The shift from local to global visual processing in 6-year-old children is associated with grey matter loss.

Background: A real-world visual scene consists of local elements (e.g. trees) that are arranged coherently into a global configuration (e.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging study of Piaget's conservation-of-number task in preschool and school-age children: a neo-Piagetian approach.

Jean Piaget's theory is a central reference point in the study of logico-mathematical development in children. One of the most famous Piagetian tasks is number conservation. Failures and successes in this task reveal two fundamental stages in children's thinking and judgment, shifting at approximately 7 years of age from visuospatial intuition to number conservation.

Evidence of different developmental trajectories for length estimation according to egocentric and allocentric viewpoints in children and adults.

This study investigated the influence of egocentric and allocentric viewpoints on a comparison task of length estimation in children and adults. A total of 100 participants ranging in age from 5 years to adulthood were presented with virtual scenes representing a park landscape with two paths, one straight and one serpentine. Scenes were presented either from an egocentric or allocentric viewpoint.

Meaningfulness and global-local processing in schizophrenia.

The present work aimed to study the influence of the meaningfulness of stimuli during global-local processing in schizophrenia. Study participants were asked to determine whether pairs of compound stimuli (global forms composed of local forms) were identical or not. Both global and local forms represented either objects or non-objects.

The resting state questionnaire: An introspective questionnaire for evaluation of inner experience during the conscious resting state.

We designed a semi-structured questionnaire for the introspective evaluation of inner experience of participants undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the resting state. This resting state questionnaire (ReSQ) consists of 62 items organized by five main types of mental activity: visual mental imagery (IMAG); inner language (LANG), split into two subtypes, inner speech (SPEE) and auditory mental imagery (AUDI); somatosensory awareness (SOMA); inner musical experience (MUSI); and mental manipulation of numbers (NUMB). For IMAG and LANG, additional questions estimated association of such activities with ongoing learning, retrospective memories, or prospective thoughts.

Adult brains don't fully overcome biases that lead to incorrect performance during cognitive development: an fMRI study in young adults completing a Piaget-like task.

A current issue in developmental science is that greater continuity in cognition between children and adults may exist than is usually appreciated in Piaget-like (stages or 'staircase') models. This phenomenon has been demonstrated at the behavioural level, but never at the brain level. Here we show with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for the first time, that adult brains do not fully overcome the biases of childhood.

How verbal and spatial manipulation networks contribute to calculation: an fMRI study.

The manipulation of numbers required during calculation is known to rely on working memory (WM) resources. Here, we investigated the respective contributions of verbal and/or spatial WM manipulation brain networks during the addition of four numbers performed by adults, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Both manipulation and maintenance tasks were proposed with syllables, locations, or two-digit numbers.

FMRI study of emotional speech comprehension.

Little is known about the neural correlates of affective prosody in the context of affective semantic discourse. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate this issue while subjects performed 1) affective classification of sentences having an affective semantic content and 2) grammatical classification of sentences with neutral semantic content. Sentences of each type were produced half by actors and half by a text-to-speech software lacking affective prosody.