Assessing adolescent tobacco use in a substance use treatment program with self-report and biological measures.

Tobacco use in adolescents can alter their lifetime health outcomes. Despite the importance of early identification and treatment, adolescent tobacco use, including that of electronic vapor products (e.g.

Electrophysiological repetition effects in persons with mild cognitive impairment depend upon working memory demand.

Forms of implicit memory, including repetition effects, are preserved relative to explicit memory in clinical Alzheimer's disease. Consequently, cognitive interventions for persons with Alzheimer's disease have been developed that leverage this fact. However, despite the clinical robustness of behavioral repetition effects, altered neural mechanisms of repetition effects are studied as biomarkers of both clinical Alzheimer's disease and pre-morbid Alzheimer's changes in the brain.

Spared behavioral repetition effects in Alzheimer's disease linked to an altered neural mechanism at posterior cortex.

Objective: Individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (AD) classically show disproportionate impairment in measures of working memory, but repetition learning effects are relatively preserved. As AD affects brain regions implicated in both working memory and repetition effects, the neural basis of this discrepancy is poorly understood. We hypothesized that the posterior repetition effect could account for this discrepancy due to the milder effects of AD at visual cortex.

Predicting risk decisions in a modified Balloon Analogue Risk Task: Conventional and single-trial ERP analyses.

Event-related potential (ERP) has the potential to reveal the temporal neurophysiological dynamics of risk decision-making, but this potential has not been fully explored in previous studies. When predicting risk decision with ERPs, most studies focus on between-trial analysis that reflects feedback learning, while within-trial analysis that could directly link option assessment with behavioral output has been largely ignored. Suitable task design is crucial for applying within-trial prediction.

Low Arousal Positive Emotional Stimuli Attenuate Aberrant Working Memory Processing in Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Emotional enhancement effects on memory have been reported to mitigate the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, relative to their manifestation in persons without pathologic aging, these effects may be reduced in magnitude or even deleterious, especially in tasks that more closely model ecologic memory performance. Based upon a synthesis of such reports, we hypothesized that in persons with AD low arousal positive stimuli would evoke relatively intact emotional enhancement effects, but that high arousal negative stimuli would evoke disordered emotional enhancement effects.

Neural substrates of context- and person-dependent altruistic punishment.

Human altruistic behaviors are heterogeneous across both contexts and people, whereas the neural signatures underlying the heterogeneity remain to be elucidated. To address this issue, we examined the neural signatures underlying the context- and person-dependent altruistic punishment, conjoining event-related fMRI with both task-based and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC). Acting as an impartial third party, participants decided how to punish norm violators either alone or in the presence of putative others.

Impulsive personality dimensions are associated with altered behavioral performance and neural responses in the monetary incentive delay task.

Individual differences in dimensions of impulsivity personality including disinhibition and sensation seeking modulate approach responses to reinforcing stimuli, such as drugs and money. The current study examined the effects of monetary incentive on both behavioral performance and electrophysiological activity among individuals varying in disinhibition and sensation seeking. The monetary incentive delay (MID) task was completed under electroencephalogram (EEG) recording.

Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing.

Background: Outcome feedback which indicates behavioral consequences are crucial for reinforcement learning and environmental adaptation. Nevertheless, outcome information in daily life is often totally or partially ambiguous. Studying how people interpret this kind of information would provide important knowledge about the human evaluative system.

Functional human promoter polymorphism and variation of mental processing speed in older adults.

We investigated the role of a single nucleotide polymorphism rs3764030 (G>A) within the human promoter in mental processing speed in healthy, cognitively intact, older adults. DNA-binding and reporter gene assays of different allele combinations in transfected cells showed that the A allele was a gain-of-function variant associated with increasing mRNA levels. We tested the hypothesis that individuals with A allele will have better memory performance (i.

Trait Anxiety and Economic Risk Avoidance Are Not Necessarily Associated: Evidence from the Framing Effect.

According to previous literature, trait anxiety is related to the tendency to choose safety options during risk decision-making, that is, risk avoidance. In our opinion, anxious people's risk preference might actually reflect their hypersensitivity to emotional information. To examine this hypothesis, a decision-making task that could elicit the framing effect was employed.

A cognitive electrophysiological signature differentiates amnestic mild cognitive impairment from normal aging.

Background: Noninvasive and effective biomarkers for early detection of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) before measurable changes in behavioral performance remain scarce. Cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs) measure synchronized synaptic neural activity associated with a cognitive event. Loss of synapses is a hallmark of the neuropathology of early Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Altered Brain Activities Associated with Neural Repetition Effects in Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients.

Older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) manifest impaired explicit memory. However, studies on implicit memory such as repetition effects in persons with MCI have been limited. In the present study, 17 MCI patients and 16 healthy normal controls (NC) completed a modified delayed-match-to-sample task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Alzheimer's Biomarkers are Correlated with Brain Connectivity in Older Adults Differentially during Resting and Task States.

β-amyloid (Aβ) plaques and tau-related neurodegeneration are pathologic hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The utility of AD biomarkers, including those measured in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), in predicting future AD risk and cognitive decline is still being refined. Here, we explored potential relationships between functional connectivity (FC) patterns within the default-mode network (DMN), age, CSF biomarkers (Aβ42 and pTau181), and cognitive status in older adults.

Social Comparison Manifests in Event-related Potentials.

Social comparison, a widespread phenomenon in human society, has been found to affect outcome evaluation. The need to belong to a social group may result in distinct neural responses to diverse social comparison outcomes. To extend previous studies by examining how social comparison with hierarchical characteristics is temporally processed, electroencephalography responses were recorded in the current study.

Association of Oxytocin Receptor Gene (OXTR) rs53576 Polymorphism with Sociality: A Meta-Analysis.

A common variant in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), rs53576, has been broadly linked to socially related personality traits and behaviors. However, the pattern of published results is inconsistent. Here, we performed a meta-analysis to comprehensively evaluate the association.

Depressive states amplify both upward and downward counterfactual thinking.

Depression has been linked to counterfactual thinking in many behavioral studies, but the direction of this effect remains disputed. In the current study, the relationship between depression and counterfactual thinking was examined using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. In a binary choice gambling task, outcome feedback of the chosen option and that of the alternative option were both provided, so as to elicit the process of counterfactual comparison.

Modulation of the brain activity in outcome evaluation by the presence of an audience: An electrophysiological investigation.

The audience effect refers to the phenomenon that one׳s performance on a task is affected by the presence of others. Here we investigated how the audience effect modulates the neurocognitive signatures underlying people׳s evaluation of their own task performance/outcome. Participants in our study played a gambling game in two social contexts: an "audience" condition and an "alone" condition.

Electrophysiological evidence for the effects of unitization on associative recognition memory in older adults.

Normal aging is associated with greater decline in associative memory relative to item memory due to impaired recollection. Familiarity may also contribute to associative recognition when stimuli are perceived as a 'unitized' representation. Given that familiarity is relatively preserved in older adults, we explored whether age-related associative memory deficits could be attenuated when associations were unitized (i.

The effects of unitization on the contribution of familiarity and recollection processes to associative recognition memory: evidence from event-related potentials.

Familiarity and recollection are two independent cognitive processes involved in recognition memory. It is traditionally believed that both familiarity and recollection can support item recognition, whereas only recollection can support associative recognition. Here, using a standard associative recognition task, we examined whether associative retrieval of unitized associations involved differential patterns of familiarity and recollection processes relative to non-unitized associations.

Reduced late positivity in younger adults, but not older adults, during short-term repetition.

Although word repetition was generally associated with enhanced amplitude of late positive complex (LPC), it seemed to yield attenuated LPC when words were repeated over short enough lags. However, this issue and its corresponding age effects have not been examined directly. For this purpose, EEG was recorded when young and elderly participants were required to make animacy decision during an incidental word repetition paradigm with words repeated after one, six, or nine intervening words.

Emotional content modulates response inhibition and perceptual processing.

In this study, event-related potentials were used to investigate the effect of emotion on response inhibition. Participants performed an emotional go/no-go task that required responses to human faces associated with a "go" valence (i.e.

The temporal course of the influence of anxiety on fairness considerations.

This study investigated the potential causes of anxious people's social avoidance. The classic ultimatum game was utilized in concert with electroencephalogram recording. Participants were divided into two groups according to levels of trait anxiety as identified by a self-report scale.

Linking brain electrical signals elicited by current outcomes with future risk decision-making.

The experience of current outcomes influences future decisions in various ways. The neural mechanism of this phenomenon may help to clarify the determinants of decision-making. In this study, thirty-nine young adults finished a risky gambling task by choosing between a high- and a low-risk option in each trial during electroencephalographic data collection.

Spectral and complexity analysis of scalp EEG characteristics for mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer's disease.

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) often is an early stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). MCI is characterized by cognitive decline departing from normal cognitive aging but that does not significantly interfere with daily activities. This study explores the potential of scalp EEG for early detection of alterations from cognitively normal status of older adults signifying MCI and AD.

Neural basis of emotional decision making in trait anxiety.

Although trait anxiety has been associated with risk decision making, whether it is related to risk per se or to the feeling of the risk, as well as the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms, remains unclear. Using a decision-making task with a manipulation of frame (i.e.