Poster Session A

Age is Associated with Whole-Brain Structural Topology but not Resting State Functional Topology in Older Adults

Presenter- Contact Information

DANIEL ELBICH

Hershey Medical Center 

Co-Author

Suzanne Segerstrom

University of Kentucky 

Co-Author

Jonathan Hakun

Hershey Medical Center 

Human aging is associated with alterations to brain structure and function. While the effects of aging on indicators of resting state functional connectivity (e.g., default-mode network timeseries correlations) and white matter microstructure (e.g., fractional anisotropy) have been well studied, how aging alters whole-brain cortical structural and functional network topology remains poorly understood. Whole-brain connectomic analysis represents an approach to examining network topology that can be applied to both functional and structural data. A sample of 76 older adults (range: 60-95) underwent resting state fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI scanning. Parcellation was conducted using the Schaefer 17 Network, 400 parcel atlas. Following preprocessing, BOLD timeseries correlations were carried out on the resting state fMRI data between the 400 parcels to construct the resting state functional network. Whole-brain probabilistic, surface-based tractography analysis, informed by the Human Connectome Project pipeline, was conducted on the diffusion-weighted data to construct the structural network. The resulting functional and structural connectomes were then quantified using graph theoretical metrics. Our results indicated that age was significantly associated with multiple measures of structural network topology: density (p < 0.01), global efficiency (p < 0.05), and modularity (p < 0.001). However, no significant associations between age and any measure of functional network topology was observed. Further, structural and functional network topology measures were not inter-related before or after controlling for age. Overall, our results suggest that summary measures of whole-brain white matter structural topology, but not functional network topology, are consistent with previously observed age-associated differences in network- and modality-specific indicators.

Alpha Power over Right/Mid-Frontal Brain Regions Support the Generation of Remote Associations in Higher Creative Indivi

Presenter- Contact Information

Yoed Kenett

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology 

Co-Author

Ioanna Zioga

Queen Mary University of London 

Co-Author

Caroline Di Bernardi Luft

Queen Mary University of Londo 

Little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying the spontaneous generation of creative ideas. We aimed to investigate the role of alpha oscillations during the production of spontaneous remote associations, and how they vary in relation to individual differences in creative ability. Participants were presented with a stimulus word and were asked to produce as many associative responses as possible in 2 minutes to a set of cue words, while having their EEG recorded. Participants also underwent a battery of creativity tests, which were used to divide them into lower and higher creativity groups. To estimate the semantic proximity of the word streams that participants produced, we used forward flow (www.forwardflow.org) which employs co-occurrence statistics of words in textual corpora to compute the semantic distance between consecutive associative responses. At the behavioral level, higher creative participants generated significantly more responses compared to lower creative participants. While higher creative participants did not generate more remote associations than lower creative participants, forward flow was positively correlated with general creativity. At the neural level, the generation of semantically distant concepts was associated with higher alpha frequency activation over right and mid frontal areas, but only for higher creative participants. This activation has been previously linked to increased cognitive control and inhibition mechanisms of the prefrontal cortex. Thus, we suggest that enhanced alpha oscillations at right/mid-frontal areas relate to the spontaneous generation of semantically remote concepts, uniquely in higher creative individuals.

Altered Brain Activity in Survivors of Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia with Executive Dysfunction

Presenter- Contact Information

Kellen Gandy

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Matthew Scoggins

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Nicholas Phillips

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Lisa Jacola

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Ching-Hon Pui

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Melissa Hudson

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Gene Reddick

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Co-Author

Kevin Krull

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neurocognitive testing were obtained in 138 survivors (44% male; median [min-max] age = 13.5 [8.2-26.5] years; time since diagnosis = 7.6 [5.1-12.5] years) treated on the St. Jude Total 15 protocol. Executive function was assessed with standardized tests of working memory (Digit Span Backwards), fluency (D-KEFS Verbal Fluency) and cognitive flexibility (D-KEFS Trail Making). Impairment was defined as at least one score <10th percentile of age-standardized normative data. fMRI was obtained on a 3T scanner during an N-back working memory task. Functional data were preprocessed (realigned, slice time corrected, normalized and smoothed) and analyzed using Statistical Parametric Mapping with contrasts developed for the 0-back, 1-back vs 2-back, and 2-back conditions which reflect varying degrees of working memory and task load. Of the 138 survivors, 52 (38%) demonstrated impaired executive function on neurocognitive assessments and functional neuroimaging data was compared with between survivors with and without impaired executive function. Survivors with impaired executive function displayed less activation in the left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex during increased work memory task load (i.e., 2-back vs 1-back), compared to survivors without impaired executive function (p < 0.001, adjusting for age and sex). This pattern suggests that survivors are at risk for disrupted or delayed functional development of frontal lobe, which is associated with impaired executive function.

An Application of Wavelet Transforms to Identify the Spatial Scale of Multivariate Activity Patterns in fMRI data

Presenter- Contact Information

Xueying Ren

University of Pittsburgh 

Co-Author

Heather Bruett

University of Pittsburgh 

Co-Author

Marc N. Coutanche

University of Pittsburgh 

The brain is hierarchically organized across different spatial scales. In occipital cortex, the question of whether visual information is represented at a fine or coarse spatial scale remains debated. Common methods for analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, such as multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques, often neglect the spatial structure of brain activity patterns. Past approaches to investigating spatial scales, such as smoothing, do not allow individual spatial scales to be stringently confined. In this study, we applied a method for quantifying spatial scales â??the wavelet transformation that overcomes these limitations. With this technique, we define a set of features that take scale and directionality information into account to represent activity patterns using a dual-tree complex wavelet transform (dt-CWT). We classified these features from fMRI data collected as participants viewed four visual categories (faces, places, man-made objects, fruit) using the XGBoost algorithm, for each of five spatial scales generated by the wavelets. In occipital cortex, we were able to classify visual categories based on the features generated using the wavelets at coarser but not finer spatial scales. These results suggest that there are significant differences in the amount of information represented at low frequency scales for those categories in occipital cortex. The categories could not be successfully classified in ventral temporal cortex (VT), suggesting that the spatial organization for those categories is represented similarly in VT.

Anticipation of novel environments enhances memory for incidental information

Presenter- Contact Information

Danlu Cen

Cardiff University 

Co-Author

Christos Gkoumas

Cardiff University 

Co-Author

Matthias Gruber

Cardiff University 

Successful dissemination of important information can save lives, especially in situations such as the current pandemic. Novelty is known to be a potent learning signal and has intrinsic motivational value, which can facilitate learning of novel material. However, little is known whether anticipation of novelty can enhance memory for incidental information that is encountered during the anticipation period. It is also unclear how anticipation of novelty relates to other intrinsic motivational states such as curiosity. Here, we used a newly developed virtual reality paradigm in which participants actively navigated towards novel or previously familiarised virtual rooms, and incidentally encountered objects on their way to the rooms. Across immediate and delayed (i.e., 24 hours after the encoding phase) surprise memory tests, participants showed superior recollection for incidental objects encountered while anticipating novel rooms as compared to previously familiarised rooms, indicating a beneficial effect of novelty anticipation on memory for incidental information. In contrast, no memory enhancement was observed on familiarity-based recognition for incidental objects leading to novel rooms, suggesting that this beneficial effect of novelty anticipation is specific to hippocampus-dependent memory. Moreover, participants who reported higher curiosity for novel rooms exhibited more memory enhancement for incidental objects, suggesting that curiosity might be one important factor contributing to novelty-related memory enhancements.

Arousal compensates for age-related deficits in early visual attentional selectivity under high attentional load

Presenter- Contact Information

Ringo Huang

University of California, Los Angeles 

Co-Author

Kelly Durbin

University of Southern California 

Co-Author

David Clewett

University of California, Los Angeles 

Co-Author

Martin Dahl

Max Planck Institute for Human Development 

Co-Author

Mara Mather

University of Southern California 

Increasing task-focused attentional load can enhance distractor suppression in younger adults. Here, we conducted a concurrent eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in younger and older adults to examine whether attentional load can also enhance distractor suppression in older adults, who often have greater difficulty with inhibitory control. In the MRI scanner, participants performed a foveal target detection task while task-irrelevant checkerboards flickered in the periphery. Attentional load was manipulated by defining the target by its color (low load) or by both its color and orientation (high load). Consistent with prior work, younger adults inhibited visual cortex activation to the distracting checkerboards under high attentional load. However, this load-dependent suppression effect was not observed in older adults. This load-by-age interaction effect was significant, suggesting that unlike younger adults, older adults do not inhibit visual processing of irrelevant distractors as load increases. Surprisingly, the presence of peripheral checkerboard distractors under high attentional load improved, rather than impaired, older adults’ reaction times and increased their pupil dilation responses, suggesting that perceptual distractors may benefit late selective attention processes in aging. Additionally, we found greater prefrontal cortex engagement in older relative to younger adults under high attentional load. In summary, younger adults inhibit visual processing of distractors more effectively than older adults as central attentional load increases. However, under high task demands, an upregulation of arousal and prefrontal cortex processes may enable older adults to compensate for such inhibition deficits and improve task-focused attention.

Arousal enhances memory selectivity in young but not older adults: fMRI and behavioral evidence

Presenter- Contact Information

Sara Gallant

University of Southern California 

Co-Author

Sara Gallant

University of Southern California 

Co-Author

Briana Kennedy

University of Western Australia 

Co-Author

Ringo Huang

University of California, Los Angeles 

Co-Author

Mara Mather

University of Southern California 

In young adults, increases in arousal selectively enhances memory for salient information while suppressing memory for non-salient details. This adaptive response helps us to perform during high-stake moments by focusing attention on important information amid distraction. However, these processes are thought to change with age. Older adults show a decline in the ability to ignore distraction as well as changes in the arousal system, which threaten to disrupt arousal’s ability to coordinate selective processing. Here, we used fMRI to test the hypothesis that increases in arousal amplify memory and neural selectivity for young adults but not for older adults. While in an MRI scanner, participants completed an attention selectivity task where they heard an arousing or neutral sound followed by two category-specific stimuli that were competing in perceptual salience. On an incidental memory task, young adults remembered more of the salient than non-salient stimuli on arousing relative to neutral trials whereas older adults did not show an increase in memory selectivity under arousal. Hearing an arousing sound also increased young adults’ brain activity in category-selective ventral occipitotemporal cortex (extrastriate body area) when viewing salient vs. non-salient stimuli. By contrast, arousal did not modulate older adults’ brain activity in response to stimuli. These behavioral and fMRI findings suggest that arousal becomes less effective at enhancing selective processing in the aging brain.

Attentional modulation in early visual cortex: a combined re-analysis of steady-state visual evoked potential studies

Presenter- Contact Information

Nika Adamian

University of Aberdeen 

Co-Author

Søren Andersen

University of Aberdeen 

Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) are a particularly powerful tool for investigating selective attention. The SSVEP is a continuous oscillatory response of the visual cortex that has the same fundamental frequency as the driving stimulus and whose amplitude is increased with attention to the driving stimulus. When multiple stimuli flickering at different frequencies are presented concurrently, each one of them will drive an SSVEP at its respective frequency, thereby allowing for the assessment of the allocation of attention to each element in a multi-stimulus display. Here we combined the data of eight published SSVEP studies in which participants (n=139 in total) attended to flickering random dot stimuli based on their defining features (e.g. location, color, luminance, or orientation) or feature-conjunctions. The reanalysis first established that in all the studies attention reliably enhanced amplitudes and shortened latencies of SSVEPs, with colour-based attention providing the strongest effect. Next we investigated the modulation of SSVEP amplitudes in a subset of studies where two different features were attended concurrently. While most models of feature-based attention assume that multiple features are combined additively, our results suggest that neuronal enhancement provided by concurrent attention is better described by multiplicative integration. Finally, we used the combined dataset to demonstrate that the increase in SSVEP amplitudes cannot be explained by the synchronization of single-trial phases. Contrary to the prediction of the phase locking account, the variance of complex Fourier coefficients increases with attention, which is more consistent with boosting of largely phase-locked signal with non-phase-locked noise.

Category knowledge facilitates value-based decisions

Presenter- Contact Information

Jonathan Shum

Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University 

Co-Author

Zarrar Shehzad

Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University 

Co-Author

Natalie Biderman

Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University 

Co-Author

Celia Durkin

Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University 

Co-Author

Daphna Shohamy

Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University 

We effortlessly learn the value of visual cues in the environment through trial and error and organize these cues into categories. However, questions remain about how and whether learned value is applied to new cues. Here, we address this question. Participants (N=100) first learned that sets of paintings belonged to specific galleries (three galleries with six paintings each). Paintings within a gallery were drawn from the same artist and differed in abstraction level. Participants then learned the value of individual paintings: value was determined according to gallery membership and abstraction level within a gallery. Then, to test generalization of categorical value, participants had to make decisions between pairs of new paintings from the same artists, without receiving any feedback, giving them an opportunity to use learned category value to drive decisions (six new paintings for each gallery). Results reveal that participants generalized category value knowledge to novel paintings. Through training, participants learned to associate each painting with the associated gallery (92.75 ± 1.30%, p < 0.001) and were more likely to choose a painting from a higher-valued gallery (64.92 ± 1.07%) than a lower-valued gallery (33.61 ± 1.06%, p < 0.001). Critically, when shown novel paintings, participants chose paintings based on their inferred gallery membership: paintings associated with a higher-valued gallery (76.96 ± 1.49%) were chosen significantly more than those from a lower-valued gallery (22.70 ± 1.48%, p < 0.001). These results provide evidence for the effects of category knowledge on value-based decisions, suggesting that category knowledge guides motivated behavior.

Characterizing External and Internal Attention: Functional Connectivity Reveals Multiple Interacting Processing Streams

Presenter- Contact Information

Peeta Li

Department of Psychology,University of Oregon,Eugene,OR 

Co-Author

Yida Wang

Amazon Web Services,Palo Alto,CA 

Co-Author

Nicholas Turk-Browne

Department of Psychology,Princeton University,Princeton,NJ 

Co-Author

1. Benjamin Hutchinson

Department of Psychology,University of Oregon,Eugene,OR 

Visual input provides us with details about current features in the external world (i.e., perception) but can also bring representations of the past into our internal world (i.e., memory). Although we can readily switch our attention between these two worlds, the neural mechanisms underlying this form of attentional switching remain underexplored. Similar to how selective attention operates across different visual object categories, one potential mechanism allowing this switch is through prioritizing of information along various distributed processing streams in the brain, as measured by functional connectivity. Here we performed an fMRI study (n = 24) and leveraged a data-driven technique known as full correlation matrix analysis (FCMA) to identify the shared and distinct neural pathways underlying external and internal attentional processing. Participants performed tasks that required the primary use of either current perceptual information or associated information from the past, but these tasks were otherwise matched (i.e., the same judgments and visual stimuli). FCMA revealed brain regions whose connectivity patterns underlie the difference between external and internal attention. Initial results suggest perception and memory might each involve a set of task-specific pathways, but these pathways are also linked to a common set of regions potentially mediating their interactions. Follow-up pattern similarity analyses found distinctions across brain regions in their sensitivity to attentional focus (external or internal), task judgement, and perceptual features. Together, these findings reveal multiple interactive processing streams across external and internal attention and highlight the role of data-driven functional connectivity techniques in discovering such cognitive dynamics.

Correlated brain indexes of semantic prediction and prediction error: brain localization and category specificity

Presenter- Contact Information

Luigi Grisoni

Freie Universität, Brain Language Laboratory 

Co-Author

Rosario Tomasello

Freie Universität, Brain Language Laboratory 

Co-Author

Friedemann Pulvermüller

Freie Universität, Brain Language Laboratory 

Accurate predictions allow to understand a message easily and quickly, whereas unpredictable utterances require more processing. Consistently, previous evidences have shown a linear relationship between anticipatory signals occurring before predictable stimuli (Prediction Potential) and post-stimulus responses (Mismatch Negativity, MMN). However, since MMN paradigms are not ecological, as they are characterized by a highly redundant stimulus presentation, it remains to be investigated whether similar mechanisms also occur in situations closer to everyday experiences. We here demonstrate the interplay between prediction and perception during sentence comprehension. Sentence fragments constraining the expectation of a specific word induced anticipatory brain activity before the expected input; this slow-wave potential was absent in case of weak expectations. That this anticipatory slow wave was related to predictive processing was further demonstrated by correlations between this signal and both subjective reports of certainty about upcoming words and objective corpus-based measures, thus confirming this response as a semantic prediction potential (SPP). Furthermore, an inverse correlation between the SPP and the following N400 brain response suggested the interpretation of the N400 as a prediction error response. The sources underlying the pre- (SPP) and post-stimulus (N400) responses were located in inferior prefrontal and posterior temporal cortices, respectively. In addition, category-specific clusters of activation in modality-preferential visual and motor brain areas for animal- and tool-related words, respectively, indicated that both measures reflected aspects of sentence meaning. Overall, these data reveal that the N400, has an antecedent, the SPP which may determine the N400 dynamics.

Damage to the Left Intraparietal Sulcus Does Not Consistently Impair Numeracy Abilities

Presenter- Contact Information

Erin Duricy

University of Pittsburgh 

Co-Author

Corrine Durisko

University of Pittsburgh 

Co-Author

Julie Fiez

University of Pittsburgh 

Math is extremely important in our society, and the ability to understand and manipulate numbers is crucial for success in day to day life. Consistently, prior studies implicate the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) as a key brain region for many types of math tasks, including symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude processing. Thus, we hypothesized that damage to the IPS in left-hemisphere stroke patients would lead to impairments in both precise and approximate numeracy tasks. We explored this hypothesis by testing 51 left-hemisphere stroke patients on a battery composed of cognition and numeracy tasks, which were further categorized as Calculation (arithmetic problems), Approximation (estimating quantity), or Transcoding (converting information from one form to another, such as ‘two’ to ‘2’). Of the 51 participants, only 4 fell into a Lesioned IPS category (20% overlap of lesion with Neurosynth-extracted IPS mask, or greater). In a multiple regression analysis, we found no significant difference between Lesioned and Non-Lesioned groups for each category, as well as for a Composite Numeracy category (p’s > 0.05). Interestingly, Cook’s Distance measure of influence indicated that the most significant outlier was an individual in the Lesioned IPS group. This individual showed a mild deficit in all categories of numeracy, had a moderate total lesion volume, and fell into the upper education range for our study population. Ultimately, we do not find evidence that left IPS damage consistently produces broad numeracy impairments, though post-hoc evidence provides single case support that IPS damage can be associated with unusually poor numeracy performance.

DeepMReye: MR-based camera-less eye tracking using deep neural networks

Presenter- Contact Information

Markus Frey

Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience 

Co-Author

Matthias Nau

Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience 

Co-Author

Christian Doeller

Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences 

Viewing behavior provides a window into many central aspects of human cognition and health, and is an important variable of interest or confound in many fMRI studies. To make eye tracking freely and widely available for MRI research, we developed DeepMReye: a convolutional neural network that decodes gaze position from the MR-signal of the eyeballs. It performs camera-less eye tracking at sub-imaging temporal resolution in held-out participants with little training data and across a broad range of scanning protocols. Critically, it works even in existing datasets and when the eyes are closed. Decoded eye movements explain network-wide brain activity also in regions not associated with oculomotor function. This work emphasizes the importance of eye tracking for the interpretation of fMRI results and provides an open-source software solution that is widely applicable in research and clinical settings.

Dissociating the brain activity during autobiographical memory retrieval based on spatial and object imagery ability

Presenter- Contact Information

Can Fenerci

McGill University 

Co-Author

Lauri Gurguryan

McGill University 

Co-Author

Signy Sheldon

McGill University 

Research has indicated a link between autobiographical memory recollection and the ability to generate mental images. Mental imagery encompasses spatial imagery, the ability to imagine schematic spatial relations as well as object imagery, the ability to imagine properties of individual objects. Here, we tested whether individual differences in these two forms of mental imagery correlate with separable brain patterns engaged during autobiographical memory recollection. We analyzed an fMRI dataset in which healthy, young adults recalled past personal experiences (autobiographical memories) in response to event captions. We modelled the relationship between brain activity during memory recollection and individual differences in spatial and object imagery, established via a well-established questionnaire, using a Partial Least Squares analysis. This analysis revealed that spatial and object imagery scores were associated with distinct patterns of neural activity during autobiographical memory recall. Spatial imagery scores were correlated with a diffuse pattern of brain activity that included the right anterior hippocampus, orbitofrontal and temporopolar cortex. Object imagery scores were correlated with a brain pattern that included clusters within the lateral parietal and sensory motor processing regions. Thus, our results suggest that spatial imagery ability is associated with a more efficient processing of the conceptual attributes used to construct autobiographical event representations, whereas object imagery ability is associated with efficient processing of perceptual attributes of these representations. Together, these data clarify how different approaches to constructing autobiographical memory representations are reflected in the brain.

Effects of emotion on memory for preceding events: Role of conceptual relatedness

Presenter- Contact Information

Chantelle Cocquyt

University of British Columbia 

Co-Author

Bonnie Densmore

University of British Columbia 

Co-Author

Christopher Madan

University of Nottingham 

Co-Author

Daniela Palombo

University of British Columbia 

It is well established that emotional events are remembered more vividly than neutral ones. Under some conditions, emotion can also enhance memory for neutral events that precede an emotional one. Yet the boundary conditions for this effect are not clear. In the present study, we investigated whether the enhancing effect of emotion on preceding neutral events is modulated by the conceptual relatedness of the preceding event. Here, participants sequentially viewed object and scene images, where each object preceded a scene that was either negative or neutral. Moreover, the objects were either conceptually related or unrelated to the scene. We hypothesized an enhancement for objects preceding negative scenes and that this enhancement would be most pronounced if the preceding object was conceptually related to the negative scene. To our surprise, we did not observe a memory enhancement for objects preceding negative scenes. Moreover, we observed a memory impairment for objects that preceded a conceptually related neutral scene. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering conceptual relationships in understanding the retrograde effects of emotion on memory.

1 – Electrophysiological evidence of attention to music in unresponsive hospice patients at the end of life

Location: 1

Presenter- Contact Information

Lawrence Ward

Univerisity of British Columbia 

Co-Author

Elizabeth Blundon

University of Miami 

Co-Author

Romayne Gallagher

University of British Columbia 

Co-Author

Lauren Dimaio

Texas Women’s University 

The objective of this study was to characterize electrophysiological activity associated with listening to music in a small group of unresponsive hospice patients at the end of life. Young, healthy controls were asked to attend to (Active condition) and ignore (Passive condition) brief (~7s) musical excerpts. A small group of hospice patients were asked to attend to the same musical excerpts (Active condition only), both when they were responsive and again when they became unresponsive. Most (84%) controls showed sustained (~3s) posterio-parietal alpha suppression when they were asked to attend to the music, while far fewer (37%) generated the same response when asked to ignore the music. Similarly, 75% of responsive hospice patients, and 100% of unresponsive hospice patients showed sustained (again, ~3s) posterio-parietal alpha suppression when asked to attend to the music. These results suggest that some unresponsive patients at the end of life may be able to listen to music, despite being unable overtly to indicate their awareness. Music-listening may be a more promising way to engage unresponsive patients compared to neutral stimulation.

Emotion Regulation Training Induces Wide-Spread Changes in Functional Activation and Connectivity

Presenter- Contact Information

Olivia Cook

University of Louisville 

Co-Author

Jessi Kane

University of Louisville 

Co-Author

Karisa Hunt

University of Louisville 

Co-Author

Brendan Depue

University of Louisville 

‘Brain Training’ programs are becoming more ubiquitous in mainstream society. However, there are relatively few studies exploring whether specific task related training leads to functional plasticity in the brain. Furthermore, no studies exist, to our knowledge, that explore training an individual’s ability to down-regulate emotion reactivity. Importantly, understanding which neural regions show changes across training highlights important brain mechanisms involved in emotion regulation processes; processes which are critical to efficient daily functioning. We explored this question using fMRI before and after emotion regulation training. Eighteen undergraduate students were recruited in a 5-day training study. Participants were scanned on day 1 and day 5. The emotion regulation task and training consisted of a standard emotion regulation paradigm, in which participants were asked to down-regulate their physiological response to negatively valanced IAPS pictures. A subjective emotion ratings task was performed before (baseline) and approximately 30 minutes later (ER-rating) required participants to interrogate their subjective emotional feeling toward IAPS pictures. Behaviorally, a significant decrease in subjective negative emotion ratings occurred on day 5 compared to day 1 (p<.03; M=2.1/2.6). Functional analyses revealed decreased activation in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), right inferior and middle frontal gyri (rIFG/rMFG), and both ventral and dorsal amygdalae on day 5 compared to day 1. Conversely, increased activation was seen in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) on day 5 compared to day 1. Using the above regions in functional connectivity analyses, revealed that while functional activation decreased, increased functional connectivity was observed in the rMFG-OFC and OFC-amygdalae.

Episodic memory impairments in Parkinson’s disease: a meta-analysis

Presenter- Contact Information

Ariana Youm

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Joshua Koh

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Megan Vaziri

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Emily Williams

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Heather Lee

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Katherine Duncan

University of Toronto 

Co-Author

Melanie Cohn

University of Toronto & Krembil Research Institute 

Despite growing consensus that episodic memory is impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD), variability across studies has obscured our understanding of the severity and nature of these impairments. To address this, we are conducting a meta-analytic review of episodic memory performance on clinical tools in nondemented PD patients compared to controls. We are also coding for moderators to inform whether these impairments stem solely from fronto-striatal dysfunction or whether hippocampal degeneration also contributes. If memory decline is a secondary effect of frontal-striatal deficits in PD, tasks that provide less support at retrieval (e.g. free recall) would show larger group differences. On the other hand, if memory impairments in PD are also hippocampal-mediated, patients would show greater forgetting after delays and worse performance in associative compared to item memory. From a sample of 25 studies, we found preliminary evidence in which patients perform worse than controls across all memory measures, p<0.0001, g= -0.7, 95% CI [-0.85, -0.50]. These impairments seem to diminish when patients are tested over delays (p=0.08), and there is no significant difference between item and associative memory (p=0.18), inconsistent with a strong hippocampal contribution. However, we also found that greater degree of retrieval support did not minimize memory deficits (p=0.82), inconsistent with fronto-striatal predictions. Although preliminary, our findings do not provide unequivocal support for either proposal; analyses of other features of memory performance is warranted. Ultimately, such analyses will help elucidate the neural underpinnings of memory dysfunction in PD and inform the development of compensatory learning strategies.

Evidence for age differences in neural distinctiveness at category and item level

Presenter- Contact Information

Myriam C. Sander

Max Planck Institut for Human Development, Berlin, Germany 

Co-Author

Malte Kobelt

Max Planck Institut for Human Development, Berlin, Germany 

Co-Author

Verena R. Sommer

Max Planck Institut for Human Development, Berlin, Germany 

Co-Author

Attila Keresztes

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 

Co-Author

Markus Werkle-Bergner

Max Planck Institut for Human Development, Berlin, Germany 

A popular hypothesis of cognitive aging research states that loss of neural specificity in old adulthood contributes to cognitive decline. While computational models suggested that this so-called neural dedifferentiation affects the neural representation on the item level, previous studies mostly focused on age differences of categorical information representation in ventral visual regions. In an age-comparative fMRI study, we combined univariate analyses and whole-brain searchlight pattern similarity analyses to elucidate age differences in neural distinctiveness at both category and item levels and their relation to memory. Thirty-five human younger adults (18–27 years old) and 32 older adults (67–75 years old) incidentally encoded images of faces and houses, followed by an old/new recognition memory task. Univariate analysis replicated previous results of age-related reductions in category-selective regions in ventral visual cortex. Interindividual differences in category selectivity were related to memory performance. Age differences in category-selective regions were also found with multivariate pattern analysis, but these showed no relation to memory performance. Finally, whole-brain search light analyses revealed additional age differences in item-level specificity in occipital regions. These were driven by younger adults’ higher item stability, that is, representational similarity between initial and repeated presentation of an item. Importantly, successful subsequent memory performance also built on high item stability. Together, our results emphasize that representational differences have consequences for memory performance. More importantly, they close an important gap in the literature, showing that not only older adults’ neural representation of category information, but also item-specific information is reduced compared to younger adults.

Evidence of an association between sign language proficiency and language network connectivity in deaf early signers

Presenter- Contact Information

Emil Holmer

Linköping University 

Co-Author

Krister Schönström

Stockholm University 

Co-Author

Josefine Andin

Linköping University 

Processing of signed and spoken languages is supported by a neural language network involving perisylvian regions. Better spoken language proficiency is associated with increased functional connectivity within this language network, and in this study we investigated whether an analogous association exists in the signed modality. Fifteen adult, deaf early signers, with typical non-verbal cognitive ability, were enrolled in a resting state fMRI study. Language proficiency was assessed using the Swedish Sign Language – Sentence Repetition Task (STS-SRT), which is used to measure global sign language proficiency in deaf adults. The language network was identified using the Conn toolbox and included four nodes, the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and the bilateral posterior portions of the superior temporal gyrus. The results showed that better STS-SRT scores were associated with stronger functional connectivity within the language network, both within and between the left and right hemisphere. The language-specificity of this association was supported by the fact that no statistically significant association was observed between performance on a non-verbal cognitive task and connectivity within the language network. The results of this study suggest that an association between language proficiency and connectivity within the language network is modality general, and highlights the role of sign language skills for brain organization in deaf adults.

Eye movements facilitate construction and subsequent recall of scenes

Presenter- Contact Information

Ryan Aloysius

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Maya E. Amestoy

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Andy C.H. Lee

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Shayna Rosenbaum

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Zhong-Xu Liu

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Jennifer D. Ryan

Rotman Research Institute 

Eye movements support the encoding of information into memory (Wynn, Shen & Ryan, 2020). The objective of the current study was to determine whether manipulating eye-movements during the mental construction of novel scenes affects the amount or type of details generated, and the storage of such details into memory. Fifty young adults (mean age = 22.4) were asked to construct and describe novel scene imagery in response to a cue (e.g., ‘busy intersection’) while they freely moved their eyes (free-viewing), fixated on a specific point (fixed-viewing), or followed a pre-defined gaze pattern (follow-viewing). Transcriptions of described scenes were coded for four types of details: items, spatial, action, and sensory details. Scenes were described a second time during a recall task under free-viewing. Significant differences in the rate of gaze fixations and of saccade amplitudes were exhibited across viewing conditions, suggesting compliance with viewing instructions. A significant effect of viewing condition was observed for the number of spatial details generated: the most details were generated under free-viewing, and the fewest under follow-viewing. No significant differences were observed across conditions for the amount of details subsequently recalled. Generally, fixation rate predicted details across viewing conditions, and fixation rate during the construction of novel scenes was suggestive of subsequent recall of those details. Subjective vividness was positively correlated with number of details. These findings suggest that gaze behaviour may facilitate the construction of details of scene imagery, promote encoding of such details into memory, and support the phenomenological experience of vividness.

Functional Connectivity Disturbances Underlying Semantic Cognition in Parkinson’s Disease

Presenter- Contact Information

qian shen

University of California San Diego 

Co-Author

Vida Sadeghi

VA San Diego Healthcare System 

Co-Author

Xiangyu Wei

University of California San Diego 

Co-Author

Deborah L. Harrington

University of California San Diego 

Semantic memory impairments in Parkinson’s disease (PD) are a risk factor for the development of dementia, but the neural underpinnings are poorly understood. This study investigated functional connectivity of brain regions that govern semantic cognition in PD. Cognitively normal PD (n=63) and control (n=43) participants underwent fMRI while performing a fame discrimination task that activates the semantic network. Generalized psychophysical interaction analyses were conducted on frontal, parietal, temporal, and subcortical (caudate, amygdala) seeds where activation was greater for famous than unfamiliar names. Eighty-one connections showed group differences in fame-modulated connectivity. Principal components analyses were applied to aberrant connectivity features, which reduced features into 6 frontal, 4 parietal, 6 temporal, and 3 subcortical latent components. Stepwise regressions correlated component scores with fame-discrimination sensitivity, confrontation naming, and category fluency scores. In PD, better fame-discrimination was related to stronger left medial frontal (Brodmann area, BA; 11) couplings with retrieval circuits, right medial frontal (BA 9) couplings with parietal-semantic processing areas, and inferior temporal couplings with a frontoparietal semantic processing circuit. Better category fluency correlated with stronger right medial frontal (BA 10) couplings with retrieval/semantic processing circuits and left angular gyrus couplings with a semantic hub. In contrast, the poorer confrontation naming was related to abnormally stronger left anterior temporal couplings with the executive system and caudate couplings with language processing systems, signifying detrimental influences on naming. The results provide novel insights into early aberrant functional changes in systems underpinning diverse facets of semantic cognition in PD, which may presage future cognitive

Functional connectivity in the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit predicts curiosity-driven real-life information-seeking

Presenter- Contact Information

Kathrin C. J. Eschmann

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Duarte F. M. M. Pereira

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Bonni Crawford

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Vera Dehmelt

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Alisa Priemysheva

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Ashvanti Valji

Cardiff University, UK 

Co-Author

Matthias J. Gruber

Cardiff University, UK 

Epistemic curiosity, the desire to learn about a fact or certain topic, is a driver of information-seeking that has been studied in a variety of situations. Thereby, curiosity reflects the intrinsic motivation of an individual to seek information in order to close information gaps. However, it is unclear whether and how epistemic curiosity drives information-seeking in real-life settings, in which genuine knowledge acquisition takes place. First, are epistemic curiosity traits stable over time and do they predict real-life information-seeking? Second, is information-seeking associated with functional connectivity between key regions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit that previously have been linked to curiosity? To answer these questions, 10-minute resting-state fMRI and epistemic curiosity trait questionnaires were conducted up to 15 months ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a follow-up survey, participants repeated the epistemic curiosity questionnaires and conducted additional questionnaires about their pandemic-related information-seeking behaviour. Pre- and during-pandemic curiosity measures did not differ, indicating that epistemic curiosity traits remained stable over time. Individual differences in epistemic curiosity at both measurement points predicted participants’ information-seeking about pandemic-related news. Interestingly, this information-seeking behaviour was also predicted by individual variability in resting-state functional connectivity between the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAcc), suggesting that individual differences in functional connectivity within the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit drive information-seeking for real-life news. The present study provides evidence that lab-based findings translate to applied settings by showing that epistemic curiosity drives information-seeking in real-life situations and that the curiosity-promoting functional network also supports real-life information-seeking behaviour.

Gender Differences in Neural Sensitivity to Emotional Prosody in Spoken Words

Presenter- Contact Information

Chieh Kao

University of Minnesota 

Co-Author

Yang Zhang

University of Minnesota 

Emotional prosody is the intonation variations in the speech that convey a speaker’s internal state and social intention. Proper recognition of emotional prosody facilitates verbal communication and social interaction. Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies documented an early negative (mismatch negativity, MMN) and a later positive (P3a) involuntary neural responses to the detection of emotional prosody change (Zora et al., 2019). Furthermore, women tend to show stronger MMN to emotional sound change (Schirmer et al., 2005), and this higher neural sensitivity may be emotion-specific (Hung & Cheng, 2013). Nonetheless, these ERP components and the gender effect were elicited by controlling the linguistic content of the speech stimuli. It remains unclear whether natural affective prosody across varying linguistic carriers would elicit similar activation patterns. The current study adopted the multi-feature oddball paradigm to investigate the ERP responses to three basic emotional prosodies-happy, angry, and sad-embedded in varying monosyllabic English words. Twenty-two adult listeners (female = 11) completed the experiment. We confirmed that MMN and P3a can be elicited by emotional prosodic change over non-repeating words. A P200 difference was also observed right before the MMN. Linear mixed-effect models further confirmed weaker P200 difference but stronger MMN and P3a to happy than sad voice. Gender differences were present across emotions, but women’s higher neural sensitivity to emotion was not consistently observed over the sequence of ERP components. Further time-frequency analysis will be applied to investigate the emotion-specific neural oscillatory patterns at theta and gamma bands, which are relevant to cognitive processing.

HAVE I SEEN YOU BEFORE: A VR STUDY

Presenter- Contact Information

Stefania La Rocca

University of Milano Bicocca 

Co-Author

Roberta Daini

University of Milan Bicocca 

One of the main questions, common to both memory and perception domains, is which process makes an unfamiliar face, familiar. While unfamiliar faces are strictly “context-dependent”, familiar faces are created from an average and generalisation of multiple and various exposures. The exposure to a higher variability during the learning phase could lead to a more robust facial representation context-independent, and a resistant trace in memory. Purpose of our study is to investigate the contribution of the environmental context variability to the face learning process. We combined the effect of variability with the number of exposures, by incidental exposing participants to unfamiliar faces, and by controlling frequency (times of encounters) and variability (number of contexts in which a person has been met). We used a virtual reality paradigm in order to create a more ecological and incidental learning approach and avoid any perceptual association with the context. Our results suggest a combined effect of the number of exposures and variability of context. For low exposure to the face, the same context facilitates consolidating the item, while at the opposite is the increased variety of the context associated with the overexposure face that facilitates the recognition.

Hippocampal spatial and sequential representations of event structure scaffold precise episodic temporal order memory

Presenter- Contact Information

Chuqi Liu

Beijing Normal University, PR China. 

Co-Author

Zhifang Ye

University of Oregon, USA. 

Co-Author

Chuansheng Chen

University of California, USA. 

Co-Author

Nikolai Axmacher

Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. 

Co-Author

Gui Xue

Beijing Normal University, PR China. 

The hippocampus plays an important role in representing spatial locations and sequences and in transforming representations via pattern separation. How these representational structures and operations support memory for the temporal order of random items is still poorly understood. We addressed this question by leveraging the method of loci (MOL), a powerful mnemonic strategy for temporal order memory that particularly recruits hippocampus-dependent computations of spatial locations and associations. Applying representational similarity analysis to fMRI activation patterns revealed that hippocampal subfields contained representations of multiple features of sequence structure, including locations, location distance and sequence boundaries, as well as episodic like temporal context. Critically, the hippocampal CA1 and CA23DG exhibited spatial and sequential pattern separation, respectively, enabling the encoding of multiple items in the same location and reducing swap errors across adjacent locations. Our results suggest that the hippocampus can flexibly reconfigure multiplexed event structure representations to support accurate temporal order memory.

Implicit perceptual-motor sequence learning is modality specific

Presenter- Contact Information

1. Catherine Han

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Paul J. Reber

Northwestern University 

The implicit acquisition of statistical information from the environment is considered a fundamental type of human learning. Implicit learning paradigms using visually cued sequences have been used to study this phenomenon, whereas auditory cues associated with sequences of motor responses have been less well explored. An important question asks whether the implicit memory underlying such learning is specific to the modality it is learned in or is modality general. To test this hypothesis, we utilized auditory and visually cued variants of the Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL) task. Participants were not informed that a covertly embedded, second order conditional, 12-item repeating sequence is present on 80% (training) and 33% (test) of trials. Participants trained on 96 sequence repetitions within one sensory modality (e.g., auditory cue training). Post-training, participants completed a sequence test using the same sequence action order cued in the trained modality (e.g., auditory cue test) and the untrained modality (e.g., visual cue test). Sequence-specific learning at test was assessed via reliably greater motor response accuracy to cues in the repeating sequence compared to novel sequences. Participants showed reliable sequence-specific learning at test for the trained modality but not for the untrained modality, indicating the representation of acquired implicit sequence knowledge did not generalize much across modalities. These findings indicate that implicit perceptual-motor sequence learning is sensory modality specific and is not purely motor-based, highlighting a common mechanism underlying statistical and implicit learning. Future work may examine whether both learning and retention of implicit perceptual-motor sequences are modality specific.

Inter-Network Neural Connectivity Mediates Intuitive Moral Decision-Making between Younger and Older Adults

Presenter- Contact Information

Shenyang Huang

Duke University 

Co-Author

Leonard Faul

Duke University 

Co-Author

Gunes Sevinc

Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School 

Co-Author

Laetitia Mwilambwe-Tshilo

McGill University 

Co-Author

Roni Setton

McGill University 

Co-Author

Amber W. Lockrow

McGill University 

Co-Author

Natalie C. Ebner

University of Florida, Gainesville 

Co-Author

Gary R. Turner

York University 

Co-Author

1. Nathan Spreng

McGill University 

Co-Author

Felipe De Brigard

Duke University 

Older adults (OAs) occupy many positions of power and constitute an increasingly larger share of the population. These demographic shifts underscore the importance of studying age-related changes in decision-making, particularly when it comes to difficult, morally-laden scenarios. However, little is known about age-related differences in moral decision-making and their relationship to the intrinsic network architecture of the brain. In the present study, younger adults (YAs; n = 117, Mage = 22.11) and OAs (n = 82, Mage = 67.54) made decisions on multiple hypothetical moral dilemmas and completed resting-state multi-echo fMRI scans. Relative to YAs, OAs were more likely to endorse deontological decisions and favor an action consistent with a moral principle, but only when the deontological moral choice was intuitive. By contrast, OAs’ decision-making did not differ from that of YAs when the utilitarian moral choice was intuitive. Enhanced connections between the posterior medial core of the default network (pmDN) and dorsal attention network , as well as overall reduced segregation of the pmDN from the rest of the brain, partially mediated this increased deontological-intuitive moral decision-making style in OAs. The present study provides novel insight into the differential network connectivity associated with moral reasoning in YAs and OAs, expanding our understanding of the diversity of neurocognitive changes that accompany aging.

Interfacing sound, meaning and constraint: Neural infrastructure for incremental interpretation

Presenter- Contact Information

Yuxing Fang

University of Cambridge 

Co-Author

Bingjiang Lyu

University of Cambridge 

Co-Author

Benedict Vassileiou

University of Cambridge 

Co-Author

Kamen Tsvetanov

University of Cambridge 

Co-Author

Lorraine Tyler

University of Cambridge 

Co-Author

William Marslen-Wilson

University of Cambridge 

Human speech comprehension depends on the dynamic integration of speech inputs with contextual constraints to enable the rapid and robust incremental interpretation of the current utterance. Here we focus on the earliest stages of this process, to determine how contextual constraints (typically generic in nature rather than lexically specific) interact with very early cues in the speech input to constrain word choice over the first 250 ms after word onset. To map out the neurocomputational infrastructure that supports these core integrative processes, we tested which brain regions are involved, the connectivity between them, the timing with which different inputs are integrated, and how different types of constraints are neurally represented. To do this, we combine MEG and EEG measures of real-time brain activity with NLP models of linguistic form and content, imaging analysis methods (Representational Similarity Analysis, Grainger Causal analysis) and data-driven whole-brain procedures (ICA) for segmenting brain activity into potential component networks. We uniquely identify a LH fronto-temporal network that integrates acoustic-phonetic cues and contextual constraints to support the early identification of lexical form and meaning. This integration process is not visible at word-onset, suggesting that bottom-up constraints are necessary to set the representational geometry of an analysis space with which semantic constraints can interface. A parallel RH fronto-temporal network shows strong sensitivity to acoustic-phonetic and phonological models, but no systematic response to semantic models. These results provide a novel perspective on a core network underpinning incremental speech interpretation.

Investigating the Relationship Between Aerobic Fitness and Performance Across Cognitive Domains in Healthy Young Adults

Presenter- Contact Information

Alexander Stuber

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Tom Bullock

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Tyler Santander

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Alexander P. Boone

Oregon State University 

Co-Author

Mary MacLean

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Liann Jimmons

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Jamie Raymer

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Gold Okafor

University of California, Berkeley 

Co-Author

Michael Miller

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Barry Giesbrecht

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Co-Author

Scott Grafton

University of California, Santa Barbara 

Regular physical activity has well-documented benefits for the human mind and brain, such as improved mood and wellbeing, enhanced cognitive function, and reduced risk of age-related cognitive decline. Most existing studies have investigated long-term exercise effects on cognition in older adults and children, reporting that enhanced physical fitness is particularly important for brain function during these transitional and developmental periods. However, the relationship between fitness and cognitive function in healthy young adults is less well understood. This represents an important knowledge gap given that optimal cognitive function is important for success in many aspects of adult life, including higher education performance and career success. Here, we investigate whether aerobic fitness is predictive of performance across a range of cognitive domains in a large sample of healthy young adults. Participants (n=178) completed tasks designed to measure spatial navigation, working memory, recognition memory, selective attention, and inhibitory control. On a separate day they underwent a fitness test to measure their aerobic capacity (VO2max). Preliminary results suggest a relationship between fitness and performance on the inhibitory control and spatial navigation tasks. Participants with higher fitness levels made faster responses in the inhibitory control task (p<.01), took more shortcuts in the spatial navigation task (p<.001), and were more efficient at navigating a previously learned maze (p<.05). These findings suggest that physical fitness is important for optimal performance in tasks that engage both inhibitory control as well as long-term memory systems.

Is time estimation error a sustained phenomenon after listening to music?

Presenter- Contact Information

Xinyu Li

BNU-HKBU United International College 

Co-Author

Fuming Yang

BNU-HKBU United International College 

Error in time estimation is a common phenomenon that is observed when people listen to music. Various studies suggest that music influences time estimation by affecting attention distribution. While previous literature shows that time estimation errors do exist while listening to music, it is unknown whether this error continues after listening to music. The current study aims at answering this question. In this study, 61 participants were divided into three groups. Each group performed time estimation tasks before and after listening to music, where each participant was asked to estimate a specific amount of time following a music listening task. The three groups were required to estimate 5, 15 and 30 seconds respectively. The results of the estimation task were bootstrapped to evaluate the confidence intervals of the estimations. Within each group, the time estimations after listening to music was compared with the estimations before listening to music. Effect sizes and the difference of mean were calculated using Bayesian statistics. Our results showed that the time estimation for 5 and 30 seconds were significantly different from the control group while the time estimation for 15 seconds did not significantly vary compared to the control group. These results indicate that short-term time estimation errors persist in humans after listening to music, indicative of the fact that a more complex timing function might play a role in time estimation.

Language areas adapt processing strategies to the temporal properties of speech

Presenter- Contact Information

Anastasia Klimovich-Gray

BCBL – Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language 

Co-Author

Nicola Molinaro

BCBL – Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language 

Temporal regularities of natural connected speech allow for optimised bottom-up speech signal processing while top-down semantic predictions help to integrate words into context. It is, however, unclear how these processes interact and adapt to the changes in speech speed or semantic content. In this study we asked how varying semantic constraints and temporal regularity of spoken sentences affect speech processing, specifically phonological analysis and semantic predictions. To do so we analysed time-resolved brain activity (MEG) while participants listened to variably constraining sentences. Additionally we disrupted the temporal regularity of speech by randomly speeding up and slowing down the audio signal. While all sentences were successfully comprehended, presence of temporal jitter engaged a markedly different cortical processing strategy. Temporal jitter predictably interfered with parsing – coherence between cortical signals and the sentence auditory envelope was reduced in the theta band (5-8Hz, right temporal sensors). Simultaneously, temporal jitter reduced listeners’ ability to generate top-down predictions about upcoming words (assessed with representational similarity analysis RSA) in the left frontotemporal areas. This prediction reduction coincided with stronger effects of phonological analysis for individual words. We argue that temporal regularity of the speech improves parsing, thereby reducing the perceptual processing cost and releasing resources for higher-order contextual analysis. Deterioration of temporal cues impedes speech parsing, degrades contextual effects and at the same time re-focuses the processing strategy to the extraction of phonological information. We show that the cortical language circuits dynamically adapt their processing to match the demands of the incoming speech stream.

Learning to control: How agents can optimally use top-down gating signals to implement different task sets.

Presenter- Contact Information

Pieter Verbeke

Ghent University 

Co-Author

Tom Verguts

Ghent University 

Cognitive control is commonly referred to as the ability to select task-relevant information and eliminate interference from task-irrelevant information. Additionally, it is generally accepted that cognitive control is implemented by top-down gating of task-relevant processing. Surprisingly, there are little systematic computational investigations of how such gating is best implemented. We evaluate four different ways of how this can be done. In a first approach, non-adaptive additive gating is applied. Here, in each task context, a different random top-down signal is provided to the network. This top-down input introduces an extra variability which reduces interference between tasks. Second, in adaptive additive gating, again top-down input is added to the network. However, here, top-down weights are susceptible to the same (backpropagation) learning rules as regular task-processing weights. Third, in random multiplicative gating, the network inhibits and/or excites a random proportion of pathways in every task context by multiplying activation with zero (inhibition) or a random positive value (excitation). Fourth, in adaptive multiplicative gating, the network learns which processing pathways to excite or inhibit in order to allow optimal overlap between task sets. We test the model on several alternating task sets with different degrees of overlap. While for some task sets, stimulus-response mappings are orthogonal, other task sets exhibit a partial or even complete overlap between the respective mappings. The adaptive multiplicative gating model outperforms all other models in terms of accuracy. Moreover, we show that this model develops hidden representations that optimally represent (dis)similarity between task contexts.

Links among GABAβ3 gene, brain excitation/inhibition imbalance, and sensory over-responsivity in neurotypical adults

Presenter- Contact Information

Yang-Teng Fan

National Chiao Tung University 

Co-Author

Szu-Ting Lin

National Chiao Tung University 

Co-Author

Shang-Yueh Tsai

National Chengchi University 

Co-Author

Tsai-Tsen Liao

Taipei Medical University 

Co-Author

Yawei Cheng

National Yang-Ming University 

Co-Author

Chung-Hsin Chiang

National Chengchi University 

Co-Author

Chih-Mao Huang

National Chiao Tung University 

Co-Author

Ovid J. L. Tzeng

Academia Sinica 

The excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance model, conceptualized as a disequilibrium between the glutamatergic and gamma-aminobutyric acidergic (GABAergic) inputs, has been hypothesized to underlie sensory alterations in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). Although evidence from genetic, neurochemical, and animal studies has provided partial support to this model, direct empirical evidence about the triadic relations among the genetic variations, brain E/I function, and sensory features in humans is lacking. To address these critical issues, we first recruited 84 neurotypical young adults, and then divided all participants based on their sensory features into two subgroups (those with and without sensory over-responsivity, or SOR and NSOR, respectively). Outcome measures include questionnaire-based sensory evaluations, brain magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) measures, and the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in GABRβ3. At the behavioral level, participants with the SOR not only exhibited higher levels of sensory responsivity, but also had greater autistic traits than those with the NSOR. At the neuronal level, an elevated Glx/GABA ratio within the prefrontal cortex was observed in the SOR group, and this increased cortical excitatory correlates with their degrees of sensory responsivity. Our genetic data further reveal that higher genotypic and allelic frequencies of the GABRβ3 SNPs (rs1426217) was noted in participants with the SOR. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the E/I imbalance accounts of patterns of sensory over-responsivity and help guide further research for ASC-associated sensory alterations.

Maternal depression is associated with alterations in reading-related neuronal circuitry among their preschool children

Presenter- Contact Information

Rola Farah

Technion Israel Institute of Technology 

Co-Author

Paige Greenwood

Cincinnati children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

Jonathan Dudley

Cincinnati children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

John S. Hutton

Cincinnati children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus

Technion Israel Institute of Technology 

Language development during early childhood is related to exposures to literacy materials and parent-child interaction. Studies have shown that engagement between mother and child is highly related to the mother’s mental health and to child’s cognitive and emotional development. Maternal depression is characterized by a lack of emotional responsiveness and engagement with their child, which may lead to decreased cognitive and language outcomes during child development and to altered reading acquisition. The goal of the current study was to define the neurobiological correlates between maternal depression and future reading related- neural circuits in their preschool children. Eleven 4-year old girls completed behavioral assessments to examine language abilities and resting state fMRI. Their mothers completed the Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI) to examine maternal depression. Results showed that higher maternal depression is associated with decreased within network connectivity of their child’s semantic and phonological network during rest (P<.05, FDR corrected). Post-hoc tests showed that this correlation was driven by the left and right angular gyrus (BA 39) being less connected with higher maternal depression scores. These results suggest that mothers that experience depressive symptoms have children with less stimulated phonological-related neural circuits. It might be that altered interaction of mothers with elevated depression levels with their young children could be related to decreased synchronization of these reading related networks during rest. We conclude that after a mother gives birth, resources should be provided to minimize depressive symptoms and interventions should be applied to support their child’s language development for future reading acquisition.

Maternal education and narrative comprehension in children with reading difficulties

Presenter- Contact Information

Paige Greenwood

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine 

Co-Author

Elisha Scott

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

Jonathan Dudley

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

John Hutton

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

Mark DiFrancesco

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Co-Author

Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus

Technion Israel Institute of Technology 

Narrative comprehension is the ability to comprehend oral language and is enhanced during parent-child engagement. However, children with reading difficulties (RD) often have deficits in core abilities such as executive functions (EFs) and language processing that are key for narrative comprehension development. Maternal education is a construct of socioeconomic status and is a predictor of language development and reading acquisition. Here, we aim to define the relationship between maternal education and the behavioral and neurobiological correlates of narrative comprehension for children with RD and typically developing readers (TRs). Seventy-two school age-children with RD and TRs performed reading, EFs and linguistic tasks, as well as an fMRI stories listening paradigm. Maternal education was collected as a continuous variable based on education in years. fMRI data was analyzed using a seed-to-voxel analysis focusing on the language network. Higher maternal education was associated with better receptive vocabulary and phonological processing in children with RD. Higher maternal education was also associated with increased functional connectivity between the language network and regions related to visual word recognition such as the left lingual gyrus and right intracalcarine cortex in children with RD vs. TRs. We suggest that maternal education may facilitate a compensatory mechanism for better language abilities, such as increased engagement of neural networks supporting imagination/visualization in children with RD.

Measurement Properties of Pupillary Dynamics

Presenter- Contact Information

Alexis Torres

Arizona State University 

Co-Author

Matthew Robison

The University of Texas at Arlington 

Co-Author

Gene Brewer

Arizona State University 

Pupillary dynamics partially index neuromodulatory signals from the noradrenergic and dopaminergic systems. These dynamics have been associated with a vast array of cognitively meaningful behaviors in the fields of perception, attention, and memory. In the current study, we sought to evaluate the psychometric measurement properties of pupillary dynamics across a set of attention tasks (Sustained Attention to Response Task, Psychomotor Vigilance Task, Color-Word Stroop Test, and Arrow Flanker Task) on two days of administration, separated by at least 6 days. Individual estimates of pupil size, pupil size variability, and pupil dilation in response to target stimuli were extracted for each task. We then measured within-task (split-half reliability) and between-task (convergent validity) correlations between these estimates. Overall, we found that individual differences in pupillary dynamics have strong psychometric properties that render them useful for evaluating individual differences. Moreover, pupillary dynamics were task general across 4 attention control tasks indicating that these dynamics likely reflect trait-like neuromodulation.

Mindfulness training dependent improvements in cognition and enhanced intrinsic hippocampal connectivity in older adults

Presenter- Contact Information

Gunes Sevinc

Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School 

Co-Author

Johann Rusche

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf 

Co-Author

Bonnie Wong

Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School 

Co-Author

Tanya Datta

David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA 

Co-Author

Robert Kaufman

UCSD 

Co-Author

Dorene Rentz

Brigham and Women’s Hospital 

Co-Author

Bradford Dickerson

Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School 

Co-Author

Sara Lazar

Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School 

Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan is a public health priority. Investigation of cognitive outcomes following various intervention methods for promoting and preserving brain structure and function, and associated neural mechanisms are therefore of critical importance. In this randomized controlled longitudinal study, we examined the behavioral and neural outcomes following mindfulness training (n=48), compared to a cognitive fitness program (n=49) in healthy, cognitively normal, older adults (65-80 years old). To assess cognitive functioning, we used the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite (PACC), that combines measures of episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition. We hypothesized that mindfulness training would enhance cognition, increase connectivity between the hippocampus and posteromedial cortex, as well as promote increased gray matter volume within those regions. Supporting our hypothesis, only mindfulness training led to improvements on the PACC. While there were no significant changes in gray matter volumes following the interventions, an investigation of mindfulness training dependent improvements demonstrated that increases in cognition were associated with increases in intrinsic connectivity within the default network components, particularly between the right hippocampus and posteromedial cortex, and between the left hippocampus and lateral parietal cortex. These findings demonstrate that mindfulness training improves cognitive performance in cognitively intact older individuals and promote successful cognitive aging through enhanced connectivity within the large-scale memory network.

Moral decision-making in individuals with Traumatic brain injury

Presenter- Contact Information

Malcolm Edwards

Meharry Medical College 

Co-Author

Emily Morrow

Vanderbilt University 

Co-Author

Melissa Duff

Vanderbilt University 

Individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) may display a wide range of cognitive impairments, including those related to decision-making and social/emotional cognition. However, we know less about how individuals with TBI perform on moral decision-making tasks, which purportedly tap both social and non-social cognitive processes. The current (in-progress) study explores moral decision-making in a large, well-characterized sample of individuals with TBI using the Trolley Dilemma paradigm (Greene et. al. in 2001), which has been widely employed in cognitive neuroscience. The paradigm juxtaposes utilitarian decisions (i.e. decisions that maximize aggregate welfare) with deontological decisions (i.e. decisions based on moral norms and other emotionally weighted inputs). Analysis is ongoing for data from 37 individuals with TBI and 51 demographically matched healthy comparison participants (HCs). We predict that individuals with TBI, relative to HCs, will display a higher proportion of utilitarian responses to personal dilemmas (i.e. moral dilemmas that require inflicting direct physical harm to another individual to maximize aggregate welfare). These data will inform mechanistic knowledge of moral decision-making in TBI and may aid in diagnostic and treatment strategies for decision-making impairments in this population.

MTL subregions differentially track repetition and recency across large timescales

Presenter- Contact Information

Mason Price

University of Oregon 

Co-Author

Emily Allen

University of Minnesota 

Co-Author

Yihan Wu

University of Minnesota 

Co-Author

Thomas Naselaris

Medical University of South Carolina 

Co-Author

Kendrick Kay

University of Minnesota 

Co-Author

1. Benjamin Hutchinson

University of Oregon 

It is well established that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is essential for successful episodic memory formation and retrieval. Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed greater BOLD activation for novel items relative to repeated presentations of a stimulus (repetition attenuation) in the hippocampus and surrounding MTL cortex. At the same time, work in behavioral neuroscience has also identified ‘time cells’ within subregions of the MTL, neuronal ensembles whose firing rates differ as a function of time elapsed. Recent human neuroimaging studies have provided further evidence that MTL subregions might be sensitive to temporal information. Taken together, these findings suggest that different MTL subregions might encode specific features of item repetitions. To investigate this question, we collected whole-brain fMRI responses at high field strength (7T; 1.8-mm resolution) while item repetitions (naturalistic images) were dispersed across intervals spanning seconds to nearly 9 months. Voxels sensitive to novelty were identified and activity was averaged within a range of MTL subregions. Further sensitivity to item repetition and recency were probed. Linear mixed effect models suggested perirhinal, subiculum, DG, and PHC tracked both repetition and recency, in line with what might be expected by attenuation. However, ERC and CA regions were better fit by a reduced model including recency alone, suggesting these areas potentially track time between repetitions rather than more basic aspects of item repetition. These effects provide insight into how the MTL might support fine-grained distinctions between the passage of time and item repetition.

Multivariate approaches on electroencephalography highlight the breakdown of modularity in visuospatial attention

Presenter- Contact Information

Mathieu Landry

École Normale Supérieure 

Co-Author

Jason Da Silva Castanheira

McGill University 

Co-Author

Jerome Sackur

École Normale Supérieure 

Co-Author

Amir Raz

McGill University 

The modular view of visuospatial attention posits that stimulus- and goal-driven orienting represent functionally independent systems. This dichotomy largely follows from their respective mode of control, wherein stimulus-driven orienting corresponds to involuntary shifts of attention due to salient events and goal-driven attention reflects voluntary control of orienting responses. While a large body of findings support this general construal, research about how these orienting systems operate alongside each other remains scant. As a consequence, limited evidence validates the idea that they are completely separable. Capitalizing on single and double cueing approaches to contrast the effects of each form of orienting alone against that of both forms when they are concurrently engaged, our study (N=32) used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess the modular view and determine whether they operate independently at the neural level during the orienting response and ensuing target-related processing. Multivariate analyses of EEG signals where we decoded the effects of attention highlight the breakdown of modularity for both orienting and target processing. In particular, we observed that goal-driven attention interferes with stimulus-driven orienting, even when both systems are simultaneously engaged towards the same spatial location. Further analyses intimate that attention-related changes in posterior alpha waves underlie the permeability of modularity in visuospatial attention. Our findings shed light on the complex dynamics that support attention processing and demonstrate how competition characterizes the relationship between stimulus- and goal-driven orienting at the sensory level.

Neural asymmetry in English vowel feature [high]: Evidence from /É?/ versus /?/

Presenter- Contact Information

Yan Yu

St. John’s University 

Co-Author

Valerie Shafer

The Graduate Center, City University of New York 

Co-Author

Astro Skliras

St. John’s University 

Co-Author

Julia Gonzalez

St. John’s University 

Co-Author

Megan Dicosta

St. John’s University 

Many studies have observed asymmetries in the amplitude of the neural index, Mismatch Negativity (MMN) dependent on which of a phonemically-contrastive minimal pair serves as the standard versus the deviant. Explanations for this pattern range from acoustic to linguistic factors. We tested whether the MMN amplitude asymmetry generated to the English mid vowel /É?/ versus high vowel /?/ contrast was compatible with an underspecification account, in which the underspecified height values are [-high] and [-low]. MMN was larger for /É?/ as the deviant, but only when compared to itself as the standard. For the within-condition comparison, MMN was larger to /?/ deviant minus /É?/ standard than to the reverse. A condition order effect was also observed. MMN amplitude was smaller to the deviant stimulus if it had previously served as the standard. These findings were compatible with an underspecification account, but also with other accounts, such as the Natural Referent Vowel model and a prototype model; we also suggest that non-linguistic factors need to be carefully considered as additional sources of speech processing asymmetries.

Neural basis for the processing of pain psychomimes: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Presenter- Contact Information

Qiong Ma

National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities 

Co-Author

Sachiko Kiyama

Tohoku University 

Co-Author

Michiru Makuuchi

National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities 

Pain psychomimes, a kind of Japanese onomatopoeias, help patients to effectively complain their pain. Psychomimes are supposed to yield emotional empathy in the other, since they vividly depict the speaker’s inner life. We performed fMRI to reveal the neural basis for the empathy processing via pain psychomimes (34 participants). Three types of sentences were examined. The first was sentences with a psychomime, like ‘I had a toothache zukizuki.’. The second was the same as the first, but with an adverb of degree instead of a psychomime, e.g., ‘I had a toothache strongly.’. The last described a painful event such as ‘I twisted my ankle on the playground’. The fMRI data were collected while participants read those sentences and rated the intensity of pain in four levels. We found that the activities in the empathy-related brain regions including the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula were correlated with the pain intensity ratings, especially for the psychomimes than for the adverbs. This suggests the superiority of psychomimes for arousing emotional empathy. A direct comparison revealed higher activation in the anterior and middle portion of middle temporal gyrus, pars opercularis bilaterally and in left anterior superior temporal gyrus in the adverb condition than in the psychomimes condition. This result suggests that adverbs require extra computational cost than psychomimes. Taken together, these findings fit well with the native Japanese speakers’ preferential use of psychomimes for depicting their pain because of the efficacy of invoking empathy and the lower neural computational cost.

Neural maturity, entropy and variance are complementary markers of mathematics development in the human brain

Presenter- Contact Information

Marie Amalric

Carnegie Mellon University 

Co-Author

Jessica Cantlon

Carnegie Mellon University 

Most of what we know about mathematics development in the human brain has been established using highly controlled laboratory paradigms that tend to minimize extraneous input. However, natural mathematics learning at school implements narrative lessons in a visually and auditorily rich environment. Understanding how the human brain processes information from dynamic naturalistic input is a key question of neuroscience. A critical step to answer this question is understanding how neural activity during real world naturalistic tasks relates to neural activity in more traditional laboratory tasks. In the present study, we first used intersubject correlations to locate reliable stimulus-driven neural processes among children and adults in naturalistic and laboratory versions of a mathematics task that shared the same content. Second, we introduced the measure of multiscale entropy, rather novel for fMRI studies of child learning, to further examine the temporal properties of children’s neural responses during the naturalistic and laboratory tasks. Our findings revealed that naturalistic learning tasks elicited content-specific activation in regions commonly observed with the controlled laboratory task, but entropy in the neural signals distinguished the naturalistic task from the controlled task, and showed evidence of developmental change in signal complexity. Additionally, children’s neural entropy and variance in neural responses within mathematics-related regions respectively correlated and anti-correlated with their neural maturity, showing increasing signal complexity and decreasing variance with increasing adult-like activity. These results suggest that neural maturity, neural entropy and neural variance are three independent but complementary markers of functional brain development.

Peak-trough asymmetry in alpha oscillations: A novel marker of hyperacusis in anxiety

Presenter- Contact Information

Jessica Simon

Florida State University 

Co-Author

Joshua Brown

Florida State University 

Co-Author

Mason Rademaker

Florida State University 

Co-Author

Nicholas Wellman

Florida State University 

Co-Author

Wen Li

Florida State University 

Alpha oscillations (8-12 Hz) are key in mediating sensory gating and sensory cortical inhibition. Attenuated alpha oscillations are implicated in anxiety-related hypervigilance, especially in the auditory modality. Auditory hypersensitivity (hyperacusis) is disproportionately represented in anxious individuals. However, current parameters of alpha activity (i.e., power, connectivity, or peak frequency) seem insufficient in specifying the association between alpha oscillations and sensory perception. Here, we examined a novel alpha parameter, alpha amplitude fluctuation asymmetry index (AFAI), which quantifies the asymmetry in the peak and trough of each alpha cycle and provides a nuanced index of alpha modulation (i.e., positive/negative AFAI respectively indexes bias to positive/negative half cycle and more/less neural inhibition). We hypothesized that AFAI would be negatively related to hyperacusis in anxiety. Participants (N = 108) underwent a 3-minute resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) recording, trait anxiety assessment, and intensity and unpleasantness ratings of sounds of quiet, medium, and loud levels with the slope of ratings across the levels indexing hyperacusis. Indeed, AFAI correlated with anxiety (r =- .24, p = .014) and hyperacusis (perceived intensity/unpleasantness: r = .25/.24, p’s < .05). Critically, AFAI mediated the relationship between anxiety and hyperacusis (especially perceived intensity, B = -.07). In comparison, there was no relation between the other alpha parameters and anxiety or hyperacusis, barring one between hyperacusis (perceived intensity) and peak alpha frequency (r = .29). Thus, negatively biased alpha asymmetry could underpin hyperacusis in anxious individuals, presenting a novel physiological marker of hyperacusis in anxiety.

Phenomenological and electrophysiological correlates of executive and affective mind wandering

Presenter- Contact Information

Paloma Manguele

University of Sussex, School of Psychology 

Co-Author

Sophie Forster

University of Sussex, School of Psychology 

Co-Author

Fiona Wiegert

University of Sussex, School of Psychology 

Previous research has highlighted that mind-wandering can serve important functions such as planning for the future, decision making, and strategic problem solving relating to our current concerns. However, such ‘executive’ forms of mind wandering can also take negative forms in terms of worry. The goals of the present research were to characterize the phenomenology of executive forms of spontaneous mind wandering, in relation to both emotional valence and mental time travel, and to facilitate future research in this area by establishing objective electrophysiological markers for executive and affective dimensions of thought. To address our first goal, two large online studies (total N = 605) employed intermittent probes during an audio lecture at which participants rated and reported their thought contents. Thirty-eight percent of thoughts were rated as moderately or highly strategic. These ‘executive thoughts’ were more likely to be future-oriented than those rated as less strategic. Individual propensity to strategic thought predicted the prospective bias but was not consistently linked to thought valence or anxiety. We then asked 30 participants to perform a series of thought exercises designed to simulate mind wandering, varying in strategic content and emotional valence, while EEG and facial EMG data were recorded. More strategic thoughts and negative valence were reflected in increased frontal beta and activity of the corrugator supercilii muscle, respectively. Our findings hence provide the foundation for future research testing the ability of these objective electrophysiological markers to index executive and affective dimensions of spontaneous thought contents.

Predicting the efficacy of intermittent theta burst stimulation from the microstructural properties of the white matter

Presenter- Contact Information

Ikko Kimura

Osaka University 

Co-Author

Hiroki Oishi

Osaka University 

Co-Author

Masamichi Hayashi

Center for Information and Neural Networks 

Co-Author

Kaoru Amano

Center for Information and Neural Networks 

Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) is one of the patterned repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) protocols that produce long-lasting facilitation of cortical excitability. While several studies have reported substantial individual differences in the efficacy of iTBS, the source of its variability remains elusive. Here, we show that the efficacy of iTBS is associated with the microstructural properties of the white matter. The iTBS was applied over the right primary motor cortex (M1) with 80% active motor threshold. Immediately before and after the iTBS, motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were measured to evaluate the change in cortico-spinal excitability. Before the iTBS, we collected diffusion and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI, qMRI) data. Intra-cellular volume fraction (ICVF) and macromolecular tissue volume (MTV) were estimated from dMRI and qMRI, respectively. A tract-based spatial statistics approach was used to examine the correlations between the iTBS-induced MEP modulation and ICVF or MTV in each voxel (N=16). We found that individual differences in the MEP modulation were negatively correlated with ICVF in the white matter connected to M1, specifically around the precentral gyrus, angular gyrus, and corpus callosum. The MEP modulation was not associated with the stimulation intensity producing MEP, intensity of iTBS, and MTV. We speculate that the white matter with weaker structural connectivity, reflected in lower ICVF, is more susceptible to the effect of iTBS. These results suggest that the white matter properties can predict the outcome of iTBS, proposing a potential clinical application for a prior assessment of effectiveness in rTMS treatment.

Prediction of treatment-related language recovery in post-stroke aphasia from neuroimaging and behavioral data

Presenter- Contact Information

Anne Billot

Boston University 

Co-Author

Sha Lai

Boston University 

Co-Author

Maria Varkanitsa

Boston University 

Co-Author

Emily Braun

Boston University 

Co-Author

Murtadha Bahrani

Boston University 

Co-Author

Brenda Rapp

Johns Hopkins University 

Co-Author

Todd Parrish

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

David Caplan

Harvard Medical School 

Co-Author

Cynthia Thompson

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Prakash Ishwar

Boston University 

Co-Author

Margrit Betke

Boston University 

Co-Author

Swathi Kiran

Boston University 

Individuals with post-stroke aphasia show different patterns of recovery. In this study, we investigated whether the combination of multimodal neuroimaging, behavioral and demographic data could improve prediction of language recovery for individuals with aphasia compared to models using a single feature type.
55 individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia completed a 12-week language treatment. Participants underwent a battery of language and neuropsychological assessments and an MRI scan before the treatment. Treatment probes specific to the language domain trained were administered every week. Behavioral scores (aphasia severity, cognitive composite scores), demographic data (age, months post-stroke onset, education), information on the brain structural integrity (lesion size, percent spared in grey and white matter regions, fractional anisotropy in white matter tracts) and functional connectivity data (bivariate pairwise correlations between regions of interest) were included as input features in the models. Responsiveness to treatment corresponds to the percentage change in treatment probe accuracy and was predicted using classification models. Responders and non-responders to treatment were classified using Random forests and Support Vector Machine models. Performance of models using a single feature and combined feature sets were evaluated using a leave-one-out cross-validation procedure.
Pilot data demonstrated that models including multiple feature sets better predict responsiveness to treatment (best multimodal model: F1 score=86.49 vs. best single feature set model: F1 score=77.78). Specifically, functional connectivity information and aphasia severity seem to be strong predictors of treatment-related language recovery in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Ongoing analyses include (i) feature engineering and fine-tuning on classification models and (ii) regression models.

Psychosocial Stress Modulates Performance and Neural Information Processing during a Go/NoGo Task

Presenter- Contact Information

Chrystal Spencer

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Co-Author

Ravi D. Mill

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Co-Author

Jamil Bhanji

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Co-Author

Mauricio Delgado

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Co-Author

Michael W. Cole

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Co-Author

Elizabeth Tricomi

Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA 

Psychosocial stress affects learning, memory, and attention, but the influence of stress on the neural processes supporting cognitive performance remains unclear. We investigated how psychosocial stress influences performance and neural processing during a Go/NoGo task. Eighty participants either underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) stress induction, or completed personality questionnaires as a control condition. Then, participants completed an fMRI Go/NoGo task, with blood pressure and salivary cortisol measurements taken intermittently. The TSST was successful in eliciting a stress response, as indicated by subjective stress ratings (t = -9.57, p < 0.001) and change in systolic blood pressure (t = -2.47, p = 0.018). Participants who underwent the TSST made fewer commission errors on trials requiring the most inhibitory control relative to the control group (t = -2.86, p = 0.026), suggesting increased vigilance. Univariate GLM analysis of task brain activity revealed no between-group differences for any region. However, using multivariate pattern analysis, stress and control groups were differentiated in the medial intraparietal area (mIPA, affiliated to the dorsal attention network; classification accuracy (CA) = 69.4%; FDR-corrected p = 0.045); the cerebellum (default mode network; CA = 72.2%; p = 0.019); and the brainstem (visual network; CA = 70.8%, p = 0.025). The mIPA and the cerebellum have been implicated in visuomotor coordination, a function central to goal-directed behavior. These results suggest that stressor-induced hypervigilance can have a facilitative effect on cognitive performance which is represented neurally by the activation patterns of cognitive control regions.

Quantitative meta-analyses of fMRI Correlates of Executive Functions Training

Presenter- Contact Information

Valentina Bachurina

Higher School of Economics National Research University 

Co-Author

Marie Arsalidou

Higher School of Economics National Research University 

Executive functions (EFs) can be defined as a set of cognitive abilities that enable concentration, and flexibility when generating solutions to complex goal-directed mental actions. Performance on laboratory tests of EFs has been associated with important components of well-being and social success. A large number of training and intervention programs are being designed and advertised to improve EFs. Given the importance of EFs and potential impact of EFs training we need to improve our understanding of neural representation of such interventions. The goal of the current quantitative meta-analyses is to examine concordance of brain responses associated with the effectiveness of EFs intervention. PRISMA guidelines were used for article selection and eligibility identification. Searches in Web of Science and PubMed with keywords ‘training’, ‘intervention’, ‘functional magnetic resonance imaging’, ‘functional MRI’, ‘executive function’, ‘inhibition’, ‘updating’, ‘switching’, ‘cognitive flexibility’, ‘working memory’, ‘inhibitory’ yielded 1399 (Web of Science), and 304 (PubMed) potential studies. Selection criteria included fMRI studies that examine EFs in healthy young adults, reported pre- and post- training whole-brain stereotaxic coordinates resulted in 17 eligible articles. GingerALE was used to analyses coordinates related to pre- and post- training. Preliminary results show that key concordance related to EF intervention is expressed in medial, superior and middle frontal gyri and the anterior insula. Frontal regions are generally associated with cognitive processing whereas the insula is related with various interoceptive, cognitive and affective functions. Implications for EF training programs are discussed.
Support is gratefully acknowledged from the Russian Science Foundation #17-18-01047

Reaction Time and Dynamic Postural Control Changes Stemming From History of Concussion

Presenter- Contact Information

Nicholas Reilly

Old Dominion University 

Co-Author

Jessica Prebor

Old Dominion University 

Co-Author

Jacquelyn Moxey

Old Dominion University 

Co-Author

Eric Schussler

Old Dominion University 

Concussion is a form of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) associated with a wide spectrum of potential symptoms including altered cognitive function and balance impairments during gait. Traditionally, determinations of recovery from concussion are defined by the resolution of neurocognitive symptoms including increases in reaction time. However, concussion has been associated with long-term reductions in postural stability during gait despite returns to baseline for neurocognitive performance. To date, there is limited research aimed at examining the relationship between changes in reaction time and long-term changes in gait stability associated with concussion. In the present study, simple reaction time and gait stability were measured in individuals that had previously sustained a diagnosed concussion (n=29) and those with no prior history of concussion (n=27). Reaction time was measured based on the average duration of time between the presentation of a light-based stimulus and the individual’s motor response over twenty trials. Gait parameters were collected by having participants walk over a six-meter pressure-sensitive mat at their preferred walking speed. Despite averaging over seven years since their most recent diagnosed injury, individuals with a prior history of concussion demonstrated significantly shorter steps and slower cadences during gait, indicating the use of compensatory strategies for poorer postural control. However, there were no significant differences between groups based on average reaction time. Collectively, these findings indicate that lingering postural control deficits stemming from concussion are not the result of changes in volitional cognitive processing speed.

Representations of concepts diverge according to the emotional value.

Presenter- Contact Information

martina riberto

 

Co-Author

Rony Paz

Weizmann Institute of science 

Co-Author

Gorana Pobric

University of Manchester 

Co-Author

Deborah Talmi

University of Cambridge 

Background. Emotional and neutral concepts are represented in different brain regions. However, it is still unknown whether the emotional value of each stimulus is encoded separately or integrated in semantic and high-level visual regions. This is of paramount importance for the debate in semantic cognition on organisation of semantic memory, and for possible treatments of anxiety disorders.
Methods. 29 participants took part in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiment where they performed a visual complexity rating of 72 complex pictures, which depicted 4 categories of realistic events (2 neutrals and 2 negative emotional). After, participants arranged these pictures in a bidimensional space, according to the similarity among them. In two separate searchlight Representation Similarity Analyses (RSA), we correlated participants’ neural pattern activations and their perceived similarity within emotional (EE) and neutral (NN) categories (pFDR <0.05).
Results. NN was correlated with clusters in the bilateral occipital place area (OPA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA). In addition to OPA and PPA, EE correlated with clusters in the bilateral precuneus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and left anterior insula. EE and NN correlations significantly differed, with EE showing higher correlations between neural pattern activations and participants’ similarity space (pFWE <0.05).
Conclusions. Representations of concepts inherent to realistic events are grounded in high-level visual regions, including the OPA and PPA. The emotional value is separately encoded in areas involved in emotional processing and regulation. This suggests that concepts formation relies on the interaction between regions that code relevant stimulus properties.

Resolving competition during memory-guided visual exploration

Presenter- Contact Information

Serra Favila

Columbia University 

Co-Author

Mariam Aly

Columbia University 

Memory allows us to use previous experiences to guide what we attend to in the complex world. Because day-to-day events share many commonalities, resolving competition between similar experiences is critical for memory-guided attention: a given memory must be selected while competing, irrelevant ones must be suppressed. We focus on eye movements as an index of attention, and ask how the brain’s visual and memory systems resolve competition to guide visual exploration. Human participants performed a visual search task in which they had a limited amount of time to find a spatially-localized distortion in a scene. This task was embedded within a repeating sequence of twelve scene categories with two exemplars each, one of which was presented on each pass through the sequence. Critically, participants learned that the scene exemplar they saw on a given trial predicted the location of the distortion on the next trial. This memory-derived prediction could be used to improve search accuracy, but only if interference between category exemplars was resolved. We hypothesize that efficient eye movements will be supported by interactions between hippocampus and visual cortex during the inter-trial interval, when memories can be used to anticipate upcoming target locations. We will use model-based analyses of fMRI data to measure the precision of memory-based spatial representations in visual cortex, and test whether interference resolution in the hippocampus drives anticipatory patterns in visual cortex to promote behavioral efficiency. This in-progress work will help establish how the brain selects among competing memories to guide attention and visual exploration.

Response inhibition in schizophrenia: neural mechanisms revealed by the P3 and lateralized readiness potential

Presenter- Contact Information

Xiangfei Hong

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Fuzhong Yang

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Yegang Hu

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Zhenying Qian

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Jijun Wang

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Chunbo Li

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Co-Author

Jianhua Sheng

Shanghai Mental Health Center 

Schizophrenia is characterized by increased impulsivity and poorly planned behavior, which may originate from a deficit in the response inhibition system. We hypothesized that inhibition deficits in schizophrenia might depend on the specific levels of response tendencies that need to be inhibited. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the event-related potential marker of response inhibition, i.e., P3, recorded from 29 schizophrenia patients (SZs; 17 women; mean age: 30.4 years) and 31 healthy control subjects (HCs; 17 women; mean age: 29.1 years) in a combined flanker-Go/NoGo task. The response tendency level in each NoGo trial was quantified by its lateralized readiness potential (LRP). For each subject, the NoGo trials were sorted into 3 groups according to their response tendency levels, i.e., single-trial LRPs. Behaviorally, we found that although SZs showed lower NoGo accuracy than HCs (p = 0.016), the NoGo accuracy decreased as the response tendency level increased in both groups (p = 0.003). For P3, the two-way ANOVA did not reveal significant main effect of group (p = 0.481), but reveal a significant interaction between response tendency and group (p = 0.003). Further tests suggested that only HCs showed significantly increased P3 amplitudes as the response tendency level increased (p = 0.019). In contrast, SZs showed a trend of decreased P3 amplitudes as the response tendency level increased (p = 0.125). Together, these results support our hypothesis by suggesting that the failure to increase P3 amplitudes in response to increased response tendency levels might underlie the inhibition deficits in SZs.

Resting-state brain connectivity and reading in pre- and beginning readers

Presenter- Contact Information

Yingying Wang

University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

Co-Author

Soyoung Park

spark25@huskers.unl.edu 

Co-Author

Avantika Mathur

University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

Co-Author

Marusha Ather

University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

Fluent decoding of written text is the foundation of a successful transition from pre-reading to the beginning reading stage, which requires complex cognitive processes including both bottom-up and top-down processes. Resting-state brain connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging offers a task-free design to study the neural plasticity of brain networks. There is a scant understanding of how resting-state brain connectivity relates to reading development dynamics during this critical transition period from typically developing pre-readers to beginning readers. In this study, we examined the developmental patterns of resting-state brain connectivity and determined individual variances in reading-related psychometric measures, as well as brain-behavioral relationships in 17 pre-readers (4.6-6.9 years) and 12 beginning readers (7.0-10.0 years). Beginning readers had stronger functional connectivity between lateral occipital-temporal and bilateral posterior superior temporal gyrus than pre-readers. The composite scores of decoding skills from the two groups combined were significantly positively correlated with functional connectivity strength between the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior portion of the cerebellar network (r=.57, p=.004). Our findings suggested that beginning readers had stronger functional connectivity between visual and language networks than pre-readers, which may reflect the beginning readers’ acquisition of orthographic knowledge and better decoding skills. This difference in functional connectivity during the transition from pre-reading to beginning reading stages had not been reported in other resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.

Review of the Late Positive Potential Suitability as a Neural Marker of Cognitive Reappraisal in Youth

Presenter- Contact Information

Heather Kennedy

McGill University 

Co-Author

Tina Montreuil

McGill University 

Socio-emotional difficulties in youth have negative ramifications for academic, social, emotional, and behavioural functioning. As such it is imperative to support healthy social and emotional development as early as possible to optimize overall social functioning. Emotion regulation plays a critical role in healthy socio-emotional development; thus, it is essential to better understand how children effectively manage their emotions from an early age. Determining effective use of emotion regulation strategies first lies on the accurate measurement of youth emotion regulation processes. However, commonly used data collection methods (i.e., self-report, parent-report, observation, etc.) present consistent shortcomings. This brief review highlights the growing body of research findings supporting the suitability of the late positive potential (LPP), measured through electroencephalography, as a neural marker of emotion regulation in youth, which presents as promising to override existing methodological limitations. More specifically, LPP could be efficiently used to measure children’s cognitive reappraisal abilities (a common adaptive emotion regulation strategy). Results generally suggest that LPPs are sensitive to directed reappraisal in children. However, given the scant research in its implications with children, questions remain regarding developmental trends, methodology, interindividual variability, reappraisal of various stimuli, and how the late positive potential offset shortcomings of more traditional measures of emotion regulation. Implications of LPP for future research are provided to address these gaps in the scholarly literature. Taken together, this review suggests that the LPP is generally sensitive to ecologically measure cognitive reappraisal in children, representing a promising avenue in establishing LPP as a neural marker of emotion regulation.

Reward prediction error signals in the amygdala selectively guide social learning under uncertainty

Presenter- Contact Information

Amrita Lamba

Brown University 

Co-Author

Matt Nassar

Brown University 

Co-Author

Oriel FeldmanHall

Brown University 

Learning about others’ trustworthiness often serves as an informative cue of social rewards, particularly in highly uncertain situations. While considerable research efforts have focused on nonsocial reward learning, much less is known about the neural computations supporting social reward learning. More specifically, how do humans learn to trust? Here we leverage computational neuroimaging approaches to investigate how individuals learn about information along value and uncertainty dimensions. We then examine how this knowledge is exploited to build a representation of trustworthiness that can adaptively guide social choice. Using the Trust Game (TG) and a matched nonsocial slot machine (SM) task, we examined how swiftly participants (N = 28) learned to make reward-maximizing choices across these contexts. Social partners and slot machines were preprogrammed to drift in their trustworthiness/monetary reward across the task. Compared to nonsocial SMs with matched reward distributions, results reveal that participants were faster to learn and experienced fewer reward prediction errors (RPEs) when interacting with consistently trustworthy or selfish partners, which correlated with activation of the striatum. In contrast, when interacting with social partners who indiscriminately showed trustworthy and untrustworthy behavior (i.e., highly uncertain behavioral profiles), participants were slower to learn and experienced greater RPEs during the TG compared to the SM. RPEs associated with learning about uncertain social partners uniquely scaled with activity in the amygdala, whereas the striatum indexed learning about uncertain SMs. These results suggest that context-selective representation of RPEs in the amygdala and striatum may drive asymmetrical learning profiles across social and nonsocial environments.

Self-attribution of cardiac activity is mediated by synchronously presented feedback of heartbeats

Presenter- Contact Information

Paradeisios Boulakis

Physiology of Cognition Lab 

Co-Author

Federico Raimondo

Institute of Systems Neuroscience,Medical Faculty 

Co-Author

Sepehr Mortaheb

Physiology of Cognition Lab 

Co-Author

Lionel Naccache

INSERM, Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière 

Co-Author

Athina Demertzi

Physiology of Cognition Lab 

The theoretical account of embodiment indicates that self-awareness emerges from a dynamic interaction between interoceptive states and the brain. Here, we provide empirical quantification of the neural substrate of interoceptive cardiac activity attribution to oneself. Seventeen healthy participants were scanned (3T MRI) while carrying electrocardiogram (ECG). During scanning, subjects were listening to auditory sounds presented either in synchrony or out of synchrony to the recorded ECG. After listening to a sequence of sounds (30-50 beeps, mean sequence duration= 40s) participants had to judge by button press whether the sequence was generated from their own heartbeat and belonged to them (‘Mine’) or it was artificially generated and belonged to someone else (‘Other’). We found that interoceptive judgments were located at the thalamical-basal ganglia level (T =5.69, puncorr=.001), highlighting the subcortical hierarchy of interoception. Self-attribution of the presented sounds (Mine vs Other) activated bilateral superior parietal regions (T=5.50, puncorr=.001) and the left operculum (T=3.68, = 15, puncorr=.001)), in line with previous accounts of parietal mediation in self-related content. Finally, reaction times were slower in relation to the accuracy of the responses (b=-1.31, [CI]=[-2.41,-0.22], p=.03, R2=0.14), with good perceivers (Mine+Aynchronous feedback, Other+Asynchronous feedback) responding faster (Mreact_time = 0.87s) than bad perceivers (Mine+Asynchronous feedback, Other+Synchronous feedback (Mreact_time = 1.12s), suggesting a more readily accessible representation of internal signals. Our results point to a two-step hierarchical model of self-awareness in typical subjects and provide empirical data to current theories of interoceptive predictive coding on subjectivity.

Single word and passage-level errors in patients with neglect dyslexia: A case series study

Presenter- Contact Information

Timothy Rich

Kessler Foundation 

Co-Author

Olga Boukrina

Kessler Foundation 

Co-Author

Peii Chen

Kessler Foundation 

Individuals with spatial neglect (SN) following right brain damage distribute insufficient attention to the left side of space or objects. In the associated reading impairment, neglect dyslexia (ND), patients err on the left side of a word or omit words nearest the left margin of a passage of text. It remains unclear if the presence of one or both of these error types is related to lesion location or other SN characteristics. Here we compared lesion location and performance on a number of assessments for SN among three stroke survivors with SN – one ND+ patient with primarily passage-level errors, one ND+ patient with passage- and word-level errors, and one ND- patient with non-lateralized passage-level errors. Lesion analyses showed that the two ND+ patients had subcortical white matter (WM) lesions affecting superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi while the ND- patient had a temporoparietal lesion sparing the longitudinal WM connections. The two ND+ patients also showed poorer performance on visual search (cancellation) tasks than the ND- patient. Thus, we observed neurologic and behavioral distinctions between ND+ and ND- patients, but no apparent difference between ND+ patients who have reading errors at different levels. The findings suggest that damage to association fibers that connect cortical areas within the same hemisphere results in a more severe spatial impairment and produces reading deficits. Further large-scale research is needed to study the neural basis of reading errors at single-word level versus passage level.

Stimulation of distinct parietal locations differentiates frontal vs hippocampal network involvement in episodic memory

Presenter- Contact Information

Shruti Dave

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Borna Bonakdarpour

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine 

Co-Author

Marek-Marsel Mesulam

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine 

Co-Author

Joel Voss

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine 

The hippocampus and inferior frontal cortex are thought to have distinct yet interactive roles in episodic memory formation, although mechanisms for their interaction remain unclear. Furthermore, these regions belong to distinct large-scale networks that are thought to include non-overlapping territories of parietal cortex, although this parietal network distinction has not been directly tested. To address these issues, we applied noninvasive theta-burst stimulation to two locations of parietal cortex: one putatively belonging to the hippocampal network and one to the frontal network. These stimulation conditions were performed in different experimental sessions before a memory encoding task and we measured the effects of stimulation on fMRI metrics of network interactions and on memory performance. Replicating previous experiments, fMRI activity associated with successful memory formation was identified within left inferior frontal gyrus. Stimulation of a parietal location of the hippocampal network decoupled the hippocampal network from the frontal areas implicated in memory formation and reduced memory performance. These effects were observed relative to stimulation of the nearby parietal location of the frontal network and relative to a control stimulation condition. This provides direct evidence that interactions of inferior frontal cortex with the distributed hippocampal network support memory formation and indicates that adjacent locations of lateral parietal cortex have functionally distinct effects on these interactions, confirming the segregation of hippocampal versus frontal network locations within lateral parietal cortex.

Structural connectome and lesion-based predictors of reading in subacute left-hemisphere stroke.

Presenter- Contact Information

Olga Boukrina

Center for Stroke Rehabilitation Research 

Co-Author

A.M. Barrett

Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation 

Co-Author

Ashish Mistry

Rocco Ortenzio Neuroimaging Center 

Co-Author

William Graves

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 

Reading relies on a distributed network of brain areas subserving word-form recognition (orthography), letter-to-sound mapping (phonology), and auditory and visual word-form to meaning mapping (semantics). Stroke can directly impact these areas or result in disconnections among multiple areas not directly affected by a lesion. In the aphasia literature, there is a lack of consensus on the prognostic value of the structural connectome in predicting post-stroke impairments compared to lesion volume and location data. While some studies show that lesion and connectome-based predictors of language deficits are comparable in accuracy, others report no advantage for connectivity-based prediction over lesion data alone on a wide range of language tests. Using multimodal neuroimaging data from 37 left-stroke patients undergoing acute rehabilitation, we examine the contribution of structural lesions and white matter (WM) connectivity to reading impairments defined by orthography, phonology, and semantics competence. Voxelwise lesion analysis controlling for lesion volume identified supramarginal, inferior temporal and fusiform gyri, and insular white matter as areas of damage most associated with phonological impairments. Lateral occipital, middle frontal, parahippocampal cortex, precuneus, putamen, and the splenium were associated with semantic impairments. Fusiform, supramarginal, insular cortex, and white matter underlying the inferior frontal cortex were linked with orthographic impairments. Our findings re-emphasize the importance of major white matter (WM) tracts in reading through WM integrity-behavior associations for orthography (inferior fronto-occipital fasciculi (IFOF)), phonology (superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi (SLF, ILF), and semantics (SLF, IFOF, cingulum, corpus callosum). Disruption of this connectivity is associated with specific dimensions of reading.

Task network effects are specialized to individuals: lessons from machine learning applied to precision fMRI

Presenter- Contact Information

Alexis Porter

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Ashley Nielsen

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Caterina Gratton

Northwestern University 

Recent precision neuroimaging work has identified unique brain characteristics that correspond to differences in task network effects at the individual level. However, to what extent are task networks specific to a given individual. In this work we examined the role of individual differences and task general modifications by training a machine learning algorithm to identify cognitive states along a single subject’s multi-session data. We utilized the Midnight Scan Club, a precision fMRI dataset containing 10 subjects scanned across 10 sessions under 5 different cognitive states (rest, 4 tasks). We trained a classifier to discriminate functional connectivity obtained during task(s) from functional connectivity obtained during rest using a leave one out cross validation scheme. We then assessed the models ability to label the unseen single subject test set from the same subject, or a different subject in the same task. We found that the model was able to perform above chance across all within and between subject analysis, with significantly higher classification accuracy within subject. We then examined the model’s ability to generalize features to a different task. We found some evidence for generalizable task modifications but this largely varied across the training task. This work suggests that between-subject approaches are blind to major sources of variation in brain networks across tasks. Moreover, individualized precision approaches have the potential to improve our understanding of how brain networks operate across different states.

Texture Glossiness May Provide A Cue to Perceptions of Real-World Object Size

Presenter- Contact Information

James Brown

Virginia Tech 

Co-Author

Maria Eddleman

Virginia Tech 

Two separate lines of research in object recognition are studies of materials perception and studies of real-world object size perception. Recent studies on real-world object size perception and texture indicate mid-level features may cue representations of object size in the absence of object identity. However, these findings are somewhat controversial, and beyond that what mid-level features cue object size is not clear. Mid-level features have always been the focus of materials perception studies of gloss and specular highlights, but to date no research has been conducted that attempts to link findings on the perception of materials to high-level object features like real-world object size. Three separate experiments were conducted to study the relationship between perceptions of object size and surface glossiness. Previous research on the relationship between perceived object size and real-world object size were replicated; Likert scale rankings of perceived object size and veridical object size followed a strong positive correlation. A significant two-way interaction between ratings of perceived glossiness, object size, and texture was found. Follow-up analyses indicated that perceptions of gloss were present across categorical differences in real-world object size in both the object image and texture image task groups. For the normal object images, small objects were perceived as being glossier than big objects. For the texture images, big objects were perceived as being glossier than small objects. These data indicate that categorical distinctions in perceived real-world object size are dissociable by similarly broad distinctions in perceived surface glossiness.

The Behavioural Relationship Between Memory and Spatial Cognition is Weaker in Older Adults

Presenter- Contact Information

Adina Levi

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Zorry Belchev

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Leanne Mendoza

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Madison Fraser

Rotman Research Institute 

Co-Author

Dr. Robin Green

University Health Network 

Co-Author

Dr. Gary Turner

York University 

Co-Author

Dr. Asaf Gilboa

Rotman Research Institute 

The hippocampus has been heavily implicated in two cognitive domains – memory and spatial cognition. Major theories predict a close relationship between these two domains, but empirical evidence is scarce and mixed. It has been established that healthy aging is associated with a decline in both hippocampal volume and function, but it is unclear how these declines affect the relationship between these domains. We investigated whether a relationship between mnemonic and spatial hippocampal-dependent abilities exists in younger and older adults. The Mnemonic Similarity Task was used to index pattern separation and the Memory Image Completion to index pattern completion. Spatial cognition was measured objectively using virtual navigation and path integration tasks and subjectively using navigation questionnaires. In younger adults, both subjective and objective measures of spatial abilities, most prominently mental mapping abilities, successfully predicted both memory processes. Validation analyses in older adults based on the structure of the relationship in the younger adults did not support a behavioural dependence between the two domains. Exploratory analyses in the older adult group also did not reveal a significant relationship between the two. These results suggest that abilities in memory and spatial cognition domains are related in younger adults, but that in healthy aging the two are independent. These findings help to establish the understanding of the functional relatedness of structurally-related abilities, and can help to inform the development of interventions for aging.

The Effect of Frequent Cannabis-Use on Cognitive-Motor Tasks

Presenter- Contact Information

Assel Al-Bayati

York University 

Co-Author

Holly Clayton

York University 

Co-Author

Ryan Cortez

York University 

Co-Author

Bernard Marius ’t Hart

York University 

Co-Author

Denise Henriques

York University 

Since the legalization of recreational use of cannabis took effect in Canada, many questions have been brought forward regarding its immediate and sustained effect on daily tasks. To investigate the effect of cannabis on various brain functions, we created a battery of cognitively demanding, visual-spatial and visual-motor tasks. Here, we discuss preliminary findings of two tasks. The first is a speeded Go/No-Go task (80% go, 20% no-go) that measures the ability to inhibit motor impulses. Task performance is analyzed by comparing the proportion of false alarms on no-go trials as well as reaction times on hits and false alarms in frequent cannabis users (N=34) and non-users (N=62). Our findings indicate that frequent users and non-users performed similarly, except that frequent cannabis users exhibited less false alarms. These results may suggest the absence of a negative effect of cannabis on performance of impulse inhibition. The second task is a spatial N-Back task (1-Back, 2-Back, & 3-Back) which assesses working memory and working memory capacity. This task is analyzed by comparing the proportion and reaction times of correct and incorrect trials in frequent cannabis users (N=29) and non-users (N=51). We found no difference in task performance on the spatial N-Back task for frequent users of cannabis, versus non-users. These results may suggest that frequent cannabis-use is not associated with working memory impairments. While there might be immediate effects of cannabis use, our preliminary results show little to no prolonged effects of cannabis on spatial working memory and impulsivity control.

The human hippocampus guides visual sampling based on the recent past to optimize learning

Presenter- Contact Information

James Kragel

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Stephan Schuele

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Stephen VanHaerents

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Joshua Rosenow

Northwestern University 

Co-Author

Joel Voss

Northwestern University 

Although the human hippocampus is essential for long-term memory, controversial findings indicate that the hippocampus may support learning through short-term computations that coordinate effective behaviors during learning. We tested the counterintuitive hypothesis that the hippocampus contributes to long-term memory by supporting remarkably short-term processing, as reflected in the temporal sequence of eye movements made during the encoding of natural scenes. While viewing scenes for the first time, participants generated specific patterns of eye movements that reflected a shift from stimulus-driven to memory-driven viewing and signaled effective spatiotemporal memory formation. Theta oscillations from hippocampal depth electrodes signaled when this viewing pattern was about to occur, suggesting short-term retrieval directed visual exploration. Moreover, effective viewing patterns were preceded by shifts towards top-down influence of hippocampal theta on activity within cortical networks that support visual perception and visuospatial attention. The hippocampus thus supports short-term memory processing that coordinates perception, attention, and behavior in support of successful spatiotemporal learning. These findings motivate the reinterpretation of long-term memory deficits as reflecting the loss of the organizing influence of the hippocampus on learning.

The influence of event boundaries on the precision of temporal memory representations

Presenter- Contact Information

Angelique Delarazan

Washington University in St. Louis 

Co-Author

Zachariah Reagh

Washington University in St. Louis 

Real-world experiences are dynamic and continuous. However, we often remember events as discrete points in time. Event segmentation provides a basis for parsing temporally evolving experiences into meaningful units. Although studies have shown a network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, are involved during event segmentation, temporal representation in the same network remains poorly understood. Recent work suggests that precise memory for when events occur is associated with increased activity in hippocampal subfields and the anterolateral entorhinal cortex (Montchal, Reagh & Yassa, 2019). However, this effect may be influenced by event boundaries. Studies have shown that segmentation ability is predictive of long-term memory, thus the degree of temporal precision in memory may interact with neural processing of boundary timepoints. Here, we investigate the influence of event boundaries on the precision of temporal memory and their respective neural correlates. Participants viewed a 28-minute television show and were later tasked with identifying, on a continuous timeline, when events occurred while brain activity was measured using high-resolution fMRI. Preliminary results show boundary-driven activity during encoding and precision-related activity during retrieval consistent with prior reports. Ongoing analyses investigate neural activity during test trials as a function of distance from event boundaries during encoding, as well as the directionality of boundary-related influences (e.g., forward direction: immediately after boundaries, reactive response to an event change; reverse direction: immediately before boundaries in anticipation of an event change; or bidirectional).

The neural correlates of sleep-related memory enhancement for a staged autobiographical event

Presenter- Contact Information

Stephanie Simpson

University of Toronto; Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest 

Co-Author

Nick Diamond

University of Pennsylvania 

Co-Author

Laryssa Levesque

Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences Centre 

Co-Author

Yushu Wang

Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences Centre 

Co-Author

Dana Jewell

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre 

Co-Author

Rui De Sousa

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre 

Co-Author

Laura Ray

University of Ottawa 

Co-Author

Stuart Fogel

University of Ottawa 

Co-Author

Brian Murray

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre 

Co-Author

Brian Levine

RRI at Baycrest Hospital; University of Toronto 

Consolidation during a period of sleep, compared to wakefulness, has been shown to reliably improve episodic memory retrieval. This effect is thought to be mediated by the neural oscillations specific to sleep such as spindles. However, it is still debated whether sleep equally benefits all aspects of episodic memory given that spatiotemporal (sequence) information appears to profit more from sleep than perceptual (item) details. Moreover, most of this prior work applied traditional lab-based stimuli in one experimental session, making it unclear if these results would generalize to more naturalistic forms of memory. The goals of this experiment are therefore to determine: 1) whether sleep differentially supports memory for the sequences and items that constitute a real-life event and 2) to what extent these results relate to spindle activity. Here, 52 healthy adults encoded an audio-guided staged autobiographical event by walking along a route in Baycrest Hospital. Sequence and item memory were probed separately via four independent online recognition memory tests across time (30 min, 12 hour, 1 week, and 1 month after encoding). During this 12-hour delay period, we collected extensive polysomnography data in the lab to assess participants’ overnight sleep. This allowed us to extract measures of sleep macrostructure (N2 and N3 duration) and microstructure (spindle activity). Although we replicated our previous finding that sleep enhances sequence memory at the 12-hour interval, we found that – contrary to our expectations – spindle activity was associated with improvements in item but not sequence memory.

The role of segmentation in measures of representational granularity along the hippocampal anteroposterior axis

Presenter- Contact Information

John Thorp

Columbia University 

Co-Author

Camille Gasser

Columbia University 

Co-Author

Esther Blessing

New York University School of Medicine 

Co-Author

Lila Davachi

Columbia University, Nathan Kline Institute 

Distinguishing the functional roles of the anterior and posterior hippocampus has become an increasingly popular line of questioning, especially as it relates to information processing and memory performance. One influential study from Brunec and Bellana, et al. (2018) introduced a new measure, inter-voxel similarity (IVS), that showed the mean correlation of all voxel timeseries to be higher in the anterior third of the hippocampus than the middle and posterior thirds combined, and concluded that this may relate to the granularity with which representations are processed along the anteroposterior axis. Keeping in mind that there should be important differences in information processing along the anteroposterior axis of the hippocampus, we aim to investigate those differences with a ‘functional’ approach to hippocampal segmentation, namely masked group independent component analysis (mICA). To this end, we analyzed a large fMRI sample (N = 138, ages 18-35) across two resting-state acquisitions conducted as part of the Nathan Kline Institute Rockland Sample. In this dataset, we replicate the Brunec et al finding that the anterior third of the hippocampus has a higher IVS than the middle and posterior thirds combined, but find no significant difference in IVS between the anterior and posterior thirds. Analyses in both acquisitions suggest that considering the middle and posterior third together as one region artificially decreases its apparent IVS by correlating perhaps distinct functional signals across those two regions. Further work will employ mICA to segment the hippocampus into functional regions which can then be queried for IVS.

 

Theta oscillations shift towards optimal frequency for cognitive control

 

Mehdi Senoussi¹, Pieter Verbeke¹, Kobe Desender^1,2, Esther De Loof¹, Durk Talsma¹, Tom Verguts¹, ¹Ghent University, ²KU Leuven

 

Humans’ capacity to pursue goal-oriented behavior despite changes in the environment is uniquely flexible. Cognitive control refers to processes allowing such behavioral adjustments and critically relies on neural oscillations in the theta band (4-7Hz). Theta amplitude has been shown to increase when control is needed, however, it remains largely unknown how theta oscillations support flexible adaptation to task demands. In this study we show that an essential aspect of theta oscillations has been completely overlooked so far: its specific frequency in the 4-7Hz range. We built a novel computational model in which theta oscillations orchestrate control over sensory and action representations, by establishing task-relevant functional networks through synchronization. Critically, we show that the frequency of theta oscillations balances reliable set up of task rules and gating of task-relevant information. Our model additionally predicts that this theta-rhythmic process is observable in behavioral performance, which constitutes, to our knowledge, the first time this phenomenon is predicted from computational simulations. We tested these predictions using a stimulus-response mapping task, and recorded EEG, in 33 participants. We showed that both behavioral performance and mid-frontal theta activity oscillated at slower frequency with increasing task difficulty. Furthermore, we showed that this shift in neural theta predicted trial-by-trial behavioral performance and that the sensitivity of theta frequency to task demands predicted overall task performance across participants. Our study provides a novel computational framework proposing how theta oscillations mechanistically implement cognitive control and adapt to external demands, opening new avenues for research on the regulation of cognitive control.

 

Understanding Neural Signals of Memory Consolidation

 

Ashwin Harimohan¹, Laura Batterink¹, ¹Western University 

 

During sleep, newly formed memories are spontaneously and repeatedly reactivated, leading to the strengthening and stabilization of the memory traces. Specific memories can also be externally reactivated by presenting memory-related cues during sleep, a technique referred to as targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Due to methodological challenges, there is currently very limited direct neural evidence for content-specific memory reactivation in humans during sleep. We aim to use simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to capture cue-evoked neural activity in specific a priori-defined cortical areas associated with learning. Participants (18-35 years old) will learn a spatial memory task that has been shown to invoke a strong lateralized EEG signal over the motor cortex (Wang et al., 2019). Associated auditory cues will be paired with each item of the memory task (e.g. ‘moo’ sound for cow) (Rudoy et al., 2009). During a 90-minute nap, half of the auditory cues will be played during slow wave sleep to invoke TMR. Building on previous EEG findings, we expect that TMR cues presented during sleep will elicit an increase in contralateral BOLD response in the motor cortex and increased spindle activity. At the single trial level, we predict that the contralateral BOLD response in the motor cortex and spindle activity will correlate and items that more strongly elicit these neural signals will also show a stronger memory benefit on the post-nap test. These findings would support the predominant theory that reactivation of new memories underlies the strengthening of memories into long-term memory traces.

 

Understanding Others Requires Right Temporoparietal Junction

 

Tatiana Schnur¹, Junhua Ding¹, Margaret Blake², Baylor College of Medicine¹, University of Houston²

 

The human ability to infer other people’s knowledge and beliefs, known as ‘theory of mind’, is an essential component of social interactions. Theory of mind tasks activate frontal and temporoparietal regions of cortex in fMRI studies. However, it is unknown which of these regions are critical. We examined this question using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping in 20 patients with acute right hemisphere brain damage. Studies of acute patients sidestep questions of recovery and reorganization that plague long-term studies of lesioned patients. Damage to the temporoparietal junction but not frontal cortex impaired thinking about others’ perspectives. This impairment held even after adjustment for overall extent of brain damage and memory, comprehension, and attention abilities. These results provide evidence that right temporoparietal junction is necessary for the human ability to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of others.

 

Unitization: Potential Roles for the Dentate Gyrus and Precuneus

 

Supreet Aashat^1,2, Shayna Rosenbaum³, Jennifer Ryan^1,2, Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest¹, University of Toronto², York University³ 

 

Transverse patterning (TP) requires learning relations among sets of objects and is sensitive to hippocampal compromise. Unitization, a cognitive strategy by which multiple, discreet elements are fused into a single unit, has been used successfully by some amnesic cases to mitigate relational memory deficits on TP (Ryan et al., 2013). The current study examines the extent to which this strategy relies on mental imagery by investigating a unique individual, B.L., who has impaired TP due to selective lesions to the hippocampus as well as volume loss within the precuneus, a region associated with mental imagery. B.L. was given five sets of the TP task, three of which were accompanied by videos and a central cue of either a unitization strategy or one of its component elements (motion, action-consequence). Performance was deemed successful if it was above a 67% threshold, denoting that 2/3 of the sets of relations had been learned. B.L. failed training and test on TP without any accompanying strategies. Training performance was improved with accompanying strategies, but performance on the no-feedback test sessions was largely impaired either immediately or 1-hour following training. The exception to this was above threshold performance for the Action-Consequence condition following a 1-hour delay. These findings suggest that volume loss in the dentate gyrus (and/or CA3) may be sufficient to create deficits on TP and/or for implementing unitization. Volume loss in the precuneus may explain B.L.’s deficits for using unitization through its known role in mental imagery and mental rotation of visual stimuli.

Visual perception in hearing signers

Presenter- Contact Information

Jessica Lammert

Western University 

Co-Author

Alexandra Levine

Western University 

Co-Author

Blake Butler

Western University 

One consequence of hearing loss is superior visual perception in the D/deaf compared to hearing controls, especially in the visual periphery. In the absence of auditory cues, these enhancements are thought to reflect compensatory broadening of the visual periphery to better monitor the surrounding environment. However, it is also possible that peripheral visual field expansion is the result of sign language communication, as sign language users process moving hand signs in the periphery while simultaneously attending to facial cues in central vision. Thus, sign language provides a drastically different visual experience compared to oral language, which for most individuals with early-onset deafness, begins at a young age. Therefore, it remains difficult to determine whether these changes in visual perception are the result of sign language experience or a direct consequence of hearing loss. The current study seeks to isolate the effects of sign language experience by examining how visual perception is altered as a function of American Sign Language (ASL) proficiency in hearing sign language users. Hearing signers and hearing non-signers (controls) are currently completing online behavioural tasks that measure biological motion perception and face perception in central and peripheral vision. Additionally, signers are completing an online test of ASL proficiency which will allow us to examine the relationship between proficiency and perception. This study is currently in progress and pilot data will be presented. We predict signers will outperform non-signers and that ASL proficiency will be positively correlated with behavioural performance, especially for stimuli presented in the visual periphery.

Why do children have lower working memory precision than adults? Examining the role of attentional allocation with pupil

Presenter- Contact Information

Elena Galeano Weber

DIPF Leibniz Institute, Frankfurt am Main 

Co-Author

Sarvenaz Pakzad

University of California, Berkeley 

Co-Author

Garvin Brod

DIPF Leibniz Institute, Frankfurt am Main 

Co-Author

Silvia Bunge

University of California, Berkeley 

Developmental studies of working memory (WM) have largely focused on increased capacity – that is, the number of items that can be remembered – and not the fidelity of these representations. Here, we examined visual WM fidelity in terms of recall precision and recall variability in middle childhood and young adulthood. We tested whether differences in WM fidelity could reflect differences in sustained attention at encoding and/or across a delay period. To this end, we probed color precision of each of three sequentially encoded objects. Using pupil dilation as a moment-to-moment measure of attentional allocation, we measured attentional allocation at encoding and throughout a long delay period. Consistent with recent behavioral research, adults showed higher recall precision and exhibited lower recall variability than children. Adults had larger pupillary responses than children during encoding, but smaller responses during the delay period, suggesting differential allocation of attention across the trial. Among children, higher WM fidelity was linked to smaller pupillary responses during encoding and maintenance, suggesting that WM processing may rely on more efficient attentional allocation with increasing expertise. Finally, we provide tentative evidence that more sustained attention as indicated by lower fluctuations in pupil dilation towards the end of a long delay period might help children exhibit more stable WM performance.