Auditory perception in the ageing brain:the role of inhibition and facilitation in early processing

AbstractAging affects the interplay between peripheral and cortical auditory processing. Previous studies have demonstrated that older adults are less able to regulate afferent sensory information and are more sensitive to distracting information. Using auditory event-related potentials we investigated the role of cortical inhibition on auditory and audiovisual processing in younger and older adults. Across puretone, auditory and audiovisual speech paradigms older adults showed a consistent pattern of inhibitory deficits, manifested as increased P50 and/or N1 amplitudes and an absent or significantly reduced N2. Older adults were still able to use congruent visual articulatory information to aid auditory processing but appeared to require greater neural effort to resolve conflicts generated by incongruent visual information. In combination, the results provide support for the Inhibitory Deficit Hypothesis of aging. They extend previous findings into the audiovisual domain and highlight older adults' ability to benefit from congruent visual information during speech processing

Song Of The Flame

Contains advertisements and/or short musical examples of pieces being sold by publisher.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/6920/thumbnail.jp

At the Balalaika

Photograph of Nelson Eddy and Ilona Masseyhttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/8626/thumbnail.jp

Wander Away

Illustration of a group of people at the foot of a mountain staring up at a woman dressed in white.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/2976/thumbnail.jp

Song Of The Flame

[Verse 1]Helpless children of the nightGroping blindly for the right, The flame of hope is near! [Refrain]What’s that light that is beckoning; Come, come, come, come!Take your new day of reckoning! What new fire is enthralling you? Soul of Russia is calling you!On! On! Up the hill of hope and glory,Follow, follow the Flame

Cossack Love Song (Don\u27t Forget Me)

Contains advertisements and/or short musical examples of pieces being sold by publisher.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/6792/thumbnail.jp

A rapid, neural measure of implicit recognition memory using fast periodic visual stimulation

Fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) has recently emerged as a powerful new tool in cognitive neuroscience. Capable of measuring a range of cognitive functions in single subjects in just minutes of recording time, it has been adapted to measure visual, semantic and linguistic processing. We present a new adaptation of the FPVS approach to measure recognition memory via old/new contrasts. Twenty one subjects (23 (±6) yrs, 7 males) completed an FPVS-oddball paradigm that assessed their spontaneous ability to differentiate between rapidly presented images on the basis of a pre-FPVS encoding task, i.e. oddball stimuli were only defined by the subject’s experimentally induced memory of them. A clear oddball detection response reflecting recognition memory was observed within one minute of EEG recording time, simply through the passive viewing of stimuli, i.e. subjects received no task instructions and provided no behavioural response. Performance on a subsequent behavioural recognition task showed high levels of recognition of the oddball stimuli. As such, the FPVS approach returned an objective, non-verbal measure of recognition memory in just one minute of recording time, free from the confounds of behavioural recognition tasks. This finding reinforces the adaptability of the FPVS approach for the examination of higher-level cognition and provides a new method for the neural measurement of recognition memory

Neural correlates of cigarette health warning avoidance among smokers

AbstractBackgroundEye-tracking technology has indicated that daily smokers actively avoid pictorial cigarette package health warnings. Avoidance may be due to a pre-cognitive perceptual bias or a higher order cognitive bias, such as reduced emotional processing. Using electroencephalography (EEG), this study aimed to identify the temporal point at which smokers’ responses to health warnings begin to differ.MethodNon-smokers (n=20) and daily smokers (n=20) viewed pictorial cigarette package health warnings and neutral control stimuli. These elicited Event Related Potentials reflecting early perceptual processing (visual P1), pre-attentive change detection (visual Mismatch Negativity), selective attentional orientation (P3) and a measure of emotional processing, the Late Positive Potential (LPP).ResultsThere was no evidence for a difference in P1 responses between smokers and non-smokers. There was no difference in vMMN and P3 amplitude but some evidence for a delay in vMMN latency amongst smokers. There was strong evidence for delayed and reduced LPP to health warning stimuli amongst smokers compared to non-smokers.ConclusionWe find no evidence for an early perceptual bias in smokers’ visual perception of health warnings but strong evidence that smokers are less sensitive to the emotional content of cigarette health warnings. Future health warning development should focus on increasing the emotional salience of pictorial health warning content amongst smokers

A passive and objective measure of recognition memory in Alzheimer’s disease using Fastball memory assessment

Earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease requires biomarkers sensitive to associated structural and functional changes. While considerable progress has been made in the development of structural biomarkers, functional biomarkers of early cognitive change, unconfounded by effort, practice and level of education, are still needed. We present Fastball, a new EEG method for the passive and objective measurement of recognition memory, that requires no behavioural memory response or comprehension of the task . Younger adults, older adults and Alzheimer’s disease patients (n = 20 per group) completed the Fastball task, lasting just under 3 min. Participants passively viewed rapidly presented images and EEG assessed their automatic ability to differentiate between images based on previous exposure, i.e. old/new. Participants were not instructed to attend to previously seen images and provided no behavioural response. Following the Fastball task, participants completed a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task to measure their explicit behavioural recognition of previously seen stimuli. Fastball EEG detected significantly impaired recognition memory in Alzheimer’s disease compared to healthy older adults (P < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.52), whereas behavioural recognition was not significantly different between Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older adults. Alzheimer’s disease patients could be discriminated with high accuracy from healthy older adult controls using the Fastball measure of recognition memory (AUC = 0.86, P < 0.001), whereas discrimination performance was poor using behavioural 2AFC accuracy (AUC = 0.63, P = 0.148). There were no significant effects of healthy ageing, with older and younger adult controls performing equivalently in both the Fastball task and behavioural 2AFC task. Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease offers potential for early treatment when quality of life and independence can be retained through disease modification and cognitive enhancement. Fastball provides an alternative way of testing recognition responses that holds promise as a functional marker of disease pathology in stages where behavioural performance deficits are not yet evident. It is passive, non-invasive, quick to administer and uses cheap, scalable EEG technology. Fastball provides a new powerful method for the assessment of cognition in dementia and opens a new door in the development of early diagnosis tools