The Neural Signature of Subliminal Visuomotor Priming: Brain Activity and Functional Connectivity Profiles
Unconscious visuomotor priming defined as the advantage in reaction time (RT) or accuracy for target shapes mapped to the same (congruent condition) when compared with a different (incongruent condition) motor response as a preceding subliminally presented prime shape has been shown to modulate activity within a visuomotor network comprised of parietal and frontal motor areas in previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. The present fMRI study investigated whether, in addition to changes in brain activity, unconscious visuomotor priming results in a modulation of functional connectivity profiles. Activi...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Ulrich, M., Kiefer, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Influence of Delay Period Duration on Inhibitory Processes for Response Preparation
In this study, we examined the dynamics of inhibitory preparatory processes, using a delayed response task in which a cue signaled a left or right index finger (Experiment 1) or hand (Experiment 2) movement in advance of an imperative signal. In Experiment 1, we varied the duration of the delay period (200, 500, and 900 ms). When transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied 100 ms before the imperative, motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited in the first dorsal interosseous were strongly inhibited. For delays of 500 ms or longer, this inhibition was greater when the targeted muscle was selected compared with when i...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Lebon, F., Greenhouse, I., Labruna, L., Vanderschelden, B., Papaxanthis, C., Ivry, R. B. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Context Memory Decline in Middle Aged Adults is Related to Changes in Prefrontal Cortex Function
The ability to encode and retrieve spatial and temporal contextual details of episodic memories (context memory) begins to decline at midlife. In the current study, event-related fMRI was used to investigate the neural correlates of context memory decline in healthy middle aged adults (MA) compared with young adults (YA). Participants were scanned while performing easy and hard versions of spatial and temporal context memory tasks. Scans were obtained at encoding and retrieval. Significant reductions in context memory retrieval accuracy were observed in MA, compared with YA. The fMRI results revealed that overall, both gro...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Kwon, D., Maillet, D., Pasvanis, S., Ankudowich, E., Grady, C. L., Rajah, M. N. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Others Sheer Presence Boosts Brain Activity in the Attention (But Not the Motivation) Network
The sheer presence of another member of the same species affects performance, sometimes impeding it, sometimes enhancing it. For well-learned tasks, the effect is generally positive. This fundamental form of social influence, known as social facilitation, concerns human as well as nonhuman animals and affects many behaviors from food consumption to cognition. In psychology, this phenomenon has been known for over a century. Yet, its underlying mechanism (motivation or attention) remains debated, its relationship to stress unclear, and its neural substrates unknown. To address these issues, we investigated the behavioral, n...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Monfardini, E., Redoute, J., Hadj-Bouziane, F., Hynaux, C., Fradin, J., Huguet, P., Costes, N., Meunier, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Cognitive Correlates of Basal Forebrain Atrophy and Associated Cortical Hypometabolism in Mild Cognitive Impairment
Degeneration of basal forebrain (BF) cholinergic nuclei is associated with cognitive decline, and this effect is believed to be mediated by neuronal dysfunction in the denervated cortical areas. MRI-based measurements of BF atrophy are increasingly being used as in vivo surrogate markers for cholinergic degeneration, but the functional implications of reductions in BF volume are not well understood. We used high-resolution MRI, fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (PET), and neuropsychological test data of 132 subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 177 cognitively normal controls to determine associat...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Grothe, M. J., Heinsen, H., Amaro, E., Grinberg, L. T., Teipel, S. J., for the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Intracortical Posterior Cingulate Myelin Content Relates to Error Processing: Results from T1- and T2-Weighted MRI Myelin Mapping and Electrophysiology in Healthy Adults
Myelin content of the cerebral cortex likely impacts cognitive functioning, but this notion has scarcely been investigated in vivo in humans. Here we tested for a relationship between intracortical myelin and a direct measure of neural activity in the form of the electrophysiological response error-related negativity (ERN). Using magnetic resonance imaging, myelin mapping was performed in 81 healthy adults aged 40–60 years by means of a T1- and T2-weighted (T1w/T2w) signal intensity ratio approach. Error trials on a version of the Eriksen flanker task triggered the ERN, a negative deflection of the event-related pote...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Grydeland, H., Westlye, L. T., Walhovd, K. B., Fjell, A. M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Changes in Search Path Complexity and Length During Learning of a Virtual Water Maze: Age Differences and Differential Associations with Hippocampal Subfield Volumes
In this study, we examined the association between volume of hippocampal subfields and age differences in virtual spatial navigation. In a sample of 65 healthy adults (age 19–75 years), advanced age was associated with a slower rate of improvement operationalized as shortening of the search path over 25 learning trials on a virtual Morris water maze task. The deficits were partially explained by greater complexity of older adults' search paths. Larger subiculum and entorhinal cortex volumes were associated with a faster decrease in search path complexity, which in turn explained faster shortening of search distance. ...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Daugherty, A. M., Bender, A. R., Yuan, P., Raz, N. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Visual Contrast Sensitivity Improvement by Right Frontal High-Beta Activity Is Mediated by Contrast Gain Mechanisms and Influenced by Fronto-Parietal White Matter Microstructure
Behavioral and electrophysiological studies in humans and non-human primates have correlated frontal high-beta activity with the orienting of endogenous attention and shown the ability of the latter function to modulate visual performance. We here combined rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and diffusion imaging to study the relation between frontal oscillatory activity and visual performance, and we associated these phenomena to a specific set of white matter pathways that in humans subtend attentional processes. High-beta rhythmic activity on the right frontal eye field (FEF) was induced with TMS and its ca...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Quentin, R., Elkin Frankston, S., Vernet, M., Toba, M. N., Bartolomeo, P., Chanes, L., Valero-Cabre, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Language Control in Bilinguals: Monitoring and Response Selection
Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in one language avoiding interference from the nontarget language. Bilinguals achieve this feat by engaging brain areas closely related to cognitive control. However, 2 questions still await resolution: whether this network is differently engaged when controlling nonlinguistic representations, and whether this network is differently engaged when control is exerted upon a restricted set of lexical representations that were previously used (i.e., local control) as opposed to control of the entire language system (i.e., global control...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - May 16, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Branzi, F. M., Della Rosa, P. A., Canini, M., Costa, A., Abutalebi, J. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
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Somatotopic Semantic Priming and Prediction in the Motor System
The recognition of action-related sounds and words activates motor regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information; in addition, motor cortex exerts causal influences on sound perception and language comprehension. However, proponents of classic symbolic theories still dispute the role of modality-preferential systems such as the motor cortex in the semantic processing of meaningful stimuli. To clarify whether the motor system carries semantic processes, we investigated neurophysiological indexes of semantic relationships between action-related sounds and words. Event-related potentials re...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - April 12, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Grisoni, L., Dreyer, F. R., Pulvermüller, F. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Functional Connectivity Architecture of the Human Brain
One of the grand challenges faced by neuroscience is to delineate the determinants of interindividual variation in the comprehensive structural and functional connection matrices that comprise the human connectome. At present, this endeavor appears most tractable at the macroanatomic scale, where intrinsic brain activity exhibits robust patterns of synchrony that recapitulate core functional circuits at the individual level. Here, we use a classical twin study design to examine the heritability of intrinsic functional network properties in 101 twin pairs, including network activity (i.e., variance of a network's specific t...
Source: Cerebral Cortex - April 12, 2016 Category: Neurology Authors: Yang, Z., Zuo, X.-N., McMahon, K. L., Craddock, R. C., Kelly, C., de Zubicaray, G. I., Hickie, I., Bandettini, P. A., Castellanos, F. X., Milham, M. P., Wright, M. J. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
