Article
Biology
Amrita Lamba, Matthew R. Nassar, Oriel FeldmanHall
Summary: People's learning from feedback varies across individuals and contexts, and this study reveals that the differences in what is learned are related to the precision of neural codes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The researchers found that people credit task-relevant cues more accurately in social contexts, which is mediated by distinct and consistent neural representations in the PFC. The study demonstrates how neural representations drive adaptive learning.
Article
Neurosciences
Anna-Maria Grob, Branka Milivojevic, Arjen Alink, Christian F. Doeller, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Gaining insight through imagination and observation contributes to the integration of separate events into coherent episodes. In this study, fMRI and representational similarity analysis were used to investigate the behavioral and neural effects of insight through imagination. The results revealed that insight through imagination was weaker than insight through observation, but the imagination group had better detail memory. Additionally, the imagination group exhibited different neural activation patterns compared to the observation group, suggesting that imagination hinders concurrent mnemonic integration but may enhance long-term memory.
Article
Neurosciences
Paula Kaanders, Hamed Nili, Jill X. O'Reilly, Laurence Hunt
Summary: In this study using fMRI, researchers investigate the neural basis of information sampling in economic choice. The activity of the medial frontal cortex (MFC) was found to predict further information sampling, while a distributed network of regions across the prefrontal cortex encoded key features of the sampled information.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Review
Neurosciences
Matthew Ainsworth, Zhemeng Wu, Helen Browncross, Anna S. Mitchell, Andrew H. Bell, Mark J. Buckley
Summary: This study investigates the functional connectivity of the primate frontopolar cortex (FPC) with other cortical regions. Results reveal a network of interconnected regions involving the FPC, posterior cingulate cortex, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which play a crucial role in the decision-making process.
PROGRESS IN NEUROBIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Roberto A. Ferreira, David Vinson, Ton Dijkstra, Gabriella Vigliocco
Summary: The study found that newly learned words in Spanish and English overlapped largely in brain regions, but differed in terms of cognitive control and phonological processing. Spanish showed heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex due to competition of existing lexical representations, while English displayed higher activity in the primary auditory cortex due to more irregular phonological-orthographic mappings.
Article
Neurosciences
Shefali Chaudhary, Sheng Zhang, Simon Zhornitsky, Yu Chen, Herta H. Chao, Chiang-Shan R. Li
Summary: Trait anxiety tends to decrease with age, possibly due to reduced ability to process emotional stimuli and improved regulation of emotions. In a study of 88 adults aged 21 to 85 using fMRI, it was found that anxiety was negatively correlated with age. While there was no evidence supporting the hypotheses of delayed reaction time or diminished limbic/emotional circuit, the findings indicated that higher automaticity in processing negative emotions may contribute to decreased anxiety with age.
Article
Neurosciences
Laura E. Meine, Jana Meier, Benjamin Meyer, Michele Wessa
Summary: Animal research has shown that control is crucial in the brain's stress response. This study investigated the effects of controllable vs. uncontrollable aversive stimuli on brain function in humans, finding that being able to control the stressor led to reduced activation in stress-responsive regions and decreased feelings of helplessness. The findings support the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in regulating stress responses dependent on controllability.
Article
Neurosciences
Shulan Hsieh, Meng-Heng Yang, Zai-Fu Yao
Summary: This study employed a mixed design task for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the differences in task-related brain activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) under different task conditions. The results showed that both low episodic and low abstraction conditions evoked more brain activity in the anterior PFC, regardless of age group.
Article
Neurosciences
Neal W. Morton, Ellen L. Zippi, Alison R. Preston
Summary: In this study, fMRI was used to track the reactivation and suppression of individual related memories during encoding of overlapping events. The results showed that reactivation of semantic knowledge related to a prior event in the posterior medial prefrontal cortex (pmPFC) supported memory integration, while the anterior hippocampus (aHPC) formed integrated representations combining the semantic features of overlapping events. Additionally, interactions between ventrolateral PFC and anterior mPFC were found to modulate aHPC integration on a trial-by-trial basis, with suppression of item-specific memory representations in anterior mPFC inhibiting hippocampal integration.
Article
Neurosciences
Nils C. J. Muller, Nils Kohn, Mariet van Buuren, Nadia Klijn, Helene Emmen, Ruud M. W. J. Berkers, Martin Dresler, Gabriele Janzen, Guillen Fernandez
Summary: This study investigated differences in memory performance between children, adolescents, and adults using fMRI and found that differences in executive rather than associative abilities explain these differences. The results suggest that children's executive system is not as mature as in adolescents and adults, and therefore cannot facilitate memory performance in the same way.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Doyoung Park, Taehyun Kim, Sue-Hyun Lee
Summary: The study found that the prefrontal cortex has a differential impact on the processing of emotional information compared to neutral information, leading to better memory for semantic components of emotional stimuli. This suggests that emotional stimuli are more directly influenced by higher-order information from the prefrontal cortex during sensory representation.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ana Martin-Salguero, Carlo Reverberi, Aldo Solari, Luca Filippin, Christophe Pallier, Luca L. Bonatti
Summary: We investigate the neural and oculomotor correlates of the elementary cognitive process of disjunction elimination induced by non-linguistic visual scenes. We track the construction and simplification of logical representations through deductive inference and identify the brain areas involved. Our findings suggest that these integrative logical processes incorporate novel experiences induced by visual scenes.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Nadira Yusif Rodriguez, Theresa H. McKim, Debaleena Basu, Aarit Ahuja, Theresa M. Desrochers
Summary: Monitoring abstract sequential information is an important aspect of human and monkey cognition. The rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) in humans and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in monkeys have shown neural activity changes during abstract sequence tasks. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that area 46 in monkey DLPFC shares similarities with human RLPFC. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments with monkeys showed that area 46 in both hemispheres responded to abstract sequential changes, with the left hemisphere exhibiting similar activation patterns to those observed in humans. These findings suggest that abstract sequences are represented in functionally homologous regions across monkeys and humans.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Noam Schneck, Tao Tu, Harry Rubin Falcone, Jeffrey M. Miller, Francesca Zanderigo, M. Elizabeth Sublette, Maria A. Oquendo, Barbara Stanley, Ainsley Burke, Kevin Ochsner, Paul Sajda, J. John Mann
Summary: The study found that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) exhibit specific connectivity patterns between brain regions during the viewing of negative images, which differ from healthy volunteers. In MDD patients, hippocampal signaling inhibits other regions involved in processing negative emotions, and this inhibition is related to hippocampal 5-HT1A receptor binding, but not raphe 5-HT1A binding.
MOLECULAR PSYCHIATRY
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
David Willinger, Iliana I. Karipidis, Plamina Dimanova, Susanne Walitza, Silvia Brem
Summary: Neuroimaging studies suggest that maturational fine-tuning of functional coupling within the cortico-striatal incentive circuitry from adolescence to adulthood facilitates the ability to enhance performance selectively for higher subjective values; furthermore, immature information processing in the incentive system during adolescence may lead to a reduced capacity to utilize subjective value for motivated behavior.
Article
Neurosciences
Jose Sanchez-Bornot, Roberto C. Sotero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Ozguer Simsek, Damien Coyle
Summary: This study proposes a multi-penalized state-space model for analyzing unobserved dynamics, using a data-driven regularization method. Novel algorithms are developed to solve the model, and a cross-validation method is introduced to evaluate regularization parameters. The effectiveness of this method is validated through simulations and real data analysis, enabling a more accurate exploration of cognitive brain functions.