The impact of premature birth on auditory-visual processes in very preterm schoolchildren.

Interactions between stimuli from different sensory modalities and their integration are central to daily life, contributing to improved perception. Being born prematurely and the subsequent hospitalization can have an impact not only on sensory processes, but also on the manner in which information from different senses is combined-i.e.

Animal cognition: Dogs build semantic expectations between spoken words and objects.

A recent study has used scalp-recorded electroencephalography to obtain evidence of semantic processing of human speech and objects by domesticated dogs. The results suggest that dogs do comprehend the meaning of familiar spoken words, in that a word can evoke the mental representation of the object to which it refers.

Learning and navigating digitally rendered haptic spatial layouts.

Learning spatial layouts and navigating through them rely not simply on sight but rather on multisensory processes, including touch. Digital haptics based on ultrasounds are effective for creating and manipulating mental images of individual objects in sighted and visually impaired participants. Here, we tested if this extends to scenes and navigation within them.

Longstanding Auditory Sensory and Semantic Differences in Preterm Born Children.

More than 10% of births are preterm, and the long-term consequences on sensory and semantic processing of non-linguistic information remain poorly understood. 17 very preterm-born children (born at < 33 weeks gestational age) and 15 full-term controls were tested at 10 years old with an auditory object recognition task, while 64-channel auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were recorded. Sounds consisted of living (animal and human vocalizations) and manmade objects (e.

Hi-Fi fMRI: High-resolution, fast-sampled and sub-second whole-brain functional MRI at 3T in humans.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a methodological cornerstone of neuroscience. Most studies measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal using echo-planar imaging (EPI), Cartesian sampling, and image reconstruction with a one-to-one correspondence between the number of acquired volumes and reconstructed images. However, EPI schemes are subject to trade-offs between spatial and temporal resolutions.

Are musical activities associated with enhanced speech perception in noise in adults? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

The ability to process speech in noise (SPiN) declines with age, with a detrimental impact on life quality. Music-making activities such as singing and playing a musical instrument have raised interest as potential prevention strategies for SPiN perception decline because of their positive impact on several brain system, especially the auditory system, which is critical for SPiN. However, the literature on the effect of musicianship on SPiN performance has yielded mixed results.

Stereoptic serious games as a visual rehabilitation tool for individuals with a residual amblyopia (AMBER trial): a protocol for a crossover randomized controlled trial.

Background: Amblyopia is the most common developmental vision disorder in children. The initial treatment consists of refractive correction. When insufficient, occlusion therapy may further improve visual acuity.

Brain responses to food viewing in women during pregnancy and post partum and their relationship with metabolic health: study protocol for the FOODY Brain Study, a prospective observational study.

Introduction: Food cravings are common in pregnancy and along with emotional eating and eating in the absence of hunger, they are associated with excessive weight gain and adverse effects on metabolic health including gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Women with GDM also show poorer mental health, which further can contribute to dysregulated eating behaviour. Food cravings can lead to greater activity in brain centres known to be involved in food 'wanting' and reward valuation as well as emotional eating.

Plasticity Changes in Central Auditory Systems of School-Age Children Following a Brief Training With a Remote Microphone System.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate whether a brief speech-in-noise training with a remote microphone (RM) system (favorable listening condition) would contribute to enhanced post-training plasticity changes in the auditory system of school-age children.

Design: Before training, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 49 typically developing children, who actively identified two syllables in quiet and in noise (+5 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]). During training, children completed the same syllable identification task as in the pre-training noise condition, but received feedback on their performance.

fMRIflows: A Consortium of Fully Automatic Univariate and Multivariate fMRI Processing Pipelines.

How functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are analyzed depends on the researcher and the toolbox used. It is not uncommon that the processing pipeline is rewritten for each new dataset. Consequently, code transparency, quality control and objective analysis pipelines are important for improving reproducibility in neuroimaging studies.

Electrophysiological differences and similarities in audiovisual speech processing in CI users with unilateral and bilateral hearing loss.

Hearing with a cochlear implant (CI) is limited compared to natural hearing. Although CI users may develop compensatory strategies, it is currently unknown whether these extend from auditory to visual functions, and whether compensatory strategies vary between different CI user groups. To better understand the experience-dependent contributions to multisensory plasticity in audiovisual speech perception, the current event-related potential (ERP) study presented syllables in auditory, visual, and audiovisual conditions to CI users with unilateral or bilateral hearing loss, as well as to normal-hearing (NH) controls.

Digital haptics improve speed of visual search performance in a dual-task setting.

Dashboard-mounted touchscreen tablets are now common in vehicles. Screen/phone use in cars likely shifts drivers' attention away from the road and contributes to risk of accidents. Nevertheless, vision is subject to multisensory influences from other senses.

Machine learning algorithms on eye tracking trajectories to classify patients with spatial neglect.

Background And Objective: Eye-movement trajectories are rich behavioral data, providing a window on how the brain processes information. We address the challenge of characterizing signs of visuo-spatial neglect from saccadic eye trajectories recorded in brain-damaged patients with spatial neglect as well as in healthy controls during a visual search task.

Methods: We establish a standardized pre-processing pipeline adaptable to other task-based eye-tracker measurements.

The timecourse of multisensory speech processing in unilaterally stimulated cochlear implant users revealed by ERPs.

A cochlear implant (CI) is an auditory prosthesis which can partially restore the auditory function in patients with severe to profound hearing loss. However, this bionic device provides only limited auditory information, and CI patients may compensate for this limitation by means of a stronger interaction between the auditory and visual system. To better understand the electrophysiological correlates of audiovisual speech perception, the present study used electroencephalography (EEG) and a redundant target paradigm.

Distinct multisensory perceptual processes guide enhanced auditory recognition memory in older cochlear implant users.

In naturalistic situations, sounds are often perceived in conjunction with matching visual impressions. For example, we see and hear the neighbor's dog barking in the garden. Still, there is a good chance that we recognize the neighbor's dog even when we only hear it barking, but do not see it behind the fence.

Topological Features of Electroencephalography are Robust to Re-referencing and Preprocessing.

Electroencephalography (EEG) is among the most widely diffused, inexpensive, and adopted neuroimaging techniques. Nonetheless, EEG requires measurements against a reference site(s), which is typically chosen by the experimenter, and specific pre-processing steps precede analyses. It is therefore valuable to obtain quantities that are minimally affected by reference and pre-processing choices.

Towards understanding how we pay attention in naturalistic visual search settings.

Research on attentional control has largely focused on single senses and the importance of behavioural goals in controlling attention. However, everyday situations are multisensory and contain regularities, both likely influencing attention. We investigated how visual attentional capture is simultaneously impacted by top-down goals, the multisensory nature of stimuli, and the contextual factors of stimuli's semantic relationship and temporal predictability.

Auditory Enhancement of Illusory Contour Perception.

Illusory contours (ICs) are borders that are perceived in the absence of contrast gradients. Until recently, IC processes were considered exclusively visual in nature and presumed to be unaffected by information from other senses. Electrophysiological data in humans indicates that sounds can enhance IC processes.

Neonatal Multisensory Processing in Preterm and Term Infants Predicts Sensory Reactivity and Internalizing Tendencies in Early Childhood.

Multisensory processes include the capacity to combine information from the different senses, often improving stimulus representations and behavior. The extent to which multisensory processes are an innate capacity or instead require experience with environmental stimuli remains debated. We addressed this knowledge gap by studying multisensory processes in prematurely born and full-term infants.

Kinematic and Somatosensory Gains in Infants with Cerebral Palsy After a Multi-Component Upper-Extremity Intervention: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Upper extremity (UE) impairments in infants with cerebral palsy (CP) result from reduced quality of motor experiences and "noisy" sensory inputs. We hypothesized that a neuroscience-based multi-component intervention would improve somatosensory processing and motor measures of more-affected (UEs) in infants with CP and asymmetric UE neurologic impairments, while remaining safe for less-affected UEs. Our randomized controlled trial compared infants (6-24 months) with CP receiving intervention (N = 37) versus a waitlisted group (N = 36).

Electrocorticography Evidence of Tactile Responses in Visual Cortices.

There is ongoing debate regarding the extent to which human cortices are specialized for processing a given sensory input versus a given type of information, independently of the sensory source. Many neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies have reported that primary and extrastriate visual cortices respond to tactile and auditory stimulation, in addition to visual inputs, suggesting these cortices are intrinsically multisensory. In particular for tactile responses, few studies have proven neuronal processes in visual cortex in humans.

3-Dimensional magnetic resonance imaging of the freely moving human eye.

Eye motion is a major confound for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in neuroscience or ophthalmology. Currently, solutions toward eye stabilisation include participants fixating or administration of paralytics/anaesthetics. We developed a novel MRI protocol for acquiring 3-dimensional images while the eye freely moves.