Cognitive entrainment to isochronous rhythms is independent of both sensory modality and top-down attention

The anisochrony of a stimulus sequence was manipulated parametrically to investigate whether rhythmic entrainment is stronger in the auditory modality than in the visual modality (Experiment 1), and whether it relies on top-down attention (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants had to respond as quickly as possible to a target presented after a sequence of either visual or auditory stimuli. The anisochrony of this sequence was manipulated parametrically, rather than in an all or none fashion; that is, it could range from smaller to larger deviations of the isochrony (0, 10, 20, 50, 100, 150 and 200 ms). We compared rhythmic entrainment patterns for auditory and visual modalities. Results showed a peak of entrainment for both isochrony and deviations of isochrony up to 50 ms (i.e., participants were equally fast both after the isochronous sequences and after 10, 20 and 50 ms deviations), suggesting that anisochronous sequences can also produce entrainment. Beyond this entrainment window, the reaction times became progressively slower. Surprisingly, no differences were found between the entrainment patterns for auditory and visual rhythms. In Experiment 2, we used a dual-task methodology by adding a working memory n-back task to the procedure of Experiment 1. Results did not show interference of the secondary task in either auditory or visual modalities, with participants showing the same entrainment pattern as in Experiment 1. These results suggest that rhythmic entrainment constitutes a cognitive process that occurs by default (automatically), regardless of the modality in which the stimuli are presented, and independent of top-down attention, to generate behavioural benefits.Financial support for this research was provided by a “Formación del Profesorado Universitario” (FPU) grant from the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Spanish Government, to Diana Cutanda, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PLAN NACIONAL de I+D+i, grant number: PSI2014-58041-P) to AC and by the Junta de Andalucía (SEJ-3054) to AC and DS

The brain in flow: a systematic review on the neural basis of the flow state

Background: Flow state is a subjective experience that people report when task performance is experienced as automatic, intrinsically rewarding, optimal and effortless. While this intriguing phenomenon is the subject of a plethora of behavioural studies, only recently researchers have started to look at its neural correlates. Here, we aim to systematically and critically review the existing literature on the neural correlates of the flow state. Methods: Three electronic databases (Web of Science, Scopus and PsycINFO) were searched to acquire information on eligible articles in July, 2021, and updated in March, 2022. Studies that measured or manipulated flow state (through questionnaires or employing experimental paradigms) and recorded associated brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) or functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) or manipulated brain activity with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) were selected. We used the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias 2 (RoB 2) tool to assess the methodological quality of eligible records. Results: In total, 25 studies were included, which involved 471 participants. In general, the studies that experimentally addressed flow state and its neural dynamics seem to converge on the key role of structures linked to attention, executive function and reward systems, giving to the anterior brain areas (e.g., the DLPC, MPFC, IFG) a crucial role in the experience of flow. However, the dynamics of these brain regions during flow state are inconsistent across studies. Discussion: In light of the results, we conclude that the current available evidence is sparse and inconclusive, which limits any theoretical debate. We also outline major limitations of this literature (the small number of studies, the high heterogeneity across them and their important methodological constraints) and highlight several aspects regarding experimental design and flow measurements that may provide useful avenues for future studies on this topic.Spanish Government 20CO1/012863Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (MICINN) Spanish Government PID2019-105635GBI00Junta de Andalucia DOC_0022

No evidence of the effect of cognitive load on self-paced cycling performance

To test the hypothesis that cognitive load (low vs. high load) during a 20 min self-paced cycling exercise affects physical performance. Bayes analyses revealed extreme evidence for the 2-back task being more demanding than the 1-back task, both in terms of accuracy (BF10 = 4490) and reaction time (BF = 1316). The data only showed anecdotal evidence for the alternative hypothesis for the power output (BF10 = 1.52), moderate evidence for the null hypothesis for the heart rate (BF10 = 0.172), anecdotal evidence for RPE (BF10 = 0.72) and anecdotal evidence for mental fatigue (BF10 = 0.588). Our data seem to challenge the idea that self-paced exercise is regulated by top-down processing, given that we did not show clear evidence of exercise impairment (at the physical, physiological and subjective levels) in the high cognitive load condition task with respect to the low working memory load condition. The involvement of top-down processing in selfpacing the physical effort, however, cannot be totally discarded. Factors like the duration of the physical and cognitive tasks, the potential influence of dual-tasking, and the participants’ level of expertise, should be taken into account in future attempts to investigate the role of top-down processing in self-paced exercise.This project was supported by grant PSI2016-75956-P from Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, awarded to DS and MZ, and grant FPU14/06229 from Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, awarded to DH

Sport participation and vigilance in children: Influence of different sport expertise

PURPOSE: The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between different types of sport expertise (externally-paced vs. self-paced sports) and vigilance performance in children by evaluating the cardiovascular fitness level of the participants. METHODS: Three groups of children (11.0 ± 0.2 years) differentiated in terms of their regular sport participation (football players, n = 20; track and field athletes, n = 20; non-athletic controls, n = 20) took part in the study. In one session, participants performed the Leger Multi-stage fitness test to estimate their aerobic fitness level. In another session, participants completed the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) to evaluate their vigilance performance under 2 conditions of velocity demands (normal vs. speed). RESULTS: The results revealed that both groups of sport practitioners had higher cardiovascular fitness than non-athlete controls. In contrast, no significant differences in the performance PVT were found between track and field athletes and controls. Crucially, football players showed better performance in the PVT than track and field athletes and controls. These between-group differences were not modulated by the speed demands of the task. CONCLUSION: The major novel finding of this research points to a positive relationship between sport participation and vigilance performance during childhood. We discuss our results in terms of the different hypotheses put forward in the literature to explain the relationship between regular exercise and cognitive functioning: the "cardiovascular fitness" and the "cognitive component skills" hypotheses.Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Cultura (FPU13-05605)Junta de Andalucia Proyecto de Excelencia (SEJ-6414)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2013-46385)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2013-46385)Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deport

Temporal preparation driven by rhythms is resistant to working memory interference

It has been recently shown that temporal orienting demands controlled attention (Capizzi et al., 2012). However, there is current debate on whether temporal preparation guided by regular rhythms also requires the generation of endogenous temporal expectancies or rather involves a mechanism independent of executive control processes. We investigated this issue by using a dual-task paradigm in two different experiments. In Experiment 1, the single-task condition measured reaction time to respond to the onset of an auditory stimulus preceded by either a regular or an irregular auditory rhythm. The dual-task condition additionally included a working memory task, which demanded mental counting and updating. In Experiment 2, the simultaneously WM task was a variant of the Sternberg Task. We hypothesized that, if temporal preparation induced by rhythms did not involve executive processing, it would not be interfered by the simultaneous working memory task. The results showed that participants could anticipate the moment of target onset on the basis of the regular rhythm and, more important, this ability resisted the interference from the double task condition in both experiments. This finding supports that temporal preparation induced by rhythms, in contrast to temporal orienting, does not require resources of executive control.Ramón y Cajal and Plan Nacional ICDCi programmes, (RYC-2007-00296, PSI2010-15399)SEJ2007-63645 from the Junta de AndalucíaPSI2010-19655 from the Plan Nacional ICDCi (Ministerio de Innovación y Ciencia)CSD2008-00048 CONSOLIDER INGENIO (Dirección General de Investigación

Individualized Mental Fatigue Does Not Impact Neuromuscular Function and Exercise Performance

Data availability statement: All data andmaterials are publicly shared on OSF at https://osf.io/xc8nr/D. S. is supported by a grant from“Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, of Spain. D. H. is supported by a grant from “Ministerio de Universidades” of Spain and Next Generation Fonds fromthe European Union. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The results of the study are presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate datamanipulation. The results of the present study do not constitute endorsement by the American College of Sports Medicine.Introduction Recent studies have questioned previous empirical evidence that mental fatigue negatively impacts physical performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the critical role of individual differences in mental fatigue susceptibility by analyzing the neurophysiological and physical responses to an individualized mental fatigue task. Methods In a preregistered (https://osf.io/xc8nr/), randomized, within-participant design experiment, 22 recreational athletes completed a time to failure test at 80% of their peak power output under mental fatigue (individual mental effort) or control (low mental effort). Before and after the cognitive tasks, subjective feeling of mental fatigue, neuromuscular function of the knee extensors, and corticospinal excitability were measured. Sequential Bayesian analysis until it reached strong evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis (BF10 > 6) or the null hypothesis (BF10 < 1/6) were conducted. Results The individualized mental effort task resulted in a higher subjective feeling of mental fatigue in the mental fatigue condition (0.50 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.39–0.62)) arbitrary units compared with control (0.19 (95% CI, 0.06–0.339)) arbitrary unit. However, exercise performance was similar in both conditions (control: 410 (95% CI, 357–463) s vs mental fatigue: 422 (95% CI, 367–477) s, BF10 = 0.15). Likewise, mental fatigue did not impair knee extensor maximal force-generating capacity (BF10 = 0.928) and did not change the extent of fatigability or its origin after the cycling exercise. Conclusions There is no evidence that mental fatigue adversely affects neuromuscular function or physical exercise; even if mental fatigue is individualized, computerized tasks seem not to affect physical performance.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad of SpainMinisterio de Universidades of Spain and Next Generation Fonds from the European Unio

The relationship between vigilance capacity and physical exercise: a mixed-effects multistudy analysis

We thank to all the participants who took part in the experiment.The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.A substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between physical exercise and cognition, although the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to contribute further to that topic by pooling the data from seven studies (N = 361) conducted by our research group to examine whether cardiovascular fitness (VO2), sport type participation (externally-paced (e.g., football or basketball) and self-paced (e.g., triathlon or track and field athletes) vs. sedentary), or both, are crucial factors to explain the association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity. We controlled for relevant variables such as age and the method of VO2 estimation. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task was used to measure vigilance performance by means of reaction time (RT). The results showed that externally-paced sport practice (e.g., football) resulted in significantly shorter RT compared to self-paced sport (e.g., triathlon) and sedentary condition, depicting larger effects in children and adolescents than in adults. Further analyses revealed no significant effect of cardiovascular fitness and self-paced sport practice, in comparison to the sedentary condition, on RT. Our data point to the relevance of considering the type of sport practice over and above the level of cardiovascular fitness as crucial factor to explain the positive association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity.This research was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades” (FJCI-2016-28405) to Antonio Luque-Casado, predoctoral grants from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad to Luis F. Ciria (BES-2014-069050), and to Rafael Ballester (FPU13-05605), and research grants from the “Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad” (PSI2013-46385-P and PSI2016-75956-P) and the “Junta de Andalucía” (SEJ-6414) to Daniel Sanabri

Smartphone-Based Platform for Affect Monitoring through Flexibly Managed Experience Sampling Methods

The identification of daily life events that trigger significant changes on our affective state has become a fundamental task in emotional research. To achieve it, the affective states must be assessed in real-time, along with situational information that could contextualize the affective data acquired. However, the objective monitoring of the affective states and the context is still in an early stage. Mobile technologies can help to achieve this task providing immediate and objective data of the users’ context and facilitating the assessment of their affective states. Previous works have developed mobile apps for monitoring affective states and context, but they use a fixed methodology which does not allow for making changes based on the progress of the study. This work presents a multimodal platform which leverages the potential of the smartphone sensors and the Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) to provide a continuous monitoring of the affective states and the context in an ubiquitous way. The platform integrates several elements aimed to expedite the real-time management of the ESM questionnaires. In order to show the potential of the platform, and evaluate its usability and its suitability for real-time assessment of affective states, a pilot study has been conducted. The results demonstrate an excellent usability level and a good acceptance from the users and the specialists that conducted the study, and lead to some suggestions for improving the data quality of mobile context-aware ESM-based systems.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN) Projects PGC2018-098813-B-C31 and RTI2018-101674-B-I00 together with the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER). This work has also been partially supported by the FPU Spanish Grant FPU16/04376 and the Dutch UT-CTIT project HoliBehave

CoVidAffect, real-time monitoring of mood variations following the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain

The COVID-19 outbreak and the ensuing confnement measures are expected to bear a signifcant psychological impact on the afected populations. To date, all available studies designed to investigate the psychological efects of this unprecedented global crisis are based on cross-sectional surveys that do not capture emotional variations over time. Here, we present the data from CoVidAfect, a nationwide citizen science project aimed to provide longitudinal data of mood changes following the COVID-19 outbreak in the spanish territory. Spain is among the most afected countries by the pandemic, with one of the most restrictive and prolonged lockdowns worldwide. The project also collected a baseline of demographic and socioeconomic data. These data can be further analyzed to quantify emotional responses to specifc measures and policies, and to understand the efect of context variables on psychological resilience. Importantly, to our knowledge this is the frst dataset that ofers the opportunity to study the behavior of emotion dynamics in a prolonged lockdown situation.Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN) PGC2018-098813-B-C31 RTI2018-101674-B-I00European Union (EU)Project MONITOR-COVID - Andalucian Ministry of Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge and Universities CV20-29556FPU Spanish Grant FPU16/04376Dutch UT-CTIT project HoliBehav

Intelligent Monitoring of Affective Factors Underlying Sport Performance by Means of Wearable and Mobile Technology

The fluctuation of affective states is a contributing factor to sport performance variability. The context surrounding athletes during their daily life and the evolution of their physiological variables beyond sport events are relevant factors, as they modulate the affective state of the subject over time. However, traditional procedures to assess the affective state are limited to self-reported questionnaires within controlled settings, thus removing the impact of the context. This work proposes a multimodal, context-aware platform that combines the data acquired through smartphones and wearable sensors to assess the affective state of the athlete. The platform is aimed at ubiquitously monitoring the fluctuations of affective states during longitudinal studies within naturalistic environments, overcoming the limitations of previous studies and allowing for the complete evaluation of the factors that could modulate the affective state. This system will also facilitate and expedite the analysis of the relationship between affective states and sport performance.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) Projects TIN2015-71873-R and TIN2015-67020-P together with the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER). This work has also been partially supported by the FPU Spanish Grant FPU16/04376 and the Dutch UT-CTIT project HoliBehave