Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Domenica Veniero, Joachim Gross, Stephanie Morand, Felix Duecker, Alexander T. Sack, Gregor Thut
Summary: The activation of the Frontal Eye Fields can shape visual cortex activity and perception through mechanisms of oscillatory realignment at the beta frequency.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
J. L. Amengual, F. Di Bello, S. Ben Hadj Hassen, Suliann Ben Hamed
Summary: This study presents findings that optimal behavioral performance is a result of the absence of interference between internal neural states and attention control. In addition to encoding spatial attention, prefrontal neurons also encode a distractibility-to-impulsivity state. The study identifies two partially overlapping neuronal subpopulations associated either with the focus of attention or overt behavior, and describes the neural variability accounting for distractibility-to-impulsivity behavior.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Kaleb A. Lowe, Wolf Zinke, Joshua D. Cosman, Jeffrey D. Schall
Summary: This study investigated the neuronal spiking modulation patterns in the FEF and F2vr areas of macaque monkeys. The results showed differences in the variety of modulation patterns, proportions of visuomotor neuron types, and consistency of modulation patterns across tasks between FEF and F2vr.
Article
Neurosciences
Francesca A. Chaloner, Sam F. Cooke
Summary: Recognizing familiar but innocuous stimuli and suppressing behavioral response to those stimuli are critical steps in dedicating cognitive resources to significant elements of the environment. Recent research has uncovered the mechanisms behind this gradual familiarity formation and found that the plasticity associated with familiarity differs across different time scales.
FRONTIERS IN CELLULAR NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Biology
Mehrshad Golesorkhi, Javier Gomez-Pilar, Federico Zilio, Nareg Berberian, Annemarie Wolff, Mustapha C. E. Yagoub, Georg Northoff
Summary: The study discusses the role of intrinsic neural timescales in input processing, emphasizing the importance of sharing across different species, exploring the influence of different temporal mechanisms on input processing, as well as the importance of this research in understanding mental features and psychiatric disorders.
COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Ali Mahmoodi, Hamed Nili, Dan Bang, Carsten Mehring, Bahador Bahrami
Summary: This study reveals that informational conformity and normative conformity have distinct behavioral and neural markers. The neural activity associated with informational conformity tracks both human and computer interactions, while the neural activity associated with normative conformity only tracks human interactions.
Article
Biology
Ian Krajbich, Andres Mitsumasu, Rafael Polania, Christian C. Ruff, Ernst Fehr
Summary: Recent studies have indicated a close functional relationship between visual attention and decision making. In this study, inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the right frontal eye field (FEF) was found to causally impact decision making by reducing the influence of gaze dwell time on choice and increasing reaction times. Computational modeling using the attentional drift diffusion model (aDDM) further revealed that FEF inhibition decreases the relative discounting of the non-fixated option in the comparison process.
Article
Neurosciences
Tianyu Gao, Shihui Han
Summary: This study reveals the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the learning and representations of symbols related to life and death. The results demonstrate that people have a positive response bias towards life symbols and a negative response bias towards death symbols. Brain imaging results show that different brain regions monitor and respond to these biases. Additionally, life and death symbols have different effects on brain oscillations.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Aurore Cazala, Catherine Del Negro, Nicolas Giret
Summary: Neurons in a high-order auditory area in zebra finches are sensitive to natural variations in vocal signals, affecting temporal reliability of responses rather than firing rate. Auditory processing in birds operates on distinct timescales to detect variations and encode the global context.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Charalampos Papadimitriou, Charles D. Holmes, Lawrence H. Snyder
Summary: The study finds that the dynamics of memory cells during spatial memory periods are more complex than previously thought. They suggest that memory may be supported by multiple attractor networks working in parallel, with each network having its own characteristic mean turn-off time that gradually frees up mnemonic resources over time.
Article
Biology
Christian H. Poth
Summary: In urgent situations, behavior tends to be driven by external stimuli rather than individual goals, affecting both eye movements and manual tasks. This phenomenon is not specific to eye movement control mechanisms, but rather a general overcoming of cognitive control by urgency.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ziyue Wang, Xiang Fei, Xiaotong Liu, Yanjie Wang, Yue Hu, Wanling Peng, Ying-wei Wang, Siyu Zhang, Min Xu
Summary: This study used mice for cortex-wide calcium imaging and revealed the spatiotemporal patterns of global cortical activity during sleep, as well as its role in regulating sleep state switching.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Joseph P. Happer, Laura C. Wagner, Lauren E. Beaton, Burke Q. Rosen, Ksenija Marinkovic
Summary: Inhibitory control relies on integrated functions across neural networks, which are better captured using aMEG that combines MEG with MRI. Experimental results show that visually salient stimuli can facilitate response withholding on certain trials and hinder responding to others, highlighting the interplay between attention and inhibitory processes. The study emphasizes the role of neural synchrony in theta band in underlying inhibitory control and attentional processes.
Article
Neurosciences
Stefan Duerschmid, Andre Maric, Marcel S. Kehl, Robert T. Knight, Hermann Hinrichs, Hans-Jochen Heinze
Summary: The study found that impulsive decisions often prioritize smaller but sooner rewards compared to larger but later rewards, and the contribution of neural activity and attention to choice alternatives to reward decisions is not yet clear.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Maria I. Perica, Finnegan J. Calabro, Bart Larsen, Will Foran, Victor E. Yushmanov, Hoby Hetherington, Brenden Tervo-Clemmens, Chan-Hong Moon, Beatriz Luna
Summary: Animal and human postmortem studies have shown that there are changes in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during adolescence, indicating shifts in excitation and inhibition balance consistent with critical period plasticity. However, how GABA and glutamate change in humans during adolescence and how the balance of these neurotransmitters changes is not well understood.
PROGRESS IN NEUROBIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Mathematical
Megan E. J. Campbell, Chase S. Sherwell, Ross Cunnington, Scott Brown, Michael Breakspear
Summary: Dyadic interactions require dynamic correspondence between one's own movements and those of the other agent. This study suggests that the hierarchical Bayesian learning of environmental statistics may underlie response priming during dyadic interactions.
PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Clinical Neurology
Sebastien Naze, Luke J. Hearne, James A. Roberts, Paula Sanz-Leon, Bjorn Burgher, Caitlin Hall, Saurabh Sonkusare, Zoie Nott, Leo Marcus, Emma Savage, Conor Robinson, Ye Ella Tian, Andrew Zalesky, Michael Breakspear, Luca Cocchi
Summary: The diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with changes in frontostriatal resting-state connectivity. This study replicates and advances previous findings on these changes by using neuroimaging and computational modelling. Participants with OCD showed increased connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the orbitofrontal cortex, and reduced connectivity between the dorsal putamen and lateral prefrontal cortex. These functional deregulations provide insights into the neural underpinnings of OCD and inform the development of targeted therapies.
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Margaret Jane Moore, Elise Milosevich, Jason B. Mattingley, Nele Demeyere
Summary: This project presents a systematic review of 34 lesion-mapping studies on the anatomical correlates of neglect. The findings suggest that egocentric and allocentric neglect represent anatomically dissociable conditions, and the anatomy of these conditions may vary across hemispheres. The studies comparing acute versus chronic neglect and peripersonal/extrapersonal neglect found distinct lesion loci and inconsistent results regarding anatomical dissociation. The quality and generalizability of the included studies varied, highlighting the need for future high-quality research.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Reuben Rideaux, Rebecca K. West, Dragan Rangelov, Jason B. Mattingley
Summary: A canonical feature of sensory systems is that they adapt to prolonged or repeated inputs, suggesting the brain encodes the temporal context in which stimuli are embedded. The study found that both fatigue and sharpening mechanisms contribute to the tilt aftereffect, but they operate at different points in the sensory processing cascade to produce qualitatively distinct outcomes.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Neuroimaging
R. Randeniya, I. Vilares, J. B. Mattingley, M. I. Garrido
Summary: Sensory perceptual alterations in autism may result from differences in sensory observation or in forming models of the environment, leading to increased bottom-up information flow relative to top-down control. A study using fMRI during a decision-under-uncertainty paradigm found no differences in task performance and representations of prior and likelihood between autistic individuals and neurotypicals. However, there were significant group differences in overall task activity, with autistic individuals showing increased activation in certain brain regions. Effective connectivity analysis revealed increased activity within sensory regions and increased bottom-up connectivity in autism. These findings support the hypothesis of increased bottom-up information flow during sensory learning tasks in autism.
NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Xuqian Li, Dragan Rangelov, Jason B. Mattingley, Lena Oestreich, Delphine Levy-Bencheton, Michael J. O'Sullivan
Summary: This study identified the relationship between the microstructure of white matter association tracts and the precision of visual working memory. The bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) I, SLF II, and SLF III, along with the bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), play a specific role in mediating the precision of visual working memory. Individual differences in axonal density in a network comprising the bilateral inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and SLF III and right SLF II, along with a supporting network located elsewhere in the brain, form a common system for visual working memory.
Article
Psychiatry
Nikitas C. Koussis, Bjorn Burgher, Jayson Jeganathan, James G. Scott, Luca Cocchi, Michael Breakspear
Summary: Impairments in emotion expression, experience, and recognition are common in early psychosis. This study investigated the role of the cognitive control system (CCS) in emotional deficits in early psychosis using the affective go/no-go task and computational modeling. Results showed that individuals with early psychosis exhibited higher brain activity in the right posterior insula during inhibitory control of fearful faces. Increased top-down connectivity between regions in the CCS and visual input regions was associated with negative symptoms in the early psychosis cohort. These findings suggest potential targets for remediation of emotional deficits in young persons with early psychosis.
SCHIZOPHRENIA BULLETIN
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Matthew F. Tang, Ehsan Kheradpezhouh, Conrad C. Y. Lee, J. Edwin Dickinson, Jason B. Mattingley, Ehsan Arabzadeh
Summary: The response of cortical neurons to sensory stimuli is influenced by past events and expectation of future events. In this study, researchers investigated how expectation affects orientation selectivity in the primary visual cortex of male mice. They found that neurons enhanced their response to unexpected stimuli, both in awake and anaesthetized mice. A computational model was used to show that trial-to-trial variability in neuronal responses was best characterized when adaptation and expectation effects were combined.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Biology
Godber M. Godbersen, Sebastian Klug, Wolfgang Wadsak, Verena Pichler, Julia Raitanen, Anna Rieckmann, Lars Stiernman, Luca Cocchi, Michael Breakspear, Marcus Hacker, Rupert Lanzenberger, Andreas Hahn
Summary: By combining functional PET/MRI data and previously published datasets, we found that the glucose metabolism of the posteromedial DMN is dependent on the metabolic demands of the corresponding task-positive networks. Different types of tasks have different effects on the glucose metabolism and BOLD signal of the posteromedial DMN. The results suggest that the DMN is involved in cognitive processing in a flexible manner and does not always function as a separate task-negative network.
Article
Psychiatry
Bjorn Burgher, James Scott, Luca Cocchi, Michael Breakspear
Summary: The mixed cognitive outcomes in early psychosis have implications for recovery. In this longitudinal study, the researchers investigated whether baseline differences in the cognitive control system in early psychosis participants would normalize over time. They found that activation of the left superior parietal cortex normalized over time, coinciding with improvements in reaction time and social-occupational functioning. The researchers also discovered changes in effective connectivity between regions underlying the task execution, suggesting a shift towards more direct processing in early psychosis participants.
TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHIATRY
(2023)
Article
Respiratory System
Peter T. Bell, Thomas Beaton, Matthew Terrill, David Gillis, John Goddard
Summary: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can lead to potent anti-tumor responses, but they often cause off-target immune-mediated adverse events (irAE). ICIs can cause a range of rheumatologic manifestations, including inflammatory arthritis, Sjogren's syndrome, scleroderma, and systemic lupus erythematosus. This case report describes a patient with metastatic melanoma who developed antisynthetase syndrome-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD) following dual Programmed Cell Death 1 and Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte-Associated Protein 4 checkpoint inhibition. The patient experienced multiple irAEs, including pneumonitis, colitis, and thyroiditis. The diagnosis of amyopathic antisynthetase syndrome was confirmed by the detection of circulating aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (anti-EJ) autoantibodies. Intensified immunosuppression followed by maintenance therapy achieved long-term disease control.
RESPIROLOGY CASE REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
Rebecca West, William Harrison, Natasha Matthews, Jason Mattingley, David Sewell
Summary: This study investigates the computational processes involved in deriving confidence in decision-making. It finds that a class of models that assesses evidence strength and sensory uncertainty provides the best account of confidence in both visual and auditory decisions.
PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Emily J. A-Izzeddin, Jason B. Mattingley, William J. Harrison
Summary: Humans have well-documented priors for features in nature that guide visual perception. Despite the variability of visual features between scenes, these priors do not significantly challenge visuo-cognitive function and therefore require the use of context-specific information. This study investigates the trade-off between longer-term priors and immediate contextual information in perceptual inference, showing that observers' performance can be approximated by a model that uses priors for low-level image statistics.