Neurofeedback training for peak performance

Aim. One of the applications of the Neurofeedback methodology is peak performance in sport. The protocols of the neurofeedback are usually based on an assessment of the spectral parameters of spontaneous EEG in resting state conditions. The aim of the paper was to study whether the intensive neurofeedback training of a well-functioning Olympic athlete who has lost his performance confidence after injury in sport, could change the brain functioning reflected in changes in spontaneous EEG and event related potentials (ERPs). Case study. The case is presented of an Olympic athlete who has lost his performance confidence after injury in sport. He wanted to resume his activities by means of neurofeedback training. His QEEG/ERP parameters were assessed before and after 4 intensive sessions of neurotherapy. Dramatic and statistically significant changes that could not be explained by error measurement were observed in the patient. Conclusion. Neurofeedback training in the subject under study increased the amplitude of the monitoring component of ERPs generated in the anterior cingulate cortex, accompanied by an increase in beta activity over the medial prefrontal cortex. Taking these changes together, it can be concluded that that even a few sessions of neurofeedback in a high performance brain can significantly activate the prefrontal cortical areas associated with increasing confidence in sport performance

The temporal dynamic of response inhibition in early childhood: An ERP study of partial and successful inhibition

Event-related potentials were recorded while five-year-old children completed a Go/No-Go task that distinguished between partial inhibition (i.e., response is initiated but cancelled before completion) and successful inhibition (i.e., response is inhibited before it is initiated). Partial inhibition trials were characterized by faster response initiation and later latency of the lateral frontal negativity (LFN) than successful Go and successful inhibition trials. The speed of response initiation was influenced by the response speed on previous trials and influenced the response speed on subsequent trials. Response initiation and action decision dynamically influenced each other, and their temporal interplay determined response inhibition success

Early error detection predicted by reduced pre-response control process: an ERP topographic mapping study

Advanced ERP topographic mapping techniques were used to study error monitoring functions in human adult participants, and test whether proactive attentional effects during the pre-response time period could later influence early error detection mechanisms (as measured by the ERN component) or not. Participants performed a speeded go/nogo task, and made a substantial number of false alarms that did not differ from correct hits as a function of behavioral speed or actual motor response. While errors clearly elicited an ERN component generated within the dACC following the onset of these incorrect responses, I also found that correct hits were associated with a different sequence of topographic events during the pre-response baseline time-period, relative to errors. A main topographic transition from occipital to posterior parietal regions (including primarily the precuneus) was evidenced for correct hits similar to 170-150 ms before the response, whereas this topographic change was markedly reduced for errors. The same topographic transition was found for correct hits that were eventually performed slower than either errors or fast (correct) hits, confirming the involvement of this distinctive posterior parietal activity in top-down attentional control rather than motor preparation. Control analyses further ensured that this pre-response topographic effect was not related to differences in stimulus processing. Furthermore, I found a reliable association between the magnitude of the ERN following errors and the duration of this differential precuneus activity during the pre-response baseline, suggesting a functional link between an anticipatory attentional control component subserved by the precuneus and early error detection mechanisms within the dACC. These results suggest reciprocal links between proactive attention control and decision making processes during error monitoring

Differential modulation of the N2 and P3 event-related potentials by response conflict and inhibition

Background: Developing reliable and specific neural markers of cognitive processes is essential to improve understanding of healthy and atypical brain function. Despite extensive research there remains uncertainty as to whether two electrophysiological markers of cognitive control, the N2 and P3, are better conceptualised as markers of response inhibition or response conflict. The present study aimed to directly compare the effects of response inhibition and response conflict on the N2 and P3 event-related potentials, within-subjects. Method: A novel hybrid go/no-go flanker task was performed by 19 healthy adults aged 18 to 25 years while EEG data were collected. The response congruence of a central target stimulus and 4 flanking stimuli was manipulated between trials to vary the degree of response conflict. Response inhibition was required on a proportion of trials. N2 amplitude was measured at two frontal electrode sites; P3 amplitude was measured at 4 midline electrode sites. Results: N2 amplitude was greater on incongruent than congruent trials but was not enhanced by response inhibition when the stimulus array was congruent. P3 amplitude was greater on trials requiring response inhibition; this effect was more pronounced at frontal electrodes. P3 amplitude was also enhanced on incongruent compared with congruent trials. Discussion: The findings support a role for N2 amplitude as a marker of response conflict and for the frontal shift of the P3 as a marker of response inhibition. This paradigm could be applied to clinical groups to help clarify the precise nature of impaired action control in disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD)

Effect of the stop-signal modality on brain electrical activity associated with suppression of ongoing actions

To clarify how the modality of stop signals affects the ability to suppress ongoing actions, we compared behavioural indices and event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded in healthy volunteers performing visual and auditory stop-signal tasks. Auditory stop signals were associated with faster reaction times and shorter stop-N2 and stop-P3 latencies. Given that the tasks did not differ in attentional/arousal processes (go-P3 or stop-P3 amplitudes) or motor preparation (LRP amplitude, onset or latency), our results suggest that stop signal modality mainly affects bottom-up sensory processes (faster auditory processing). The ERP waveform obtained by subtracting successfully stopped from unsuccessfully stopped trials showed similar amplitude and topography in both tasks, indicating that the strength of top-down processes related to inhibition was independent of modality. The findings contribute further knowledge about the variables associated with efficient inhibition and have practical implications for the design of settings or interventions to improve reactive inhibition.This work was supported by funding from the Galician Government (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; axudas para a consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do Sistema universitario de Galicia [grant number GPC2014/047]. A.J. G-V was supported by a grant from the Deputación da Coruña (Bolsas de investigación en ciencias da saúde 2017) and Xunta de Galicia (Axudas de apoio á etapa de formación posdoutoral 2018)

Event-related brain potentials related to attention and to response emission. Possible markers for healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment

El envejecimiento de la población es un problema que afecta a todo el mundo, por lo que su estudio ha ganado importancia en los últimos años, tanto para mejorar la calidad de vida de los mayores, como para reducir el alto coste que conllevan las enfermedades relacionadas con la edad (en especial aquéllas relacionadas con la demencia), dado que los mayores de 85 años muestran un ratio de demencia de alrededor del 50%. Se ha propuesto que existe un continuo entre el envejecimiento sano y las demencias, pero la mayor parte de los investigadores opinan que si esperamos a que emerja el deterioro funcional (asociado ya a etapas iniciales de la demencia) podría ser demasiado tarde para tratar la enfermedad subyacente. Por esto, se ha puesto gran interés en estas fases pre-demencia con el objetivo de identificar síntomas clínicos de la enfermedad antes de que el deterioro sea evidente. El concepto de deterioro cognitivo ligero (DCL) pretende identificar este estado intermedio que a menudo es una fase de transición del envejecimiento normal a la demencia. Para establecer un diagnóstico de DCL se requiere que las actividades de la vida diaria se encuentren preservadas, que no exista demencia, y que uno o más dominios cognitivos se encuentren afectados (subtipos unidominio y multidominio, respectivamente). Así, si la memoria es un dominio afectado, se pueden identificar dos subtipos de DCL amnésico (DCLa): DCLa unidominio (DCLau) y DCLa multidominio (DCLam). Si la memoria no es un dominio afectado, pueden ser identificados otros dos subtipos de DCL no amnésico (DCLna): DCLna unidominio (DCLnau) y DCLna multidominio (DCLnam). Se ha observado que los subtipos no amnésicos del DCL experimentan un riesgo mayor de desarrollar demencias distintas de la Enfermedad de Alzheimer (EA), mientras que los subtipos amnésicos sufren un mayor riesgo de desarrollar EA. Diversos estudios han sugerido además que los pacientes con DCL multidominio muestran un riesgo mayor de progresar a demencia que aquéllos con DCL unidominio. La EA es la forma más común de demencia, y se asocia a un estado de dependencia de alto coste no solo social, sino también económico y psicológico, siendo por lo tanto un problema social y sanitario de primer orden. Por esto, la identificación de personas con DCL posibilitaría enfrentar la enfermedad incluso desde estadios prodrómicos

Dissociation of neural substrates of response inhibition to negative information between implicit and explicit facial go/nogo tasks: evidence from an electrophysiological study

Creative Commons Attribution LicenseBackground: Although ample evidence suggests that emotion and response inhibition are interrelated at the behavioral and neural levels, neural substrates of response inhibition to negative facial information remain unclear. Thus we used event-related potential (ERP) methods to explore the effects of explicit and implicit facial expression processing in response inhibition. Methods: We used implicit (gender categorization) and explicit emotional Go/Nogo tasks (emotion categorization) in which neutral and sad faces were presented. Electrophysiological markers at the scalp and the voxel level were analyzed during the two tasks. Results: We detected a task, emotion and trial type interaction effect in the Nogo-P3 stage. Larger Nogo-P3 amplitudes during sad conditions versus neutral conditions were detected with explicit tasks. However, the amplitude differences between the two conditions were not significant for implicit tasks. Source analyses on P3 component revealed that right inferior frontal junction (rIFJ) was involved during this stage. The current source density (CSD) of rIFJ was higher with sad conditions compared to neutral conditions for explicit tasks, rather than for implicit tasks. Conclusions: The findings indicated that response inhibition was modulated by sad facial information at the action inhibition stage when facial expressions were processed explicitly rather than implicitly. The rIFJ may be a key brain region in emotion regulation.This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31000503, 91232717, 31100812, 81301176, and 81300944) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (2011CB707805)

A Neurocognitive Approach to Error Commission and Error Processing in Complex Choice Tasks

Basic routines and momentous decisions have a constitutive commonality: sooner or later, making a mistake is inevitable. Consequently, a plethora of studies in the domains of psychology and cognitive neuroscience expended great efforts to understand the mechanisms behind error commission more profoundly. The current work comprises two studies that assess the neurocognitive dynamics of error commission and error processing in complex choices while considering error detection, error significance and action inhibition as moderating processes. In our first study, we implemented a novel complex choice task and replicated common variations of neural error processing mechanisms with error detection. We found that an additional self-evaluation rating during half of the experiment enhances neural correlates of error evidence accumulation. Conducting multivariate pattern analyses revealed a broad influence of self-evaluation on whole-brain activity patterns that is potentially associated with attentional resource allocation. In our second study, we assessed the cognitive dynamics of error commission and error processing during complex choices systematically from stimulus onset to post-response adaptation while considering different types of inhibition errors. For motor inhibition we found error-specific variations in neural measures along the entire processing stream, while interference suppression was linked to a particularly resource-intense processing of conflict and inhibition independent of response accuracy. Together, our two studies demonstrate that in complex choices, error-related cognitive processes underlie variations with error detection, self-evaluation and action inhibition that can be uncovered using different behavioural and electrophysiological assessments and a systematic analysing approach. Our findings highlight that the endeavour of investigating error commission and error processing in complex choices using a systematic multimethod approach is pivotal to foster a more profound understanding of error-related cognitive processes

Erroneous and correct actions have a different affective valence: evidence from ERPs

The accuracy of actions is swiftly determined through specific monitoring brain systems. Event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that error commission is associated with the generation of the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne), whereas correct actions are associated with the correct-related negativity (CRN). Although the exact functional meaning of the ERN/Ne (and CRN) component remains debated, some authors have suggested that it reflects the processing of the emotional significance of actions. However, no study to date has directly linked amplitude changes at the level of the ERN/Ne-CRN to the affective processing of actions. To decode the emotional valence of actions performed during a go/no-go task, the authors used an evaluative priming method in this study. After each action following the go/no-go stimulus, participants had to categorize an evaluative word as either positive or negative. Behavioral results showed that response errors (i.e., false alarms, FAs) performed during the go/no-go task led to a faster categorization of negative than positive words. Remarkably, this evaluative priming effect was related to the magnitude of the ERN/Ne component generated during the go/no-go task. Moreover, ERP results showed that the processing of evaluative words following FAs was influenced early on after word onset (early posterior negativity-EPN effect), while it was influenced later following correct as well as incorrect actions (late positive potential-LPP effect). Altogether, these ERP results suggest that the action-related ERN-CRN component encodes the perceived emotional significance of actions, such that early stages of evaluative word processing following these actions are influenced by this automatic process

Is there electrophysiological evidence for a bilingual advantage in neural processes related to executive functions?

Available online 3 August 2020Over the last two decades, a large number of studies have concluded that bilingualism enhances executive functions. However, other studies have reported no significant results. In addition, it is not clear how bilingualism might modulate specific executive control processes. Event-related potentials (ERP) are an excellent technique for identifying whether the neural correlates of executive control processes are strengthened by bilingualism, given their high temporal resolution. On the basis of previous research into the ERP correlates of executive functions, we hypothesize that specific ERP differences between monolinguals and bilinguals can be considered to indicate a bilingual advantage in executive functions. We then review the very limited number of studies that have investigated ERP differences between monolinguals and bilinguals during the performance of executive control tasks. Overall, we conclude that the existence of a bilingual advantage in neural processing related to executive functions remains uncertain and further studies are required. We highlight the utility of investigating several ERPs that have been ignored by previous studies.This study was funded by the Spanish government (Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación Postdoctoral Grant), European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions 838536_BILINGUALPLAS), Basque Government (BERC 2018-2021 program), BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2015-0490, and Grant RTI2018-093547-BI00 from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación