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Sreenivasan Meyyappan; Mingzhou Ding; George R. Mangun Hierarchical organization of human visual feature attention control Journal Article In: The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 45, no. 39, pp. 1–13, 2025. @article{Meyyappan2025,Attention can be deployed in advance of visual stimuli based on features such as color or direction of motion. This anticipatory feature-based attention involves top-down neural control signals from the frontoparietal network that bias visual cortex to enhance attended information and suppress distraction. For example, anticipatory attention control can enable effective selection based on stimulus color while ignoring distracting information about stimulus motion. Anticipatory attention can also be focused more narrowly, for example, to select specific colors or motion directions that define task-relevant aspects of the stimuli. One important question that remains open is whether anticipatory attention control first biases broad feature dimensions such as color versus motion before biasing the specific feature attributes (e.g., blue vs green). To investigate this, we recorded EEG activity during a task where human participants of either sex were cued to either attend to a motion direction (up or down) or a color (blue or green) on a trial-by-trial basis. Applying multivariate decoding approaches to the EEG alpha band activity (8-12 Hz) during attention control (cue-target interval), we observed significant decoding for both the attended dimensions (motion vs color) and specific feature attributes (up vs down; blue vs green). Importantly, the temporal onset of the dimension-level biasing (motion vs color) preceded that of the attribute-level biasing (up vs down and blue vs green). These findings demonstrate that the top-down control of feature-based attention proceeds in a hierarchical fashion, first biasing the broad feature dimension, and then narrowing to the specific feature attribute. |
Olivia C. Meisner; Olga Dal Monte; Nicholas Fagan; Anirvan S. Nandy; Steve W. C. Chang Oxytocin in the amygdala sustains prosocial behavior via state-dependent amygdala–prefrontal modulation Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 45, no. 36, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Meisner2025,Prosocial behaviors are crucial for maintaining primates' complex social relationships. As central regions involved in social decision-making, the basolateral amygdala (BLA) processes social salience and value, while the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACCg) integrates social information to guide decision-making. Oxytocin, a key modulator of social behavior, can influence both prosocial behavior and neural activity in these regions, but the precise mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated oxytocin's effects on prosocial behavior and neural activity by infusing oxytocin or saline into the BLA (Oxt-BLA, Sal-BLA) and examining the effects of Oxt-BLA on prosocial decisions, BLA and ACCg neural activity, and the coordination between the two regions in male rhesus macaques. We found that Oxt-BLA's behavioral effects were state-dependent: during high prosocial states, it sustained prosocial choices and task engagement, counteracting the natural decline seen in the control condition. However, during low prosocial states, Oxt-BLA had minimal behavioral effects. At the neural level, Oxt-BLA enhanced BLA and ACCg activity for prosocial choices only during high prosocial states. Importantly, Oxt-BLA maintained stable BLA–ACCg coordination during high prosocial states, preventing the decline in communication observed in control conditions. These findings demonstrate that oxytocin's ability to sustain prosocial behavior depends on social motivational state. These results support that oxytocin processing in the BLA acts as a state-dependent neuromodulator that enhances BLA and ACCg neural responses and maintains BLA–ACCg communication to guide prosocial decisions. |
Giulia Mazzi; Ambra Ferrari; Maria Laura Mencaroni; Chiara Valzolgher; Mirko Tommasini; Francesco Pavani; Stefania Benetti Prior expectations guide multisensory integration during face-to-face communication Journal Article In: PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 21, no. 9, pp. 1–27, 2025. @article{Mazzi2025,Face-to-face communication relies on the seamless integration of multisensory signals, including voice, gaze, and head movements, to convey meaning effectively. This poses a fundamental computational challenge: optimally binding signals sharing the same communicative intention (e.g., looking at the addressee while speaking) and segregating unrelated signals (e.g., looking away while coughing), all within the rapid turn-taking dynamics of conversation. Critically, the computational mechanisms underlying this extraordinary feat remain largely unknown. Here, we cast face-to-face communication as a Bayesian Causal Inference problem to formally test whether prior expectations arbitrate between the integration and segregation of vocal and bodily signals. Specifically, we asked whether there is a stronger prior tendency to integrate audiovisual signals that convey the same communicative intention, thus establishing a crossmodal pragmatic correspondence. Additionally, we evaluated whether observers solve causal inference by adopting optimal Bayesian decision strategies or non-optimal approximate heuristics. In a spatial localization task, participants watched audiovisual clips of a speaker where the audio (voice) and the video (bodily cues) were sampled either from congruent positions or at increasing spatial disparities. Crucially, we manipulated the pragmatic correspondence of the signals: in a communicative condition, the speaker addressed the participant with their head, gaze and speech; in a non-communicative condition, the speaker kept the head down and produced a meaningless vocalization. We measured audiovisual integration through the ventriloquist effect, which quantifies how much the perceived audio position is misplaced towards the video position. Combining psychophysics with computational modelling, we show that observers solved audiovisual causal inference using non-optimal heuristics that nevertheless approximate optimal Bayesian inference with high accuracy. Remarkably, participants showed a stronger tendency to integrate vocal and bodily information when signals conveyed congruent communicative intent, suggesting that pragmatic correspondences enhance multisensory integration. Collectively, our findings provide novel and compelling evidence that face-to-face communication is shaped by deeply ingrained expectations about how multisensory signals should be structured and interpreted. |
Zhikai Lv; Chaolan Tang; Yiqing Zheng; Xian Yang Proactive interaction of artificial intelligence agents in intelligent assistive systems: Mechanisms and impacts Journal Article In: International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, pp. 1–21, 2025. @article{Lv2025a,The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has driven AI Agents to shift from passive response to proactive interaction, a critical advancement for optimizing user experience and operational efficiency. Current research predominantly emphasizes functional implementation, while studies on user attention and related task performance of proactive interaction mechanisms remain relatively scarce. This research systematically examines three core characteristics of AI Agent proactive interaction (environmental perception, decision support, and task execution) through an integrated methodology combining eye-tracking, Information Processing Efficiency Index, and Self-Assessment Manikin scales. Key findings reveal: (1) Proactive environmental perception with visual-textual cues significantly enhances user attention and task efficiency; (2) Provision of decision-making rationales strengthens user trust and satisfaction; (3) Proactive information delivery improves both user satisfaction and information processing efficiency. As the first study to jointly analyze AI Agent interaction mechanisms from psychological and cognitive perspectives, this work establishes theoretical foundations and actionable guidelines for designing intelligent assistive systems. |
Haoning Liu; Yue Qi; Yaxin Zhang; Andy Yu; Yinghe Chen; Xin Zhang; Yan Lou; Xiao Yu In: Current Psychology, vol. 44, no. 18, pp. 14843–14858, 2025. @article{Liu2025j,The effects of executive function (EF) training on children's analogical reasoning—particularly analogical strategy use—remain unclear. This study used a pretest–posttest–follow-up design to explore and compare the effects of working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC) training on analogical performance and strategy use in school-age children. Fifty-nine children aged 8–10 were randomly allocated into WM training, IC training, and control groups. Children in the WM and IC training groups received adaptive training targeting multiple sub-components of WM and IC. In the pretest, posttest, and 6-month follow-up, children were tested on WM, IC, and analogical reasoning. Analogical performance was measured by the accuracy of the visual analogy task. Eye tracking was used to measure the analogical strategies when solving the visual analogy task. Results showed that WM and IC training improved analogical performance and strategy use in the posttest and even lasted for six months. WM training group demonstrated greater improvements in analogical strategy use but did not outperform the IC group in analogical performance. These findings highlight the value of WM and IC training in promoting the development of analogical reasoning in children. |
Baiwei Liu; Siyang Kong; Freek Ede Microsaccades strongly modulate but do not directly cause the EEG N2pc marker of spatial attention Journal Article In: PLoS biology, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 1–17, 2025. @article{Liu2025c,The N2pc is a popular human-neuroscience marker of covert and internal spatial attention that occurs 200-300 ms after being prompted to shift attention-a time window also characterized by the spatial biasing of small fixational eye movements known as microsaccades. Here, we show how co-occurring microsaccades profoundly modulate N2pc amplitude during top-down shifts of spatial attention in both perception and working memory. At the same time, we show that a significant-albeit severely weakened-N2pc can still be established in the absence of co-occurring microsaccades. Moreover, despite the strong modulation of the N2pc by microsaccade presence and direction, the N2pc does not align to the precise timing of microsaccades, ruling out that the observed N2pc modulations by microsaccades are a direct artifact of microsaccade-related eye-muscle activity, corneo-retinal dipole movement, or visual inputs moving over the retina. Thus, while microsaccades strongly modulate N2pc amplitude, microsaccades themselves are not a prerequisite for, nor a direct cause of, the N2pc. |
Jiashen Li; Zhengyue Chen; Xin Hao; Wei Liu Boundaries in the eyes: Measure event segmentation during naturalistic video watching using eye tracking Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 1–21, 2025. @article{Li2025f,During naturalistic information processing, individuals spontaneously segment their continuous experiences into discrete events, a phenomenon known as event segmentation. Traditional methods for assessing this process, which include subjective reports and neuroimaging techniques, often disrupt real-time segmentation or are costly and time-intensive. Our study investigated the potential of measuring event segmentation by recording and analyzing eye movements while participants viewed naturalistic videos. We collected eye movement data from healthy young adults as they watched commercial films (N = 104), or online Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educational courses (N = 44). We analyzed changes in pupil size and eye movement speed near event boundaries and employed inter-subject correlation analysis (ISC) and hidden Markov models (HMM) to identify patterns indicative of event segmentation. We observed that both the speed of eye movements and pupil size dynamically responded to event boundaries, exhibiting heightened sensitivity to high-strength boundaries. Our analyses further revealed that event boundaries synchronized eye movements across participants. These boundaries can be effectively identified by HMM, yielding higher within-event similarity values and aligned with human-annotated boundaries. Importantly, HMM-based event segmentation metrics responded to experimental manipulations and predicted learning outcomes. This study provided a comprehensive computational framework for measuring event segmentation using eye-tracking. With the widespread accessibility of low-cost eye-tracking devices, the ability to measure event segmentation from eye movement data promises to deepen our understanding of this process in diverse real-world settings. |
Yao-Tung Lee; Yi-Hsuan Chang; Cesar Barquero; Chi-Shin Wu; Shu-Ping Chao; David Yen-Ting Chen; Jui‐Tai Chen; Yih‐Giun Cherng; Chin-An Wang Pupil and eye blink response abnormalities during emotional conflict processing in late-life depression Journal Article In: Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 378–393, 2025. @article{Lee2025c,Introduction: This study aims to investigate the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system (LC-NE) function in late-life depression (LLD) patients by examining task-evoked pupil dilation in the emotional face-word Stroop task, given the recently established coupling between task-evoked pupil dilation and LC-NE activation. Materials and Methods: Using video-based eye-tracking and principal component analysis, we explored task-evoked pupil responses and eye blinks in LLD patients (N = 25) and older healthy controls (CTRL) (N = 29) to determine whether there were alterations in pupil responses and eye blinks in LLD compared to CTRL. Results: LLD patients exhibited significantly different pupil and eye-blink behavior compared to CTRL, with dampened task-evoked pupil dilation associated with emotional congruency and valence processing mediated by the sympathetic system compared to CTRL. Eye-blink rates associated with emotional valence were also altered in LLD compared to CTRL Moreover, Geriatric Depression Scale-15 scores in LLD correlated with emotional congruency effects revealed by task-evoked pupil dilation. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that LLD patients display altered pupil behavior compared to CTRL. These altered responses correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms, indicating their potential as objective biomarkers for use in large at-risk populations for LLD. |
Haiting Lan; Sixin Liao; Jan-Louis Kruger; Michael J. Richardson Processing written language in video games: An eye-tracking study on subtitled instructions Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 1–25, 2025. @article{Lan2025a,Written language is a common component among the multimodal representations that help players construct meanings and guide actions in video games. However, how players process texts in video games remains underexplored. To address this, the current exploratory eye-tracking study examines how players processed subtitled instructions and resultant game performance. Sixty-four participants were recruited to play a videogame set in a foggy desert, where they were guided by subtitled instructions to locate, corral, and contain robot agents (targets). These instructions were manipulated into three modalities: visual-only (with subtitled instructions only), auditory only (with spoken instructions), and visual–auditory (with both subtitled and spoken instructions). The instructions were addressed to participants (as relevant subtitles) or their AI teammates (as irrelevant subtitles). Subtitle-level results of eye movements showed that participants primarily focused on the relevant subtitles, as evidenced by more fixations and higher dwell time percentages. Moreover, the word-level results indicate that participants showed lower skipping rates, more fixations, and higher dwell time percentages on words loaded with immediate action-related information, especially in the absence of audio. No significant differences were found in player performance across conditions. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of subtitle processing in video games and, more broadly, text processing in multimedia contexts. Implications for future research on digital literacy and computer-mediated text processing are discussed. |
Natalia Ladyka-Wojcik; Zhong Xu Liu; Jennifer D. Ryan In: Imaging Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp. 1–18, 2025. @article{LadykaWojcik2025,Memory and gaze behavior are intricately linked, guiding one another to extract information and create mental representations of our environment for subsequent retrieval. Recent findings from functional neuroimaging and computational modeling suggest that reciprocal interactions between the extended hippocampal system and visuo-oculomotor regions are functionally relevant for building these mental representations during visual exploration. Yet, evidence for the directionality of information flow during encoding within this reciprocal architecture in humans is limited. In the current study, we used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to give a non-invasive account for the directional influences between these systems when new memories are created. Here, we provide novel evidence demonstrating how unrestricted, naturalistic visual exploration induces changes in this connectivity. Subsequent memory retrieval performance was also predicted by the pattern of connectivity modulated by unrestricted visual exploration, identifying the mechanism underlying a rich history of previous work linking increased gaze behavior during encoding to later memory. Together, these findings suggest that gaze behavior shapes the ways in which brain dynamics within and between the hippocampal system and early visual cortex unfold during encoding in humans. Importantly, these directional interactions support the building of coherent, lasting mental representations. |
Nawras Kurzom; Juman Misherky; Avi Mendelsohn The effect of background music on memory formation of spoken words: A tradeoff between tension perception and memory Journal Article In: Music Perception, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 13–28, 2025. @article{Kurzom2025,The ability to selectively attend to speech within complex auditory environments is crucial for effective communication. The influence of background music on verbal learning has been a subject of debate in previous research. Background music comprises specific elements that can involuntarily capture or divert attention away from the primary task. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of instrumental background music—specifically tension, tension-resolution, and neutral segments—on the acquisition and later retention of simultaneous English spoken words. Musical tension was defined as the sensation caused by delaying the resolution of the dominant fifth harmonies. This sensation was validated in the study by measuring subjective reports of felt-tension and increases in pupil dilation in participants sensitive to musical tension. Our findings revealed that the inclusion of simultaneous background music during the learning of spoken words led to improved subsequent recall, as compared to hearing spoken words in silence. Furthermore, participants who subjectively perceived musical tension exhibited lower memory performance compared to those who did not. These findings provide insight into how background music can either hinder or facilitate the formation of memories for nonmusical stimuli in everyday scenarios. |
Kyra L. Krass; Joslyn S. Hoang; Gitte H. Joergensen; Gerry T. M. Altmann Anticipatory eye movements revisited: From affordances and actions to consequences and states Journal Article In: Brain Research, vol. 1863, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Krass2025,The initial demonstration of anticipatory eye movements during sentence processing (Altmann & Kamide, 1999) found anticipatory looks towards the object that afforded the action referred to in the unfolding sentence. Here, we show that the object that affords the action is in fact dispreferred in the context of an object that instead affords the consequence of the action. We ran two studies to both confirm this bias and determine its malleability depending on the task. Our data suggest that looking behaviors (anticipatory or otherwise) are governed by the ubiquitous goal bias found in other cognitive domains. We offer a revised account of attentional biases in sentence processing that captures both action-based and goal-based biases in a unified approach to anticipatory event-based processes in language processing. |
Sandra Klonteig; Elise S. Roalsø; Brage Kraft; Torgeir Moberget; Eva Hilland; Peyman Mirtaheri; Rune Jonassen In: Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, vol. 88, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Klonteig2025,Background: Attentional bias (AB) is characterized by preferential cognitive and emotional processing of mood-congruent stimuli and considered a central mechanism in mood disorders. Considerable research has focused on improving AB measures to enhance mechanistic understanding and clinical utility. The present study examines psychometric properties of a range of AB measures with a multimodal setup. Methods: A nonclinical sample of 62 women aged 20–30 years completed the facial dot-probe task while behavioral responses (reaction time), eye-gaze patterns (eye tracking), and electrical brain potentials (electroencephalography) were recorded. AB metrics from four types of AB measures – traditional, response-based, dwell time, and the N2pc component– were examined with internal consistency and short-term test-retest calculations. AB metrics with an internal consistency score over .4 were considered reliable, and their validity were explored by examining relations to depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition, the consistency between reliable metrics across trials were examined. Results: Findings show that traditional AB metrics exhibited no degree of reliability, whereas response-based and dwell time metrics overall demonstrated better internal consistencies. Response-based metrics also had higher test-retest reliability in all but one metric. The previously reported reliability of the N2pc component was not observed. As for validity, no linear associations were found between the reliable measures, depression, and anxiety. There were no relations between metrics across trials. Conclusions: This study provides insights for future AB research, emphasizing the potential of novel metrics over traditional ones and the use of multimodal setups to develop reliable and potentially hybrid measurements for clinical assessment. |
Jan Nikolas Klanke; Sven Ohl; Martin Rolfs Sensorimotor awareness requires intention: Evidence from minuscule eye movements Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 262, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Klanke2025,Microsaccades are tiny eye movements typically occurring spontaneously and without awareness but can also be intentionally controlled with high precision. We used these tiny visual actions to investigate how intention modulates sensorimotor awareness by directly comparing intended (upon instruction), unintended (occurring despite instruction to fixate), and spontaneous microsaccades. In addition, we dissociated the effects of action intention and the actions' visual consequences on awareness. To achieve this, we presented a stimulus at high temporal frequency rendering it invisible during stable fixation. Critically, this stimulus became visible when it slowed down on the retina, either incidentally, due to a microsaccade with comparable direction and speed, or physically, when replaying the retinal consequence of previous microsaccades. Trials without a stimulus were included as control. Participants reported whether they perceived the stimulus (visual sensitivity), whether they believed they had made a microsaccade (microsaccade sensitivity), and their level of confidence that their eye movement behavior was linked to their perception (causality assignment). Visual sensitivity was high for both generated and replayed microsaccades and comparable for intended, unintended, and spontaneous eye movements. Microsaccade sensitivity, however, was low for spontaneous microsaccades, but heightened for both intended and unintended movements. Thus, the intention to saccade or fixate enhances awareness of otherwise undetected eye movements. Visual consequences failed to aid eye movement awareness, and confidence ratings revealed a poor understanding of a causal relationship between eye movement and sensory consequence. These findings highlight the functional relevance of intention in sensorimotor awareness at the smallest scale of visual actions. |
Mohammad Ahsan Khodami; Luca Battaglini A simulated visual field defect impairs temporal processing: An effect not modulated by emotional faces Journal Article In: Vision (Switzerland), vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 1–19, 2025. @article{Khodami2025,Temporal processing is fundamental to visual perception, yet little is known about how it functions under compromised visual field conditions or whether emotional stimuli, as reported in the literature, can modulate it. This study investigated temporal resolution using a two-flash fusion paradigm with a static, semi-transparent overlay that degraded the right visual hemifield of opacity 0.60 and examined the potential modulatory effects of emotional faces. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to report if they perceived one or two flashes presented at either −6° (normal vision) or +6° (beneath a scotoma) across eight interstimulus intervals, ranging from 10 to 80 ms with a step size of 10 ms. Results showed significantly impaired temporal discrimination in the degraded vision condition, with elevated thresholds 52.29 ms vs. 34.78 ms and reduced accuracy, particularly at intermediate ISIs 30–60 ms. In Experiment 2, we introduced emotional faces before flash presentation to determine whether emotional content would differentially affect temporal processing. Our findings indicate that neither normal nor scotoma-impaired temporal processing was modulated by the specific emotional content (angry, happy, or neutral) of the facial primes. |
Aine Ito Effects of task instructions on predictive eye movements and word recognition during second language sentence comprehension Journal Article In: Language Learning, vol. 75, no. 3, pp. 801–831, 2025. @article{Ito2025,This study tested whether encouraging prediction enhances prediction in second language (L2) speakers. L2 English speakers listened to English sentences like The woman … will read/buy one of the newspapers while viewing the target (a newspaper) and distractor objects (a rose, a bowl, and a mango) on a screen and clicked on the target as quickly as possible. The target was predictable (read) or unpredictable (buy) from the verb meaning. Participants looked at the target longer and were quicker to move the mouse to it when instructed to predict sentence continuation than when they were merely instructed to comprehend sentences. This result held true both when the target was predictable and unpredictable. Furthermore, only when instructed to predict did the participants make more clicking errors when the target was unpredictable than predictable, which suggested that encouraging prediction can interfere with word recognition accuracy in unpredictable contexts due to reduced cognitive resources or failed predictions. |
Boluwatife Ikwunne; Jolie Parham; Erdem Pulcu A nonlinear relationship between prediction errors and learning rates in human reinforcement-learning Journal Article In: PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 21, no. 9, pp. 1–21, 2025. @article{Ikwunne2025,Reinforcement-learning (RL) models have been pivotal to our understanding of how agents perform learning-based adaptions in dynamically changing environments. However, the exact nature of the relationship (e.g., linear, logarithmic etc.) between key components of RL models such as prediction errors (PEs; the difference between the agent's expectation and the actual outcome) and learning rates (a coefficient used by agents to update their beliefs about the environment) has not been studied in detail. Here, across (i) simulations, (ii) reanalyses of readily available datasets and (iii) a novel experiment, we demonstrate that the relationship between PEs and learning rates is (i) nonlinear over the PE/ learning rates space, and (ii) it can be accounted for by an exponential-logarithmic function that can transform the magnitude of PEs instantaneously to learning rates in a novel RL model. In line with the temporal predictions of this model, we show that physiological correlates of learning rates accumulate while learners observe the outcome of their choices and update their beliefs about the environment. |
Elizaveta Igoshina; Iska Moxon-Emre; Eric Bouffet; Donald J. Mabbott Distress evokes a visual attention bias to treatment-related scenes in children and adolescents treated for a posterior fossa brain tumour Journal Article In: Pediatric Blood and Cancer, vol. 72, no. 9, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Igoshina2025,Objective: Distress following treatment is common in children and adolescents treated for a brain tumour, reflecting underlying difficulties with emotion regulation. However, the medical factors that evoke distress remain poorly understood. Cranial radiation therapy (CRT), administered for malignant tumours, is associated with a high treatment burden and poor emotion regulation. This study investigates the effect of CRT on distress compared to non-CRT treatment and typically developing children (TDC), using self-report and eye-tracking measures. Method: Data were collected from 18 TDC and 36 children and adolescents treated for a posterior fossa brain tumour, including 17 who received CRT and 19 who did not. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing distress and then free-viewed treatment-related and emotional scenes while their eyes were tracked. Visual avoidance of a scene type served as a behavioural indicator of implicit emotion regulation. Results: Participants treated with CRT reported distress more frequently (84.21%) compared to those treated without CRT (58.82%) and TDC (52.94%). Distressed participants exhibited greater visual avoidance of treatment-related scenes than their non-distressed counterparts. Participants treated with CRT also demonstrated more visual avoidance than those treated without CRT or TDC. Conclusion: The high treatment burden associated with CRT likely contributes to increased distress and visual avoidance of treatment-related scenes, which may reflect attempts to regulate unpleasant emotional responses. Accumulating medical procedures may heighten threat sensitivity and reinforce avoidance as a strategy for emotion regulation. Thus, visual avoidance may serve as a behavioural marker of distress and help identify patients who are at an elevated risk. |
Luke Huszar; Tair Vizel; Marisa Carrasco Transient increases to apparent contrast by exogenous attention persist in visual working memory Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Huszar2025,The sensory recruitment hypothesis posits that Visual Working Memory (VWM) maintenance uses the same cortical machinery as online perception, implying similarity between the two. Characterizing similarities and differences in these representations is critical for understanding how perceptions are reformatted into durable working memories. It is unknown whether the perceptual appearance effect brought by attention is maintained in VWM. We investigated how VWM depends on attentional state by examining how transient modulations from reflexive (exogenous) attentional orienting affect the appearance of VWM representations; particularly whether VWM takes a “snapshot” at the time of encoding, or transient attentional dynamics continue into VWM. Specifically, we assessed whether the transient modulation to perceived contrast caused by exogenous attention is preserved when attended stimuli are encoded and maintained in VWM. Observers performed a delayed contrast comparison task in which one stimulus had to be held in VWM across a delay and compared to a second stimulus. Exogenous attention was manipulated through transient pre-cues appearing above the location of the first, second, or both stimuli before their onset.Model comparisons revealed that the transient attentional boost to perceived contrast persisted in VWM across the delay. This result indicates that VWM maintains a “snapshot” of the attentional-modulated perceptual representation at the time of encoding and suggests that attentional effects on vision enable us to select and protect in VWM visual information relevant to cognition and action. |
Ziyue Hu; Dominic M. D. Tran; Reuben Rideaux Multimodal evidence challenges the effectiveness of probabilistic cueing for establishing sensory expectations Journal Article In: Imaging Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp. 1–19, 2025. @article{Hu2025b,Predictive coding theories posit a reduction in error-signaling neural activity when incoming sensory input matches existing expectations—a phenomenon termed expectation suppression. However, the empirical evidence for expectation suppression, as well as its underlying neural mechanism, is contentious. A further aspect of predictive coding that remains untested is how predictions are integrated across sensorimotor domains. To investigate these two questions, we employed a novel cross-domain probabilistic cueing paradigm, where participants were presented with both visual and motor cues within a single trial. These cues manipulated the orientation and temporal expectancy of target stimuli with 75% validity. Participants completed a reproduction task where they rotated a bar to match the orientation of the target stimulus while their neural and pupil responses were respectively measured via electroencephalography and eye tracking. Our results showed a consistent, feature-unspecific effect of motor expectancy across multiple measures, while evidence for visual expectancy was limited. However, neither motor nor visual expectancy modulated the fidelity of sensory representations. These results indicate that violations of temporal expectancy in the current study may reveal the brain's intrinsic sensitivity to temporal regularities in the natural settings, rather than feature-specific predictions. In contrast, the absence of visual expectancy effects in both neural and pupillometry results adds to a growing body of evidence questioning the effectiveness of probabilistic cueing paradigms for establishing expectations capable of altering sensory representations. Due to null findings in the visual and sensory representation analyses, we did not further investigate cross-domain prediction integration. |
Alex J. Hoogerbrugge; Ignace T. C. Hooge; Roy S. Hessels; Christoph Strauch When is enough enough? Empirical guidelines to determine participant sample size for scene viewing studies Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 57, no. 9, 2025. @article{Hoogerbrugge2025,Eye tracking is widely used to study where spatial attention is allocated across stimuli. However, determining a sufficient and efficient number of participants for such studies remains a challenge. While clear guidelines have been established for many classical statistical tests, no straightforward participant sample size guidelines exist for the comparison of gaze distribution maps and area-of-interest analyses – two of the most prominent analyses in scene viewing studies. Just how many participants should be included for reliable and reproducible gaze estimations? We here utilized gaze data to a single static image, viewed by 1248 individuals (dataset 1), and gaze data to 200+ images, viewed by 84 participants each (dataset 2). Researchers can assess which of these datasets and analysis types most resemble their setup and determine their sample size accordingly. Although we cannot provide a one-size-fits-all sample size recommendation, we show progressively diminishing returns for a range of sample sizes and for two typical study types. For example, when using Normalized Saliency Score as a metric of distribution map similarity, a 5% relative increase requires increases in sample size from 13 → 20 → 34 participants (based on dataset 1) or from 10 → 16 → 32 participants (based on dataset 2). Alternatively, when analyzing the number of visits to certain areas of interest, a 25% decrease in outcome variance requires increases in sample size from 13 → 24 → 44. We provide easy-to-use guidelines and reference tables to determine scene viewing participant sample size for academics and industry professionals alike. |
Qifeng Gou; Sunnan Li In: PeerJ, vol. 13, pp. 1–20, 2025. @article{Gou2025,Background. Variations in attention and search strategies can partially explain the differences in players' decision-making capabilities. This study aims to explore the correlation between basketball players' multiple object tracking (MOT) ability and visual search in sports decision-making tasks using the expert-novice paradigm. Methods. Forty-eight college students were selected and divided into two groups: the expert group (24 basketball players) and the novice group (24 general college students). Using different numbers and speeds inMOTtasks, the Eyelink eye tracker was employed to record the visual search process during sports decision-making tasks. The correlation coefficient between MOT accuracy and eye-tracking indicators was then analyzed. Results. (1) The accuracy of MOT in both the expert and novice groups was negatively correlated with average fixation time and average fixation frequency. The correlation between MOT accuracy and average fixation time for passing intuition and passing cognition in the expert group was stronger than that in the novice group. (2) When tracking three—six targets at a speed of 10—/s, a strong correlation was observed between the MOT accuracy in both groups and the eye movement indicators of the sports decision-making task. (3) The correlation between MOT accuracy in the expert group and the proportion of fixation time in irrelevant areas during intuitive decision-making was lower than in the novice group. Similarly, the correlation with the proportion of fixation frequency in irrelevant areas during cognitive decision-making was also lower in the expert group compared to the novice group. Conclusions. The multiple object tracking ability of basketball players is negatively correlated with fixation time and fixation frequency in sports decision-making tasks, and positively correlated with fixation time during passing decisions. |
A. J. Glazebrook; Jane Shakespeare-Finch; Patrick J. Johnston; Jonathan E. Robinson Dwelling on the positive: Eye-tracking and electroencephalogram indicators of posttraumatic growth Journal Article In: Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Glazebrook2025,OBJECTIVE: Since existing research demonstrates people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) direct more attention toward negative and threatening visual stimuli, this study hypothesized people with posttraumatic growth (PTG) may direct increased attention toward positive visual stimuli. METHOD: To examine this hypothesis, eye-tracking data and electroencephalogram brain activity recorded during the N170 time window were collected for 72 healthy individuals with varying trauma exposures as they passively viewed positively and negatively valenced images in a two-phase study design. PTG and PTSD symptoms in this nonclinical sample were measured using the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) and the Impacts of Events Scale-Revised (Weiss & Marmar, 1997). N170 was examined as existing research identifies N170 as an early electrophysiological inflection sensitive to context. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that as overall PTG and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory subfactor "appreciation of life" increased, participant pupil dilations also increased, and participants were more likely to gaze first and dwell for longer on positively valenced images. There was no association between N170 and PTG. However, increased PTSD symptoms were associated with a larger N170 responsivity to negatively valenced images. CONCLUSION: Eye-tracking findings offer novel physiological evidence of the salience of positive imagery for people with greater PTG. Larger N170 responses to negative images may offer a physiological marker of the pronounced threat recognition present in people with increased PTSD symptom severity. The propensity for individuals with more PTG to focus on positive, life-affirming images may underpin the more constructive worldviews and contemplative deliberate rumination, meaning-making, and constructive coping efforts associated with PTG development. |
Enrico Ferrea; Pierre Morel; Alexander Gail Frontal and parietal planning signals encode adapted motor commands when learning to control a brain-computer interface Journal Article In: PLoS Biology, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 1–28, 2025. @article{Ferrea2025,Perturbing visual feedback is a powerful tool for studying visuomotor adaptation. However, unperturbed proprioceptive signals in common paradigms inherently co-varies with physical movements and causes incongruency with the visual input. This can create challenges when interpreting underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. We employed a brain-computer interface (BCI) in rhesus monkeys to investigate spatial encoding in frontal and parietal areas during a 3D visuomotor rotation task where only visual feedback was movement-contingent. We found that both brain regions better reflected the adapted motor commands than the perturbed visual feedback during movement preparation and execution. This adaptive response was observed in both local and remote neurons, even when they did not directly contribute to the BCI input signals. The transfer of adaptive changes in planning activity to corresponding movement corrections was stronger in the frontal than in the parietal cortex. Our results suggest an integrated large-scale visuomotor adaptation mechanism in a motor-reference frame spanning across frontoparietal cortices. |
Katherine Farber; Linjing Jiang; Mario Michiels; Ignacio Obeso; Hoi-Chung Leung Microsaccade activity during visuospatial working memory in early-stage Parkinson's disease Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 1–17, 2025. @article{Farber2025,Fixational saccadic eye movements (microsaccades) have been associated with cognitive processes, especially in tasks requiring spatial attention and memory. Alterations in oculomotor and cognitive control are commonly observed in Parkinson's disease (PD), though it is unclear to what extent microsaccade activity is affected. We acquired eye movement data from sixteen participants with early-stage PD and thirteen older healthy controls to examine the effects of dopamine modulation on microsaccade activity during the delay period of a spatial working memory task. Some microsaccade characteristics, like amplitude and duration, were moderately larger in the PD participants when they were “on” their dopaminergic medication than healthy controls, or when they were “off” medication, while PD participants exhibited microsaccades with a linear amplitude–velocity relationship comparable to controls. Both groups showed similar microsaccade rate patterns across task events, with most participants showing a horizontal bias in microsaccade direction during the delay period regardless of the remembered target location. Overall, our data suggest minimal involvement of microsaccades during visuospatial working memory maintenance under conditions without explicit attentional cues in both subject groups. However, moderate effects of PD-related dopamine deficiency were observed for microsaccade size during working memory maintenance. |
Peiyan Du; Tongyan Li; Ye Chen; Jingyu Chen Architectural semiotics unveiled: Parallel investigations into visual processing mechanisms and cognitive discrepancies of She ethnic motifs Journal Article In: Buildings, vol. 15, no. 17, pp. 1–26, 2025. @article{Du2025a,As an essential medium for the cultural narrative of architectural space, studying the cognitive transformation mechanisms of traditional ethnic decorative patterns is critical for their effective preservation and innovative application. This research focuses on typical decorative motifs found in She ethnic architectural heritage, systematically classifying them into five categories—animal, plant, human figure, totem, and geometric—based on symbolic themes, formal structure, and cultural function. Correspondingly, 20 sets of standardized black-and-white line drawing stimuli were developed for experimental use. Methodologically, this study utilized the EyeLink 1000 eye-tracking system to acquire real-time gaze metrics, including fixation duration and saccadic amplitude, as well as pupil dilation responses from participants engaged in a controlled pattern observation task. Immediately after observation, participants completed a semantic differential assessment using a five-point Likert scale. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), Kruskal–Wallis tests, and Bonferroni-adjusted post hoc comparisons (α = 0.05). Attention allocation was further examined through heatmaps and gaze trajectory visualizations to provide comprehensive insight into visual engagement. Two principal findings were identified: first, male participants showed a predominant focus on holistic structural composition and cultural symbol representation, whereas female participants exhibited a processing bias towards fine details; second, concrete symbols imbued with historical significance elicited more pronounced emotional responses, while abstract geometric patterns necessitated formal reconstruction to enhance cognitive accessibility. These findings offer empirical support for gender-inclusive architectural design strategies and inform practical approaches for safeguarding cultural heritage within contemporary architectural environments. Consequently, modern reinterpretation of traditional decorative patterns should balance cultural narrative fidelity with functional adaptation, achieving inclusive expression through contextual reconstruction and interactive design strategies. Future research directions include expanding participant demographics to encompass cross-cultural cohorts and incorporating multimodal neuroimaging techniques to elucidate the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms, thereby advancing the sustainable transmission and innovation of ethnic cultural heritage. |
Laura Doll; Sabine Heiland; Alexander Gutschalk A role of pupil-linked arousal, cingulo-insular cortex, and intralaminar thalamus for auditory near-threshold perception Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 9, pp. 1391–1415, 2025. @article{Doll2025,The perception of near-threshold tones varies strongly across trials, likely because of fluctuations in sustained attention or arousal. We used parallel fMRI and pupillometry to study the role of attention networks for the detection of near-threshold tones in three phases: (1) passive listening, (2) active detection of salient tones, and (3) active detection of near-threshold tones. Results confirmed previous findings from magnetoencephalography that auditory cortex activity and pupil-dilation responses for near-threshold tones were only observed when task-relevant, stronger for hit trials, but also present for miss trials. We then sought which attention-related areas show a similar response pattern, and found it in insular cortex, anterior midcingulate cortex, and inferior precentral sulcus. Moreover, activity in the insula was already stronger for hit than miss trials in the prestimulus interval. Activity for hit trials was also observed in a number of subcortical nuclei, including thalamus, periaqueductal gray, locus coeruleus, and the colliculi. Like insula, activity in the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus additionally showed activity for miss trials and stronger activity for hit trials in the baseline. Finally, BOLD activity correlated to spontaneous pupil fluctuations was evaluated and revealed biphasic activation and deactivation in a widespread cortical network, with a maximum 3 sec and minimum 7 sec after pupil dilation. The cortical networks included insula, anterior midcingulate cortex, retro-splenial, and sensory cortex. Overall, these data identify the cingulo-insular network and the intralaminar thalamic nuclei as potential sources of fluctuations in auditory cortex activity in the context of near-threshold tone detection. |
Jan Willem Gee; Niels A. Kloosterman; Anke Braun; Tobias H. Donner Catecholamines reduce choice history biases in perceptual decision making Journal Article In: PLoS Biology, vol. 23, pp. 1–15, 2025. @article{Gee2025,Theoretical accounts postulate that the catecholaminergic neuromodulator noradrenaline shapes cognition and behavior by reducing the impact of prior expectations on learning, inference, and decision-making. A ubiquitous effect of dynamic priors on perceptual decisions under uncertainty is choice history bias: the tendency to systematically repeat, or alternate, previous choices, even when stimulus categories are presented in a random sequence. Here, we directly test for a causal impact of catecholamines on these priors. We pharmacologically elevated catecholamine levels in human participants through the application of the noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine. We quantified the resulting changes in observers' history biases in a visual perceptual decision task. Choice history biases in this task were highly idiosyncratic, tending toward choice repetition or alternation in different individuals. Atomoxetine decreased these biases (toward either repetition or alternation) compared to placebo. Behavioral modeling indicates that this bias reduction was due to a reduced bias in the accumulation of sensory evidence, rather than of the starting point of the accumulation process. Atomoxetine had no significant effect on other behavioral measures tested, including response time and choice accuracy. Atomoxetine and variations of pupil-linked arousal at slower and faster timescales had analogous effects on choice history bias. We conclude that catecholamines reduce the impact of a specific form of prior on perceptual decisions. |
Alex Carvalho; Isabelle Dautriche 20-month-olds can use negative evidence while learning word meanings Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 262, pp. 1–10, 2025. @article{Carvalho2025,Decades of research in psychology have built models and theoretical assumptions about language development evaluating how children extract information from positive evidence to learn the meanings of novel words. In the present set of studies, we evaluated whether children can also consider negative evidence, information about what a word cannot refer to. Across two experiments (n = 73), we show that English-learning 20-month-olds can use negative evidence in the form of negative sentences (e.g., “This is not a danu”) to constrain their interpretation of a novel word meaning (“danu”). These findings raise the possibility that learning word meanings through positive evidence alone, while possible, may not be the most accurate characterization of the word learning process and invite further developments of current word learning theories and models that incorporate negative evidence. |
Debadatta Dash; Fumiaki Iwane; William Hayward; Roberto F Salamanca-Giron; Marlene Bönstrup; Ethan R Buch; Leonardo G Cohen Sequence action representations contextualize during early skill learning Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 13, pp. 1–25, 2025. @article{Dash2025,Activities of daily living rely on our ability to acquire new motor skills composed of precise action sequences. Here, we asked in humans if the millisecond-level neural representation of an action performed at different contextual sequence locations within a skill differentiates or remains stable during early motor learning. We first optimized machine learning decoders predictive of sequence-embedded finger movements from magnetoencephalographic (MEG) activity. Using this approach, we found that the neural representation of the same action performed in different contextual sequence locations progressively differentiated—primarily during rest intervals of early learning (offline)—correlating with skill gains. In contrast, representational differentiation during practice (online) did not reflect learning. The regions contributing to this representational differentiation evolved with learning, shifting from the contralateral pre- and post-central cortex during early learning (trials 1–11) to increased involvement of the superior and middle frontal cortex once skill performance plateaued (trials 12–36). Thus, the neural substrates supporting finger movements and their representational differentiation during early skill learning differ from those supporting stable performance during the subsequent skill plateau period. Representational contextualization extended to Day 2, exhibiting specificity for the practiced skill sequence. Altogether, our findings indicate that sequence action representations in the human brain contextually differentiate during early skill learning, an issue relevant to brain-computer interface applications in neurorehabilitation. |
Annabell Coors; Weiyi Zeng; Ulrich Ettinger; Monique M. B. Breteler Neuropathology determines whether brain systems segregation benefits cognitive performance Journal Article In: Imaging Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp. 1–15, 2025. @article{Coors2025,The human brain is a large-scale network, containing multiple segregated, functionally specialized systems. With increasing age, these systems become less segregated, but the reasons and consequences of this age-related reorganization are largely unknown. Thus, after characterizing age- and sex-specific differences in the segregation of global, sensorimotor, and association systems using resting-state functional MRI data, we analyzed how segregation relates to cognitive performance in both classical and eye movement tasks across age strata and whether this is influenced by the degree of neuropathology. Our analyses included 6,455 participants (30–95 years) of the community-based Rhineland Study. System segregation indices were based on functional connectivity within and between 12 brain systems. We assessed cognitive performance with tests for memory, processing speed, executive function, and crystallized intelligence and oculomotor tasks. Multivariable regression models confirmed that brain systems become less segregated with age (e.g., global segregation: standardized regression coefficient (ß) = -0.298; 95% confidence interval [-0.299, -0.297], p < 0.001) and that in older age this effect is stronger in women compared to men. Higher segregation benefited memory (especially in young individuals) and processing speed in individuals with mild neuropathology (not significant after multiple testing correction). Lower segregation benefited crystallized intelligence in 46- to 55-year-olds. Associations between segregation indices and cognition were generally weak (ß ~ 0.01–0.06). This suggests that optimal brain organization may depend on the degree of brain pathology. Age-related brain reorganization could serve as a compensatory mechanism and partly explain improvements in crystallized intelligence and the decline in fluid cognitive domains from adolescence to (late) adulthood. |
Yong Min Choi; Tzu-Yao Chiu; Jake Ferreira; Julie D. Golomb Maintaining visual stability in naturalistic scenes: The roles of trans-saccadic memory and default assumptions Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 262, pp. 1–9, 2025. @article{Choi2025,How is visual stability maintained across saccades? One theory poses the visual system has an underlying assumption that the visual world has not changed during the saccade, and scrutinization of trans-saccadic memory occurs only when there is strong evidence against external stability. As support, prior studies demonstrated a “blanking effect”, where sensitivity to trans-saccadic change is increased when a short blank is inserted immediately after saccade onset. However, there remains a considerable gap between these findings, discovered with simple visual stimuli, and understanding trans-saccadic stability for rich naturalistic scenes. Here we tested human observers in a blanking paradigm with naturalistic scene images, using artificial intelligence (AI)-generated “scene wheel” stimuli that varied in a continuous and quantifiably controlled manner. Psychometric modeling revealed that inserting a brief blank screen during a saccade increased sensitivity to trans-saccadic scene changes and decreased the stability bias. These effects occurred only when observers made actual eye movements, but not when eye movements were simulated with retinal image shifts. These findings demonstrate that trans-saccadic memory of complex scenes and an overarching stability assumption work in tandem to achieve stable perceptual experience in natural environments. |
César Campos-Rojas; Romualdo Ibáñez-Orellana Tracking the impact of age and dimensional shifts on situation model updating during narrative text comprehension Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 1–19, 2025. @article{CamposRojas2025,Studies on the relationship between age and situation model updating during narrative text reading have mainly used response or reading times. This study enhances previous measures (working memory, recognition probes, and comprehension) by incorporating eye-tracking techniques to compare situation model updating between young and older Chilean adults. The study included 82 participants (40 older adults and 42 young adults) who read two narrative texts under three conditions (no shift, spatial shift, and character shift) using a between-subject (age) and within-subject (dimensional change) design. The results show that, while differences in working memory capacity were observed between the groups, these differences did not impact situation model comprehension. Younger adults performed better in recognition tests regardless of updating conditions. Eye-tracking data showed increased fixation times for dimensional shifts and longer reading times in older adults, with no interaction between age and dimensional shifts. |
Yoram Braw; Itay Goor-Aryeh; Motti Ratmansky Detecting feigned pain using an eye-tracker Integrated Numerical Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) Journal Article In: Pain Practice, vol. 25, no. 7, pp. 1–13, 2025. @article{Braw2025,The Numerical Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) is routinely used to assess pain severity. A recently developed NPRS integrated the pain scale with an eye tracker (NPRSETI). As part of this study, we explored the NPRSETI's utility to detect feigned pain, an ongoing challenge facing clinicians. To achieve this aim, chronic pain outpatients were randomly assigned to a simulation (i.e., requested to exaggerate their pain; n = 34) or a control condition (i.e., requested to genuinely report their pain severity; n = 35). They then rated their pain using the NPRSETI. Eye movement analyses indicated that simulators spent more time gazing at the higher NPRSETI pain ratings before providing their pain ratings and less time at the leftward (“No pain”) anchor afterward. The discrimination capacities of these measures, however, were poor. In contrast, pain ratings using the NPRSETI showed excellent discriminative capacity, with a pain rating of 10 associated with 94.3% specificity and 26.5% sensitivity. Overall, the study's findings further indicate the feasibility of incorporating an eye tracker to evaluate the severity of pain. Though the findings at present do not support the utility of NPRSETI-based eye movement measures as validity indicators, pain ratings showed promise as a simple screen of feigned pain. The preliminary nature of the findings, however, calls for further research. Such research may aid in further developing effective indicators of feigned pain and hopefully clarify cognitive processes (e.g., experienced cognitive load) involved in pain deception. Perspective: The NPRSETI enables pain ratings by patients with severe motor and speech impairments. While eye movements were not adequate in detecting feigned pain, participants' pain ratings showed initial promise. As this is a preliminary study, further research is recommended. |
Ilona M. Bloem; Leah Bakst; Joseph T. McGuire; Sam Ling Dynamic estimation of the attentional field from visual cortical activity Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 14, pp. 1–21, 2025. @article{Bloem2025,Navigating around the world, we must adaptively allocate attention to our surroundings based on anticipated future stimuli and events. This allocation of spatial attention boosts visuocortical representations at attended locations and locally enhances perception. Indeed, spatial attention has often been analogized to a ‘spotlight' shining on the item of relevance. Although the neural underpinnings of the locus of this attentional spotlight have been relatively well studied, less is known about the size of the spotlight: to what extent can the attentional field be broadened and narrowed in accordance with behavioral demands? In this study, we developed a paradigm for dynamically estimating the locus and spread of covert spatial attention, inferred from visuocortical activity using fMRI in humans. We measured BOLD activity in response to an annulus while participants (four female, four male) used covert visual attention to determine whether more numbers or letters were present in a cued region of the annulus. Importantly, the width of the cued area was systematically varied, calling for different sizes of the attentional spotlight. The deployment of attention was associated with an increase in BOLD activity in corresponding retinotopic regions of visual areas V1–V3. By modeling the visuocortical attentional modulation, we could reliably recover the cued location, as well as a broadening of the attentional modulation with wider attentional cues. This modeling approach offers a useful window into the dynamics of attention and spatial uncertainty. |
Ecem Altan; Catherine A. Morgan; Steven C. Dakin; D. Samuel Schwarzkopf Spatial frequency adaptation modulates population receptive field sizes Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 13, pp. 1–29, 2025. @article{Altan2025,The spatial tuning of neuronal populations in the early visual cortical regions is related to the spatial frequency (SF) selectivity of neurons. However, there has been no direct investigation into how this relationship is reflected in population receptive field (pRF) sizes despite the common application of pRF mapping in visual neuroscience. We hypothesised that adaptation to high/low SF would decrease the sensitivity of neurons with respectively small/large receptive field sizes, resulting in a change in pRF sizes as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). To test this hypothesis, we first quantified the SF aftereffect using a psychophysical paradigm where human observers made SF judgments following adaptation to high/low SF noise patterns. We then incorporated the same adaptation technique into a standard pRF mapping procedure to investigate the spatial tuning of the early visual cortex following SF adaptation. Results showed that adaptation to a low/high SF resulted in smaller/larger pRFs, respectively, as hypothesised. Our results provide the most direct evidence to date that the spatial tuning of the visual cortex, as measured by pRF mapping, is related to the SF selectivity of visual neural populations. This has implications for various domains of visual processing, including size perception and visual acuity. |
Beyza Akkoyunlu; Caspar M. Schwiedrzik Task-irrelevant phase but not contrast variability unlocks generalization in visual perceptual learning Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 297–309, 2025. @article{Akkoyunlu2025,Performance on visual tasks can be improved by practice, a process called visual perceptual learning. However, learning-induced performance improvements are often limited to the specific stimuli and visual field locations used during training. Recent research has shown that variability along task-irrelevant stimulus dimensions during training can reduce this specificity. This has been related to higher stages of visual processing that harbor neurons that are invariant to the task-irrelevant dimension. Here, we test whether task-irrelevant trial-by-trial variability in two visual features for which invariances arise at different stages of processing, contrast, and spatial phase results in different degrees of generalization in space in an orientation discrimination task. We find that randomizing spatial phase results in complete generalization of learning to a new spatial location, contrary to randomizing contrast. Our results thus suggest that the neural population undergoing plasticity in visual perceptual learning is determined by the training task, which, in turn, affects generalization. This lends further support to the hypothesis that task-irrelevant variability is an independent factor in determining the specificity of perceptual learning. |
Sumiya Sheikh Abdirashid; Tomas Knapen; Serge O. Dumoulin The precision of attention controls attraction of population receptive fields Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 1–15, 2025. @article{Abdirashid2025,We alter our sampling of visual space not only by where we direct our gaze, but also by where and how we direct our attention. Attention attracts receptive fields toward the attended position, but our understanding of this process is limited. Here we show that the degree of this attraction toward the attended locus is dictated not just by the attended position, but also by the precision of attention. We manipulated attentional precision while using 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure population receptive field (pRF) properties.Participants performed the same color-proportion detection task either focused at fixation (0.1° radius) or distributed across the entire display (>5° radius). We observed blood oxygenation level-dependent response amplitude increases as a function of the task, with selective increases in foveal pRFs for the focused attention task and vice versa for the distributed attention task. Furthermore, cortical spatial tuning changed as a function of attentional precision. Specifically, focused attention more strongly attracted pRFs toward the attended locus compared with distributed attention. This attraction also depended on the degree of overlap between a pRF and the attention field. A Gaussian attention field model with an offset on the attention field explained our results. Together, our observations indicate the spatial distribution of attention dictates the degree of its resampling of visual space. |
Hossein Abbasi; Cynthia D. King; Stephanie Lovich; Brigitte Röder; Jennifer M. Groh; Patrick Bruns Eye movement-related eardrum oscillations do not require current visual input Journal Article In: Hearing Research, vol. 465, pp. 1–11, 2025. @article{Abbasi2025,Oculomotor signals influence the neural processing of auditory input. Recent studies have shown that this connection extends to the auditory periphery: The phase and amplitude of eardrum oscillations was systematically influenced by eye movement direction and magnitude, a phenomenon called eye movement-related eardrum oscillations (EMREOs). Previous findings have suggested that EMREOs occur independently from auditory stimulation, but it is unknown whether they depend on the presence of visual sensory input or solely reflect efference copies of the oculomotor system. To distinguish between these two alternatives, we measured eye movements and eardrum oscillations in sighted human participants who performed free saccadic eye movements in darkness. Despite the lack of any sensory stimulation during eye movements, significant EMREOs occurred in all participants. EMREO characteristics were comparable to a separate control experiment in which participants performed guided saccades to visual targets and were robust to different types of eye tracker calibration methods. Thus, our results suggest that EMREOs are not driven by bottom-up sensory signals but rather reflect a pure influence of oculomotor signals on peripheral auditory processing. This indicates that EMREOs might play a crucial role in reference frame transformations which are needed for audio-visual spatial integration. |
Yujie Zheng; Yuhang Pan; Yinuo Xu; Zhi Li Can multiple-target search paradigms reliably discriminate serial and parallel search processes? Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Zheng2025c,Distinguishing between serial and parallel processing modes in visual search tasks remains a challenge in cognitive psychology. The multiple target search (MTS) paradigm, which utilizes target redundancy gains to identify parallel searches, is currently one of the promising approaches for this distinction. Despite being proposed five decades ago, this method has not gained widespread acceptance among researchers in visual search area, potentially due to two limitations. One is its inability to reliably detect redundancy gains in established parallel searches (e.g., the distinct popout color search). The other is the presence of redundancy gains in pure-target-absent trials, which are apparently incompatible with the MTS's explanation of redundancy gains. In this study, we tested a modified version of the traditional reaction-time-based MTS (rt-MTS) by developing an accuracy-based MTS (acc-MTS). The results suggested that the acc-MTS successfully overcomes the aforementioned limitations of the rt-MTS paradigm while maintaining significantly greater efficiency. These findings established the acc-MTS as a reliable and efficient methodological advancement for determining the serial or parallel nature of visual search tasks. |
Jordana S. Wynn; Anisha Khosla; Arber Kacollja; Elaheh Shahmiri; Nicole D. Anderson; Kelly Shen; Jennifer D. Ryan Decoding memory function through naturalistic gaze patterns Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 122, no. 33, pp. 1–3, 2025. @article{Wynn2025,Eye movements are closely linked to encoding and retrieval processes, with changes in viewing behavior reflecting age- and pathology-related memory decline. In the current study, we leveraged this relationship to explore possible gaze-based indicators of memory function. Across two task-free viewing experiments, we investigated changes in naturalistic viewing behavior across five participant groups spanning a broad spectrum of memory function, from healthy young adults to amnesic cases. We show that memory decline is associated with an underlying reduction in explorative, adaptive, and differentiated visual sampling of the environment. Our results provide compelling evidence that naturalistic gaze patterns can serve as a sensitive marker of cognitive decline. |
Eduardo Cunha Vilela; Joao Lucas Bernardy; Gerson Yukio Tomanari Eye fixations in delayed matching-to-sample task as predictors of stimuli class formation in MTS tasks Journal Article In: Learning and Motivation, vol. 91, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Vilela2025,This study examined whether eye fixation duration on sample stimuli predicts success in equivalence class formation during matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks with varying delays. Nine typically developing adults completed conditional discrimination training using a one-to-many (OTM) structure to establish four three-member equivalence classes. Each class was trained under a different delay condition: simultaneous MTS, 0-s, 2-s, or 4-s delays between sample offset and comparison onset. Eye movements were recorded throughout training to assess observing behavior. Seven participants met the learning criterion and demonstrated equivalence class formation. The delay condition did not significantly affect the acquisition or emergence of equivalence or symmetry relations. Similarly, sample fixation durations did not significantly differ across delay conditions. However, fixation durations were longer in early training blocks, suggesting a practice effect. A strong positive correlation between sample response latency and fixation duration also emerged, supporting the interpretation that latency may reflect engagement time. These findings challenge the view that increased delay intervals inherently enhance learning by extending sample observation and instead highlight the value of direct eye-tracking measures in understanding observing behavior and its relation to stimulus control. |
Yanying Tian; Min Hai; Yongchun Wang; Minmin Yan; Tingkang Zhang; Jingjing Zhao; Yonghui Wang Is the precedence of social re-orienting only inherent to the initiators? Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 78, no. 9, pp. 1972–1985, 2025. @article{Tian2025,Previous researches have revealed that initiators preferentially re-orient their attention towards responders with whom they have established joint attention (JA). However, it remains unclear whether this precedence of social re-orienting is inherent to initiators or applies equally to responders, and whether this social re-orienting is modulated by the social contexts in which JA is achieved. To address these issues, the present study adopted a modified virtual-reality paradigm to manipulate social roles (initiator vs. responder), social behaviours (JA vs. Non-JA), and social contexts (intentional vs. incidental). Results indicated that people, whether as initiators or responders, exhibited a similar prioritisation pattern of social re-orienting, and this was independent of the social contexts in which JA was achieved, revealing that the prioritisation of social re-orienting is an inherent social attentional mechanism in humans. It should be noted, however, that the distinct social cognitive systems engaged when individuals switched roles between initiator and responder were only driven during intentional (Experiment 1) rather than incidental (Experiment 2) JA. These findings provide potential insights for understanding the shared attention system and the integrated framework of attentional and mentalising processes. |
Wendy Sun; Anne Billot; Jingnan Du; Xiangyu Wei; Rachel A. Lemley; Mohammad Daneshzand; Aapo Nummenmaa; Randy L. Buckner; Mark C. Eldaief Precision network modeling of transcranial magnetic stimulation across individuals suggests therapeutic targets and potential for improvement Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 46, no. 11, pp. 1–23, 2025. @article{Sun2025,Higher-order cognitive and affective functions are supported by large-scale networks in the brain. Dysfunction in different networks is proposed to associate with distinct symptoms in neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the specific networks targeted by current clinical transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) approaches are unclear. While standard-of-care TMS relies on scalp-based landmarks, recent FDA-approved TMS protocols use individualized functional connectivity with the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) to optimize TMS targeting. Leveraging previous work on precision network estimation and modeling of the TMS electric field (E-field), we asked whether various clinical TMS approaches target different functional networks between individuals. Results revealed that modeled homotopic scalp positions (left F3 and right F4) target different networks within and across individuals, and right F4 generally favors a right-lateralized control network. TMS coil positions over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) zone anticorrelated with the sgACC most frequently target a network coupled to the ventral striatum (reward circuitry) but largely miss that network in some individuals. We further illustrate how modeling can be used to retrospectively assess the estimated targets achieved in prior TMS sessions and also used to prospectively provide coil positions that can target distinct closely localized dlPFC network regions with spatial selectivity and maximal E-field intensity. In a final study, precision targeting was found to be feasible in participants with Major Depressive Disorder using data derived from a single low-burden MRI session suggesting the methods are applicable to translational efforts where limiting patient burden and ensuring robustness are critical. |
Marıa María Silva-Gago; Marcos Garcıa-Diez; Emiliano Bruner; Luis M. Martınez; Felipe Criado-Boado; Marcos García-Diez; Emiliano Bruner; Luis M. Martínez; Felipe Criado-Boado Figure recognition and visual attention patterns behind the observation of Palaeolithic art Journal Article In: Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 225–241, 2025. @article{Silva-Gago2025,Art visual processing is a complex cognitive process that involves perception, attention and decision-making. The initial stage of this process is characterized by visual exploration through rapid eye movements which can provide insights into attentional patterns and information processing and can be examined using eye-tracking technology. In this study, we employ eye-tracking to investigate visual perception during the observation of Palaeolithic rock art mostly from the Cantabrian seaboard, aiming to investigate the behavioural mechanisms underlying figure recognition and attentional distribution. This study comprises two experiments—one including entire panels and the other focusing exclusively on single figures—both yielding similar results. Our findings indicate that attention was predominantly directed towards the depicted figures, particularly their heads, rather than other elements within the visual field. Additionally, incomplete figures were perceived as complete, suggesting that figure recognition were influenced by Gestalt principles, internal cognitive models, and other top-down systems. |
Wenjia Shi; Mengcai Zhou; Kenta Ono Cognitive style and visual attention in multimodal museum exhibitions: An eye-tracking study on visitor experience Journal Article In: Buildings, vol. 15, no. 16, pp. 1–22, 2025. @article{Shi2025e,Exhibition design in museum environments serves as a vital mechanism for enhancing cultural engagement, enriching visitor experience, and promoting heritage preservation. Despite the growing number of museums, improvements in exhibition quality remain limited. In this context, understanding exhibition visual content becomes fundamental to shaping visitor experiences in cultural heritage settings, as it directly influences how individuals perceive, interpret, and engage with displayed information. However, due to individual differences in cognitive processing, standardized visualization strategies may not effectively support all users, potentially resulting in unequal levels of knowledge acquisition and engagement. This study presents a quasi-experimental eye-tracking investigation examining how visualizer–verbalizer (V–V) cognitive styles influence content comprehension in a historical museum context. Participants were classified as visualizers or verbalizers via standardized questionnaires and explored six artifacts displayed through varying information modalities while their eye movements—including fixation durations and transition patterns—were recorded to assess visual processing behavior. The results revealed that participants' comprehension performance was strongly associated with their visual attention patterns, which differed systematically between visualizers and verbalizers. These differences reflect distinct visual exploration strategies, with cognitive style influencing how individuals allocate attention and process multimodal exhibition content. Eye movement data indicated that visualizers engaged in broader cross-modal integration, whereas verbalizers exhibited more linear, text-oriented strategies. The findings provide empirical evidence for the role of cognitive style in shaping visual behavior and interpretive outcomes in museum environments, underscoring the need for cognitively adaptive exhibition design. |
Flavio Jean Schmidig; Daniel Yamin; Omer Sharon; Yoav Nadu; Jonathan Nir; Charan Ranganath; Yuval Nir Anticipatory eye gaze as a marker of memory Journal Article In: Communications Psychology, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Schmidig2025,Human memory is typically studied by direct questioning, and the recollection of events is investigated through verbal reports. Thus, current research confounds memory per-se with its report. Critically, the ability to investigate memory retrieval in populations with deficient verbal ability is limited. Here, using the MEGA (Memory Episode Gaze Anticipation) paradigm, we show that monitoring anticipatory gaze using eye tracking can quantify memory retrieval without verbal report. Upon repeated viewing of movie clips, eye gaze patterns anticipating salient events can quantify their memory traces seconds before these events appear on the screen. A series of five experiments with a total of 145 participants using either tailor-made animations or naturalistic movies consistently reveal that accumulated gaze proximity to the event can index memory. Machine learning-based classification can identify whether a given viewing is associated with memory for the event based on single-trial data of gaze features. Detailed comparison to verbal reports establishes that anticipatory gaze marks recollection of associative memory about the event, whereas pupil dilation captures familiarity. Finally, anticipatory gaze reveals beneficial effects of sleep on memory retrieval without verbal report, illustrating its broad applicability across cognitive research and clinical domains. Anticipatory eye movements during repeated movie viewing reveal when and what is remembered. Gaze patterns correlate with explicit reports, offering a method to detect memory for events without verbal reports. |
Giacomo Scanavini; Isabelle Martin; Ludvik Alkhoury; Ana Radanovic; Yakira Tepler; Abhishek Jaywant; N. Jeremy Hill; Tracy Butler; Keith W. Jamison; Amy Kuceyeski; Nicholas D. Schiff; Sudhin A. Shah Coupling of event-related potential and pupil dilation as a compensatory marker of executive attention in traumatic brain injury Journal Article In: Neurotrauma Reports, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 706–719, 2025. @article{Scanavini2025,Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impairs attention and executive function, often through disrupted coordination between cognitive and autonomic systems. While electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry are widely used to assess neural and autonomic responses independently, little is known about how these systems interact in TBI. Understanding their coordination is essential to identify compensatory mechanisms that may support attention under conditions of neural inefficiency. In this study, we examined pupil dilation during the Attention Network Test in individuals with TBI (n = 25) and controls without brain injury (n = 45). TBI participants exhibited preserved accuracy but slower reaction times (RTs), suggesting increased cognitive effort. Paradoxically, this effort was not reflected in heightened pupil dilation. Instead, pupil responses were attenuated, suggesting impaired recruitment of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system and possible autonomic dysregulation. We further assessed the relationship between simultaneously recorded pupillary responses and visual evoked responses in a subset of those in whom both measures were available (n = 23, TBI; n = 35, controls). Crucially, while both pupil dilation and amplitude of the visual P3 event-related potential were reduced in TBI, these measures showed a positive correlation across participants with TBI; this was absent in controls. Our results suggest that TBI may induce a compensatory coupling between cortical and autonomic systems to sustain cognitive performance despite underlying dysfunction. Positive correlation between pupil dilation and event-related potential suggest a role for arousal dysregulation in subjects with TBI. Our findings provide new evidence for altered EEG-pupil dynamics in TBI and highlight the potential of combining cortical and autonomic measures as a multimodal biomarker for tracking recovery, stratifying injury severity, and guiding individualized rehabilitation strategies. |
Christian Salas; Nicolas Núñez; Luz María Pozo; Marko Bremer; Daniel Rojas-Líbano Behavioral and neuropsychological correlates of emotion regulation via attentional deployment: An expanded replication Journal Article In: Europe's Journal of Psychology, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 216–233, 2025. @article{Salas2025,Attentional deployment (AD) constitutes an emotion regulation (ER) strategy that shifts the attentional focus to modulate the emotional experience. There are very few experimental paradigms that can study AD. One such task studies AD by using emotional images with zones of focus within them, to manipulate visual attention toward arousing or non-arousing portions of the scene. However, this task has only been implemented with participants inside a scanner and has no replications beyond the work of the original research group. In the present study, we replicated and extended a previously introduced AD task, implementing it with a sample of 55 adult participants. Our sample performed the task in a regular laboratory setting, including eye-tracking to monitor instruction following, and in addition, participants completed an attentional test. We replicated the original AD effect in a new population sample, although we found a lower effect size. We conceived and computed an estimate of AD abilities by comparing intensity and valence ratings across attentional conditions. We also analyzed the association between attention measured through the Attention Network Test (ANT) and AD capacities and found no relationship. The task can be used in the laboratory to analyze the AD process. Our replication and expansion of the AD task provide valuable insights into the behavioral and neuropsychological correlates of ER strategies. |
Jens Roeser; Mark Torrance; Thom Baguley Semantic contrast ahead: Contrast guides pre-planning in complex noun-phrase production Journal Article In: Language and Cognition, vol. 17, pp. 1–23, 2025. @article{Roeser2025,Whether or not pre-planning extends beyond the initial noun in a noun phrase depends, in part, on the phrase's dependency structure. Dependency structure disambiguates, in many contexts, the noun phrase's reference. In the present experiment (N = 64), we demonstrate that advance planning is affected by the extent to which a dependency supports semantic disambiguation. Participants produced noun phrases in response to picture arrays. Syntax and lexemes were held constant, but semantic scope was manipulated by varying the contrastive functions of the first and the second noun. Evidence from eye-movement data revealed a stronger tendency for early planning in the extended scope condition. This is evidence that pre-planning requirements of structurally complex noun phrases are, in at least some contexts, determined by semantic functions. |
Hamideh Norouzi; Mohammad Reza Daliri Microstate dynamics in working memory: Exploring spatial information coding of stimulus and behavioral performance Journal Article In: Brain and Behavior, vol. 15, no. 8, pp. 1–10, 2025. @article{Norouzi2025a,Background: EEG microstate analysis provides insights into the spatial and temporal dynamics of brain activity during cognitive tasks. The four canonical microstates (classes A, B, C, and D) have been widely reported and associated with various cognitive functions. However, the relationship between microstate parameters and behavioral responses in cognitive functions, such as working memory (WM), has not been sufficiently investigated. This study investigates how microstate dynamics relate to WM performance during a memory-guided saccade (MGS) task. Methods EEG and Eye-tracking data were recorded from participants performing an MGS task at two target eccentricities (near and far). Saccade error was used as a behavioral index of WM performance. Microstate parameters (occurrence, coverage, duration, and transition probability) were computed for the four canonical microstates during the trials. Results Our analysis revealed a significant reduction in the coverage of microstate C, often associated with the default mode network, during the memory maintenance interval compared to baseline. Moreover, a notable increase was observed in the duration of microstate D, considering polarity during the memory interval, which could be related to the frontoparietal control network (FPCN). Notably, the transition probability (TP) from D+ to D- during the memory duration correlated with saccade errors, indicating a behavioral predictive capacity. Furthermore, we identified distinct patterns of microstate D transitions to other microstates that differed significantly between the near and far target conditions, suggesting a functional role in spatial coding. Conclusion Microstate dynamics, particularly those of microstate D, play a dual role in spatial WM by supporting information coding and predicting behavioral accuracy. The polarity-specific transitions within microstate D provide a neural signature of WM performance, with implications for understanding network-level mechanisms underlying spatial memory and saccade control. |
Marco Ninghetto; Georgios A. Keliris; Kamil Szulborski; Tomasz Gałecki; Bartosz Kossowski; Daan Panneman; Frans P. M. Cremers; Monika Ołdak; Jacek P. Szaflik; Kalina Burnat Cortical response to transient and long-term visual field loss Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1–13, 2025. @article{Ninghetto2025,In the visual cortices, receptive fields (RFs) are arranged in a gradient from small sizes in the center of the visual field to the largest sizes at the periphery. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) mapping of population RFs, we investigated RF adaptation in V1, V2, and V3 in patients after long-term photoreceptor degeneration affecting the central (Stargardt disease [STGD]) and peripheral (Retinitis Pigmentosa [RP]) regions of the retina. In controls, we temporarily limited the visual field to the central 10° to model peripheral loss. The central loss experienced by STGD patients led to an increase in RF size in the dorsal subdivisions of V1, V2, and V3. In contrast, peripheral loss in RP patients led to a bilateral increase in population RF sizes in V1 but a decrease in V2. Transient peripheral loss in controls led to an increase in RF size in V1 and a decrease in V2 and V3, regardless of the dorsal-ventral division of the cortical representation. Our findings suggest a dorsal-ventral difference in RF size in response to central visual field loss, likely reflecting the functional relevance of these divisions within the cortical representations of the visual field. |
Hilary H. T. Ngai; Jingwen Jin Emotion ensemble judgement: Cognitive training for a positive perspective Journal Article In: British Journal of Psychology, vol. 116, no. 3, pp. 636–655, 2025. @article{Ngai2025b,Emotion ensemble judgement refers to the cognitive process by which individuals extract the general emotional tone of a busy visual scene. This study investigated whether emotion ensemble judgement can be changed through cognitive training. Two groups of participants underwent interpretation and visual attention training towards positivity, respectively, while the third group served as the control (total n = 102). All three groups participated in an emotion ensemble-rating task where they rated the overall emotion of a set of facial expressions three times (pre-training, immediately post-training and 7-days post-training). The results demonstrated the malleability of perceptual judgement of an emotion ensemble. The interpretation-training group exhibited a shift towards positivity, particularly for fearful ensembles. Similarly, the attention-training group also showed a positive shift, along with increased eye movements towards happy stimuli immediately after training. These findings help shed light on the formation and correction of biases in emotion perception and judgement. |
Jose Mora-Quiroga; Juan Pablo Abril-Ronderos; Marisol R. Lamprea Reciprocal competition between cognitive tasks and emotional processing revealed by EEG and eye tracking Journal Article In: International Journal of Psychophysiology, vol. 214, pp. 1–10, 2025. @article{MoraQuiroga2025,Processing of engaging stimuli triggers increases in visual exploration, enhances the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) and produce larger posterior alpha desynchronization (a-ERD), suggesting orienting and attention allocation. It has been shown that a salient arousing image in the background of a cognitive task consumes processing resources from the superimposed task, producing a deleterious effect on performance. On the other hand, experiments designed to change the focus of attention during the processing of emotional stimuli have shown a reduction of the emotional response, indicating an attentional competition between significant stimuli simultaneously presented. This research aimed to describe the competition between the performance on a cognitive task presented in a reduced space of the image (1.2 %) and the processing of emotional images displayed at the background using EEG and Eye Tracking. Results showed that the superimposition of the task had an early attractor effect, evidenced by an above-chance decoding accuracy (about 180 ms since the image onset) and an enhancement in the N1 component. This engagement in the task reduced the processing of the images as evidenced by a decrease in the LPP amplitudes, an enhancement in the a-ERD and a greater dwell-time over the task. Additional analysis showed that the unpleasant pictures were visually explored and emotionally processed after participants responded to the task. In conclusion, the present study supports the competition model of selective attention, highlighting the dominance of top-down control in shaping perceptual and cognitive processing. |
Sahar Moradizeyveh; Ambreen Hanif; Sidong Liu; Yuankai Qi; Amin Beheshti; Antonio Di Ieva Eye-guided multimodal fusion: Toward an adaptive learning framework using explainable artificial intelligence Journal Article In: Sensors, vol. 25, no. 15, pp. 1–15, 2025. @article{Moradizeyveh2025,Interpreting diagnostic imaging and identifying clinically relevant features remain challenging tasks, particularly for novice radiologists who often lack structured guidance and expert feedback. To bridge this gap, we propose an Eye-Gaze Guided Multimodal Fusion framework that leverages expert eye-tracking data to enhance learning and decision-making in medical image interpretation. By integrating chest X-ray (CXR) images with expert fixation maps, our approach captures radiologists' visual attention patterns and highlights regions of interest (ROIs) critical for accurate diagnosis. The fusion model utilizes a shared backbone architecture to jointly process image and gaze modalities, thereby minimizing the impact of noise in fixation data. We validate the system's interpretability using Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) and assess both classification performance and explanation alignment with expert annotations. Comprehensive evaluations, including robustness under gaze noise and expert clinical review, demonstrate the framework's effectiveness in improving model reliability and interpretability. This work offers a promising pathway toward intelligent, human-centered AI systems that support both diagnostic accuracy and medical training. |
Vasilii Marshev; Haley G. Frey; Jan Brascamp No evidence for a cortical origin of pupil constriction responses to isoluminant stimuli Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 1–20, 2025. @article{Marshev2025,The pupil constricts in response to visual stimuli that keep net luminance unchanged but that do introduce local luminance increments and decrements-a reaction here called "isoluminant constriction." This response can form a pupillometric index of visual processing, but it is unclear what kind of processing it reflects; some authors have suggested that the constriction arises from subcortical, luminance-based neural signals, whereas others have argued for an origin at cortical, feature-based processing stages. We tested the involvement of cortical neural activity in isoluminant constrictions. To this end, we measured constrictions to stimuli presented after contrast adaptation, an adaptation procedure thought to lessen cortical stimulus responses. If cortical processing is involved in the isoluminant constriction, then such adaptation should lead to reduced isoluminant constriction amplitudes. We tested this prediction in the course of three experiments. We found no evidence for the prediction in any of the experiments, and did find Bayesian evidence against the prediction. These results suggest that, at least in the conditions of our experiments, isoluminant constrictions may not reflect visual cortical processing. |
Yumo Li; Qiandong Wang; Siqi Yuan; Tak Kwan Lam; Kun Guo; Yong Q. Zhang; Li Yi Reduced attention to human eyes in autism-associated Shank3 mutant laboratory beagle dogs Journal Article In: Molecular Psychiatry, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 3765–3773, 2025. @article{Li2025r,Autistic individuals often exhibit reduced attention to faces and eyes, which may underlie their social difficulty. This study used eye-tracking techniques to explore visual attention towards faces in Shank3 mutant laboratory beagle dogs, a model for autism, to identify parallels with human autism. We first assessed visual attention differences towards the eyes between Shank3 mutant and wild-type (WT) laboratory beagles by presenting them with human and dog face images. Then, using the gaze cueing paradigm, we directed the dogs' gaze towards the eyes and mouth and quantified their gaze shifts. Finally, we investigated the impact of oxytocin on eye-gaze behavior by comparing gaze patterns under pre-administration, vehicle, and oxytocin conditions while viewing human faces. We found that mutant dogs showed a reduced proportional viewing time of human eyes than WT dogs (p = 0.032), but no difference in proportional eye viewing time when viewing dog faces (p = 0.691). Mutant dogs shifted their gazes away from the human eyes more quickly than the mouth (p = 0.043), unlike WT dogs (p = 0.345), suggesting an active eye avoidance. Furthermore, exogenous oxytocin increased proportional viewing time on human eyes in mutant dogs than pre-administration and vehicle conditions (p = 0.022), suggesting a potential effect of oxytocin on social attention in autism. To our knowledge, this study is the first to report an eye avoidance phenotype in an animal model of autism. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social difficulties in autism and the development of supporting strategies for autism. |
Anika Krause; Christian H. Poth Urgency overpowers cognitive control by amplifying cognitive processing asymmetries Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 87, no. 6, pp. 1974–1993, 2025. @article{Krause2025,Cognitive control is the functional backbone of intelligent behavior, because it allows to act according to one's intentions, even when the environment elicits opposed behaviors. Recently, it has been shown that reactions under urgency in a cognitive control task are dominated by stimulus-driven information and goal-directed actions are overpowered, as reflected by a temporary drop in performance below chance level in conflict situations. This effect was shown for eye movements as well as manual cognitive control tasks. Crucially, most previous studies used tasks that involved a natural processing asymmetry between the stimulus-driven information and the goal-directed information, leaving it unclear whether urgency affects cognitive control in general. Here, we investigated whether urgency also impacts performance in tasks that evoke a stimulus-stimulus conflict between similarly processed stimuli. Therefore, urgency was applied to two Eriksen flanker tasks, one using color stimuli, the other one using letter stimuli. In both experiments, urgency did not lead to a drop in performance below chance level in conflict situations, meaning that goal-directed behavior could be maintained. In a third experiment, an Eriksen flanker task with letter stimuli and a stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of 120 ms between the appearance of the flanker stimuli and the target stimulus, urgency evoked a large drop in performance below chance level. These results reveal that the effect of urgency on cognitive control is based on an amplification of cognitive processing asymmetries induced by urgency and is thus specific for tasks involving processing asymmetries, thereby evoking early-onset cognitive conflicts. |
Philipp J. Koch; Tabea Kürten; Anja Fellbrich; Andreas Sprenger; Christoph Helmchen 2025. @misc{Koch2025,This case study illustrates object tilt illusions without room tilt illusions which may be related to impairments of reference frames of visual perception as we did not find evidence by clinical, behavioral and brain imaging analyses that support lesions or disconnections of core vestibular processing areas as it is postulated in room tilt illusion. As perceived tilts were only found in distant but not near objects and noticed without any tilt perception of one' own body a visual illusion within the extrapersonal space might be a feasible mechanism facilitated by the inter- and intrahemispheric occipito-parietal disconnections demonstrated by modern disconnectivity analyses. As a consequence, information on the visual representation of objects in space may not properly be matched between both hemispheres (due to the severe disconnection in the splenium) leading not only to object distorsions and metamorphopsia but also object tilt illusions. |
Hakan Karsilar; Sebastiaan Mathôt; Hedderik Rijn Stimuli are perceived as lasting longer when there is something bright on the screen Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 87, no. 6, pp. 1948–1963, 2025. @article{Karsilar2025,Perceived time often diverges from physical time. This discrepancy is important given the crucial role of time perception in numerous cognitive processes. A critical question concerning the non-veridicality of timing is whether and how different physical attributes (e.g., size, speed, and numerosity) influence perceived duration. The present study deals specifically with how perceived time depends on stimulus brightness, both of a to-be-timed stimulus and the background on which this stimulus is presented. The results of two experiments show that increased brightness lengthens perceived duration, and, surprisingly, that this is the case both for the stimulus and the background. The finding that stimulus brightness affects time perception is a much needed replication of classic studies; however, the finding that background brightness similarly affects time perception is novel, and suggests that time perception may be biased by low-level visual perception. Additionally, we tested the hypothesis that large pupils (as a result of spontaneous pupil-size fluctuations) are associated with longer perceived durations. This hypothesis was based on the common assumption that arousal affects both pupil size and time perception; however, in contrast to this hypothesis, results show that pupil size has no relation to perceived time. Taken together, our study suggests that time perception is strongly affected by low-level visual input (brightness) but not—or hardly—by pupil-linked arousal. |
Anna Mini Jos; Andrew Westbrook; Sophia LoParco; A. Ross Otto The interplay between tonic and phasic pupil activity and cognitive flexibility and stability Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 62, no. 8, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Jos2025,Previous research has shown that while larger phasic pupillary activity indexes lower switch costs and better performance on a Stroop task, greater tonic pupillary activity indexes greater exploration. However, the direct influence of tonic–phasic pupillary activity on cognitive flexibility and cognitive stability—two control modes that potentially trade off with each other—has not been systematically investigated. We examine these associations using a task that imposes varying requirements on flexibility (task switching) and stability (distractor inhibition). The task included ambiguous trials that captured participants' preference for cognitively flexible performance. Participants (n = 51) completed the task with pupillary measurement recording. We find a lower preference to voluntarily switch (lower flexibility preference) in individuals with higher switch costs (lower ability/effort exerted to be flexible) and in individuals with faster RTs on Distractor Inhibition trials (higher stability), indicating a possible trade off between an individual's cognitively stable performance and the preference to be flexible. Examining pupillary data, we show that a larger phasic pupillary response in Task Switch trials is associated with lower switch costs, that is, higher flexibility. Individuals with larger average tonic pupil diameter were less likely to voluntarily switch tasks in ambiguous trials (i.e., lower flexibility preference), contrary to our expectations. Finally, we observed that higher tonic pupillary measures predicted quicker errors on trials measuring cognitive stability and greater overall task disengagement. Taken together, our findings shed light on the differential relationships between phasic pupillary activity and tonic pupil diameter and stable versus flexible modes of cognitive control. |
Yuqing Gu; Yu Li; Lihua Xu; Tianhong Zhang; Huiru Cui; Yanyan Wei; Mengqing Xia; Wenjun Su; Yingying Tang; Xiaochen Tang; Dan Zhang; Xu Liu; Jijun Wang Predictive role of fixation stability for clinical stages and conversion in schizophrenia and its correlation with cognitive function Journal Article In: Schizophrenia Bulletin, pp. 1–10, 2025. @article{Gu2025b,Background and Hypothesis: Given that fixation stability is closely linked to cognition, we investigated fixation stability in patients at different stages of schizophrenia, its relation- ship with cognitive impairments, and its predictive role for conversion to psychosis. Study Design: Fixation stability was measured by bivariate contour ellipse area (BCEA), and cognition was assessed by the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cog- nition in Schizophrenia Consensus Cognitive Battery for 75 patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES), 75 patients with clinical high-risk (CHR) syndrome, and 75 healthy controls (HCs). After a 1-year longitudinal study, CHR follow-up outcomes were classified as CHR-converters and CHR-nonconverters. Diagnostic model for clinical stages and prediction model for conversion were constructed using logistic regression and Cox regression, respectively. Study Results: Patients exhibited fixation instability and cognition impairments compared to HC, with impairments increasing from CHR to FES. In CHR, BCEA negatively correlated with Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia Consensus Cognitive Battery scores, but this correlation was absent in FES. Diagnostic model effectively discriminated HC and FES, with an area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.914. Among 66 CHR followed up for 1 year , 13 have converted to schizophrenia, with a conversion rate of 19.70%. When divided into large and small BCEA groups (33 each), the conversion rate was 27.27% and 12.12%. Conversion prediction model achieved an area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.708. Conclusions: Our results indicate that fixation instability worsens with schizophrenia progression, which is associated with cognitive impairments. Additionally, BCEA may serve as a biomarker for predicting conversion to psychosis. |
Lihi Goldman; Dana Basel; Hadar Hallel; Nimrod Hertz-Palmor; Amit Lazarov Instant messaging communication in social anxiety: No support for the Combined Cognitive Bias Hypothesis (CCBH) Journal Article In: Motivation and Emotion, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 439–454, 2025. @article{Goldman2025,The Combined Cognitive Bias Hypothesis (CCBH) postulates that attention and interpretation biases do not work in “solitary,” but nourish each other, interacting in a cyclic or bi-directional manner. While providing initial evidence for the CCBH in social anxiety, most research assessed each bias separately using traditional laboratory-based tasks with different stimuli in each task. Here, we examined the CCBH, assessing both biases within a single ecological-valid task. We hypothesized that compared with control participants, socially anxious participants would interpret ambiguity more negatively and would also attend more to ambiguous (negatively interpreted) information. Participants with high (HAS; n = 30) and low (LSA; n = 30) levels of social anxiety read a fictitious textual conversation (via the WhatsApp instant messaging platform) between two students following their first date, while putting themselves in the shoes of the conversation initiator. The textual conversation featured both ambiguous and irrelevant (hence non-ambiguous) sections regarding the interest of the counterpart to proceed to another date. Participants' interpretation of each section was evaluated, as was their attention allocation to each section using eye-tracking methodology. No group differences emerged on interpretation of the ambiguous and irrelevant sections– both groups rated the former as more negative than the latter. Conversely, in attention, while LSA participants dwelled longer on the ambiguous (negatively-interpreted) sections, compared to the irrelevant (less negatively-interpreted) ones, HSA participants exhibited the opposite pattern of attention allocation. No evidence emerged for the CCBH in social anxiety when explored within a single ecological-valid task gauging both interpretation and attention. |
Zuzanna Fuchs; Emma Kealey; Esra Eldem-Tunç; Leo Mermelstein; Linh Pham; Anna Runova; Yue Chen; Metehan Oğuz; Seoyoon Hong; Catherine Pan; J. K. Subramony Measuring adult heritage language lexical proficiency for studies on facilitative processing of gender Journal Article In: Languages, vol. 10, no. 8, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Fuchs2025c,The present study analyzes individual differences in the facilitative processing of grammatical gender by heritage speakers of Spanish, asking whether these differences correlate with lexical proficiency. Results from an eye-tracking study in the Visual World Paradigm replicate prior findings that, as a group, heritage speakers of Spanish show facilitative processing of gender. Importantly, in a follow-up within-group analysis, we test whether three measures of lexical proficiency—oral picture-naming, verbal fluency, and LexTALE—predict individual performance. We find that lexical proficiency, as measured by LexTALE, predicts overall word recognition; however, we observe no effects of the other measures and no evidence that lexical proficiency modulates the strength of the facilitative effect. Our results highlight the importance of carefully selecting tools for proficiency assessment in experimental studies involving heritage speakers, underscoring that the absence of evidence for an effect of proficiency based on a single measure should not be taken as evidence of absence. |
Huiyu Ding; Jonathon Whitlock; Lili Sahakyan Pupil fluctuations signal intentional forgetting of natural scenes Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 62, no. 8, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Ding2025,Studies have revealed that information can be intentionally forgotten when instructed, commonly studied in the laboratory with the directed forgetting (DF) procedure. The current investigation examined pupillometric signals associated with intentional forgetting, as the pupil reflects the activity in the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC-NE) system that is functionally involved in the neural correlates of intentional forgetting. Experiment 1 employed an item-method DF paradigm, where participants were presented with natural scenes, each followed by a memory cue to either remember (R) or forget (F) that scene. At test, participants were asked to judge whether the presented scene was the original studied version (i.e., “Old”) or a mirrored variant (i.e., “Lure”). By comparing pupil dilation during test trials between R-cued and F-cued scenes for both hit and miss trials, we found greater pupil dilation for F-cued miss trials compared to R-cued miss trials, but no difference in pupil dilation between the cue conditions for hit trials. This suggests a unique pupillometric pattern linked to successful intentional forgetting. Experiment 2 was aimed at assessing if memory strength differences could provide an explanation for the observed effect. Instead of DF cues, we manipulated memory strength by repeating a subset of scenes, thereby converting all study items into R-cued items with different degrees of familiarity. We observed no difference in pupil dilation between strongly encoded and weakly encoded scenes at test, indicating that encoding strength by itself did not explain the difference in pupil dilation resulting from intentional forgetting. Together, these findings provide novel evidence that pupil fluctuations during retrieval index successful intentional forgetting. |
Sean Devine; Y. Doug Dong Dong; Martin Sellier Silva; Mathieu Roy; A. Ross Otto Increased attention towards progress information near a goal state Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 1531–1539, 2025. @article{Devine2025,A growing body of evidence across psychology suggests that (cognitive) effort exertion increases in proximity to a goal state. For instance, previous work has shown that participants respond more quickly, but not less accurately, when they near a goal—as indicated by a filling progress bar. Yet it remains unclear when over the course of a cognitively demanding task do people monitor progress information: Do they continuously monitor their goal progress over the course of a task, or attend more frequently to it as they near their goal? To answer this question, we used eye-tracking to examine trial-by-trial changes in progress monitoring as participants completed blocks of an attentionally demanding oddball task. Replicating past work, we found that participants increased cognitive effort exertion near a goal, as evinced by an increase in correct responses per second. More interestingly, we found that the rate at which participants attended to goal progress information—operationalized here as the frequency of gazes towards a progress bar—increased steeply near a goal state. In other words, participants extracted information from the progress bar at a higher rate when goals were proximal (versus distal). In exploratory analysis of tonic pupil diameter, we also found that tonic pupil size increased sharply as participants approached a goal state, mirroring the pattern of gaze. These results support the view that people attend to progress information more as they approach a goal. |
Paweł Cybulski Predicting cartographic symbol location with eye-tracking data and machine learning approach Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 1–75, 2025. @article{Cybulski2025,Visual search is a core component of map reading, influenced by both cartographic design and human perceptual processes. This study investigates whether the location of a target cartographic symbol—central or peripheral—can be predicted using eye-tracking data and machine learning techniques. Two datasets were analyzed, each derived from separate studies involving visual search tasks with varying map characteristics. A comprehensive set of eye movement features, including fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and gaze dispersion, were extracted and standardized. Feature selection and polynomial interaction terms were applied to enhance model performance. Twelve supervised classification algorithms were tested, including Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and Support Vector Machines. The models were evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and ROC-AUC. Results show that models trained on the first dataset achieved higher accuracy and class separation, with AdaBoost and Gradient Boosting performing best (accuracy = 0.822; ROC-AUC > 0.86). In contrast, the second dataset presented greater classification challenges, despite high recall in some models. Feature importance analysis revealed that fixation standard deviation as a proxy for gaze dispersion, particularly along the vertical axis, was the most predictive metric. These findings suggest that gaze behavior can reliably indicate the spatial focus of visual search, providing valuable insight for the development of adaptive, gaze-aware cartographic interfaces. |
Jason C. Coronel; Matthew Sweitzer; James Alex Bonus; Rebecca Dore; Blue Lerner Fusing theory-guided machine learning and bio-sensing: Considering time in how children learn science from dynamic multimedia Journal Article In: Journal of Communication, pp. 1–18, 2025. @article{Coronel2025,A new era of message processing research will emerge from the convergence of powerful machine learning algorithms with dynamic data from everyday devices equipped with biological sensors. Our study takes critical steps into this era by integrating theory-guided artificial neural networks with eye movements to understand how people learn science concepts from dynamic multimedia. Essential to our theory-guided machine learning approach is a cognitive conceptualization of time as the dynamic interdependence between past and new information that guides how multimedia is attended to and understood. We tracked the eye movements of 197 children as they watched an educational video. We trained two neural network architectures differing in theory guidance to predict learning outcomes using eye movements. The theory-guided architecture, which considered the temporal interdependence of information, yielded more accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our work advances the use of theory-guided machine learning and the development of systems that monitor real-time learning. |
David Clewett; Ringo Huang; Lila Davachi Locus coeruleus activation “resets” hippocampal event representations and separates adjacent memories Journal Article In: Neuron, vol. 113, no. 15, pp. 2521–2535.e1–e8, 2025. @article{Clewett2025,Memories reflect the ebb and flow of experiences, capturing distinct events from our lives. Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuromelanin imaging, and pupillometry, we show that arousal and locus coeruleus (LC) activation segment continuous experiences into discrete memories. As sequences unfold, encountering a context shift or event boundary triggers pupil-linked arousal and LC processes that predict later memory separation. Boundaries, furthermore, promote temporal pattern separation within the left hippocampal dentate gyrus, which correlates with heightened LC responses to those same transition points. Unlike transient LC effects, indirect structural and functional markers of elevated background LC activation correlate with reduced arousal-related LC and pupil responses at boundaries, suggesting that hyperarousal disrupts event segmentation. Our findings support the idea that arousal mechanisms initiate a neural and memory “reset” in response to significant changes, fundamentally shaping the episodes that define episodic memory. |
Valeria Baragona; Erich Schröger; Andreas Widmann Salient, unexpected omissions of sounds can involuntarily distract attention Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 8, pp. 1291–1307, 2025. @article{Baragona2025,Salient unexpected and task-irrelevant sounds can act as distractors by capturing attention away from a task. Consequently, a performance impairment (e.g., prolonged RTs) is typically observed along with a pupil dilation response (PDR) and the P3a ERP component. Previous results showed prolonged RTs in response to task-relevant visual stimuli also following unexpected sound omissions. However, it was unclear whether this was due to the absence of the sound's warning effect or to distraction caused by the violation of a sensory prediction. In our paradigm, participants initiated a trial through a button press that elicited either a regular sound (80%), a deviant sound (10%), or no sound (10%). Thereafter, a digit was presented visually, and the participant had to classify it as even or odd. To dissociate warning and distraction effects, we additionally included a control condition in which a button press never generated a sound, and therefore no sound was expected. Results show that, compared with expected events, unexpected deviants and omissions lead to prolonged RTs (distraction effect), enlarged PDR, and a P3a-like ERP effect. Moreover, sound events, compared with no sound events, yielded faster RTs (warning effect), larger PDR, and increased P3a. Overall, we observed a co-occurrence of warning and distraction effects. This suggests that not only unexpected sounds but also unexpected sound omissions can act as salient distractors. This finding supports theories claiming that involuntary attention is based on prediction violation. |
Emma L. Axelsson; Tayla Britton; Gurmeher K. Gulhati; Chloe Kelly; Helen Copeland; Luca McNamara; Hester Covell; Alyssa A. Quinn Strike a pose: Relationships between infants' motor development and visuospatial representations of bodies Journal Article In: Behavioral Sciences, vol. 15, no. 8, pp. 1–31, 2025. @article{Axelsson2025a,Infants discriminate faces early in the first year, but research on infants' discrimination of bodies is plagued by mixed findings. Using a familiarisation novelty preference method, we investigated 7- and 9-month-old infants' discrimination of body postures presented in upright and inverted orientations, and with and without heads, along with relationships with gross and fine motor development. In our initial studies, 7-month-old infants discriminated upright headless postures with forward-facing and about-facing images. Eye tracking revealed that infants looked at the bodies of the upright headless postures the longest and at the heads of upright whole figures for 60–70% of the time regardless of the presence of faces, suggesting that heads detract attention from bodies. In a more stringent test, with similarly complex limb positions between test items, infants could not discriminate postures. With longer trials, the 7-month-olds demonstrated a familiarity preference for the upright whole figures, and the 9-month-olds demonstrated a novelty preference, albeit with a less robust effect. Unlike previous studies, we found that better gross motor skills were related to the 7-month-olds' better discrimination of upright headless postures compared to inverted postures. The 9-month-old infants' lower gross and fine motor skills were associated with a stronger preference for inverted compared to upright whole figures. This is further evidence of a configural representation of bodies in infancy, but it is constrained by an upper bias (heads in upright figures, feet in inverted), the test item similarity, and the trial duration. The measure and type of motor development reveals differential relationships with infants' representations of bodies. |
Jing Zhu; Yuanlong Li; Changlin Yang; Hanshu Cai; Xiaowei Li; Bin Hu Transformer-based fusion model for mild depression recognition with EEG and pupil area signals Journal Article In: Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, vol. 63, no. 7, pp. 2011–2027, 2025. @article{Zhu2025c,Early detection and treatment are crucial for the prevention and treatment of depression; compared with major depression, current researches pay less attention to mild depression. Meanwhile, analysis of multimodal biosignals such as EEG, eye movement data, and magnetic resonance imaging provides reliable technical means for the quantitative analysis of depression. However, how to effectively capture relevant and complementary information between multimodal data so as to achieve efficient and accurate depression recognition remains a challenge. This paper proposes a novel Transformer-based fusion model using EEG and pupil area signals for mild depression recognition. We first introduce CSP into the Transformer to construct single-modal models of EEG and pupil data and then utilize attention bottleneck to construct a mid-fusion model to facilitate information exchange between the two modalities; this strategy enables the model to learn the most relevant and complementary information for each modality and only share the necessary information, which improves the model accuracy while reducing the computational cost. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the EEG and pupil area signals of single-modal models we constructed is 89.75% and 84.17%, the precision is 92.04% and 95.21%, the recall is 89.5% and 71%, the specificity is 90% and 97.33%, the F1 score is 89.41% and 78.44%, respectively, and the accuracy of mid-fusion model can reach 93.25%. Our study demonstrates that the Transformer model can learn the long-term time-dependent relationship between EEG and pupil area signals, providing an idea for designing a reliable multimodal fusion model for mild depression recognition based on EEG and pupil area signals. |
Jie Zhang; Jing Xia; Huihui Zhou; Shuo Wang Gamma synchronization between the medial temporal lobe and medial frontal cortex for goal-directed visual attention in humans Journal Article In: Cell Reports, vol. 44, no. 7, pp. 1–27, 2025. @article{Zhang2025g,Goal-directed visual attention is a fundamental cognitive function that engages multiple brain regions, yet the neural circuit mechanisms in humans remain unclear. We addressed this question by simultaneously recording neural activity from the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and medial frontal cortex (MFC) during a goal-directed visual search task. We found that gamma-band synchronization between the MTL and MFC signaled target detection. Using two additional tasks, we dissociated the neural processes underlying working memory and search decision execution, revealing distinct patterns of synchronization. Further analyses showed that dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) spike-MTL LFP synchronization encoded search dynamics and contributed to guiding behavior. Importantly, MTL-MFC synchronization disproportionately modulated neural representational geometry, highlighting its impact on information encoding. Finally, we demonstrated directional gamma influences across brain areas and cross-frequency coupling. Together, these findings illuminate the circuit-level dynamics underlying visual attention and offer insights into how the human brain selectively processes information in complex visual environments. |
Xinger Yu; Geoffrey F. Woodman Investigating memory episodes in location probability learning: Can altering response features reset spatial bias? Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 87, no. 5, pp. 1518–1529, 2025. @article{Yu2025a,When individuals are repeatedly exposed to a specific task, they store each occurrence as a distinct memory episode, which includes stimuli, responses, and outcomes. The accumulation of these episodes enables more efficient retrieval over time, particularly under consistent conditions, leading to quicker and more automatic responses. This mechanism likely underlies the statistical learning effect observed in tasks such as the probability cueing paradigm, where frequent target detection at a predictable location enhances performance through rapid, less conscious retrieval of relevant episodes. In this study, we explored the role of episodic retrieval in implicit location probability learning, focusing specifically on how changes in response features might impact the retrieval of memory episodes and, consequently, the learned attentional bias. Participants performed a visual search task, searching for a T among Ls, while unaware that the target was more often in one screen region. An attentional bias towards this region developed during training. In the testing phase, we examined whether changes in motor responses could negate the learned attentional bias, as such changes might prevent the retrieval of relevant memory episodes. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, two experiments showed that changing response features did not affect the attentional bias. This study expands our understanding of human statistical learning by examining the previously neglected yet increasingly recognized role of episodic retrieval in shaping implicit learning processes, thereby opening new avenues for understanding how our visual systems adapt to and learn from the environment. |
Xin Yan; Weiyu Wang; Shujuan Ye; Xiaowei Ding Eyes on the prize: Reward outranks punishment in working memory resources allocation Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 1533–1546, 2025. @article{Yan2025g,Working memory (WM) plays a pivotal role in cognitive processes; yet, its resources are strictly limited, making it crucial to understand how these resources are allocated. Motivation, such as reward and punish- ment, has been widely recognized as a key factor influencing WM. Previous research has either examined the impacts of reward and punishment on the availability ofWM resources separately or focused solely on the effects of reward on resource allocation. We posit that integrating these effects into a single study is essential for a comprehensive understanding of their interplay. To this end, we conducted three experiments using a delay estimation task, combined with the Target Confusability Competition model, to systematically inves- tigate how reward and punishment affect the availability and allocation ofWM resources. In Experiment 1, participants memorized the orientations of two arrows, each associated with reward or punishment cues. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants encountered both reward and punishment cues within the same trial, test- ing three hypotheses about resource allocation: reward dominance, punishment dominance, and no differ- ence. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that reward and punishment equally enhanced the availability of WM resources. In Experiment 2, which was the first to integrate rewards and punishments within the same trial, reward prioritized the allocation of WM resources over punishment. Eye-tracking data from Experiment 3 indicated that this effect was driven by greater attentional focus on reward targets, which led to more WM resource allocation. We provide novel evidence that reward outweighs punishment in WM resource allocation. Public |
Isla Williams; Andrea Phillipou; Elsdon Storey; Peter Brotchie; Larry Abel Visual perception and fixation patterns in an individual with ventral simultanagnosia, integrative agnosia and bilateral visual field loss Journal Article In: Neurology International, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 1–17, 2025. @article{Williams2025,Background/Objectives: As high-acuity vision is limited to a very small visual angle, examination of a scene requires multiple fixations. Simultanagnosia, a disorder wherein elements of a scene can be perceived correctly but cannot be integrated into a coherent whole, has been parsed into dorsal and ventral forms. In ventral simultanagnosia, limited visual integration is possible. This case study was the first to record gaze during the presentation of a series of visual stimuli, which required the processing of local and global elements. We hypothesised that gaze patterns would differ with successful processing and that feature integration could be disrupted by distractors. Methods: The patient received a neuropsychological assessment and underwent CT and MRI. Eye movements were recorded during the following tasks: (1) famous face identification, (2) facial emotion recognition, (3) identification of Ishihara colour plates, and (4) identification of both local and global letters in Navon composite letters, presented either alone or surrounded by filled black circles, which we hypothesised would impair global processing by disrupting fixation. Results: The patients identified no famous faces but scanned them qualitatively normally. The only emotion to be consistently recognised was happiness, whose scanpath differed from the other emotions. She identified none of the Ishihara plates, although her colour vision was normal on the FM-15, even mapping an unseen digit with fixations and tracing it with her finger. For plain Navon figures, she correctly identified 20/20 local and global letters; for the “dotted” figures, she was correct 19/20 times for local letters and 0/20 for global letters (chi-squared NS for local, p < 0.0001, global), with similar fixation of salient elements for both. Conclusions: Contrary to our hypothesis, gaze behaviour was largely independent of the ability to process global stimuli, showing for the first time that normal acquisition of visual information did not ensure its integration into a percept. The core defect lay in processing, not acquisition. In the novel Navon task, adding distractors abolished feature integration without affecting the fixation of the salient elements, confirming for the first time that distractors could disrupt the processing, not the acquisition, of visual information in this disorder. |
Wiktor Wicecławski; Marek Binder; Aleksandra Smus Does pseudoneglect influence pupillary light or dark response? Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 232, pp. 1–7, 2025. @article{Wiȩclawski2025,Pupillary light response (PLR) is modulated by the allocation of spatial attention. Larger pupil constrictions for bright stimuli presented on the left side are considered indicative of pseudoneglect, a subtle attentional bias observed in neurotypical populations. This study aimed to replicate this effect using the split-screen method—a newly introduced measure of spatial attentional bias—while accounting for factors such as contraction anisocoria by recording from both pupils. Additionally, we introduced conditions with and without competing stimuli (a black patch on the opposite side to the original white patch that is supposed to elicit pupil contraction) to investigate the role of visual competition in PLR modulation and explored the pupillary dark response (PDR) to assess whether attentional biases affect pupil dilation. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe a significant pseudoneglect effect, as pupil constriction was not consistently greater for left-sided stimuli. We found clear evidence for contraction anisocoria, whereby ipsilateral stimuli produce stronger constrictions than contralateral stimuli, thus highlighting the need to account for this physiological effect in future studies. Regarding PDR, we did not find significant attentional modulation or evidence of dilation anisocoria as pupil dilation amplitudes were similar across both hemifields. These findings suggest that although the split-screen method may reveal physiological asymmetries like anisocoria, its sensitivity to attentional biases in neurotypical populations still requires further investigation. |
Signy Wegener; Anne Castles; Elisabeth Beyersmann; Kate Nation; Hua Chen Wang; Erik D. Reichle Eye tracking and simulating the spacing effect during orthographic learning Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 1–22, 2025. @article{Wegener2025,Spreading out study opportunities over time improves the retention of verbal material compared to consecutive study, yet little is known about the influence of temporal spacing on orthographic learning specifically. The current study addressed four questions: (1) do readers' eye movements during orthographic learning differ under spaced and massed conditions? (2) is the spacing effect observed in offline post-tests? (3) can readers' eye movements during learning be linked with learning success in offline post-tests? (4) can E-Z Reader simulate the spacing effect during orthographic learning? Eighty adults silently read sentences containing novel words while their eye movements were monitored. Sentences were read four times; half of the items were spaced while half were massed. Participants completed a post-test assessing their written word form learning (orthographic choice or spelling). Simulations with E-Z Reader were used to interpret the human data. During orthographic learning, massed items had shorter total reading times than spaced items. A spacing advantage was noted in the offline post-tests. Longer fixations during learning were associated with higher response accuracy at post-test. Implementing a processing deadline enabled E-Z Reader to simulate participants' eye movements; simulations suggested that massed items may have received less attentional processing than spaced items during learning. Temporal spacing results in longer fixations during learning and better learning outcomes using offline tests. The combination of human eye movements and computational modeling provides useful insights into how reading and memory intersect and points to new directions for future research. |
Helene M. Gugelberg; Stefan J. Troche Individual differences in strategy and the item-position effect in reasoning ability measures Journal Article In: Journal of Intelligence, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 1–28, 2025. @article{Gugelberg2025,Despite the high similarity of reasoning ability items, research indicates that individuals apply different strategies when solving them. The two distinct strategies are response elimination and constructive matching. The latter, frequently showing a positive correlation with reasoning ability, entails the individual systematically investigating the presented problem matrix of an item before scanning the response alternatives. To further understand the sources of individual differences in strategy use during test taking, three different eye-tracking metrics were investigated in participants (N = 210) solving the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM). Relying on the fixed-links modeling approach, bifactor models were fit to the data. The latent model approach revealed, in line with other research, a positive correlation between reasoning ability and constructive matching. The results further indicated that a change in strategy use was correlated with the item-position effect and not reasoning ability. The former exhibited a different direction of effect, depending on the eye-tracking metric analyzed. When investigating the toggle rate, the participants used more constructive matching towards the end of the APM. The proportional time to first fixation on response alternatives indicated less constructive matching as the test progressed, and the proportional time on the problem matrix exhibited no distinct pattern regarding a change in strategy use. These diverging results point towards the possibility of a more nuanced problem-solving behavior than previously assumed. By including the item-position effect in the analyses, the increasing individuals differences in problem-solving behavior can be taken into account, which could be a necessary step in attaining a more comprehensive understanding of problem-solving behavior. |
Ankita Sengupta; Devarajan Sridharan Reward expectation yields distinct effects on sensory processing and decision making in the human brain Journal Article In: PLoS Biology, vol. 23, no. 7, pp. 1–33, 2025. @article{Sengupta2025,Reward expectation robustly guides both attention and decisions. Yet, whether common or distinct mechanisms mediate each of these processes remains unknown. Previous studies have often conflated the effect of reward expectation on sensory processing and decision-making because locations selected for sensory prioritization (sensitivity effects) were also prioritized for decisions (criterion effects). Here, we identify distinct forms of reward expectation that separably control spatial attention and decisional biases in human cortex. Sensitivity and criterion were independently modulated when expected rewards varied across locations (“space-specific”) or choices (“choice-specific”), respectively. Only sensitivity, not criterion, modulations reflected a limited, conserved attentional resource. Established neural and physiological signatures of attention, including gain modulation of event-related potentials, alpha-band power lateralization, and eye-movement biases, were elicited only by space-specific reward modulation. By contrast, neural correlates of decisional biases, including pre-stimulus alpha power suppression, selectively accompanied choice-specific reward modulation. Attention-related neural markers predicted sensitivity modulation by space-specific reward expectation but not criterion modulation by choice-specific reward expectation, indicating their distinct underlying mechanisms. Our findings uncover fundamentally dissociable behavioral and neural underpinnings of reward expectation effects on sensory and decisional selection, with critical implications for understanding how reward, attention, and choice are linked in the human brain. they must also choose to act quickly and pick off this fruit, to thwart their conspecifics. In other words, reward expectation can influence not only how attention is engaged but also how choices are made. Yet, these two effects have been frequently conflated in laboratory tasks. Here, with a task that decouples reward expectation's effects on attention from those on decision-making we uncover their distinct neural correlates. Our results show how reward shapes attention and biases choices independently in the human brain. |
Aikaterini Premeti; Frédéric Isel; Maria Pia Bucci Eye movements of French dyslexic adults while reading texts: Evidence of word length, lexical frequency, consistency and grammatical category Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 1–24, 2025. @article{Premeti2025,Background/Objectives: Dyslexia, a learning disability affecting reading, has been extensively studied using eye movements. This study aimed to examine in the same design the effects of different psycholinguistic variables, i.e., grammatical category, lexical frequency, word length and orthographic consistency on eye movement patterns during reading in adults. Methods: We compared the eye movements of forty university students, twenty with and twenty without dyslexia while they read aloud a meaningful and a meaningless text in order to examine whether semantic context could enhance their reading strategy. Results: Dyslexic participants made more reading errors and had longer reading time particularly with the meaningless text, suggesting an increased reliance on the semantic context to enhance their reading strategy. They also made more progressive and regressive fixations while reading the two texts. Similar results were found when examining grammatical categories. These findings suggest a reduced visuo-attentional span and reliance on a serial decoding approach during reading, likely based on grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. Furthermore, in the whole text analysis, there was no difference in fixation duration between the groups. However, when examining word length, only the control group exhibited a distinction between longer and shorter words. No significant group differences emerged for word frequency. Importantly, multiple regression analyses revealed that orthographic consistency predicted fixation durations only in the control group, suggesting that dyslexic readers were less sensitive to phonological regularities—possibly due to underlying phonological deficits. Conclusions: These findings suggest the involvement of both phonological and visuo-attentional deficits in dyslexia. Combined remediation strategies may enhance dyslexic individuals' performance in phonological and visuo-attentional tasks. |
Sabine Prantner; Alejandro Espino-Payá; M. Carmen Pastor; Cristina Giménez-García; Rafael Ballester-Arnal; Markus Junghoefer In: Psychophysiology, vol. 62, no. 7, pp. 1–21, 2025. @article{Prantner2025,Gender identity and sexual orientation form fundamental characteristics of an individual's sexual identity and relate to patterns of physiological and neural activity involved in processing erotic or explicit sexual stimuli. To investigate this, we used high-density magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure brain responses of hetero- and homosexual women and men to opposite- and same-sex erotic images, as well as sexually explicit images. Additionally, we administered pupillometry and subjective measures of hedonic valence and emotional arousal. Erotic versus sexually explicit stimuli initially resulted in enhanced pupil dilation and stronger neural activity in the extended visual cortex, but at later times, reverse effects were found. Our results further showed that perceived affect varied by gender and sexual orientation, with significant group effects. Pupil measurements revealed differences in dilation depending on opposite- and same-sex erotic and sexually explicit images and participant groups. Similarly, effects of stimuli content were found for the neural activity. The findings suggest that preferred versus non-preferred stimuli are subjectively processed in a category-specific way, especially in hetero- and homosexual males as well as homosexual women compared to heterosexual women, and indicate a sensitivity to sexual images in affective-motivational and reward areas of the brain. To conclude, subjective, visual, and neural responses to sexually relevant stimuli seem partly dependent on gender and sexual orientation but predominanly indicate influences of stimulus content. |
Diane C. Mézière; Lili Yu; Titus Malsburg; Erik D. Reichle; Genevieve McArthur Using eye movements from a “read-only” task to predict text comprehension Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 1–18, 2025. @article{Meziere2025,Recent research on the use of eye movements to predict performance on reading comprehension tasks suggests that while eye movements may be used to measure comprehension, the relationship between eye-movement behavior and comprehension is influenced by differences in task demands between comprehension measures. In this study, we examined the usefulness of eye movements collected during reading with no additional task demands (a “read-only” condition) to predict comprehension ability as measured by a recall task. We collected eye-movement behavior from adult native speakers of English (N = 62, 46 females, mean age 26 years) while they read nine passages of fictional text in two conditions: a read-only condition with no additional task, and a recall condition where participants were asked to recall the story after reading it. We ran Bayesian logistic regression models to predict performance on the recall tasks from standard eye-tracking measures collected during the two reading conditions (read-only and recall). Eye-tracking measures collected in the read-only and recall conditions were both useful in predicting reading comprehension as measured by recall scores. Additionally, the relationship between eye-movement behavior and recall performance was similar for both reading conditions. In both cases, a combination of early and late measures was the best predictors of performance on the recall task. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of eye movements collected during reading with no additional task as predictors of reading comprehension ability. |
Jennifer March; Sebastian Gluth Hunger shifts attention and attribute weighting in dietary choice Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 13, pp. 1–56, 2025. @article{March2025,Hunger is a biological drive which can promote unhealthy dietary decisions. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect, and in particular the interactive role of attention and choice processes, remain elusive. To address this gap, we conducted an eye- tracking experiment, in which 70 participants completed a multi- attribute food choice task in hungry and sated states. Confirming our preregistered hypotheses, participants' preference for tasty over healthy food items was amplified by hunger. Attention mediated this influence of hunger, as hungry partici- pants focused more on tasty options, leading them to make less healthy decisions. Rigorous model comparisons revealed that an extension of the recently proposed multi- attribute attentional drift diffusion model best explained choice and response times. According to this model, hunger did not only increase the relative taste compared to health weight, but it also increased the fixation- related discounting of health but not taste information. Our results suggest that the cognitive mechanisms underlying unhealthy dietary decisions under hunger are characterized by a nuanced interplay between attention and the significance assigned to the options' underlying attributes. |
Verónica Mäki-Marttunen; Sander Tjalling Nieuwenhuis Neuromodulatory influences on propagation of traveling waves along the unimodal-transmodal gradient Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 1–11, 2025. @article{MaekiMarttunen2025,Understanding the factors underlying brain activity fluctuation is important to understand the flexible nature of the brain and cognition. Growing evidence indicates that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity travels as waves around global signal peaks following a unimodal-transmodal gradient. This may explain the organization of brain activity into functional networks, but why the strength of integration between networks fluctuates is uncertain. Given that arousal-related neuromodulatory systems affect network integration and that traveling waves are modulated by arousal, we aimed to assess the hypothesis that an increase in neuromodulatory tone can affect network integration by modulating the speed of propagation of traveling waves. We tested this hypothesis using pharmacological fMRI/pupil measurements during rest and tasks. Atomoxetine, which increases extracellular catecholamine levels, was associated with faster traveling waves, and faster traveling waves correlated with more network integration. We also examined temporal variations in pupil size, a signature of transient changes in neuromodulatory activity, and found that the periods of traveling waves were characterized by larger pupil size. Our results suggest that neuromodulatory tone affects traveling wave propagation, and that this arousal-modulated propagation shapes integrated functional connectivity features, highlighting specific effects of prolonged and transient neuromodulatory influences on slow brain dynamics. |
Canhuang Luo; Edward F. Ester Traveling waves link human visual and frontal cortex during working memory–guided behavior Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 122, no. 30, pp. 1–9, 2025. @article{Luo2025,Traveling waves guide the spatial propagation of neural activity and computational processes across the brain. Traveling waves could contribute to the control of memory-guided behaviors by flexibly organizing the timing and direction of interactions between brain regions responsible for storing memory content with those responsible for producing task-relevant behaviors. Using short-term memory as a test case, we report evidence supporting this possibility. Analyses of human EEG data revealed forward- and backward-propagating traveling waves linking visual and motor brain areas around the time of a memory-guided behavior. These waves predicted intra- and interindividual differences in task performance, could not be explained by eye movements or passive volume conduction, and were absent when participants planned but could not execute a memory-guided behavior. These findings implicate traveling waves as a mechanism in the initiation and control of memory-guided behaviors. |
Karin Ludwig; Raffaela M. M. Böswald; Johannes Schusterbauer; Thomas Schenk Side-specific implicit training of attentional disengagement and reorienting Journal Article In: Experimental Brain Research, vol. 243, no. 7, pp. 1–13, 2025. @article{Ludwig2025a,Some patients with parietal brain damage have problems disengaging their attention from ipsilesional stimuli. Although this disengage deficit has been described in the framework of the neglect syndrome, where it is particularly pronounced, no current treatment addresses this issue directly and side-specifically. In this study we propose a paradigm that could serve as such a training and – as a proof of concept – test its effects on the attentional allocation of healthy participants. We trained 36 participants between 20 and 35 years of age in a spatial orienting paradigm in which cues on one side were predictive of the opposite side, while the cues on the opposite side were neutral. We then compared reaction times before, during, and after this training. We could show that (1) this side-specific training specifically accelerated attentional disengagement from the predictive cues, (2) this effect persisted even when cues became unpredictive again, (3) it could be achieved implicitly, i.e., without the participants' knowledge of the true cue-target-relationship, and that (4) it indeed relied on the learning of the cue's predictiveness of the target location and not pure target occurrence probabilities. These results not only contribute to our knowledge about the spatial orienting of attention but might also form the basis for a new approach to treating the disengage deficit. |
Bingyu Liu; Qingyang Luo; Zhifeng Liang; Hua He; Yong Gu Robust single-trial decoding of physical self-motion from hemodynamic signals in the brain measured by functional ultrasound imaging Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 122, no. 29, pp. 1–12, 2025. @article{Liu2025e,Physical self-motion frequently happens in daily life, during which our vestibular system is critical in various important functions including balance and visual stability maintenance, postural and motor control, locomotion, spatial perception, and path integration-based navigation. Conventional noninvasive methods for studying vestibular functions include functional MRI (fMRI) that conveniently measures brain-wide signals; however, subjects are required to be physically restricted in the scanner. In such cases, caloric or galvanic vestibular stimulation is applied to stimulate peripheral vestibular organs, suffering a loss of precise stimulation of peripheral vestibular organs as during physical motion conditions. In this study, we adopted functional ultrasound (fUS) imaging, a newly emerging minimally invasive technique with high spatiotemporal resolution, to measure vestibular related signals in primates under passive, physical self-motion conditions that selectively activate vestibular organs. We found that robust fUS signals were evoked in brain-wide regions. While many areas overlapped with those previously reported by fMRI or electrophysiology, significant activations were also seen in areas that were not clearly identified previously including area 5, 1-2, M1, V3A, and 7 m. Importantly, using a linear discriminant analysis algorithm, physical self-motion information, including both translation directions, and translation-vs.-rotation, could be reliably decoded from fUS signals on a single-trial basis. In addition to vestibular-related activity, many areas also exhibited visual-motion response, indicating possible multisensory interactions. Our findings suggest that fUS imaging holds a promising tool for studying vestibular functions in tasks under physical self-motion conditions, as well as interactions with visual or motor systems. |
Aoqi Li; Jeremy M. Wolfe; Johan Hulleman Errors in visual search: How can we reduce them? Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 87, no. 5, pp. 1471–1495, 2025. @article{Li2025a,Observers routinely make errors in almost any visual search task. In previous online experiments, we found that indiscriminately highlighting all item positions in a noisy search display reduced errors. Here, we conducted two eye-tracking studies to investigate the mechanics of this error reduction: Does cueing direct attention to previously overlooked regions or enhance attention/processing at cued locations? Displays were presented twice. In Experiment 1, for half of the displays, the cue was only presented on the first copy (Cue – noCue) and for the other half, only presented on the second copy (noCue – Cue). Cueing successfully reduced errors but did not significantly affect reaction times (RTs). This contrasts with the online experiment where the cue increased RTs while reducing errors. In Experiment 2, we replicated the design of the online experiment by splitting the displays into noCue – noCue and noCue – Cue pairs. We now found that the cue reduced errors, but increased RTs on trials with high-contrast targets. The eye-tracking data show that participants fixated closer to items and fixation durations were shorter in cued displays. The smaller fixation-item distance reduced search errors, where observers never fixated the target, for low-contrast targets and the remaining low-contrast errors seemed to be recognition errors, where observers looked at the target but too quickly looked away. Taken together, these results suggest the main reason that errors were reduced was because attention was more properly directed to overlooked regions by the cues. Enhancement of attention at the cued areas may have played an auxiliary role. |
Max Levinson; Christopher C. Pack; Sylvain Baillet Stimulus-dependent delay of perceptual filling-in by microsaccades Journal Article In: Journal of vision, vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 1–14, 2025. @article{Levinson2025,Perception is a function of both stimulus features and active sensory sampling. The illusion of perceptual filling-in occurs when eye gaze is kept still: visual boundary perception may fail, causing adjacent visual features to remarkably merge into one uniform visual surface. Microsaccades-small, involuntary eye movements during gaze fixation-counteract perceptual filling-in, but the mechanisms underlying this process are not well-understood. We investigated whether microsaccade efficacy for preventing filling-in depends on two boundary properties, namely, color contrast and retinal eccentricity (distance from gaze center). Twenty-one human participants (male and female) fixated on a point until they experienced filling-in between two isoluminant colored surfaces. We found that increased color contrast independently extends the duration before filling-in, but does not alter the impact of individual microsaccades. Conversely, lower eccentricity delayed filling-in only by increasing microsaccade efficacy. We propose that microsaccades facilitate stable boundary perception via a transient retinal motion signal that scales with eccentricity but is invariant to boundary contrast. These results shed light on how incessant eye movements integrate with ongoing stimulus processing to stabilize perceptual detail, with implications for visual rehabilitation and the optimization of visual presentations in virtual and augmented reality environments. |
Hsing Hao Lee; Marisa Carrasco Visual adaptation stronger at the horizontal than the vertical meridian: Linking performance with V1 cortical surface area Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 122, no. 29, pp. 1–11, 2025. @article{Lee2025b,Visual adaptation reduces bioenergetic expenditure by decreasing sensitivity to repetitive and similar stimuli. In human adults, visual performance varies systematically around the polar angle for many visual dimensions and tasks: Performance is superior along the horizontal than the vertical meridian (horizontal–vertical anisotropy, HVA) and the lower than upper vertical meridian (vertical meridian asymmetry, VMA). These asymmetries are resistant to spatial and temporal attention. However, it remains unknown whether visual adaptation differs around the polar angle. Here, we investigated how adaptation influences contrast sensitivity at the fovea and perifovea across the four cardinal meridian locations for both horizontal and vertical stimuli in an orientation discrimination task. In the nonadapted conditions, the HVA was more pronounced for horizontal than vertical stimuli. For both orientations, adaptation was stronger along the horizontal than the vertical meridian, exceeding foveal adaptation. Additionally, perifoveal adaptation effects positively correlated with individual V1 cortical surface area. These findings reveal that visual adaptation mitigates the HVA in contrast sensitivity, fostering perceptual uniformity around the visual field while conserving bioenergetic resources. |
Marianna Kyriacou; Cecilie Rummelhoff; Franziska Köder Irony processing in adults with ADHD: Evidence from eye-tracking and executive attention tasks Journal Article In: Journal of Attention Disorders, vol. 29, no. 9, pp. 724–744, 2025. @article{Kyriacou2025a,Objective: ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts pragmatic communication abilities in children, including their understanding of verbal irony. This study aims to investigate whether adults with ADHD experience similar challenges in interpreting ironic statements, and to examine the role of executive attention abilities in accounting for any observed differences. Methods: 52 adults with ADHD and 55 neurotypical controls participated in an eye-tracking experiment. They read stories that included either literal or ironic statements and answered targeted comprehension questions. We used measures of working memory and fluid intelligence as independent indices of executive attention. Results: The results showed that adults with ADHD were as accurate as the control group in comprehending irony. However, they experienced an additional processing cost, indicated by increased reading times for ironic statements. While fluid intelligence improved comprehension accuracy in the control group, it did not have the same effect for participants with ADHD. Importantly, higher working memory capacity in adults with ADHD was associated with faster processing times, making their irony processing comparable to that of the control group. Conclusion: Our findings underscore the subtle challenges adults with ADHD face in processing irony and highlight the crucial role of working memory in enhancing performance. These insights stress the importance of considering individual cognitive capacities and their interaction with ADHD symptoms to better understand how ADHD impacts pragmatic abilities in adulthood. |
Magdalena Klimek; Hasse Karlsson; Linnea Karlsson; Riikka Korja; Saara Nolvi; Tuomo Häikiö; Jetro J. Tuulari; Eeva-Leena Kataja In: PLoS One, vol. 20, no. 7, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Klimek2025,Paternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been recently linked to offspring's brain development. Yet, none of the previous studies in humans have explored the association between paternal ACEs and a child's attentional bias for facial expressions of emotion. Our study fills this gap. Data were collected from 239 fathers (mean age 32.15; SD 5.04) and their children at 8 months of age who were part of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Paternal ACEs were evaluated using the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) in five domains: emotional and physical neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and sexual abuse. In children, eye-tracking was used to study attentional engagement to emotional faces vs. non-faces and distractors, and to calculate face and fear bias indices. Hierarchical linear regression and the Mann-Whitney U test were used for analyses. A negative association between paternal sexual abuse and face bias was found in children (p = 0.043), when paternal postpartum anxiety and sex of the child were controlled, however the effect size was rather low. Additionally, daughters (n = 6) of sexually abused fathers expressed lower face bias (p = 0.02) and higher fear bias (p = 0.04) than daughters of sexually non-abused fathers. Our preliminary exploration suggests a potential intergenerational effect of paternal exposure to sexual abuse on the processing of facial expression among daughters at the age of 8 months, yet the results require further confirmatory analyses, especially in a larger study group of ACEs-exposed individuals. |
Shinichiro Kira; Ariel Zylberberg; Michael N. Shadlen Incorporation of a cost of deliberation time in perceptual decision making Journal Article In: The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 45, no. 31, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Kira2025,Many decisions benefit from the accumulation of evidence obtained sequentially over time. In such circumstances, the decision-maker must balance speed against accuracy, while considering the cost associated with the passage of time. A neural mechanism to achieve this balance is to accumulate evidence and to terminate the deliberation when enough evidence has accrued. To accommodate time costs, it has been hypothesized that the criterion to terminate a decision may become lax as a function of time. Here we tested this hypothesis by manipulating the cost of time in a perceptual choice–reaction time (RT) task. Human participants (both sexes) discriminated the direction of motion in a dynamic random-dot display, which varied in difficulty across trials. Unbeknownst to the participants, halfway through the experiment, we increased the time pressure by canceling a small fraction of trials, mimicking a broken fixation, if they had not made a decision by a provisional deadline. This subtle manipulation led participants to make faster but less accurate decisions. Choice and RT were well explained by a bounded evidence-accumulation process. We developed a novel computational method to estimate the time-dependent changes in the stopping bounds directly from the participants' RT and choice data. Our analysis revealed that the bounds decline as a function of time, and that this decline is steeper following the time–cost manipulation. The time-varying decision bounds approximate an optimal stopping policy, although the specific bound shape is idiosyncratic across individuals. |
Andy Jeesu Kim; Keran Chen; Ying Tian; Mara Mather The effects of mindfulness meditation on mechanisms of attentional control in young and older adults: A preregistered eye tracking study Journal Article In: eNeuro, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1–18, 2025. @article{Kim2025,Neuroimaging data reveal that a functional locus ceruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system is critical in maintaining cognitive performance during aging. However, older adults show reduced LC integrity and altered functional connectivity, demonstrating both structural declines and dysfunction. The LC-NA system mediates mechanisms of attention processing and eye tracking studies have shown that older adults are slower and more distractible compared with young adults in visual search tasks. Prior studies have shown that mindfulness meditation modulates LC noradrenergic activity, increases gray matter volume in the brainstem, and improves attentional control. Thus, in a preregistered longitudinal study, we investigated whether 30 d of guided mindfulness meditation using a mobile application improved attentional control measured with eye movements. We hypothesized that older adults would show greater benefits from the mindfulness intervention compared with young adults. In two oculomotor search tasks, we identified that guided mindfulness practice improved saccadic reaction times, but that other longitudinal benefits in goal-directed attentional control or distractibility by task-irrelevant salient stimuli may be from repeated practice. Furthermore, we did not find evidence for age differences in response to the mindfulness intervention between young, middle-aged, and older adults, nor among scores on mindfulness questionnaires. Our findings show that short-term mindfulness practice can modulate cognition, specifically with the speed of overt orienting of attention that may not be observable in self-report measures. This study is the first to show the utility of mindfulness on cognition using a highly reliable measure in eye movements and suggests future longer-term intervention studies may be warranted. |
Ariel N. James; Rachel Ryskin; Joshua K. Hartshorne; Haylee Backs; Nandeeta Bala; Laila Barcenas-Meade; Samata Bhattarai; Tessa Charles; Gerasimos Copoulos; Claire Coss; Alexander Eisert; Elena Furuhashi; Keara Ginell; Anna Guttman-McCabe; Emma Harrison; Laura Hoban; William A. Hwang; Claire Iannetta; Kristen M. Koenig; Chauncey Lo; Victoria Palone; Gina Pepitone; Margaret Ritzau; Yi Hua Sung; Lauren Thompson; Joshua R. Leeuw What paradigms can webcam eye-tracking be used for? Attempted replications of five cognitive science experiments Journal Article In: Collabra: Psychology, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1–26, 2025. @article{James2025,Web-based data collection allows researchers to recruit large and diverse samples with fewer resources than lab-based studies require. Recent innovations have expanded the set of methodolgies that are possible online, but ongoing work is needed to test the suitability of web-based tools for various research paradigms. Here, we focus on webcam-based eye-tracking; we tested whether the results of five different eye-tracking experiments in the cognitive psychology literature would replicate in a webcam-based format. Specifically, we carried out five experiments by integrating two javascript-based tools: jsPsych and a modified version of Webgazer.js. In order to represent a wide range of applications of eye-tracking to cognitive psychology, we chose two psycholinguistic experiments, two memory experiments, and a decision-making experiment. These studies also varied in the type of eye-tracking display, including screens split into halves (Exps. 3 and 5) or quadrants (Exps. 2 and 4), or composed scenes with regions of interest that varied in size (Exp. 1). Outcomes were mixed. The least successful replication attempt was Exp. 1; we did not obtain a condition effect in our remote sample (1a), nor in an in-lab follow-up (1b). However, the other four experiments were more successful, replicating a blank-screen effect (Exp. 2), a novelty preference (Exp. 3), a verb bias effect (Exp. 4), and a gaze-bias effect in decision-making (Exp. 5). These results suggest that webcam-based eye-tracking can be used to detect a variety of cognitive phenomena, including those with sensitive time, although paradigms that require high spatial resolution (like Exp. 1) should be adapted to coarser quadrant or split-half displays. |
Jiawen Huang; Eleanor Furness; Yifang Liu; Morell Jovan Kenmoe; Ronak Elias; Hannah Tongxin Zeng; Christopher Baldassano Accurate predictions facilitate robust memory encoding independently from stimulus probability Journal Article In: Open Mind, vol. 9, pp. 940–958, 2025. @article{Huang2025c,We can use prior knowledge of temporal structure to make predictions about how an event will unfold, and this schematic knowledge has been shown to impact the way that event memories are encoded and later reconstructed. Existing paradigms for studying prediction, however, are largely unable to separate effects of prediction accuracy from effects of stimulus probability: likely outcomes are assumed to be predicted, while unlikely outcomes are assumed to cause prediction errors. Here we use a novel approach in which we can independently manipulate prediction success and stimulus probability, by using real-time eye-tracking when viewing moves in a board game. The moves can be consistent or inconsistent with a participant's predictions (assessed via fixation patterns) and can be also be likely or unlikely to be played by a strategic player. By decorrelating these two measures, we found that both probability and prediction accuracy boost memory through two separate mechanisms, leading to different eye-movement strategies at retrieval. Accurate prediction improved encoding precision, allowing participants to directly retrieve these moves without the use of schematic knowledge. Probable moves, on the other hand, led to improved memory through a retrieval-time strategy in which schematic knowledge was used to generate candidate moves for recognition. These results shed new light on the specific role of predictions in enhancing event memories, and provide a more realistic paradigm for studying schemas, learning, and decision making. |
Darías Holgado; Alice Cailleux; Paolo Ruggeri; Corinna Martarelli; Tristan A. Bekinschtein; Daniel Sanabria; Nicolas Place Individualized cognitive effort to failure does not affect subsequent strenuous physical performance Journal Article In: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 57, no. 7, pp. 1603–1615, 2025. @article{Holgado2025,Introduction The relationship between cognitive tasks and physical performance has garnered significant attention, with evidence suggesting that cognitive effort before exercise may impair physical performance. However, recent findings challenge the robustness of this effect, necessitating a reassessment of the mechanisms linking cognitive load to physical performance. This study introduces a novel approach to address methodological limitations, emphasizing individualized cognitive task difficulty and duration. Using techniques such as temporal experience tracing and psychophysiological monitoring, we explore the dynamics between cognitive effort, subjective states, and physical performance. Methods In a preregistered, randomized, within-participant design experiment, 21 recreational athletes completed a running time to exhaustion test at 90% of their maximal aerobic speed after performing a cognitive task until failure or watching a self-selected documentary. Pupillometry and six subjective dimensions were measured with the temporal experience tracing during task performance. Results We found that 1) subjective changes during effortful tasks are not limited to a single experience, such as mental fatigue or boredom, but can be grouped into distinct patterns; 2) the individualized and demanding cognitive task, completed before exercise, did not impair subsequent physical performance; 3) pupil size reliably reflected cognitive load and is partially related to changes in subjective states, while fixation on the stimulus decreased over time, especially during high-demand periods. Conclusions These results do not support the effect of performing a highly demanding cognitive task on subsequent strenuous physical performance. Instead, they reveal the richness of the subjective experience linked to cognitive performance that goes beyond mere mental fatigue. Overall, we show a novel way to understand the interplay between cognitive and physical performance. |
Taylor R. Hayes; John M. Henderson DeepMeaning: Estimating and interpreting scene meaning for attention using a vision-language transformer Journal Article In: Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science, vol. 9, pp. 1020–1036, 2025. @article{Hayes2025,Humans rapidly process and understand real-world scenes with ease. Our stored semantic knowledge gained from experience is thought to be central to this ability by organizing perceptual information into meaningful units to efficiently guide our attention. However, the role stored semantic representations play in attentional guidance remains difficult to study and poorly understood. Here, we apply a state-of-the-art vision-language transformer trained on billions of image-text pairs to help advance our understanding of the role local meaning plays in scene guidance. Specifically, we demonstrate that this transformer-based approach can be used to automatically estimate local scene meaning in indoor and outdoor scenes, predict where people look in these scenes, detect changes in local semantic content, and provide multiple avenues to model interpretation through its language capabilities. Taken together, these findings highlight how multimodal transformers can advance our understanding of the role scene semantics play in scene attention by serving as a representational framework that bridges vision and language. |
Katarzyna Harezlak; Ewa Pluciennik Towards improved eye movement biometrics: Investigating new features with neural networks Journal Article In: Sensors, vol. 25, no. 14, pp. 1–16, 2025. @article{Harezlak2025,Providing protected access to many everyday-used resources is becoming increasingly necessary. Research on applying eye movement for this purpose has been conducted for many years. However, due to technological advancements and the lack of stable solutions, subsequent explorations remain valid. The presented work is one of such studies. Two methods of biometric identification based on eye movements that utilize neural networks have been developed. In the first case, a feature vector was constructed from a 100-element time series depicting eye movement dynamics, which included velocity, acceleration, jerk, their point-to-point percentage changes, and frequency-domain representations. The same eye movement dynamic features were used in the second method, but this time, statistical values were calculated based on the previously defined time series. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and dense networks were used in the user identification task in the first and second approaches, respectively. In the exploration, the publicly available GazeBase dataset was used, from which data collected for the ‘jumping point' stimulus were chosen. The obtained results are very promising, with an accuracy of 96% for the LSTM model and the time series feature vector set and 76% for the second method. They were achieved over a three-year time span of eye movement recordings; however, different time periods were investigated, as well as various numbers of stimulus positions. |