ambivalent trust and ontological representations of death as latent factors of religiosity

AbstractThe studies on the relationship between religiosity and the management of trust in postmodern society are an emerging field of research. The psychological contribute of the attachment theory shows how early relationships with the parental figures determine the adult attachment styles and the related dispositions to trust and religiosity. Lack of trust is a critical aspect of the insecure attachment styles: the avoidant and the anxious. This study in focused on these two traits, considering their level of trust compared to religiosity and representations of death. The Interpersonal Trust Survey, The World Health Organization Quality Of Life-Spirituality, Religiousness and Personal Beliefs, the Testoni Death Representations Scale and the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised were utilized. The results illustrated different expressions of trust in avoidant and anxious styles

P300, Gray Matter Volume and Individual Characteristics Correlates in Healthy Elderly

We investigated whether P300-ERP and cognitive test performance differ for age, sex, and education in two groups of healthy elderly, and verified whether any correlations exist between P300 amplitude and latency and gray matter volume using whole brain voxel-by-voxel-based mapping, controlling for age, education, sex and Total Intracranial Volume (TIV). We used 32 channel electroencephalograms (EEG) to record the P300 responses and 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to determine gray matter volume. We recruited 36 native-Dutch speaking healthy older subjects, equally divided in two sub-groups of 52–64 and 65–76 years old, administered a battery of cognitive tests and recorded their demographics, EEGs and task performance; additionally, 16 adults from the second sub-group underwent an MRI scan. We found significant differences between age groups in their cognitive tests performance, P300 amplitudes for the frontal and parietal electrodes for the most difficult task, and P300 latencies for frontal, central and parietal electrodes for all three tasks difficulty levels. Interesting, sex and education affected cognitive and P300 results. Higher education was related to higher accuracy, and P300 amplitudes and shorter latencies. Moreover, females exhibited higher P300 amplitudes and shorter latencies, and better cognitive tasks performance compared to males. Additionally, for the 16 adults underwent to MRI scan, we found positive correlations between P300 characteristics in frontal, central and parietal areas and gray matter volume, controlling for demographic variables and TIV, but also showing that age, sex, and education correlate with gray matter volume. These findings provide support that age, sex, and education affect an individual’s cognitive, neurophysiological and structural characteristics, and therefore motivate the need to further investigate these in relation to P300 responses and gray matter volume in healthy elderly

Functional response of attention-related cortical networks to multi-sessions tRNS

Background: Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) has been shown to facilitate visual-attention abilities. Yet, the impact of this type of stimulation alone on brain dynamics remains to be determined. Aim: We investigated the effect of off-line multi-session tRNS on brain activity and visual-attention behavior. We hypothesized that parietal stimulation would impact brain activity related to attentional processes that could consequently facilitate behavior. Methods: 28 healthy subjects participated in a 5-day experiment and were assigned to one of four conditions in a between-subject design: two active conditions (tRNS was delivered over hMT+ or over parietal cortex) and two no-stimulation conditions (sham and behavioral only). From day 1 to day 4 subjects received stimulation (depending on their condition) while at rest. On day 5, brain activity was recorded while subjects performed the visual-attention task. Results: Parietal tRNS significantly modulated brain activity compared to control groups. However, no difference in performance was found. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that off-line multi-session parietal tRNS has a long-lasting impact on brain activity but not on behavior. This study shows that this type of stimulation can be efficient alone to influence brain states and such stimulation efficacy could be advantageous in the rehabilitation context where active patients’ collaboration is not always possible. Furthermore, this study is a starting point to exploit the physical properties of this stimulation method to influence the cortex

Single-Trial EEG Responses Classified Using Latency Features

Covert attention has been repeatedly shown to impact on EEG responses after single and repeated practice sessions. Machine learning techniques are increasingly adopted to classify single-trial EEG responses thereby primarily relying on amplitude-based features instead of latency-based features. In this study, we investigated changes in EEG response signatures of nine healthy older subjects when performing 10 sessions of covert attention training. We show that, when we trained classifiers to distinguish recorded EEG patterns between the two experimental conditions (a target stimulus is "present" or "not present"), latency-based classifiers outperform the amplitude-based ones and that classification accuracy improved along with behavioral accuracy, providing supportive evidence of brain plasticity.status: publishe

P300, Gray Matter Volume and Individual Characteristics Correlates in Healthy Elderly

We investigated whether P300-ERP and cognitive test performance differ for age, sex, and education in two groups of healthy elderly, and verified whether any correlations exist between P300 amplitude and latency and gray matter volume using whole brain voxel-by-voxel-based mapping, controlling for age, education, sex and Total Intracranial Volume (TIV). We used 32 channel electroencephalograms (EEG) to record the P300 responses and 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to determine gray matter volume. We recruited 36 native-Dutch speaking healthy older subjects, equally divided in two sub-groups of 52-64 and 65-76 years old, administered a battery of cognitive tests and recorded their demographics, EEGs and task performance; additionally, 16 adults from the second sub-group underwent an MRI scan. We found significant differences between age groups in their cognitive tests performance, P300 amplitudes for the frontal and parietal electrodes for the most difficult task, and P300 latencies for frontal, central and parietal electrodes for all three tasks difficulty levels. Interesting, sex and education affected cognitive and P300 results. Higher education was related to higher accuracy, and P300 amplitudes and shorter latencies. Moreover, females exhibited higher P300 amplitudes and shorter latencies, and better cognitive tasks performance compared to males. Additionally, for the 16 adults underwent to MRI scan, we found positive correlations between P300 characteristics in frontal, central and parietal areas and gray matter volume, controlling for demographic variables and TIV, but also showing that age, sex, and education correlate with gray matter volume. These findings provide support that age, sex, and education affect an individual's cognitive, neurophysiological and structural characteristics, and therefore motivate the need to further investigate these in relation to P300 responses and gray matter volume in healthy elderly.status: publishe

Impact of strategy use during N-Back training in older adults

status: Published onlin

N-back training and transfer effects revealed by behavioral responses and EEG

INTRODUCTION: Cognitive function performance decreases in older individuals compared to young adults. To curb this decline, cognitive training is applied, but it is not clear whether it improves only the trained task or also other cognitive functions. To investigate this, we considered an N-back working memory (WM) training task and verified whether it improves both trained WM and untrained cognitive functions. METHODS: As EEG studies have noted task difficulty and age-related changes in time-locked EEG responses, called event-related potentials (ERPs), we focused on the relation between the P300 ERP component, task difficulty level, and behavior response accuracy and reaction time (RT) in young and older healthy adults. We used two groups of young and older healthy participants to assess the effect of N-back training: cognitive training group (CTG) and passive control group (PCG). Before and after training, cognitive tests were administered to both groups to evaluate transfer effects. RESULTS: Despite the observed age-related differences in the P300 ERP component and in terms of RT and accuracy, our findings demonstrate a stronger improvement in the trained task for older CTGs compared to younger CTGs, larger near- and far-transfer effect to WM and fluid intelligence for both younger and older CTGs, and a far-transfer effect to attention but only for older adults. Significant differences in response accuracy were shown between young and older subjects in spatial memory and attention tests. CONCLUSION: The application of a WM training is a promising tool for both healthy adults, and in particular for older subjects, as it showed physiological and behavioral differences in cognitive plasticity across life span and evidence of benefits in the trained task and near-/far-transfer effects to other cognitive functions.status: publishe

Differential Impact of Cognitive Impairment in MCI Patients: A Case-Based Report

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) traditionally refers to an intermediate stage between healthy individuals and early Alzheimer disease. Evidence shows grey and white matter volume changes and decrease in several executive functions, albeit the relation between cognitive performance and brain volume remains unclear. Here, we discuss 3 individual cases of MCI by investigating their MRI scans and cognitive test performance. We also recruited age-matched healthy older adults serving as gold standard for both grey and white matter volume and cognitive test outcomes. Our results show the impact of cognitive impairment on cognitive test performance and grey and white matter volumes, and the role played by cognitive and brain reserve on mitigating cognitive decline. Furthermore, we add evidence to previous studies by showing an increase in white matter volume compared to healthy controls, in all 3 patients. This pattern of increased white matter volume might help us to better understand the pathological mechanisms underlying MCI which in turn could contribute to future investigations.status: publishe

Mental workload of young and older adults gauged with ERPs and spectral power during N-Back task performance

Mental workload has been shown to correlate with alpha and theta band power but only few EEG studies focused on the relation between these bands and Event Related Potentials (ERPs), more specifically the P300 component. We report on an EEG study on mental workload where not only young but also older adults performed an N-Back task. Participants watched a sequence of visual pictures and indicated whether the current picture was the same as the one shown N pictures before. We considered N = 4 difficulty levels and analyzed the relation between these and P300 amplitude and theta and alpha band power, and also examined the effect of age, level of education, work activities, and task accuracy. Our results revealed a decrease in P300 amplitude and alpha band activity for higher difficulty levels for young adults in the parietal region. However, for older adults, fatigue played a more important role than we could anticipate as the alpha band power increased for the highest task difficulty level, and since performance accuracy also decreased, it could even be a sign of task disengagement. Beside alpha band, theta band activity showed a positive correlation with task difficulty level for both young and older adults. Additionally, we found higher P300 amplitudes for young adults compared to older adults, in line with their higher performance accuracies and lower reaction times. In conclusion, we showed that P300 amplitude and alpha and theta bands power provide complementary information for judging mental workload during N-Back performance for young and older subjects and for detecting mental fatigue and task disengagement.status: publishe

Divergent Research Methods Limit Understanding of Working Memory Training.

Working memory training has been a hot topic over the last decade. Although studies show benefits in trained and untrained tasks as a function of training, there is an ongoing debate on the efficacy of working memory training. There have been numerous meta-analyses put forth to the field, some finding overall broad transfer effects while others do not. However, discussion of this research typically overlooks specific qualities of the training and transfer tasks. As such, there has been next to no discussion in the literature on what training and transfer tasks features are likely to mediate training outcomes. To address this gap, here, we characterized the broad diversity of features employed in N-back training tasks and outcome measures in published working memory training studies. Extant meta-analyses have not taken into account the diversity of methodology at this level, primarily because there are too few studies using common methods to allow for a robust meta-analysis. We suggest that these limitations preclude strong conclusions from published data. In order to advance research on working memory training, and in particular, N-back training, more studies are needed that systematically compare training features and use common outcome measures to assess transfer effects