Number Processing in Infants and Children Born Very Preterm

Individuals born very preterm (<32 weeks; VP) have notably poorer attainment in mathematics than their term-born peers. Only a handful of studies have investigated basic numerical skills in VP children and the underlying mechanisms associated with problems with mathematics in this population are still not fully comprehended. Basic processes underlying numerical cognition can go awry very early in development and there is a lack of knowledge of early trajectories of acquisition of numerical skills in infants born prematurely. This thesis reports on a series of studies investigating number processing in very preterm infants and children. These make use of a combination of tools, such as neurodevelopmental assessments, eye-tracking, event-related-potentials, neuropsychological evaluations and experimental tasks. Specifically, cross-sectional studies investigated numerical sensitivity in VP infants aged six and twelve months. Behavioural and electrophysiological measures assessing a range of domain-general and domain-specific skills associated with mathematics performance were also investigated in VP school-aged children. The results showed that, during the first year of post-natal life, VP infants do not exhibit differential developmental trajectories in the basic ability to discriminate numerosities compared to infants born at full term, although they required a longer time to discriminate the new number of elements. Later in development, school-aged VP children demonstrated difficulties in processing basic numerical information. Electrophysiological data demonstrated that this might be associated with deficits in sensory and attention resources and not necessarily in how VP children encode number-related information. Difficulties in processing numerical information, however, have only a marginal impact on their performance in mathematics. We tentatively conclude that difficulties in mathematics in individuals born very prematurely are largely associated with domain-general skills

Examining the Relationships Between Socio-cognitive Factors and Neural Synchrony During Movie Watching Across Development

While different cognitive abilities mature, the conscious experiences of children likely become richer and more elaborate. A challenge in investigating relationships between cognitive development and real-world experiences is having measures that assess naturalistic processing. Movie watching offers a solution, since following the plot of a film requires cognitive processes that are similar to real-world experiences. When different adults watch the same film, their brain activity begins to align (known as neural synchrony). The strength of this alignment has been shown to reflect the degree to which different individuals are having a similar experience of the movie. While this phenomenon has been established in adults, much less is known about the neural mechanisms supporting naturalistic processing in children and adolescents. The current thesis investigated the neural correlates of movie watching across late childhood and early adolescence. In Chapter 2, I found that autistic children showed more variable brain responses in regions associated with social cognition when watching a movie compared to children without autism. In Chapter 3, I found that adolescents (ages 11-15) with higher cognitive scores showed greater neural synchrony during movie watching in brain regions associated with social processing and executive functions compared to those with below average cognitive scores. This pattern was not evident in children (ages 7-11) who differed in their cognitive scores. In Chapter 4, I found that although the spatial topographies of children’s functional brain networks were nearly indistinguishable during movie watching and rest, these two states differed in the degree of neural synchrony that was present within much of the brain. That is, movies led to significantly more neural synchrony compared to rest, except for in parts of the prefrontal cortex. Taken together, these results suggest that 1) autistic children have more distinct experiences when processing naturalistic stimuli compared to those without autism, 2) adolescents with higher cognitive scores have more similar experiences with each other when watching a movie compared to those with lower scores, and 3) although children’s brain networks during movie watching and rest have a similar functional architecture, processing a film leads to neural synchrony, whereas resting state does not

The neuroscience basis and educational interventions of mathematical cognitive impairment and anxiety: a systematic literature review

IntroductionMathematics is a fundamental subject with significant implications in education and neuroscience. Understanding the cognitive processes underlying mathematical cognition is crucial for enhancing educational practices. However, mathematical cognitive impairment and anxiety significantly hinder learning and application in this field. This systematic literature review aims to investigate the neuroscience basis and effective educational interventions for these challenges.MethodsThe review involved a comprehensive screening of 62 research articles that meet the ESSA evidence levels from multiple databases. The selection criteria focused on studies employing various methodologies, including behavioral experiments and neuroimaging techniques, to explore the neuroscience underpinnings and educational interventions related to mathematical cognitive impairment and anxiety.ResultsThe review identified key themes and insights into the neuroscience basis of mathematical cognitive impairment and anxiety. It also examined their impact on educational practices, highlighting the interplay between cognitive processes and educational outcomes. The analysis of these studies revealed significant findings on how these impairments and anxieties manifest and can be addressed in educational settings.DiscussionThe review critically analyzes the shortcomings of existing research, noting gaps and limitations in current understanding and methodologies. It emphasizes the need for more comprehensive and diverse studies to better understand these phenomena. The discussion also suggests new directions and potential improvement strategies for future research, aiming to contribute to more effective educational interventions and enhanced learning experiences in mathematics.ConclusionThis systematic review provides valuable insights into the neuroscience basis of mathematical cognitive impairment and anxiety, offering a foundation for developing more effective educational strategies. It underscores the importance of continued research in this area to improve educational outcomes and support learners facing these challenges

Do informal caregivers of people with dementia mirror the cognitive deficits of their demented patients?:A pilot study

Recent research suggests that informal caregivers of people with dementia (ICs) experience more cognitive deficits than noncaregivers. The reason for this is not yet clear. Objective: to test the hypothesis that ICs ‘mirror' the cognitive deficits of the demented people they care for. Participants and methods: 105 adult ICs were asked to complete three neuropsychological tests: letter fluency, category fluency, and the logical memory test from the WMS-III. The ICs were grouped according to the diagnosis of their demented patients. One-sample ttests were conducted to investigate if the standardized mean scores (t-scores) of the ICs were different from normative data. A Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple comparisons. Results: 82 ICs cared for people with Alzheimer's dementia and 23 ICs cared for people with vascular dementia. Mean letter fluency score of the ICs of people with Alzheimer's dementia was significantly lower than the normative mean letter fluency score, p = .002. The other tests yielded no significant results. Conclusion: our data shows that ICs of Alzheimer patients have cognitive deficits on the letter fluency test. This test primarily measures executive functioning and it has been found to be sensitive to mild cognitive impairment in recent research. Our data tentatively suggests that ICs who care for Alzheimer patients also show signs of cognitive impairment but that it is too early to tell if this is cause for concern or not

Predictive cognition in dementia: the case of music

The clinical complexity and pathological diversity of neurodegenerative diseases impose immense challenges for diagnosis and the design of rational interventions. To address these challenges, there is a need to identify new paradigms and biomarkers that capture shared pathophysiological processes and can be applied across a range of diseases. One core paradigm of brain function is predictive coding: the processes by which the brain establishes predictions and uses them to minimise prediction errors represented as the difference between predictions and actual sensory inputs. The processes involved in processing unexpected events and responding appropriately are vulnerable in common dementias but difficult to characterise. In my PhD work, I have exploited key properties of music – its universality, ecological relevance and structural regularity – to model and assess predictive cognition in patients representing major syndromes of frontotemporal dementia – non-fluent variant PPA (nfvPPA), semantic-variant PPA (svPPA) and behavioural-variant FTD (bvFTD) - and Alzheimer’s disease relative to healthy older individuals. In my first experiment, I presented patients with well-known melodies containing no deviants or one of three types of deviant - acoustic (white-noise burst), syntactic (key-violating pitch change) or semantic (key-preserving pitch change). I assessed accuracy detecting melodic deviants and simultaneously-recorded pupillary responses to these deviants. I used voxel-based morphometry to define neuroanatomical substrates for the behavioural and autonomic processing of these different types of deviants, and identified a posterior temporo-parietal network for detection of basic acoustic deviants and a more anterior fronto-temporo-striatal network for detection of syntactic pitch deviants. In my second chapter, I investigated the ability of patients to track the statistical structure of the same musical stimuli, using a computational model of the information dynamics of music to calculate the information-content of deviants (unexpectedness) and entropy of melodies (uncertainty). I related these information-theoretic metrics to performance for detection of deviants and to ‘evoked’ and ‘integrative’ pupil reactivity to deviants and melodies respectively and found neuroanatomical correlates in bilateral dorsal and ventral striatum, hippocampus, superior temporal gyri, right temporal pole and left inferior frontal gyrus. Together, chapters 3 and 4 revealed new hypotheses about the way FTD and AD pathologies disrupt the integration of predictive errors with predictions: a retained ability of AD patients to detect deviants at all levels of the hierarchy with a preserved autonomic sensitivity to information-theoretic properties of musical stimuli; a generalized impairment of surprise detection and statistical tracking of musical information at both a cognitive and autonomic levels for svPPA patients underlying a diminished precision of predictions; the exact mirror profile of svPPA patients in nfvPPA patients with an abnormally high rate of false-alarms with up-regulated pupillary reactivity to deviants, interpreted as over-precise or inflexible predictions accompanied with normal cognitive and autonomic probabilistic tracking of information; an impaired behavioural and autonomic reactivity to unexpected events with a retained reactivity to environmental uncertainty in bvFTD patients. Chapters 5 and 6 assessed the status of reward prediction error processing and updating via actions in bvFTD. I created pleasant and aversive musical stimuli by manipulating chord progressions and used a classic reinforcement-learning paradigm which asked participants to choose the visual cue with the highest probability of obtaining a musical ‘reward’. bvFTD patients showed reduced sensitivity to the consequence of an action and lower learning rate in response to aversive stimuli compared to reward. These results correlated with neuroanatomical substrates in ventral and dorsal attention networks, dorsal striatum, parahippocampal gyrus and temporo-parietal junction. Deficits were governed by the level of environmental uncertainty with normal learning dynamics in a structured and binarized environment but exacerbated deficits in noisier environments. Impaired choice accuracy in noisy environments correlated with measures of ritualistic and compulsive behavioural changes and abnormally reduced learning dynamics correlated with behavioural changes related to empathy and theory-of-mind. Together, these experiments represent the most comprehensive attempt to date to define the way neurodegenerative pathologies disrupts the perceptual, behavioural and physiological encoding of unexpected events in predictive coding terms

Investigating the neural correlates of ongoing experience

Spontaneous thoughts are heterogeneous and inherently dynamic. Despite their time-variant properties, studies exploring spontaneous thoughts have identified thematic patterns that exhibit trait-like characteristics and are stable across time. Concurrently, structural and functional neuroimaging studies have shown unique and stable whole-brain network configurations linked to behaviour either through the static and dynamic intrinsic communication and activity of their core regions or through informational exchange with each other. This thesis aimed to explore how these within and between network interactions at different temporal scales might relate to variations in ongoing experience. We utilised different neuroimaging modalities (diffusion weighted and functional magnetic resonance imaging) and applied both static and dynamic analyses techniques. We found evidence of inter-individual variation in all cases associated with different patterns of spontaneous thoughts. Experiment 1 found that variation in white matter architecture projecting to the hippocampus, as well as the stable functional interaction of the hippocampus with the medial prefrontal cortex were linked to the tendency of experiencing thoughts related to the future or the past. Experiment 2 found that static functional connectivity of the precuneus and a lateral fronto-temporal network was related to visual imagery. Furthermore, we found that coupling of a lateral visual network with regions of the brainstem and cerebellum was associated with ruminative thinking, self-consciousness and attentional problems. Importantly, our results highlighted an interaction among these associations, where the brainstem visual network coupling moderated the relationship between parietal-frontal regions and reports of visual imagery. Finally, Experiment 3 used hidden Markov modelling to identify dynamic neural states linked to thoughts related to problem-solving and less intrusive thinking, as well as better physical and mental health. Collectively, these studies highlight the utility of using both static and dynamic measures of neural function to understand patterns of ongoing experience

Hydrocephalus: A neuropsychological and theoretical primer.

Hydrocephalus is a common neurological condition, the hallmark feature of which is an excess in production, or accumulation, of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles. Although it is associated with diffuse damage to paraventricular brain areas, patients are broadly typified by a particular pattern of cognitive impairments that include deficits in working memory, attention, and spatial abilities. There have, however, been relatively few neuropsychological accounts of the condition. Moreover, theories of the relationship between aetiology and impairment appear to have emerged in isolation of each other, and proffer fundamentally different accounts. In this primer, we aim to provide a comprehensive and contemporary overview of hydrocephalus for the neuropsychologist, covering cognitive sequelae and theoretical interpretations of their origins. We review clinical and neuropsychological assays of cognitive profiles, along with the few studies that have addressed more integrative behaviours. In particular, we explore the distinction between congenital or early-onset hydrocephalus with a normal-pressure variant that can be acquired later in life. The relationship between these two populations is a singularly interesting one in neuropsychology since it can allow for the examination of typical and atypical developmental trajectories, and their interaction with chronic and acute impairment, within the same broad neurological condition. We reflect on the ramifications of this for our subject and suggest avenues for future research. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Using Machine Learning To Identify Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Development of Cognition in Children and Adolescents With ADHD

Childhood and adolescence are marked by improvements to cognition and by the emergence of neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). What neural mechanisms are associated with cognitive development in ADHD? In this study, I applied machine learning models to functional connectivity profiles to identify patterns of network connectivity that predict various cognitive abilities in a group of participants ages 6 to 16 with ADHD. The models successfully predicted IQ, visual spatial, verbal comprehension, and fluid reasoning in children ages 6 to 11, but not adolescents. Furthermore, the models identified connections with the default mode, memory retrieval, and dorsal attention networks as driving prediction during early and middle childhood, but connections with the somatomotor, cingulo-opercular and frontoparietal networks were more important in middle childhood. These results suggest that computational models can identify neural mechanisms associated with predicting cognitive abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD using naturalistic stimuli