Temporal dynamics of selective attention and conflict resolution during cross-dimensional go-nogo decisions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Decision-making is a fundamental capacity which is crucial to many higher-order psychological functions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a visual target-identification task that required go-nogo choices. Targets were identified on the basis of cross-dimensional conjunctions of particular colors and forms. Color discriminability was manipulated in three conditions to determine the effects of color distinctiveness on component processes of decision-making.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Target identification was accompanied by the emergence of prefrontal P2a and P3b. Selection negativity (SN) revealed that target-compatible features captured attention more than target-incompatible features, suggesting that intra-dimensional attentional capture was goal-contingent. No changes of cross-dimensional selection priorities were measurable when color discriminability was altered. Peak latencies of the color-related SN provided a chronometric measure of the duration of attention-related neural processing. ERPs recorded over the frontocentral scalp (N2c, P3a) revealed that color-overlap distractors, more than form-overlap distractors, required additional late selection. The need for additional response selection induced by color-overlap distractors was severely reduced when color discriminability decreased.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We propose a simple model of cross-dimensional perceptual decision-making. The temporal synchrony of separate color-related and form-related choices determines whether or not distractor processing includes post-perceptual stages. ERP measures contribute to a comprehensive explanation of the temporal dynamics of component processes of perceptual decision-making.</p

Using Network Dynamical Influence to Drive Consensus

Consensus and decision-making are often analysed in the context of networks, with many studies focusing attention on ranking the nodes of a network depending on their relative importance to information routing. Dynamical influence ranks the nodes with respect to their ability to influence the evolution of the associated network dynamical system. In this study it is shown that dynamical influence not only ranks the nodes, but also provides a naturally optimised distribution of effort to steer a network from one state to another. An example is provided where the "steering" refers to the physical change in velocity of self-propelled agents interacting through a network. Distinct from other works on this subject, this study looks at directed and hence more general graphs. The findings are presented with a theoretical angle, without targeting particular applications or networked systems; however, the framework and results offer parallels with biological flocks and swarms and opportunities for design of technological networks

Usefulness of event-related potentials in the assessment of mild cognitive impairment

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of this study was to determine if changes in latencies and amplitudes of the major waves of Auditory Event-Related Potentials (AERP), correlate with memory status of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD).</p> <p>91 patients with MCI (mean ± SD age = 66.6 ± 5.4, MMSE score = 27.7) and 30 age-matched healthy control (AMHC) subjects (mean ± SD age = 68.9 ± 9.9) were studied. 54 patients were re-examined after an average period of 14(± 5.2) months. During this time period 5 patients converted to AD. Between-group differences in latency and amplitude of the major AERP waves (N200, P300 and Slow Wave) were determined. Within each group, correlation coefficients (CC) between these characteristics of the different AERP waves were calculated. Finally, for patients, CCs were determined among each AERP wave and their age and MMSE scores. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the underlying structure of waveforms both in the control and the patient groups.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Latencies of all major AERP components were prolonged in patients compared to controls. Patients presented with significantly higher N200 amplitudes, but no significant differences were observed in P300 amplitudes. Significant differences between follow-up and baseline measurements were found for P300 latency (p = 0.009), N200 amplitude (p < 0.001) and P300 amplitude (p = 0.05). MMSE scores of patients did not correlate with latency or amplitude of the AERP components. Moreover, the establishment of a N200 latency cut-off value of 287 ms resulted in a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 91% in the prediction of MCI patients that converted to AD.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although we were not able to establish significant correlations between latencies and amplitudes of N200, P300 and SW and the patients' performance in MMSE, which is a psychometric test for classifying patients suffering from MCI, our results point out that the disorganization of the AERP waveform in MCI patients is a potential basis upon which a neurophysiologic methodology for identifying and "staging" MCI can be sought. We also found that delayed N200 latency not only identifies memory changes better than the MMSE, but also may be a potential predictor of the MCI patients who convert to AD.</p

Expression of Msx1 and Dlx1 during Dumbo rat head development: Correlation with morphological features

The Dumbo rat possesses some characteristics that evoke several human syndromes, such as Treacher-Collins: shortness of the maxillary, zygomatic and mandibular bones, and low position of the ears. Knowing that many homeobox genes are candidates in craniofacial development, we investigated the involvement of the Msx1 and Dlx1 genes in the Dumbo phenotype with the aim of understanding their possible role in abnormal craniofacial morphogenesis and examining the possibility of using Dumbo rat as an experimental model for understanding abnormal craniofacial development. We studied the expression of these genes during craniofacial morphogenesis by RT-PCR method. We used Dumbo embryos at E12 and E14 and included the Wistar strain as a control. Semi-quantitative PCR analysis demonstrated that Msx1 and Dlx1 are expressed differently between Dumbo and Wistar rats, indicating that their low expression may underly the Dumbo phenotype

Rapid Processing of Both Reward Probability and Reward Uncertainty in the Human Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Reward probability and uncertainty are two fundamental parameters of decision making. Whereas reward probability indicates the prospect of winning, reward uncertainty, measured as the variance of probability, indicates the degree of risk. Several lines of evidence have suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an important role in reward processing. What is lacking is a quantitative analysis of the encoding of reward probability and uncertainty in the human ACC. In this study, we addressed this issue by analyzing the feedback-related negativity (FRN), an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects the ACC activity, in a simple gambling task in which reward probability and uncertainty were parametrically manipulated through predicting cues. Results showed that at the outcome evaluation phase, while both win and loss-related FRN amplitudes increased as the probability of win or loss decreased, only the win-related FRN was modulated by reward uncertainty. This study demonstrates the rapid encoding of reward probability and uncertainty in the human ACC and offers new insights into the functions of the ACC

Sequential Neural Processes in Abacus Mental Addition: An EEG and fMRI Case Study

Abacus experts are able to mentally calculate multi-digit numbers rapidly. Some behavioral and neuroimaging studies have suggested a visuospatial and visuomotor strategy during abacus mental calculation. However, no study up to now has attempted to dissociate temporally the visuospatial neural process from the visuomotor neural process during abacus mental calculation. In the present study, an abacus expert performed the mental addition tasks (8-digit and 4-digit addends presented in visual or auditory modes) swiftly and accurately. The 100% correct rates in this expert’s task performance were significantly higher than those of ordinary subjects performing 1-digit and 2-digit addition tasks. ERPs, EEG source localizations, and fMRI results taken together suggested visuospatial and visuomotor processes were sequentially arranged during the abacus mental addition with visual addends and could be dissociated from each other temporally. The visuospatial transformation of the numbers, in which the superior parietal lobule was most likely involved, might occur first (around 380 ms) after the onset of the stimuli. The visuomotor processing, in which the superior/middle frontal gyri were most likely involved, might occur later (around 440 ms). Meanwhile, fMRI results suggested that neural networks involved in the abacus mental addition with auditory stimuli were similar to those in the visual abacus mental addition. The most prominently activated brain areas in both conditions included the bilateral superior parietal lobules (BA 7) and bilateral middle frontal gyri (BA 6). These results suggest a supra-modal brain network in abacus mental addition, which may develop from normal mental calculation networks

Electrophysiological correlates of associative learning in smokers: a higher-order conditioning experiment

Background: Classical conditioning has been suggested to play an important role in the development, maintenance, and relapse of tobacco smoking. Several studies have shown that initially neutral stimuli that are directly paired with smoking are able to elicit conditioned responses. However, there have been few human studies that demonstrate the contribution of higher-order conditioning to smoking addiction, although it is assumed that higher-order conditioning predominates learning in the outside world. In the present study a higher-order conditioning task was designed in which brain responses of smokers and non-smokers were conditioned by pairing smoking-related and neutral stimuli (CS1smokeand CS1neutral) with two geometrical figures (CS2smokeand CS2neutral). ERPs were recorded to all CSs.Results: Data showed that the geometrical figure that was paired with smoking stimuli elicited significantly larger P2 and P3 waves than the geometrical figure that was paired with neutral stimuli. During the first half of the experiment this effect was only present in smokers whereas non-smokers displayed no significant differences between both stimuli, indicating that neutral cues paired with motivationally relevant smoking-related stimuli gain more motivational significance even though they were never paired directly with smoking. These conclusions are underscored by self-reported evidence of enhanced second-order conditioning in smokers.Conclusions: It can be concluded that smokers show associative learning for higher-order smoking-related stimuli. The present study directly shows the contribution of higher-order conditioning to smoking addiction and is the first to reveal its electrophysiological correlates. Although results are preliminary, they may help in understanding the etiology of smoking addiction and its persistence

Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex

BACKGROUND: Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (~150–300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. RESULTS: Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. CONCLUSION: The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon

A pulse of mid-Pleistocene rift volcanism in Ethiopia at the dawn of modern humans

The Ethiopian Rift Valley hosts the longest record of human co-existence with volcanoes on Earth, however, current understanding of the magnitude and timing of large explosive eruptions in this region is poor. Detailed records of volcanism are essential for interpreting the palaeoenvironments occupied by our hominin ancestors; and also for evaluating the volcanic hazards posed to the 10 million people currently living within this active rift zone. Here we use new geochronological evidence to suggest that a 200 km-long segment of rift experienced a major pulse of explosive volcanic activity between 320 and 170 ka. During this period, at least four distinct volcanic centres underwent large-volume (&gt;10 km3) caldera-forming eruptions, and eruptive fluxes were elevated five times above the average eruption rate for the past 700 ka. We propose that such pulses of episodic silicic volcanism would have drastically remodelled landscapes and ecosystems occupied by early hominin populations