in individuals with high schizotypyal traits (HSTs) using eye-tracking paradigms. Methods: In Experiment 1, 30 individuals with HSTs and 30 individuals with low schizotypal traits (LSTs) underwent a visual search task that involved PM cues, and participants' eye movements were recorded. In Experiment 2, 50 individuals with HSTs were randomly assigned to the implementation intention group and typical instruction group. Results: In Experiment 1, individuals with HSTs had a lower PM accuracy and performed less PM cue monitoring (indicated by fewer total fixation counts on distractor words) than individuals with LSTs. In Experiment 2, implementation intention significantly improved PM accuracy and increased total fixation counts on distractor words in individuals with HSTs compared to the HST group with typical instruction. Conclusions: Individuals with HSTs were impaired in PM and showed reduced cue monitoring compared to individuals with LSTs. Implementation intention improved PM performance and facilitated cue monitoring in individuals with HSTs. Significance: Our findings indicate that cue monitoring may be an important process of intervention target for PM for individuals in the schizophrenia spectrum. |
Hanane Ramzaoui; Sylvane Faure; Renaud David; Sara Spotorno Top-down and bottom-up sources of eye-movement guidance during realistic scene search in Alzheimer's disease Journal Article In: Neuropsychology, vol. 36, no. 7, pp. 597–613, 2022. @article{Ramzaoui2022, Objective: Visual search is a crucial task in daily life, but in Alzheimer's disease (AD) it has usually been investigated using simple arrays. Here, we used scenes depicting real environments and studied the time course of attentional guidance. Method: We analyzed eye-movement differences between mild AD patients and age-matched healthy controls during search. We examined top-down guidance, manipulating the target template (precise picture vs. word cue) and the target-scene semantic consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent), and bottom-up guidance, manipulating the perceptual salience (high vs. low) of targets and distractors. Results: During scene scanning, AD patients had longer search times, made more fixations before the first target fixation, and showed a greater probability of distractor selection, with longer distractor fixation. AD also led to longer target fixation. In patients and controls, picture cues and highly salient targets improved all search phases, whereas consistent targets only improved search initiation (first saccade). Moreover, topdown and bottom-up guidance interacted in initiation and scanning, and this did not differ between the two groups of participants. However, AD led to a smaller picture cue benefit in shortening distractor fixation and greater bottom-up search facilitation during scanning, where a high-salience target reduced the performance gap between patients and controls. Conclusions: Our study shows the importance of top-down and bottomup guidance, and their integration, in improving search in AD patients. It suggests that precise target cues and, even more, highly salient targets may act as environmental supports that enhance attentional processing and search performance. |
Ileana Ratiu; Schea Fissel-Brannick; Miyka Whiting; Lindsay Murnion; Tamiko Azuma The impact of mild traumatic brain injury on reading comprehension and eye movements: preliminary results Journal Article In: Journal of Communication Disorders, vol. 96, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Ratiu2022, Introduction: Individuals who sustain a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) can suffer from executive function, working memory, and attention deficits, which can impact functional task performance, including reading comprehension. Individuals with mTBI commonly report reading difficulties, but such difficulties have been historically difficult to capture using behavioral measures. The current study examined reading performance in those with and without mTBI using eye-tracking measures, which may be more sensitive to reading impairment in mTBI. Method/Results: In Experiment 1, 26 participants with a history of mTBI and 26 healthy control participants completed working memory (WM) and reading comprehension tasks. We found no differences in behavioral measures but found that spontaneous eye-blinking frequency was lower during the reading task in the mTBI group. In Experiment 2, we explored the impact of auditory distraction (e.g., multi-talker babble) on reading and memory performance. Twenty-three new participants with a history of mTBI and 26 healthy control participants completed a short-term memory (STM) task, a WM task, and a reading comprehension task under two distraction conditions. As in Experiment 1, we found no differences on behavioral measures, but observed significant differences on spontaneous eye-blinking frequency between those with and without mTBI. Group differences in distraction effects were also observed and performance on the WM task predicted reading comprehension performance. Conclusions: The lack of differences on behavioral measures between groups, but lower frequencies of spontaneous eye blinking in the mTBI group suggests that while these individuals successfully completed the reading comprehension task, they may require more cognitive resources to do so. |
Mariel Roberts; Marisa Carrasco Exogenous attention generalizes location transfer of perceptual learning in adults with amblyopia Journal Article In: iScience, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1–29, 2022. @article{Roberts2022, Visual perceptual learning (VPL) is a behavioral manifestation of brain neuroplasticity. However, its practical effectiveness is limited because improvements are often specific to the trained conditions and require significant time and effort. It is critical to understand the conditions that promote learning and transfer. Covert endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) spatial attention help overcome VPL location specificity in neurotypical adults, but whether they also do so for people with atypical visual development is unknown. This study investigates the role of exogenous attention during VPL in adults with amblyopia, an ideal population given their asymmetrically developed, but highly plastic, visual cortex. Here we show that training on a discrimination task leads to improvements in foveal contrast sensitivity, acuity, and stereoacuity. Notably, exogenous attention helps generalize learning beyond trained spatial locations. Future large-scale studies can verify the extent to which attention enhances the effectiveness of perceptual learning during rehabilitation of visual disorders. |
Isabel Kreis; Lei Zhang; Steffen Moritz; Gerit Pfuhl Spared performance but increased uncertainty in schizophrenia: Evidence from a probabilistic decision-making task Journal Article In: Schizophrenia Research, vol. 243, pp. 414–423, 2022. @article{Kreis2022, Aberrant attribution of salience to in fact little informative events might explain the emergence of positive symptoms in schizophrenia and has been linked to belief uncertainty. Uncertainty is thought to be encoded by neuromodulators, including norepinephrine. However, norepinephrinergic encoding of uncertainty, measured as task-related pupil dilation, has rarely been explored in schizophrenia. Here, we addressed this question by comparing individuals with a disorder from the schizophrenia spectrum to a non-psychiatric control group on behavioral and pupillometric measures in a probabilistic prediction task, where different levels of uncertainty were introduced. Behaviorally, patients performed similar to controls, but their belief uncertainty was higher, particularly when instability of the task environment was high, suggesting an increased sensitivity to this instability. Furthermore, while pupil dilation scaled positively with uncertainty, this was less the case for patients, suggesting aberrant neuromodulatory regulation of neural gain, which may hinder the reduction of uncertainty in the long run. Together, the findings point to abnormal uncertainty processing and norepinephrinergic signaling in schizophrenia, potentially informing future development of both psychopharmacological therapies and psychotherapeutic approaches that deal with the processing of uncertain information. |
Wupadrasta Santosh Kumar; Keerthana Manikandan; Dinavahi V. P. S. Murty; Ranjini Garani Ramesh; Simran Purokayastha; Mahendra Javali; Naren Prahalada Rao; Supratim Ray Stimulus-induced narrowband gamma oscillations are test–retest reliable in human EEG Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex Communications, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Kumar2022a, Visual stimulus-induced gamma oscillations in electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings have been recently shown to be compromised in subjects with preclinical Alzheimer's Disease (AD), suggesting that gamma could be an inexpensive biomarker for AD diagnosis provided its characteristics remain consistent across multiple recordings. Previous magnetoencephalography studies in young subjects have reported consistent gamma power over recordings separated by a few weeks to months. Here, we assessed the consistency of stimulus-induced slow (20–35 Hz) and fast gamma (36–66 Hz) oscillations in subjects (n = 40) (age: 50–88 years) in EEG recordings separated by a year, and tested the consistency in the magnitude of gamma power, its temporal evolution and spectral profile. Gamma had distinct spectral/temporal characteristics across subjects, which remained consistent across recordings (average intraclass correlation of ~0.7). Alpha (8–12 Hz) and steady-state-visually evoked-potentials were also reliable. We further tested how EEG features can be used to identify 2 recordings as belonging to the same versus different subjects and found high classifier performance (AUC of ~0.89), with temporal evolution of slow gamma and spectral profile being most informative. These results suggest that EEG gamma oscillations are reliable across sessions separated over long durations and can also be a potential tool for subject identification. |
Koji Kuraoka; Kae Nakamura Facial temperature and pupil size as indicators of internal state in primates Journal Article In: Neuroscience Research, 2022. @article{Kuraoka2022, Studies in human subjects have revealed that autonomic responses provide objective and biologically relevant information about cognitive and affective states. Measures of autonomic responses can also be applied to studies of non-human primates, which are neuro-anatomically and physically similar to humans. Facial temperature and pupil size are measured remotely and can be applied to physiological experiments in primates, preferably in a head-fixed condition. However, detailed guidelines for the use of these measures in non-human primates is lacking. Here, we review the neuronal circuits and methodological considerations necessary for measuring and analyzing facial temperature and pupil size in non-human primates. Previous studies have shown that the modulation of these measures primarily reflects sympathetic reactions to cognitive and emotional processes, including alertness, attention, and mental effort, over different time scales. Integrated analyses of autonomic, behavioral, and neurophysiological data in primates are promising methods that reflect multiple dimensions of emotion and could potentially provide tools for understanding the mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders and vulnerabilities characterized by cognitive and affective disturbances. |
Nikki A. Lammers; Nils S. Van den Berg; Selma Lugtmeijer; Anouk R. Smits; Yair Pinto; Edward H. F. Haan Mid-range visual deficits after stroke: Prevalence and co-occurrence Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Lammers2022, Visual deficits are common after stroke and are powerful predictors for the chronic functional outcome. However, while basic visual field and recognition deficits are relatively easy to assess with standardized methods, selective deficits in visual primitives, such as shape or motion, are harder to identify, as they often require a symmetrical bilateral posterior lesion in order to provoke full field deficits. Therefore, we do not know how often they occur. Nevertheless, they can have severe repercussions for daily-life functioning. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and co-occurrence of hemifield “mid-range” visual deficits (i.e. color, shape, location, orientation, correlated motion, contrast, texture and glossiness), using a novel experimental set-up with a gaze-contingent presentation of the stimuli. To this end, a prospective cohort of 220 ischemic (sub)cortical stroke patients and a healthy control group was assessed with this set-up. When comparing performance of patients with controls, the results showed that deficits in motion-perception were most prevalent (26%), followed by color (22%), texture (22%), location (21%), orientation (18%), contrast (14%), shape (14%) and glossiness (13%). 63% of the stroke patients showed one or more mid-range visual deficits. Overlap of deficits was small; they mostly occurred in isolation or co-occurred with only one or two other deficits. To conclude, it was found that deficits in “mid-range” visual functions were very prevalent. These deficits are likely to affect the chronic post-stroke condition. Since we found no strong patterns of co-occurrences, we suggest that an assessment of deficits at this level of visual processing requires screening the full range of visual functions. |
Emily A. Lang; Camilla Van Geen; Ellen Tedeschi; Caroline B. Marvin; Daphna Shohamy; Emily A. Lang; Camilla Van Geen; Ellen Tedeschi; Caroline B. Marvin; Daphna Shohamy Learned temporal statistics guide information seeking and shape memory Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 151, no. 5, pp. 986–995, 2022. @article{Lang2022, Curiosity drives information seeking and promotes learning. Prior work has focused on how curiosity is elicited by intrinsic qualities of information, leaving open questions about how curiosity, exploration, and learning are shaped by the environment. Here we examine how temporal dynamics of the learning envi- ronment shape curiosity and learning. Participants (n = 71) foraged for the answer to trivia questions in two conditions that differed only in their temporal statistics. In one condition, the timing of information delivery followed a uniform distribution, while in another it followed a heavy-tailed distribution. We found that the two conditions elicited distinct responses in both behavior and pupil dilation: participants were more likely to wait for information and to later remember it in the uniform distribution. By contrast, participants showed greater surprise, evidenced in a spike in pupil dilation, when presented with the answers in the heavy-tailed distribution. Furthermore, pupil dilation was inversely related to curiosity and memory, suggesting that temporal uncertainty may interfere with the positive effects of curiosity on learning. Our findings demonstrate that the predicted timing of information delivery influences information seeking, memory, and physiological arousal, suggesting that information is best learned when it is both intrinsically interesting and presented within a temporally predictable environment. |
Chrysanthi Leonidou; Elena Constantinou; Maria Panteli; Georgia Panayiotou Attentional processing of unpleasant stimuli in alexithymia: Early avoidance followed by attention maintenance bias Journal Article In: Cogent Psychology, vol. 9, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Leonidou2022, Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality trait linked to increased risk for psychological, psychosomatic, and physical health problems. One hypothesized mechanism through which alexithymia predisposes individuals to such problems is the interference of alexithymic characteristics in processing affective, particularly unpleasant content. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and biases in attentional processing of threatening vs. neutral pictorial stimuli, disentangling early (vigilance) from late (maintenance) attentional biases. One hundred participants (77 female; 18–35 years old) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and underwent a free viewing task with picture pairs presenting illness, fear and neutral content, during which dwell time on each picture was recorded at time intervals of 0–500 ms, 501–1000 ms and 1001–6500 ms of exposure. Results from multilevel modeling showed that alexithymia interacted with time interval and picture type. Higher alexithymia scores were related to less dwell time towards fear pictures at 501 ms-1000 ms, but more dwell time at 1001 ms-6500 ms after stimulus onset. This effect was particularly observed for the externally oriented thinking and the difficulty in describing feelings facets of alexithymia, but not the difficulty in identifying feelings. There was no effect of alexithymia on early vigilance at 0–500 ms. This study provides evidence on the association between alexithymic traits and early avoidance, along with late maintenance bias to fear, which appears consistent with the view that alexithymia is associated with avoidant emotion regulation processes, but also greater requirements of cognitive resources for processing affective information. |
Astar Lev; Yoram Braw; Tomer Elbaum; Michael Wagner; Yuri Rassovsky Eye tracking during a continuous performance test: Utility for assessing ADHD patients Journal Article In: Journal of Attention Disorders, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 245–255, 2022. @article{Lev2022, Objective: The use of continuous performance tests (CPTs) for assessing ADHD related cognitive impairment is ubiquitous. Novel psychophysiological measures may enhance the data that is derived from CPTs and thereby improve clinical decision-making regarding diagnosis and treatment. As part of the current study, we integrated an eye tracker with the MOXO-dCPT and assessed the utility of eye movement measures to differentiate ADHD patients and healthy controls. Method: Adult ADHD patients and gender/age-matched healthy controls performed the MOXO-dCPT while their eye movements were monitored (n = 33 per group). Results: ADHD patients spent significantly more time gazing at irrelevant regions, both on the screen and outside of it, than healthy controls. The eye movement measures showed adequate ability to classify ADHD patients. Moreover, a scale that combined eye movement measures enhanced group prediction, compared to the sole use of conventional MOXO-dCPT indices. Conclusions: Integrating an eye tracker with CPTs is a feasible way of enhancing diagnostic precision and shows initial promise for clarifying the cognitive profile of ADHD patients. Pending replication, these findings point toward a promising path for the evolution of existing CPTs. |
Astar Lev; Tomer Elbaum; Corinne Berger; Yoram Braw Feigned ADHD associated cognitive impairment: Utility of integrating an eye-tracker and the MOXO-dCPT Journal Article In: Journal of Attention Disorders, vol. 26, no. 9, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Lev2022a, Objective: The current study assessed the utility of eye-movements measures, gathered while participants performed a commercially available Continuous Performance Test (CPT), to detect feigned ADHD-associated cognitive impairment. Method: Healthy simulators (n = 37), ADHD patients (n = 33), and healthy controls (n = 36) performed an eye-tracker integrated MOXO-dCPT and a stand-alone validity indicator. Results: Simulators gazed significantly longer at regions that were irrelevant for successful MOXO-dCPT performance compared to ADHD patients and healthy controls. This eye-movement measure, however, had lower sensitivity than traditional MOXO-dCPT indices. Discussion: Gaze direction measures, gathered while performing a CPT, show initial promise as validity indicators. Traditional CPT measures, however, are more sensitive and therefore offer a more promising path for the establishment of CPT-based validity indicators. The current study is an initial exploration of the issue and further evaluation of both theoretical and practical aspects is mandated. |
Wei Li; Hannah Rohde; Martin Corley Veritable untruths: Autistic traits and the processing of deception Journal Article In: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 52, pp. 4921–4930, 2022. @article{Li2022g, How do we decide whether a statement is literally true? Here, we contrast participants' eventual evaluations of a speaker's meaning with the real-time processes of comprehension. We record participants' eye movements as they respond to potentially misleading instructions to click on one of two objects which might be concealing treasure (the treasure is behind thee, uh, hat). Participants are less likely to click on the named object when the instructions are disfluent. However, when hearing disfluent utterances, a tendency to fixate the named object early increases with participants' autism quotient scores. This suggests that, even where utterances are equivalently understood, the processes by which interpretations are achieved vary across individuals. |
Amy M. Lieberman; Allison Fitch; Arielle Borovsky Flexible fast-mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Lieberman2022, Word learning in young children requires coordinated attention between language input and the referent object. Current accounts of word learning are based on spoken language, where the association between language and objects occurs through simultaneous and multimodal perception. In contrast, deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) perceive both linguistic and non-linguistic information through the visual mode. In order to coordinate attention to language input and its referents, deaf children must allocate visual attention optimally between objects and signs. We conducted two eye-tracking experiments to investigate how young deaf children allocate attention and process referential cues in order to fast-map novel signs to novel objects. Participants were deaf children learning ASL between the ages of 17 and 71 months. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 30) were presented with a novel object and a novel sign, along with a referential cue that occurred either before or after the sign label. In Experiment 2, a new group of participants (n = 32) were presented with two novel objects and a novel sign, so that the referential cue was critical for identifying the target object. Across both experiments, participants showed evidence for fast-mapping the signs regardless of the timing of the referential cue. Individual differences in children's allocation of attention during exposure were correlated with their ability to fast-map the novel signs at test. This study provides first evidence for fast-mapping in sign language, and contributes to theoretical accounts of how word learning develops when all input occurs in the visual modality. |
Joel T. Martin; Annalise H. Whittaker; Stephen J. Johnston Pupillometry and the vigilance decrement: Task-evoked but not baseline pupil measures reflect declining performance in visual vigilance tasks Journal Article In: European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 778–799, 2022. @article{Martin2022, Baseline and task-evoked pupil measures are known to reflect the activity of the nervous system's central arousal mechanisms. With the increasing availability, affordability and flexibility of video-based eye tracking hardware, these measures may one day find practical application in real-time biobehavioural monitoring systems to assess performance or fitness for duty in tasks requiring vigilant attention. But real-world vigilance tasks are predominantly visual in their nature and most research in this area has taken place in the auditory domain. Here, we explore the relationship between pupil size—both baseline and task-evoked—and behavioural performance measures in two novel vigilance tasks requiring visual target detection: (1) a traditional vigilance task involving prolonged, continuous and uninterrupted performance (n = 28) and (2) a psychomotor vigilance task (n = 25). In both tasks, behavioural performance and task-evoked pupil responses declined as time spent on task increased, corroborating previous reports in the literature of a vigilance decrement with a corresponding reduction in task-evoked pupil measures. Also in line with previous findings, baseline pupil size did not show a consistent relationship with performance measures. Our data offer novel insights into the complex interplay of brain systems involved in vigilant attention and question the validity of the assumption that baseline (prestimulus) pupil size and task-evoked (poststimulus) pupil measures reflect the tonic and phasic firing modes of the locus coeruleus. |
Drew J. McLaughlin; Maggie E. Zink; Lauren Gaunt; Brent Spehar; Kristin J. Van Engen; Mitchell S. Sommers; Jonathan E. Peelle Pupillometry reveals cognitive demands of lexical competition during spoken word recognition in young and older adults Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{McLaughlin2022, In most contemporary activation-competition frameworks for spoken word recognition, candidate words compete against phonological “neighbors” with similar acoustic properties (e.g., “cap” vs. “cat”). Thus, recognizing words with more competitors should come at a greater cognitive cost relative to recognizing words with fewer competitors, due to increased demands for selecting the correct item and inhibiting incorrect candidates. Importantly, these processes should operate even in the absence of differences in accuracy. In the present study, we tested this proposal by examining differences in processing costs associated with neighborhood density for highly intelligible items presented in quiet. A second goal was to examine whether the cognitive demands associated with increased neighborhood density were greater for older adults compared with young adults. Using pupillometry as an index of cognitive processing load, we compared the cognitive demands associated with spoken word recognition for words with many or fewer neighbors, presented in quiet, for young (n = 67) and older (n = 69) adult listeners. Growth curve analysis of the pupil data indicated that older adults showed a greater evoked pupil response for spoken words than did young adults, consistent with increased cognitive load during spoken word recognition. Words from dense neighborhoods were marginally more demanding to process than words from sparse neighborhoods. There was also an interaction between age and neighborhood density, indicating larger effects of density in young adult listeners. These results highlight the importance of assessing both cognitive demands and accuracy when investigating the mechanisms underlying spoken word recognition. |
Anat Rudich-Strassler; Nimrod Hertz-Palmor; Amit Lazarov Looks interesting: Attention allocation in depression when using a news website – An eye tracking study Journal Article In: Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 304, pp. 113–121, 2022. @article{RudichStrassler2022, Background: Eye-tracking-based attention research has shown attentional biases toward dysphoric and away from positive stimuli in depression. However, most research used prototypical stimuli (co-presented contrasting emotional faces/pictures), less reflective of real-life situations. The current study addressed this limitation by examining participants' attentional allocation patterns while freely viewing a news website containing dysphoric and positive news articles. Methods: Participants with high levels of depression (HD; n = 30) and with minimal levels of depression (MD; n = 30) freely viewed a fictitious news website for 3.5 min, containing six articles (picture + text) with dysphoric content and six with positive content. Gaze patterns on corresponding areas of interest (AOIs) were compared. Following the task, participants rated each article's valence, authenticity, and interest. Results: Compared to MD participants, HD participants spent more time dwelling on dysphoric articles and less time dwelling on positive articles. Within group analyses showed that while HD participants spent more time dwelling on dysphoric compared to positive articles, MD participants showed no preference, allocating their attention equally to both article types. Echoing within-group gaze patterns, HD participants rated the dysphoric articles as being more interesting than the positive articles, while MD participants rated both types of articles as being equally interesting. Conclusion: Attentional biases in depression were also evident when using a more ecologically valid task such as viewing a news website, manifesting as increase attention allocation to dysphoric over positive content. This attention pattern may be related to corresponding differences in the level of interest participants found in each article type. |
Arunava Samaddar; Brooke S. Jackson; Christopher J. Helms; Nicole A. Lazar; Jennifer E. McDowell; Cheolwoo Park A group comparison in fMRI data using a semiparametric model under shape invariance Journal Article In: Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, vol. 167, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Samaddar2022, In the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, a common type of analysis is to compare differences across scanning sessions. A challenge to direct comparisons of this type is the low signal-to-noise ratio in fMRI data. By using the property that brain signals from a task-related experiment may exhibit a similar pattern in regions of interest across participants, a semiparametric approach under shape invariance to quantify and test the differences in sessions and groups is developed. The common function is estimated with local polynomial regression and the shape invariance model parameters are estimated using evolutionary optimization methods. The efficacy of the semi-parametric approach is demonstrated on a study of brain activation changes across two sessions associated with practice-related cognitive control. The objective of the study is to evaluate neural circuitry supporting a cognitive control task, and associated practice-related changes via acquisition of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal collected using fMRI. By using the proposed approach, BOLD signals in multiple regions of interest for control participants and participants with schizophrenia are compared as they perform a cognitive control task (known as the antisaccade task) at two sessions, and the effects of task practice in these groups are quantified. |
Foroogh Shamsi; Rong Liu; MiYoung Kwon Binocularly asymmetric crowding in glaucoma and a lack of binocular summation in crowding Journal Article In: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Shamsi2022, PURPOSE. Glaucoma is associated with progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells. Here we investigated the impact of glaucomatous damage on monocular and binocular crowding in parafoveal vision. We also examined the binocular summation of crowding to see if crowding is alleviated under binocular viewing. METHODS. The study design included 40 individuals with glaucoma and 24 age-similar normal cohorts. For each subject, the magnitude of crowding was determined by the extent of crowding zone. Crowding zone measurements were made binocularly in parafoveal vision (i.e., at 2° and 4° retinal eccentricities) visual field. For a subgroup of glaucoma subjects (n = 17), crowding zone was also measured monocularly for each eye. RESULTS. Our results showed that, compared with normal cohorts, individuals with glaucoma exhibited significantly larger crowding—enlargement of crowding zone (an increase by 21%; P < 0.01). Moreover, we also observed a lack of binocular summation (i.e., a binocular ratio of 1): binocular crowding was determined by the better eye. Hence, our results did not provide evidence supporting binocular summation of crowding in glaucomatous vision. CONCLUSIONS. Our findings show that crowding is exacerbated in parafoveal vision in glaucoma and binocularly asymmetric glaucoma seems to induce binocularly asymmetric crowding. Furthermore, the lack of binocular summation for crowding observed in glaucomatous vision combined with the lack of binocular summation reported in a previous study on normal healthy vision support the view that crowding may start in the early stages of visual processing, at least before the process of binocular integration takes place. |
Frederick Shic; Adam J. Naples; Erin C. Barney; Shou An Chang; Beibin Li; Takumi McAllister; Minah Kim; Kelsey J. Dommer; Simone Hasselmo; Adham Atyabi; Quan Wang; Gerhard Helleman; April R. Levin; Helen Seow; Raphael Bernier; Katarzyna Charwaska; Geraldine Dawson; James Dziura; Susan Faja; Shafali Spurling Jeste; Scott P. Johnson; Michael Murias; Charles A. Nelson; Maura Sabatos-DeVito; Damla Senturk; Catherine A. Sugar; Sara J. Webb; James C. McPartland In: Molecular Autism, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Shic2022, Background: Eye tracking (ET) is a powerful methodology for studying attentional processes through quantification of eye movements. The precision, usability, and cost-effectiveness of ET render it a promising platform for developing biomarkers for use in clinical trials for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: The autism biomarkers consortium for clinical trials conducted a multisite, observational study of 6–11-year-old children with ASD (n = 280) and typical development (TD |
Francis X. Smith; Bob McMurray Lexical access changes based on listener needs: Real-time word recognition in continuous speech in cochlear implant users Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1487–1501, 2022. @article{Smith2022, Objectives: A key challenge in word recognition is the temporary ambiguity created by the fact that speech unfolds over time. In normal hearing (NH) listeners, this temporary ambiguity is resolved through incremental processing and competition among lexical candidates. Post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users show similar incremental processing and competition but with slight delays. However, even brief delays could lead to drastic changes when compounded across multiple words in a phrase. This study asks whether words presented in non-informative continuous speech (a carrier phrase) are processed differently than in isolation and whether NH listeners and CI users exhibit different effects of a carrier phrase. Design: In a Visual World Paradigm experiment, listeners heard words either in isolation or in non-informative carrier phrases (e.g., "click on the."). Listeners selected the picture corresponding to the target word from among four items including the target word (e.g., mustard), a cohort competitor (e.g., mustache), a rhyme competitor (e.g., custard), and an unrelated item (e.g., penguin). Eye movements were tracked as an index of the relative activation of each lexical candidate as competition unfolds over the course of word recognition. Participants included 21 post-lingually deafened cochlear implant users and 21 NH controls. A replication experiment presented in the Supplemental Digital Content, http://links.lww.com/EANDH/A999 included an additional 22 post-lingually deafened CI users and 18 NH controls. Results: Both CI users and the NH controls were accurate at recognizing the words both in continuous speech and in isolation. The time course of lexical activation (indexed by the fixations) differed substantially between groups. CI users were delayed in fixating the target relative to NH controls. Additionally, CI users showed less competition from cohorts than NH controls (even as previous studies have often report increased competition). However, CI users took longer to suppress the cohort and suppressed it less fully than the NH controls. For both CI users and NH controls, embedding words in carrier phrases led to more immediacy in lexical access as observed by increases in cohort competition relative to when words were presented in isolation. However, CI users were not differentially affected by the carriers. Conclusions: Unlike prior work, CI users appeared to exhibit "wait-and-see" profile, in which lexical access is delayed minimizing early competition. However, CI users simultaneously sustained competitor activation late in the trial, possibly to preserve flexibility. This hybrid profile has not been observed previously. When target words are heard in continuous speech, both CI users and NH controls more heavily weight early information. However, CI users (but not NH listeners) also commit less fully to the target, potentially keeping options open if they need to recover from a misperception. This mix of patterns reflects a lexical system that is extremely flexible and adapts to fit the needs of a listener. |
Sabine Soltani; Dimitri M. L. Ryckeghem; Tine Vervoort; Lauren C. Heathcote; Keith O. Yeates; Christopher Sears; Melanie Noel Clinical relevance of attentional biases in pediatric chronic pain: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Pain, vol. 163, no. 2, pp. E261–E273, 2022. @article{Soltani2022, Attentional biases have been posited as one of the key mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of chronic pain and co-occurring internalizing mental health symptoms. Despite this theoretical prominence, a comprehensive understanding of the nature of biased attentional processing in chronic pain and its relationship to theorized antecedents and clinical outcomes is lacking, particularly in youth. This study used eye-tracking to assess attentional bias for painful facial expressions and its relationship to theorized antecedents of chronic pain and clinical outcomes. Youth with chronic pain (n = 125) and without chronic pain (n = 52) viewed face images of varying levels of pain expressiveness while their eye gaze was tracked and recorded. At baseline, youth completed questionnaires to assess pain characteristics, theorized antecedents (pain catastrophizing, fear of pain, and anxiety sensitivity), and clinical outcomes (pain intensity, interference, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress). For youth with chronic pain, clinical outcomes were reassessed at 3 months to assess for relationships with attentional bias while controlling for baseline symptoms. In both groups, youth exhibited an attentional bias for painful facial expressions. For youth with chronic pain, attentional bias was not significantly associated with theorized antecedents or clinical outcomes at baseline or 3-month follow-up. These findings call into question the posited relationships between attentional bias and clinical outcomes. Additional studies using more comprehensive and contextual paradigms for the assessment of attentional bias are required to clarify the ways in which such biases may manifest and relate to clinical outcomes. |
Michael J. Spilka; William R. Keller; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss; Robert W. Buchanan; James M. Gold; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss Endogenous oxytocin levels are associated with facial emotion recognition accuracy but not gaze behavior in individuals with schizophrenia Journal Article In: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol. 145, pp. 494–506, 2022. @article{Spilka2022, Abstract Objective: Difficulties in social cognition are common in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and are not ameliorated by antipsychotic treatment. Intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration has been explored as a potential intervention to improve social cognition; however, results are inconsistent, suggesting potential individual difference variables that may influence treatment response. Less is known about the relationship between endogenous OT and social cognition in SZ, knowledge of which may improve the development of OT-focused therapies. We examined plasma OT in relationship to facial emotion recognition and visual attention to salient facial features in SZ and controls. Methods: Forty-two individuals with SZ and 23 healthy controls viewed photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensity and identified the emotional expression displayed. Participants' gaze behavior during the task was recorded via eye tracking. Plasma oxytocin concentrations were determined by radioimmunoassay. Results: SZ were less accurate than controls at identifying high-intensity fear-ful facial expressions and low-intensity sad expressions. Lower overall and high- ntensity facial emotion recognition accuracy was associated with lower plasma OT levels in SZ but not controls. OT was not associated with visual attention to salient facial features; however, SZ had reduced visual attention to the nose re- gion compared to controls. Conclusion: Individual differences in endogenous OT predict facial emotion recognition ability in SZ but are not associated with visual attention to salient facial features. Increased understanding of the association between endogenous OT and social cognitive abilities in SZ may help improve the design and interpretation of OT- ocused clinical trials in SZ. |
Zoey Stark; Léon Franzen; Aaron P. Johnson Insights from a dyslexia simulation font: Can we simulate reading struggles of individuals with dyslexia? Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 228–243, 2022. @article{Stark2022, Individuals with dyslexia struggle at explaining what it is like to have dyslexia and how they perceive letters and words differently. This led the designer Daniel Britton to create a font that aims to simulate the perceptual experience of how effortful reading can be for individuals with dyslexia (http://danielbritton.info/dyslexia). This font removes forty percent of each character stroke with the aim of increasing reading effort, and in turn empathy and understanding for individuals with dyslexia. However, its efficacy has not yet been empirically tested. In the present study, we compared participants without dyslexia reading texts in the dyslexia simulation font to a group of individuals with dyslexia reading the same texts in Times New Roman font. Results suggest that the simulation font amplifies the struggle of reading, surpassing that experienced by adults with dyslexia—as reflected in increased reading time and overall number of eye movements in the majority of typical readers reading in the simulation font. Future research could compare the performance of the Daniel Britton simulation font against a sample of beginning readers with dyslexia as well as seek to design and empirically test an adapted simulation font with an increased preserved percentage of letter strokes. |
Tobias Staudigl; Juri Minxha; Adam N. Mamelak; Katalin M. Gothard; Ueli Rutishauser Saccade-related neural communication in the human medial temporal lobe is modulated by the social relevance of stimuli Journal Article In: Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Staudigl2022, Humans predominantly explore their environment by moving their eyes. To optimally communicate and process visual information, neural activity needs to be coordinated with the execution of eye movements. We investigated the coordination between visual exploration and interareal neural communication by analyzing local field potentials and single neuron activity in patients with epilepsy. We demonstrated that during the free viewing of images, neural communication between the human amygdala and hippocampus is coordinated with the execution of eye movements. The strength and direction of neural communication and hippocampal saccade-related phase alignment were strongest for fixations that landed on human faces. Our results argue that the state of the human medial temporal lobe network is selectively coordinated with motor behavior. Interareal neural communication was facilitated for social stimuli as indexed by the category of the attended information. |
Marianna Stella; Paul E. Engelhardt Use of parsing heuristics in the comprehension of passive sentences: Evidence from dyslexia and individual differences Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Stella2022, This study examined the comprehension of passive sentences in order to investigate whether individuals with dyslexia rely on parsing heuristics in language comprehension to a greater extent than non‐dyslexic readers. One hundred adults (50 dyslexics and 50 controls) read active and passive sentences, and we also manipulated semantic plausibility. Eye movements were monitored, while participants read each sentence, and afterwards, participants answered a comprehension question. We also assessed verbal intelligence and working memory in all participants. Results showed dyslexia status interacted with sentence structure and plausibility, such that participants with dyslexia showed significantly more comprehension errors with passive and implausible sentence. With respect to verbal intelligence and working memory, we found that individuals with lower verbal intelligence were overall more likely to make comprehension errors, and individuals with lower working memory showed particular difficulties with passive and implausible sentences. For reading times, we found that individuals with dyslexia were overall slower readers. These findings suggest that (1) individuals with dyslexia do rely on heuristics to a greater extent than do nondyslexic individuals, and (2) individual differences variables (e.g., verbal intelligence and working memory) are also related to the use of parsing heuristics. For the latter, lower ability individuals tended to be more consistent with heuristic processing (i.e., good‐enough representations). |
Anna Lena Stroh; Konstantin Grin; Frank Rösler; Davide Bottari; José Ossandón; Bruno Rossion; Brigitte Röder Developmental experiences alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual cortex: Evidence from deaf and hearing native signers Journal Article In: European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 1629–1644, 2022. @article{Stroh2022, To date, the extent to which early experience shapes the functional characteristics of neural circuits is still a matter of debate. In the present study, we tested whether congenital deafness and/or the acquisition of a sign language alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual system. Moreover, we investigated whether, assuming cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals, the temporal processing characteristics of possibly reorganised auditory areas resemble those of the visual cortex. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were recorded in congenitally deaf native signers, hearing native signers, and hearing nonsigners. The luminance of the visual stimuli was periodically modulated at 12, 21, and 40 Hz. For hearing nonsigners, the optimal driving rate was 12 Hz. By contrast, for the group of hearing signers, the optimal driving rate was 12 and 21 Hz, whereas for the group of deaf signers, the optimal driving rate was 21 Hz. We did not observe evidence for cross-modal recruitment of auditory cortex in the group of deaf signers. These results suggest a higher preferred neural processing rate as a consequence of the acquisition of a sign language. |
Leah N. Tobin; Christopher R. Sears; Kristin M. Von Ranson In: Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Tobin2022, Objective: This cluster randomized controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of participation in the Body Project—a cognitive-dissonance-based preventive intervention that reduces self-reported body dissatisfaction—for reducing body-dissatisfaction-related attentional biases. We hypothesized that women in a Body Project condition would show a greater reduction in attentional biases to weight-related images and words at postintervention than women in a wait-list control condition. Method: Body-dissatisfied university women (N= 168; Mage = 20.50 ± 3.37 years; 42.0% White; MBMI = 23.08 ± 4.45 kg/m2) were randomly assigned to a Body Project, media psychoeducation (i.e., active control), or wait-list control condition. We assessed attentional biases via eye-gaze tracking and body satisfaction using the Body Shape Questionnaire, at baseline and postintervention. Results: Self-reported outcomes from previous literature were replicated. Compared to wait-list, Body Project participation reduced attention to images of thin models ( ps < .05; ds = .19, .24), but not to weight-related words. Compared to wait-list, the media psychoeducation condition reduced attention to fat-related images and words (ds = .17, .18). Conclusions: This study, which replicates previous self-report findings, is the first to find that two preventive interventions reduced an objective outcome (attentional bias to weight-related images) in body-dissatisfied women. |
Chiara Tortelli; Antonella Pomè; Marco Turi; Roberta Igliozzi; David C. Burr; Paola Binda Contextual information modulates pupil size in autistic children Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Tortelli2022, Recent Bayesian models suggest that perception is more “data-driven” and less dependent on contextual information in autistic individuals than others. However, experimental tests of this hypothesis have given mixed results, possibly due to the lack of objectivity of the self-report methods typically employed. Here we introduce an objective no-report paradigm based on pupillometry to assess the processing of contextual information in autistic children, together with a comparison clinical group. After validating in neurotypical adults a child-friendly pupillometric paradigm, in which we embedded test images within an animation movie that participants watched passively, we compared pupillary response to images of the sun and meaningless control images in children with autism vs. age- and IQ-matched children presenting developmental disorders unrelated to the autistic spectrum. Both clinical groups showed stronger pupillary constriction for the sun images compared with control images, like the neurotypical adults. However, there was no detectable difference between autistic children and the comparison group, despite a significant difference in pupillary light responses, which were enhanced in the autistic group. Our report introduces an objective technique for studying perception in clinical samples and children. The lack of statistically significant group differences in our tests suggests that autistic children and the comparison group do not show large differences in perception of these stimuli. This opens the way to further studies testing contextual processing at other levels of perception. |
Nils S. Berg; Nikki A. Lammers; Anouk R. Smits; Selma Lugtmeijer; Yair Pinto; Edward H. F. De Haan Mid-range visual functions in relation to higher-order visual functions after stroke Journal Article In: Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 580–591, 2022. @article{Berg2022a, Introduction: We aimed to investigate whether associations between deficits in “mid-range” visual functions and deficits in higher-order visual cognitive functions in stroke patients are more in line with a hierarchical, two-pathway model of the visual brain, or with a patchwork model, which assumes a parallel organization with many processing routes and cross-talk. Methods: A group of 182 ischemic stroke patients was assessed with a new diagnostic set-up for the investigation of a comprehensive range of visuosensory mid-range functions: color, shape, location, orientation, correlated motion, contrast and texture. With logistic regression analyses we investigated the predictive value of these mid-range functions for deficits in visuoconstruction (Copy of the Rey-Complex Figure Test), visual emotion recognition (Ekman 60 Faces Test of the FEEST) and visual memory (computerized Doors-test). Results: Results showed that performance on most mid-range visual tasks could not predict performance on higher-order visual cognitive tasks. Correlations were low to weak. Impaired visuoconstruction and visual memory were only modestly predicted by a worse location perception. Impaired emotion perception was modestly predicted by a worse orientation perception. In addition, double dissociations were found: there were patients with selective deficits in mid-range visual functions without higher-order visual deficits and vice versa. Conclusions: Our findings are not in line with the hierarchical, two-pathway model. Instead, the findings are more in line with alternative “patchwork” models, arguing for a parallel organization with many processing routes and cross-talk. However, future studies are needed to test these alternative models. |
Preeti Verghese; Saeideh Ghahghaei; Zachary Lively Mapping residual stereopsis in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 13, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Verghese2022, Individuals with macular degeneration typically lose vision in the central region of one or both eyes. A binocular scotoma occurs when vision loss occurs in overlapping locations in both eyes, but stereopsis is impacted even in the non-overlapping region wherever the visual field in either eye is affected. We used a novel stereoperimetry protocol to measure local stereopsis across the visual field (up to 25° eccentricity) to determine how locations with functional stereopsis relate to the scotomata in the two eyes. Participants included those with monocular or binocular scotomata and age-matched controls with healthy vision. Targets (with or without depth information) were presented on a random dot background. Depth targets had true binocular disparity of 20' (crossed), whereas non-depth targets were defined by monocular cues such as contrast and dot density. Participants reported target location and whether it was in depth or flat. Local depth sensitivity (d') estimates were then combined to generate a stereopsis map. This stereopsis map was compared to the union of the monocular microperimetry estimates that mapped out the functional extent of the scotoma in each eye. The "union" prediction aligned with residual stereopsis, showing impaired stereopsis within this region and residual stereopsis outside this region. Importantly, the stereoblind region was typically more extensive than the binocular scotoma defined by the intersection (overlap) of the scotomata. This explains why individuals may have intact binocular visual fields but be severely compromised in tasks of daily living that benefit from stereopsis, such as eye-hand coordination and navigation. |
Simone Vespa; Lars Stumpp; Giulia Liberati; Jean Delbeke; Antoine Nonclercq; André Mouraux; Riëm El Tahry Characterization of vagus nerve stimulation-induced pupillary responses in epileptic patients Journal Article In: Brain Stimulation, vol. 15, pp. 1498–1507, 2022. @article{Vespa2022, Background: Modulation of the locus coeruleus (LC)-noradrenergic system is a key mechanism of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). Activation of the LC produces pupil dilation, and the VNS-induced change in pupil diameter was demonstrated in animals as a possible dose-dependent biomarker for treatment titration. Objective: This study aimed to characterize VNS-induced pupillary responses in epileptic patients. Methods: Pupil diameter was recorded in ten epileptic patients upon four stimulation conditions: three graded levels of VNS intensity and a somatosensory control stimulation (cutaneous electrical stimulation over the left clavicle). For each block, the patients rated the intensity of stimulation on a numerical scale. We extracted the latency of the peak pupil dilation and the magnitude of the early (0e2.5 s) and late components (2.5e5 s) of the pupil dilation response (PDR). Results: VNS elicited a peak dilation with longer latency compared to the control condition (p ¼ 0.043). The magnitude of the early PDR was significantly correlated with the intensity of perception (p ¼ 0.046), whereas the late PDR was not (p ¼ 0.19). There was a significant main effect of the VNS level of intensity on the magnitude of the late PDR (p ¼ 0.01) but not on the early PDR (p ¼ 0.2). The relationship between late PDR magnitude and VNS intensity was best fit by a Gaussian model (inverted-U). Conclusions: The late component of the PDR might reflect specific dose-dependent effects of VNS, as compared to control somatosensory stimulation. The inverted-U relationship of late PDR with VNS in- tensity might indicate the engagement of antagonist central mechanisms at high stimulation intensities. |
Chiara Visentin; Chiara Valzolgher; Matteo Pellegatti; Paola Potente; Francesco Pavani; Nicola Prodi A comparison of simultaneously-obtained measures of listening effort: Pupil dilation, verbal response time and self-rating Journal Article In: International Journal of Audiology, vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 561–573, 2022. @article{Visentin2022, Objective: The aim of this study was to assess to what extent simultaneously-obtained measures of listening effort (task-evoked pupil dilation, verbal response time [RT], and self-rating) could be sensitive to auditory and cognitive manipulations in a speech perception task. The study also aimed to explore the possible relationship between RT and pupil dilation. Design: A within-group design was adopted. All participants were administered the Matrix Sentence Test in 12 conditions (signal-to-noise ratios [SNR] of −3, −6, −9 dB; attentional resources focussed vs divided; spatial priors present vs absent). Study sample: Twenty-four normal-hearing adults, 20–41 years old (M = 23.5), were recruited in the study. Results: A significant effect of the SNR was found for all measures. However, pupil dilation discriminated only partially between the SNRs. Neither of the cognitive manipulations were effective in modulating the measures. No relationship emerged between pupil dilation, RT and self-ratings. Conclusions: RT, pupil dilation, and self-ratings can be obtained simultaneously when administering speech perception tasks, even though some limitations remain related to the absence of a retention period after the listening phase. The sensitivity of the three measures to changes in the auditory environment differs. RTs and self-ratings proved most sensitive to changes in SNR. |
Josefine Waldthaler; Mikkel C. Vinding; Allison Eriksson; Per Svenningsson; Daniel Lundqvist Neural correlates of impaired response inhibition in the antisaccade task in Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 422, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Waldthaler2022, Deficits in response inhibition are a central feature of the highly prevalent dysexecutive syndrome found in Parkinson's disease (PD). Such deficits are related to a range of common clinically relevant symptoms including cognitive impairment as well as impulsive and compulsive behaviors. In this study, we explored the cortical dynamics underlying response inhibition during the mental preparation for the antisaccade task by recording magnetoencephalography (MEG) and eye-movements in 21 non-demented patients with early to mid-stage Parkinson's disease and 21 age-matched healthy control participants (HC). During the pre-stimulus preparatory period for antisaccades we observed: • a preparation-related increase in beta band activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of HC (n = 15) for antisaccades compared with prosaccades that was not detectable in the PD group (n = 17); • a significant attenuation of the preparation-related increase in alpha band power in bilateral FEF and reduced alpha band connectivity between the right DLPFC and right FEF in the PD group compared with HC, suggesting reduced top-down control to inhibit pre-potent activation of FEF in PD; and • a positive correlation between the magnitude of pre-stimulus beta desynchronization in FEF and subsequent antisaccade latency in PD and HC, indicating a relationship between preparatory beta band modulation and effectiveness of subsequent antisaccade execution. Taken together, the results indicate that alterations in pre-stimulus prefrontal alpha and beta activity hinder proactive response inhibition and in turn result in higher error rates and prolonged response latencies in PD. |
2021 |
Delia A. Gheorghe; Muriel T. N. Panouillères; Nicholas D. Walsh Investigating the effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation on saccadic adaptation and cortisol response Journal Article In: Cerebellum and Ataxias, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–11, 2021. @article{Gheorghe2021, Background: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over the prefrontal cortex has been shown to modulate subjective, neuronal and neuroendocrine responses, particularly in the context of stress processing. However, it is currently unknown whether tDCS stimulation over other brain regions, such as the cerebellum, can similarly affect the stress response. Despite increasing evidence linking the cerebellum to stress-related processing, no studies have investigated the hormonal and behavioural effects of cerebellar tDCS. Methods: This study tested the hypothesis of a cerebellar tDCS effect on mood, behaviour and cortisol. To do this we employed a single-blind, sham-controlled design to measure performance on a cerebellar-dependent saccadic adaptation task, together with changes in cortisol output and mood, during online anodal and cathodal stimulation. Forty-five participants were included in the analysis. Stimulation groups were matched on demographic variables, potential confounding factors known to affect cortisol levels, mood and a number of personality characteristics. Results: Results showed that tDCS polarity did not affect cortisol levels or subjective mood, but did affect behaviour. Participants receiving anodal stimulation showed an 8.4% increase in saccadic adaptation, which was significantly larger compared to the cathodal group (1.6%). Conclusion: The stimulation effect on saccadic adaptation contributes to the current body of literature examining the mechanisms of cerebellar stimulation on associated function. We conclude that further studies are needed to understand whether and how cerebellar tDCS may module stress reactivity under challenge conditions. |
Mikael Rubin; Michael J. Telch Pupillary response to affective voices: Physiological responsivity and posttraumatic stress disorder Journal Article In: Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 182–189, 2021. @article{Rubin2021a, Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is related to dysfunctional emotional processing, thus motivating the search for physiological indices that can elucidate this process. Toward this aim, we compared pupillary response patterns in response to angry and fearful auditory stimuli among 99 adults, some with PTSD (n = 14), some trauma-exposed without PTSD (TE; n = 53), and some with no history of trauma exposure (CON; n = 32). We hypothesized that individuals with PTSD would show more pupillary response to angry and fearful auditory stimuli compared to those in the TE and CON groups. Among participants who had experienced a traumatic event, we explored the association between PTSD symptoms and pupillary response; contrary to our prediction, individuals with PTSD displayed the least pupillary response to fearful auditory stimuli compared those in the TE |
Kathryn M. Rothenhoefer; Tao Hong; Aydin Alikaya; William R. Stauffer Rare rewards amplify dopamine responses Journal Article In: Nature Neuroscience, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 465–469, 2021. @article{Rothenhoefer2021, Dopamine prediction error responses are essential components of universal learning mechanisms. However, it is unknown whether individual dopamine neurons reflect the shape of reward distributions. Here, we used symmetrical distributions with differently weighted tails to investigate how the frequency of rewards and reward prediction errors influence dopamine signals. Rare rewards amplified dopamine responses, even when conventional prediction errors were identical, indicating a mechanism for learning the complexities of real-world incentives. |
Lucy L. Russell; Caroline V. Greaves; Rhian S. Convery; Jennifer Nicholas; Jason D. Warren; Diego Kaski; Jonathan D. Rohrer Novel instructionless eye tracking tasks identify emotion recognition deficits in frontotemporal dementia Journal Article In: Alzheimer's Research and Therapy, vol. 13, pp. 39, 2021. @article{Russell2021a, Background: Current tasks measuring social cognition are usually ‘pen and paper' tasks, have ceiling effects and include complicated test instructions that may be difficult to understand for those with cognitive impairment. We therefore aimed to develop a set of simple, instructionless, quantitative, tasks of emotion recognition using the methodology of eye tracking, with the subsequent aim of assessing their utility in individuals with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Methods: Using the Eyelink 1000 Plus eye tracker, 18 bvFTD and 22 controls completed tasks of simple and complex emotion recognition that involved viewing four images (one target face (simple) or pair of eyes (complex) and the others non-target) followed by a target emotion word and lastly the original four images alongside the emotion word. A dwell time change score was then calculated as the main outcome measure by subtracting the percentage dwell time for the target image before the emotion word appeared away from the percentage dwell time for the target image after the emotion word appeared. All participants also underwent a standard cognitive battery and volumetric T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Analysis using a mixed effects model showed that the average (standard deviation) mean dwell time change score in the target interest area was 35 (27)% for the control group compared with only 4 (18)% for the bvFTD group (p < 0.05) for the simple emotion recognition task, and 15 (26)% for the control group compared with only 2 (18)% for the bvFTD group (p < 0.05) for the complex emotion recognition task. Worse performance in the bvFTD group correlated with atrophy in the right ventromedial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, brain regions previously implicated in social cognition. Conclusions: In summary, eye tracking is a viable tool for assessing social cognition in individuals with bvFTD, being well-tolerated and able to overcome some of the problems associated with standard psychometric tasks. |
Anthony J. Ryals; Megan E. Kelly; Anne M. Cleary Increased pupil dilation during tip-of-the-tongue states Journal Article In: Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 92, pp. 103152, 2021. @article{Ryals2021, Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are feelings of impending word retrieval success during a current failure to retrieve a target word. Though much is known and understood about TOT states from decades of research, research on potential psychophysiological correlates of the TOT state is still in its infancy, and existing studies point toward the involvement of neural processes that are associated with enhanced attention, motivation, and information-seeking. In the present study, we demonstrate that, during instances of target retrieval failure, TOT states are associated with greater pupillary dilation (i.e., autonomic arousal) in 91% of our sample. This is the first study to demonstrate a pupillometric correlate of the TOT experience, and this finding provides an important step toward understanding emotional attributes associated with TOT states. Mean pupil dilation also increased such that instances of target identification failure that were unaccompanied by TOT states < instances in which TOTs occurred < instances of target identification success. It is possible that TOTs reflect an intermediary state between complete target retrieval failure and full target retrieval. |
Giulia C. Salgari; Geoffrey F. Potts; Joseph Schmidt; Chi C. Chan; Christopher C. Spencer; Jeffrey S. Bedwell Event-related potentials to rare visual targets and negative symptom severity in a transdiagnostic psychiatric sample Journal Article In: Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 132, no. 7, pp. 1526–1536, 2021. @article{Salgari2021, Objectives: Negative psychiatric symptoms are often resistant to treatments, regardless of the disorder in which they appear. One model for a cause of negative symptoms is impairment in higher-order cognition. The current study examined how particular bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of selective attention relate to severity of negative symptoms across a transdiagnostic psychiatric sample. Methods: The sample consisted of 130 participants: 25 schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, 26 bipolar disorders, 18 unipolar depression, and 61 nonpsychiatric controls. The relationships between attentional event-related potentials following rare visual targets (i.e., N1, N2b, P2a, and P3b) and severity of the negative symptom domains of anhedonia, avolition, and blunted affect were evaluated using frequentist and Bayesian analyses. Results: P3b and N2b mean amplitudes were inversely related to the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-Negative Symptom Factor severity score across the entire sample. Subsequent regression analyses showed a significant negative transdiagnostic relationship between P3b amplitude and blunted affect severity. Conclusions: Results indicate that negative symptoms, and particularly blunted affect, may have a stronger association with deficits in top-down mechanisms of selective attention. Significance: This suggests that people with greater severity of blunted affect, independent of diagnosis, do not allocate sufficient cognitive resources when engaging in activities requiring selective attention. |
Nichole E. Scheerer; Elina Birmingham; Troy Q. Boucher; Grace Iarocci Attention capture by trains and faces in children with and without autism spectrum disorder Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. e0250763, 2021. @article{Scheerer2021, This study examined involuntary capture of attention, overt attention, and stimulus valence and arousal ratings, all factors that can contribute to potential attentional biases to face and train objects in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the visual domain, faces are particularly captivating, and are thought to have a ‘special status' in the attentional system. Research suggests that similar attentional biases may exist for other objects of expertise (e.g. birds for bird experts), providing support for the role of exposure in attention prioritization. Autistic individuals often have circumscribed interests around certain classes of objects, such as trains, that are related to vehicles and mechanical systems. This research aimed to determine whether this propensity in autistic individuals leads to stronger attention capture by trains, and perhaps weaker attention capture by faces, than what would be expected in non-autistic children. In Experiment 1, autistic children (6–14 years old) and age- and IQ-matched non-autistic children performed a visual search task where they manually indicated whether a target butterfly appeared amongst an array of face, train, and neutral distractors while their eye-movements were tracked. Autistic children were no less susceptible to attention capture by faces than non-autistic children. Overall, for both groups, trains captured attention more strongly than face stimuli and, trains had a larger effect on overt attention to the target stimuli, relative to face distractors. In Experiment 2, a new group of children (autistic and non-autistic) rated train stimuli as more interesting and exciting than the face stimuli, with no differences between groups. These results suggest that: (1) other objects (trains) can capture attention in a similar manner as faces, in both autistic and non-autistic children (2) attention capture is driven partly by voluntary attentional processes related to personal interest or affective responses to the stimuli. |
Christoph Scheffel; Sven-Thomas Graupner; Anne Gärtner; Josephine Zerna; Alexander Strobel; Denise Dörfel Effort beats effectiveness in emotion regulation choice: Differences between suppression and distancing in subjective and physiological measures Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 58, no. 11, pp. e13908, 2021. @article{Scheffel2021, Emotion regulation (ER) can be implemented by different strategies which differ in their capacity to alter emotional responding. What all strategies have in common is that cognitive control must be exercised in order to implement them. The aim of the present preregistered study was to investigate whether the two ER strategies, expressive suppression and distancing, require different amounts of cognitive effort and whether effort is associated with personality traits. Effort was assessed subjectively via ratings and objectively via pupillometry and heart period. In two studies |
Elena Selezneva; Michael Brosch; Sanchit Rathi; T. Vighneshvel; Nicole Wetzel Comparison of pupil dilation responses to unexpected sounds in monkeys and humans Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, pp. 754604, 2021. @article{Selezneva2021, Pupil dilation in response to unexpected stimuli has been well documented in human as well as in non-human primates; however, this phenomenon has not been systematically compared between the species. This analogy is also crucial for the role of non-human primates as an animal model to investigate neural mechanisms underlying the processing of unexpected stimuli and their evoked pupil dilation response. To assess this qualitatively, we used an auditory oddball paradigm in which we presented subjects a sequence of the same sounds followed by occasional deviants while we measured their evoked pupil dilation response (PDR). We used deviants (a frequency deviant, a pink noise burst, a monkey vocalization and a whistle sound) which differed in the spectral composition and in their ability to induce arousal from the standard. Most deviants elicited a significant pupil dilation in both species with decreased peak latency and increased peak amplitude in monkeys compared to humans. A temporal Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed two components underlying the PDRs in both species. The early component is likely associated to the parasympathetic nervous system and the late component to the sympathetic nervous system, respectively. Taken together, the present study demonstrates a qualitative similarity between PDRs to unexpected auditory stimuli in macaque and human subjects suggesting that macaques can be a suitable model for investigating the neuronal bases of pupil dilation. However, the quantitative differences in PDRs between species need to be investigated in further comparative studies. |
A. Sfärlea; K. Takano; C. Buhl; J. Loechner; E. Greimel; E. Salemink; G. Schulte-Körne; B. Platt In: Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 1345–1358, 2021. @article{Sfaerlea2021, Contemporary cognitive models of depression propose that cognitive biases for negative information at the level of attention (attention biases; AB) and interpretation (interpretation biases; IB) increase depression risk by promoting maladaptive emotion regulation (ER). So far, empirical support testing interactions between these variables is restricted to non-clinical and clinical adult samples. The aim of the current study was to extend these findings to a sample of children and adolescents. This cross-sectional study included 109 children aged 9–14 years who completed behavioural measures of AB (passive-viewing task) and IB (scrambled sentences task) as well as self-report measures of ER and depressive symptoms. In order to maximize the variance in these outcomes we included participants with a clinical diagnosis of depression as well as non-depressed youth with an elevated familial risk of depression and non-depressed youth with a low familial risk of depression. Path model analysis indicated that all variables (AB, IB, adaptive and maladaptive ER) had a direct effect on depressive symptoms. IB and AB also had significant indirect effects on depressive symptoms via maladaptive and adaptive ER. These findings provide initial support for the role of ER as a mediator between cognitive biases and depressive symptoms and provide the foundations for future experimental and longitudinal studies. In contrast to studies in adult samples, both adaptive as well as maladaptive ER mediated the effect of cognitive biases on depressive symptoms. This suggests potentially developmental differences in the role of ER across the lifespan. |
Anca Sfärlea; Linda Lukas; Gerd Schulte-Körne; Belinda Platt In: Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 139, 2021. @article{Sfaerlea2021a, Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is characterized by dysfunctional cognitions including cognitive biases at various levels of information processing. However, less is known about the specificity of these biases, i.e., if they occur for eating-disorder-related information alone or also for non-eating-disorder-related emotional information in AN patients (content-specificity) and if they are unique to individuals with AN or are also shown by individuals with other mental disorders (disorder-specificity). Methods: The present study systematically assesses cognitive biases in 12–18-year-old female adolescents with AN on three levels of information processing (attention, interpretation, and memory) and with regard to two types of information content (eating-disorder-related, i.e., stimuli related to body weight and shape, and non-eating-disorder-related). To address not only content- but also disorder-specificity, adolescents with AN will be compared not only to a healthy control group but also to a clinical control group (adolescents with major depression or particular anxiety disorders). Cognitive biases are assessed within a single experimental paradigm based on the Scrambled Sentences Task. During the task eye movements are recorded in order to assess attention biases while interpretation biases are derived from the behavioural outcome. An incidental free recall test afterwards assesses memory biases. We expect adolescents with AN to show more pronounced negative cognitive biases on all three levels of information processing and for both types of content compared to healthy adolescents. In addition, we expect the specificity of biases to translate into differential results for the two types of content: AN patients are expected to show stronger biases for disorder-related stimuli but similar or less pronounced biases for non-disorder-related stimuli compared to the clinical control group. Discussion: This is the first study to comprehensively assess cognitive biases in adolescents with AN. It will have essential implications not only for cognitive-behavioural models of AN but also for subsequent studies aiming to modify cognitive biases in this population, thereby addressing important maintaining factors already at an early stage of the disorder. |
Omer Sharon; Firas Fahoum; Yuval Nir Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in humans induces pupil dilation and attenuates alpha oscillations Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 320–330, 2021. @article{Sharon2021, Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is widely used to treat drug-resistant epilepsy and depression. While the precise mechanisms mediating its long-term therapeutic effects are not fully resolved, they likely involve locus coeruleus (LC) stimulation via the nucleus of the solitary tract, which receives afferent vagal inputs. In rats, VNS elevates LC firing and forebrain noradrenaline levels, whereas LC lesions suppress VNS therapeutic efficacy. Noninvasive transcutaneous VNS (tVNS) uses electrical stimulation that targets the auricular branch of the vagus nerve at the cymba conchae of the ear. However, the extent to which tVNS mimics VNS remains unclear. Here, we investigated the short-term effects of tVNS in healthy human male volunteers (n = 24), using high-density EEG and pupillometry during visual fixation at rest. We compared short (3.4 s) trials of tVNS to sham electrical stimulation at the earlobe (far from the vagus nerve branch) to control for somatosensory stimulation. Although tVNS and sham stimulation did not differ in subjective intensity ratings, tVNS led to robust pupil dilation (peaking 4-5 s after trial onset) that was significantly higher than following sham stimulation. We further quantified, using parallel factor analysis, how tVNS modulates idle occipital alpha (8-13Hz) activity identified in each participant. We found greater attenuation of alpha oscillations by tVNS than by sham stimulation. This demonstrates that tVNS reliably induces pupillary and EEG markers of arousal beyond the effects of somatosensory stimulation, thus supporting the hypothesis that tVNS elevates noradrenaline and other arousal-promoting neuromodulatory signaling, and mimics invasive VNS. |
Adi Shechter; David L. Share Keeping an eye on effort: A pupillometric investigation of effort and effortlessness in visual word recognition Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 80–95, 2021. @article{Shechter2021a, Rapid and seemingly effortless word recognition is a virtually unquestioned characteristic of skilled reading, yet the definition and operationalization of the concept of cognitive effort have proven elusive. We investigated the cognitive effort involved in oral and silent word reading using pupillometry among adults (Experiment 1 |
Jing Shen Pupillary response to dynamic pitch alteration during speech perception in noise Journal Article In: JASA Express Letters, vol. 1, no. 11, pp. 115202, 2021. @article{Shen2021, Dynamic pitch, also known as intonation, conveys both semantic and pragmatic meaning in speech communica- tion. While alteration of this cue is detrimental to speech intelligibility in noise, the mechanism involved is poorly understood. Using the psychophysiological measure of task-evoked pupillary response, this study examined the perceptual effect of altered dynamic pitch cues on speech perception in noise. The data showed that pupil dilation increased with dynamic pitch strength in a sentence recognition in noise task. Taken together with recognition accuracy data, the results suggest the involvement of perceptual arousal in speech perception with dynamic pitch alteration |
Les Sikos; Katharina Stein; Maria Staudte A rose by any other verb: The effect of expectations and word category on processing effort in situated sentence comprehension Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, pp. 661898, 2021. @article{Sikos2021, Recent work has shown that linguistic and visual contexts jointly modulate linguistic expectancy and, thus, the processing effort for a (more or less) expected critical word. According to these findings, uncertainty about the upcoming referent in a visually-situated sentence can be reduced by exploiting the selectional restrictions of a preceding word (e.g., a verb or an adjective), which then reduces processing effort on the critical word (e.g., a referential noun). Interestingly, however, no such modulation was observed in these studies on the expectation-generating word itself. The goal of the current study is to investigate whether the reduction of uncertainty (i.e., the generation of expectations) simply does not modulate processing effort-or whether the particular subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence structure used in these studies (which emphasizes the referential nature of the noun as direct pointer to visually co-present objects) accounts for the observed pattern. To test these questions, the current design reverses the functional roles of nouns and verbs by using sentence constructions in which the noun reduces uncertainty about upcoming verbs, and the verb provides the disambiguating and reference-resolving piece of information. Experiment 1 (a Visual World Paradigm study) and Experiment 2 (a Grammaticality Maze study) both replicate the effect found in previous work (i.e., the effect of visually-situated context on the word which uniquely identifies the referent), albeit on the verb in the current study. Results on the noun, where uncertainty is reduced and expectations are generated in the current design, were mixed and were most likely influenced by design decisions specific to each experiment. These results show that processing of the reference-resolving word—whether it be a noun or a verb—reliably benefits from the prior linguistic and visual information that lead to the generation of concrete expectations. |