Media Reporting of Neuroscience Depends on Timing, Topic and Newspaper Type

The rapid developments in neuroscientific techniques raise high expectations among the general public and therefore warrant close monitoring of the translation to the media and daily-life applications. The need of empirical research into neuroscience communication is emphasized by its susceptibility to evoke misconceptions and polarized beliefs. As the mass media are the main sources of information about (neuro-)science for a majority of the general public, the objective of the current research is to quantify how critically and accurately newspapers report on neuroscience as a function of the timing of publication (within or outside of periods of heightened media attention to neuroscience, termed “news waves”), the topic of the research (e.g. development, health, law) and the newspaper type (quality, popular, free newspapers). The results show that articles published during neuroscience news waves were less neutral and more optimistic, but not different in accuracy. Furthermore, the overall tone and accuracy of articles depended on the topic; for example, articles on development often had an optimistic tone whereas articles on law were often skeptical or balanced, and articles on health care had highest accuracy. Average accuracy was rather low, but articles in quality newspapers were relatively more accurate than in popular and free newspapers. Our results provide specific recommendations for researchers and science communicators, to improve the translation of neuroscience findings through the media: 1) Caution is warranted during periods of heightened attention (news waves), as reporting tends to be more optimistic; 2) Caution is also warranted not to follow topic-related biases in optimism (e.g., development) or skepticism (e.g., law); 3) Researchers should keep in mind that overall accuracy of reporting is low, and especially articles in popular and free newspapers provide a minimal amount of details. This indicates that researchers themselves may need to be more active in preventing misconceptions to aris

Growth mindset and school burnout symptoms in young adolescents: the role of vagal activity as potential mediator

Experiencing school burnout symptoms can have negative consequences for learning. A growth mindset, the belief that human qualities such as intelligence are malleable, has previously been correlated with fewer school burnout symptoms in late adolescents. This might be because adolescents with a stronger growth mindset show more adaptive self-regulation strategies and thereby increasing resilience against academic setbacks. Here we confirmed in a sample of 426 Dutch young adolescents (11–14 years old; 48% female) that this relationship between growth mindset and school burnout symptoms holds after controlling for other potential predictors of school burnout symptoms such as academic achievement, school track, gender, and socio-economic status. Our second aim was to increase our understanding of the mechanism underlying the relation between mindset and school burnout, by measuring physiological resilience (vagal activity, a measure of parasympathetic activity, also known as heart rate variability or HRV) in a subsample (n = 50). We did not find any relation between vagal activity and growth mindset or school burnout symptoms, nor could we establish a mediating effect of vagal activity in their relation. In conclusion, we found evidence for a potential protective effect of a growth mindset on school burnout symptoms in young adolescents, but not for physiological resilience (vagal activity) as an underlying mechanism. The protective effect of growth mindset as confirmed in our younger sample can be leveraged in interventions to prevent increasing school burnout symptoms

fMR-adaptation indicates selectivity to audiovisual content congruency in distributed clusters in human superior temporal cortex

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Efficient multisensory integration is of vital importance for adequate interaction with the environment. In addition to basic binding cues like temporal and spatial coherence, meaningful multisensory information is also bound together by content-based associations. Many functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies propose the (posterior) superior temporal cortex (STC) as the key structure for integrating meaningful multisensory information. However, a still unanswered question is how superior temporal cortex encodes content-based associations, especially in light of inconsistent results from studies comparing brain activation to semantically matching (congruent) versus nonmatching (incongruent) multisensory inputs. Here, we used fMR-adaptation (fMR-A) in order to circumvent potential problems with standard fMRI approaches, including spatial averaging and amplitude saturation confounds. We presented repetitions of audiovisual stimuli (letter-speech sound pairs) and manipulated the associative relation between the auditory and visual inputs (congruent/incongruent pairs). We predicted that if multisensory neuronal populations exist in STC and encode audiovisual content relatedness, adaptation should be affected by the manipulated audiovisual relation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results revealed an occipital-temporal network that adapted independently of the audiovisual relation. Interestingly, several smaller clusters distributed over superior temporal cortex within that network, adapted stronger to congruent than to incongruent audiovisual repetitions, indicating sensitivity to content congruency.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results suggest that the revealed clusters contain multisensory neuronal populations that encode content relatedness by selectively responding to congruent audiovisual inputs, since unisensory neuronal populations are assumed to be insensitive to the audiovisual relation. These findings extend our previously revealed mechanism for the integration of letters and speech sounds and demonstrate that fMR-A is sensitive to multisensory congruency effects that may not be revealed in BOLD amplitude per se.</p

The COGs (context, object, and goals) in multisensory processing

Our understanding of how perception operates in real-world environments has been substantially advanced by studying both multisensory processes and “top-down” control processes influencing sensory processing via activity from higher-order brain areas, such as attention, memory, and expectations. As the two topics have been traditionally studied separately, the mechanisms orchestrating real-world multisensory processing remain unclear. Past work has revealed that the observer’s goals gate the influence of many multisensory processes on brain and behavioural responses, whereas some other multisensory processes might occur independently of these goals. Consequently, other forms of top-down control beyond goal dependence are necessary to explain the full range of multisensory effects currently reported at the brain and the cognitive level. These forms of control include sensitivity to stimulus context as well as the detection of matches (or lack thereof) between a multisensory stimulus and categorical attributes of naturalistic objects (e.g. tools, animals). In this review we discuss and integrate the existing findings that demonstrate the importance of such goal-, object- and context-based top-down control over multisensory processing. We then put forward a few principles emerging from this literature review with respect to the mechanisms underlying multisensory processing and discuss their possible broader implications

Top-down task effects overrule automatic multisensory responses to letter-sound pairs in auditory association cortex

In alphabetic scripts, letters and speech sounds are the basic elements of correspondence between spoken and written language. In two previous fMRI studies, we showed that the response to speech sounds in the auditory association cortex was enhanced by congruent letters and suppressed by incongruent letters. Interestingly, temporal synchrony was critical for this congruency effect to occur. We interpreted these results as a neural correlate of letter-sound integration, driven by the learned congruency of letter-sound pairs. The present event-related fMRI study was designed to address two questions that could not directly be addressed in the previous studies, due to their passive nature and blocked design. Specifically: (1) to examine whether the enhancement/suppression of auditory cortex are truly multisensory integration effects or can be explained by different attention levels during congruent/incongruent blocks, and (2) to examine the effect of top-down task demands on the neural integration of letter-sound pairs. Firstly, we replicated the previous results with random stimulus presentation, which rules out an explanation of the congruency effect in auditory cortex solely in terms of attention. Secondly, we showed that the effects of congruency and temporal asynchrony in the auditory association cortex were absent during active matching. This indicates that multisensory responses in the auditory association cortex heavily depend on task demands. Without task instructions, the auditory cortex is modulated to favor the processing of congruent and synchronous information. This modulation is overruled during explicit matching when all audiovisual stimuli are equally relevant, independent of congruency and temporal relation

Contextual control of audiovisual integration in low-level sensory cortices

Potential sources of multisensory influences on low-level sensory cortices include direct projections from sensory cortices of different modalities, as well as more indirect feedback inputs from higher order multisensory cortical regions. These multiple architectures may be functionally complementary, but the exact roles and inter-relationships of the circuits are unknown. Using a fully balanced context manipulation, we tested the hypotheses that: (1) feedforward and lateral pathways subserve speed functions, such as detecting peripheral stimuli. Multisensory integration effects in this context are predicted in peripheral fields of low-level sensory cortices. (2) Slower feedback pathways underpin accuracy functions, such as object discrimination. Integration effects in this context are predicted in higher-order association cortices and central/foveal fields of low-level sensory cortex. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the effects of central versus peripheral stimulation on audiovisual integration, while varying speed and accuracy requirements for behavioral responses. We found that interactions of task demands and stimulus eccentricity in low-level sensory cortices are more complex than would be predicted by a simple dichotomy such as our hypothesized peripheral/speed and foveal/accuracy functions. Additionally, our findings point to individual differences in integration that may be related to skills and strategy. Overall, our findings suggest that instead of using fixed, specialized pathways, the exact circuits and mechanisms that are used for low-level multisensory integration are much more flexible and contingent upon both individual and contextual factors than previously assumed

Implicit and Explicit Gender Beliefs in Spatial Ability: Stronger Stereotyping in Boys than Girls

Sex differences in spatial ability are a seriously debated topic, given the importance of spatial ability for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and girls' underrepresentation in these domains. In the current study we investigated the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability (i.e., "spatial ability is for boys") in 10- and 12-year-old children. We used both an explicit measure (i.e., a self-report questionnaire) and an implicit measure (i.e., a child IAT). Results of the explicit measure showed that both sexes associated spatial ability with boys, with boys holding more male stereotyped attitudes than girls. On the implicit measure, boys associated spatial ability with boys, while girls were gender-neutral. In addition, we examined the effects of gender beliefs on spatial performance, by experimentally activating gender beliefs within a pretest-instruction-posttest design. We compared three types of instruction: boys are better, girls are better, and no sex differences. No effects of these gender belief instructions were found on children's spatial test performance (i.e., mental rotation and paper folding). The finding that children of this age already have stereotypic beliefs about the spatial capacities of their own sex is important, as these beliefs may influence children's choices for spatial leisure activities and educational tracks in the STEM domain

Understanding Academic Performance: The Role of Mindset, School Burnout, Effort Beliefs, and Meritocracy Beliefs

This study will compare different mediation and moderation models to determine how different variables explain academic performance. Specifically, mindset, school burnout, effort beliefs, and meritocracy beliefs are all variables of interest that will be included. These models will be compared to each other to determine the best fitting model, after which the paths in the best fitting model will be given an interpretation. This study will also attempt to replicate previous findings showing that socioeconomic status moderates the relation between meritocracy beliefs and academic performance

Multiple number-naming associations:How the inversion property affects adults’ two-digit number processing

Some number-naming systems are less transparent than others. For example, in Dutch, 49 is named “negenenveertig,” which translates to “nine and forty,” i.e., the unit is named first, followed by the decade. This is known as the “inversion property,” where the morpho-syntactic representation of the number name is incongruent with its written Arabic form. Number word inversion can hamper children’s developing mathematical skills. But little is known about its effects on adults’ numeracy, the underlying mechanism, and how a person’s bilingual background influences its effects. In the present study, Dutch-English bilingual adults performed an audiovisual matching task, where they heard a number word and simultaneously saw two-digit Arabic symbols and had to determine whether these matched in quantity. We experimentally manipulated the morpho-syntactic structure of the number words to alter their phonological (dis)similarities and numerical congruency with the target Arabic two-digit number. Results showed that morpho-syntactic (in)congruency differentially influenced quantity match and non-match decisions. Although participants were faster when hearing traditional non-transparent Dutch number names, they made more accurate decisions when hearing artificial, but morpho-syntactically transparent number words. This pattern was partly influenced by the participants’ bilingual background, i.e., their L2 proficiency in English, which involves more transparent number names. Our findings suggest that, within inversion number-naming systems, multiple associations are formed between two-digit Arabic symbols and number names, which can influence adults’ numerical cognition.</p