Early Trajectory Prediction in Elite Athletes

Cerebellar plasticity is a critical mechanism for optimal feedback control. While Purkinje cell activity of the oculomotor vermis predicts eye movement speed and direction, more lateral areas of the cerebellum may play a role in more complex tasks, including decision-making. It is still under question how this motor-cognitive functional dichotomy between medial and lateral areas of the cerebellum plays a role in optimal feedback control. Here we show that elite athletes subjected to a trajectory prediction, go/no-go task manifest superior subsecond trajectory prediction accompanied by optimal eye movements and changes in cognitive load dynamics. Moreover, while interacting with the cerebral cortex, both the medial and lateral cerebellar networks are prominently activated during the fast feedback stage of the task, regardless of whether or not a motor response was required for the correct response. Our results show that cortico-cerebellar interactions are widespread during dynamic feedback and that experience can result in superior task-specific decision skills

The Influence of Perceptual Training on Working Memory in Older Adults

Normal aging is associated with a degradation of perceptual abilities and a decline in higher-level cognitive functions, notably working memory. To remediate age-related deficits, cognitive training programs are increasingly being developed. However, it is not yet definitively established if, and by what mechanisms, training ameliorates effects of cognitive aging. Furthermore, a major factor impeding the success of training programs is a frequent failure of training to transfer benefits to untrained abilities. Here, we offer the first evidence of direct transfer-of-benefits from perceptual discrimination training to working memory performance in older adults. Moreover, using electroencephalography to evaluate participants before and after training, we reveal neural evidence of functional plasticity in older adult brains, such that training-induced modifications in early visual processing during stimulus encoding predict working memory accuracy improvements. These findings demonstrate the strength of the perceptual discrimination training approach by offering clear psychophysical evidence of transfer-of-benefit and a neural mechanism underlying cognitive improvement

Graded cue information in dichotic pitch : effects on event-related potentials

To determine whether electroencephalogram components elicited by dichotic pitch stimuli are all-or-none threshold-like responses or graded responses that depend on the saliency of the stimuli, we recorded electroencephalograms while participants listened to dichotic pitch stimuli constructed with different signal-to-background ratios. The object-related negativity and P400 components were largest when the dichotic pitch was most salient (high signal to- background ratio), and decreased in amplitude with decreasing signal-to-background ratio. These results are similar to those reported for mistuned harmonics, thereby providing additional evidence that the object-related negativity and P400 components observed for these disparate stimulus types reflect similar processing. They also support the notion that the object-related negativity and P400 amplitudes are dependent on the level of relevant cue-based stimulus information.4 page(s