9 research outputs found

    The effect of directional social cues on saccadic eye movements in Parkinson’s disease

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    There is growing interest in how social processes and behaviour might be affected in Parkinson’s disease. A task which has been widely used to assess how people orient attention in response to social cues is the spatial cueing task. Socially relevant directional cues, such as a picture of someone gazing or pointing to the left or the right have been shown to cause orienting of visual attention in the cued direction. The basal ganglia may play a role in responding to such directional cues, but no studies to date have examined whether similar social cueing effects are seen in people with Parkinson’s disease. In this study, patients and healthy controls completed a prosaccade (Experiment 1) and an antisaccade (Experiment 2) task in which the target was preceded by arrow, eye gaze or pointing finger cues. Patients showed increased errors and response times for antisaccades but not prosaccades. Healthy participants made most anticipatory errors on pointing finger cue trials, but Parkinson's patients were equally affected by arrow, eye gaze and pointing cues. It is concluded that Parkinson's patients have a reduced ability to suppress responding to directional cues, but this effect is not specific to social cues

    Effects of Birth Experience on Relational Memory in Adults

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    Recent evidence has emerged that being born via planned or emergency cesarean section delivery (CSD) compared to vaginal delivery (VD) not only led to slower allocation of attention in human infants and adults but also affected hippocampal regions responsible for memory in mice. This is concerning as the number of C-sections has risen in the past two decades according to the World Health Organization. Therefore, the current study investigated if a higher-order cognitive function like relational memory, is also affected by CSD and if these effects last into adulthood. Birth experience effects on item-item, item-space and item-time relational memory along with item recognition were assessed in adult participants using a task developed by Konkel et al. (2008). Results indicated that the item-item memory performance was affected by CSD with planned CSD adults showing poorer recognition compared to emergency CSD adults. No differences in memory performance were found between either of the CSD groups and the VD group in any of the relational conditions. As relational binding has implications in forming autobiographical memories and connections between our past, present and future states, healthcare professionals should discuss with expecting mothers the potential long-term effects of planned CSD on their infants’ cognitive development

    Effects of Birth Experience on Relational Memory in Adults

    Get PDF
    Recent evidence has emerged that being born via planned or emergency cesarean section delivery (CSD) compared to vaginal delivery (VD) not only led to slower allocation of attention in human infants and adults but also affected hippocampal regions responsible for memory in mice. This is concerning as the number of C-sections has risen in the past two decades according to the World Health Organization. Therefore, the current study investigated if a higher-order cognitive function like relational memory, is also affected by CSD and if these effects last into adulthood. Birth experience effects on item-item, item-space and item-time relational memory along with item recognition were assessed in adult participants using a task developed by Konkel et al. (2008). Results indicated that the item-item memory performance was affected by CSD with planned CSD adults showing poorer recognition compared to emergency CSD adults. No differences in memory performance were found between either of the CSD groups and the VD group in any of the relational conditions. As relational binding has implications in forming autobiographical memories and connections between our past, present and future states, healthcare professionals should discuss with expecting mothers the potential long-term effects of planned CSD on their infants cognitive development

    Cross-species neuroscience: closing the explanatory gap

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    Neuroscience has seen substantial development in non-invasive methods available for investigating the living human brain. However, these tools are limited to coarse macroscopic measures of neural activity that aggregate the diverse responses of thousands of cells. To access neural activity at the cellular and circuit level, researchers instead rely on invasive recordings in animals. Recent advances in invasive methods now permit large-scale recording and circuit level manipulations with exquisite spatiotemporal precision. Yet, there has been limited progress in relating these microcircuit measures to complex cognition and behaviour observed in humans. Contemporary neuroscience thus faces an explanatory gap between macroscopic descriptions of the human brain and microscopic descriptions in animal models. To close the explanatory gap, we propose adopting a cross-species approach. Despite dramatic differences in the size of mammalian brains this approach is broadly justified by preserved homology. Here, we outline a three-armed approach for effective cross-species investigation that highlights the need to translate different measures of neural activity into a common space. We discuss how a cross-species approach has the potential to transform basic neuroscience while also benefiting neuropsychiatric drug development where clinical translation has, to date, seen minimal success

    Eye movements in the “Morris Maze” spatial working memory task reveal deficits in strategic planning

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    © 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Analysis of eye movements can provide insights into processes underlying performance of cognitive tasks. We recorded eye movements in healthy participants and people with idiopathic Parkinson disease during a token foraging task based on the spatial working memory component of the widely used Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Participants selected boxes (using a mouse click) to reveal hidden tokens. Tokens were never hidden under a box where one had been found before, such that memory had to be used to guide box selections. A key measure of performance in the task is between search errors (BSEs) in which a box where a token has been found is selected again. Eye movements were found to be most commonly directed toward the next box to be clicked on, but fixations also occurred at rates higher than expected by chance on boxes farther ahead or back along the search path. Looking ahead and looking back in this way was found to correlate negatively with BSEs and was significantly reduced in patients with Parkinson disease. Refixating boxes where tokens had already been found correlated with BSEs and the severity of Parkinson disease symptoms. It is concluded that eye movements can provide an index of cognitive planning in the task. Refixations on locations where a token has been found may also provide a sensitive indicator of visuospatial memory integrity. Eye movement measures derived from the spatial working memory task may prove useful in the assessment of executive functions as well as neurological and psychiatric diseases in the future

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