Willed Attentional Selection of Visual Features: An EEG Study.

Visual selective attention studies generally tend to apply cuing paradigms to instructively direct observers' attention to certain locations, features or objects. However, in real situations, attention in humans often flows spontaneously without any specific instructions. Recently, a concept named "willed attention" was raised in visuospatial attention, in which participants are free to make volitional attention decisions.

An event-related potential study of prepotent motor activity and response inhibition deficits in schizophrenia.

Response inhibition deficits in schizophrenia (SZ) are accompanied by reduced neural activities using event-related potential (ERP) measurements. However, it remains unclear whether the reduction in inhibition-related ERPs in SZ is contingent upon prepotent motor tendencies. This study aimed to examine the relationship between ERP markers of prepotent motor activity (lateralised readiness potential, LRP) and response inhibition (P3) by collecting behavioural and EEG data from healthy control (HC) subjects and SZ patients during a modified Go/No-Go task.

Impaired insight and error-monitoring deficits among outpatients with attenuated psychosis syndrome and first-episode psychosis.

We aimed to determine the relationship between electrophysiological signatures of error monitoring and clinical insight among outpatients with attenuated psychosis syndrome (APS) and first-episode psychosis (FEP). Error-related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe), and correct response negativity (CRN) were recorded during a modified flanker task for patients with FEP (n = 32), APS individuals (n = 58), and healthy controls (HC, n = 49). Clinical insight was measured using the Schedule of Assessment of Insight (SAI) and included awareness of illness (SAI-illness), relabeling of specific symptoms (SAI-symptoms), and treatment compliance (SAI-treatment).

Comparing the Signal-to-Noise Ratio Estimates for Event-Related Potentials: A Simulation Study.

Event-related potential (ERP) is one of the commonly used electrophysiologic measures for brain activity with millisecond time resolution, which has been widely applied to psychology and neuroscience research. Conventionally, ERP is obtained by grand-averaging EEG recordings across multiple trials to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Reliable quantitative analysis of the amplitude or latency of ERP requires sufficient SNR.

Direct and indirect effects of error monitoring on social functioning in a cohort with high-risk and first-episode psychosis.

Error monitoring plays a key role in people's adjustment to social life. This study aimed to examine the direct (DE) and indirect effects (IDE) of error monitoring, as indicated by error-related negativity (ERN), on social functioning in a clinical cohort from high-risk (APS) to first-episode psychosis (FEP). This study recruited 100 outpatients and 49 healthy controls (HC).

The effects of pre-cue alpha and cueing strategy on age-related deficits in post-cue alpha activity and target processing during visual spatial attention.

Electroencephalography alpha-band (8-13 Hz) activity during visual spatial attention declines in normal aging. We recently reported the impacts of pre-cue baseline alpha and cueing strategy on post-cue anticipatory alpha activity and target processing in visual spatial attention (Wang et al., Cerebral Cortex, 2023).

EEG correlates of anticipatory attention and target processing in children and adults during visual spatial attention.

The ability of attentional orienting has been suggested to keep developing throughout childhood. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have shown that 6-10 year old children exhibit lateralized alpha-band (8-13 Hz) activity and event-related potentials (ERPs) that are classic markers of spatial attentional orienting in adults. However, the lack of a direct comparison of these EEG correlates between children and adults in the same experiment made it difficult to evaluate developmental effects on neural activity throughout attentional stages.

The effects of pre-cue posterior alpha on post-cue alpha activity and target processing in visual spatial attention tasks with instructional and probabilistic cues.

The electroencephalography alpha-band (8-13 Hz) activity may represent a crucial neural substrate of visual spatial attention. However, factors likely contributing to alpha activity have not been adequately addressed, which impedes understanding its functional roles. We investigated whether pre-cue alpha power was associated with post-cue alpha activity in 2 independent experiments (n = 30 each) with different cueing strategies (instructional vs.

Decoding the temporal dynamics of affective scene processing.

Natural images containing affective scenes are used extensively to investigate the neural mechanisms of visual emotion processing. Functional fMRI studies have shown that these images activate a large-scale distributed brain network that encompasses areas in visual, temporal, and frontal cortices. The underlying spatial and temporal dynamics, however, remain to be better characterized.

Neural mechanisms of inhibitory control deficits in obesity revealed by P3 but not N2 event-related potential component.

The lack of inhibitory control toward foods may cause unhealthy eating behavior and lead to obesity. However, previous research failed to reach consensus on the alterations in event-related potential (ERP) markers of inhibitory control, i.e.

Investigating Heritage Language Processing: Meaning Composition in Chinese Classifier-Noun Phrasal Contexts.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how Chinese-Malay bilingual speakers with Chinese as heritage language process semantic congruency effects in Chinese and how their brain activities compare to those of monolingual Chinese speakers using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. To this end, semantic congruencies were manipulated in Chinese classifier-noun phrases, resulting in four conditions: (i) a strongly constraining/high-cloze, plausible (SP) condition, (ii) a weakly constraining/low-cloze, plausible (WP) condition, (iii) a strongly constraining/implausible (SI) condition, and (iv) a weakly constraining/implausible (WI) condition. The analysis of EEG data focused on two event-related potential components, i.

Hair cortisol, social support, personality traits, and clinical course: differences in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the differences in the relationship between hair cortisol concentration (HCC) and psychosocial stress, social support, clinical features, clinical course, and outcome in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Methods: A total of 109 schizophrenia patients, 93 bipolar disorder patients and 86 healthy controls between 18 and 60 years old were enrolled in the study. Linear regression and factor analysis were employed to examine and compare the relationship between HCC and childhood trauma, the number of stressful life events, the amount of social support in the three months before the hair cortisol assessment, clinical fearures, clinical course, and outcome in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Conflict Processing in Schizophrenia: Dissociable neural mechanisms revealed by the N2 and frontal midline theta.

Deficits in executive control have long been regarded as one of the hallmark cognitive characteristics in people with schizophrenia (SZ), and current neurocognitive models of SZ generally regard the dysfunctional anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as the possible neural mechanism. This however, contrasts with recent studies showing that conflict processing, a key component of executive functions that relies on ACC, remains relatively intact in SZ. The current study aimed to investigate this issue through two well-known electrophysiological signatures of conflict processing that have been suggested to originate from ACC, i.

Effects of multi-domain cognitive training on working memory retrieval in older adults: behavioral and ERP evidence from a Chinese community study.

Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive function that typically declines with age. Previous studies have shown that targeted WM training has the potential to improve WM performance in older adults. In the present study, we investigated whether a multi-domain cognitive training program that was not designed to specifically target WM could improve the behavioral performance and affect the neural activity during WM retrieval in healthy older adults.

Decoding attention control and selection in visual spatial attention.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are used extensively to investigate the neural mechanisms of attention control and selection. The univariate ERP approach, however, has left important questions inadequately answered. We addressed two questions by applying multivariate pattern classification to multichannel ERPs in two cued visual spatial attention experiments (N = 56): (a) impact of cueing strategies (instructional vs.

Attention-related modulation of frontal midline theta oscillations in cingulate cortex during a spatial cueing Go/NoGo task.

Recently frontal midline theta (FMθ, 4-8 Hz) oscillations have been consistently reported and proposed as the potential neural mechanism for response inhibition, a core component of human executive functions. However, it remains unclear to what extent the increase of FMθ power during response inhibition tasks is influenced by other non-inhibitory cognitive processes that are usually required for the tasks. In this study, we examined attention-related effects on FMθ during response inhibition by revisiting the EEG data from healthy young adults (N = 30) while performing a spatial cueing Go/NoGo task (Hong et al.

Validation of a Piezoelectric Sensor Array-Based Device for Measurement of Carotid-Femoral Pulse Wave Velocity: The Philips Prototype.

Background: Multiple piezoelectric pressure mechanotransducers topologized into an array might improve efficiency and accuracy in collecting arterial pressure waveforms for measurement of pulse wave velocity (PWV).

Objective: In the present study, we validated a piezoelectric sensor array-based prototype (Philips) against the validated and clinically widely used Complior device (Alam Medical).

Methods: We recruited 33 subjects with a wide distribution of PWV.

Segregating Top-Down Selective Attention from Response Inhibition in a Spatial Cueing Go/NoGo Task: An ERP and Source Localization Study.

Successfully inhibiting a prepotent response tendency requires the attentional detection of signals which cue response cancellation. Although neuroimaging studies have identified important roles of stimulus-driven processing in the attentional detection, the effects of top-down control were scarcely investigated. In this study, scalp EEG was recorded from thirty-two participants during a modified Go/NoGo task, in which a spatial-cueing approach was implemented to manipulate top-down selective attention.

Deciding where to attend: Large-scale network mechanisms underlying attention and intention revealed by graph-theoretic analysis.

The neural mechanisms by which intentions are transformed into actions remain poorly understood. We investigated the network mechanisms underlying spontaneous voluntary decisions about where to focus visual-spatial attention (willed attention). Graph-theoretic analysis of two independent datasets revealed that regions activated during willed attention form a set of functionally-distinct networks corresponding to the frontoparietal network, the cingulo-opercular network, and the dorsal attention network.

Age-Related Differences in the Modulation of Small-World Brain Networks during a Go/NoGo Task.

Although inter-regional phase synchrony of neural oscillations has been proposed as a plausible mechanism for response control, little is known about the possible effects due to normal aging. We recorded multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG) from healthy younger and older adults in a Go/NoGo task, and examined the aging effects on synchronous brain networks with graph theoretical analysis. We found that in both age groups, brain networks in theta, alpha or beta band for either response execution (Go) or response inhibition (NoGo) condition showed prominent small-world property.

Normal aging selectively diminishes alpha lateralization in visual spatial attention.

EEG studies of cue-induced visual alpha power (8-13 Hz) lateralization have been conducted on young adults without examining differences that may develop as a consequence of normal aging. Here, we examined age-related differences in spatial attention by comparing healthy older and younger adults. Our key finding is that cue-induced alpha power lateralization was observed in younger, but not older adults, even though both groups exhibited classic event-related potential signatures of spatial orienting.

Age-related spatiotemporal reorganization during response inhibition.

As a key high-level cognitive function in human beings, response inhibition is crucial for adaptive behavior. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that older individuals exhibit greater neural activation than younger individuals during response inhibition tasks. This finding has been interpreted within a neural compensation framework, in which additional neural resources are recruited in response to age-related cognitive decline.

Functional brain networks for sensory maintenance in top-down selective attention to audiovisual inputs.

Sensory maintenance in top-down selective attention to audiovisual inputs involves distributed cortical activations, while the connectivity between the widespread cortical regions has not been well understood. Graph theory has been demonstrated to be a useful tool in the analysis of brain networks. In this study, we used graph theoretical analysis to investigate the functional brain networks for sensory maintenance in top-down selective attention to audiovisual inputs.

Cortical functional connectivity under different auditory attentional efforts.

Auditory attentional effort (AAE) could be tuned to different levels in a top-down manner, while its neural correlates are still poorly understood. In this paper, we investigate the cortical connectivity under different levels of AAE. Multichannel EEG signals were recorded from nine subjects (male/female=6=3) in an auditory discrimination task under low or high AAE.