Working memory allows for the manipulation of information in support of ongoing tasks, providing a workspace for cognitive processes such as learning, reasoning, and decision making. How well working memory depends, in part, on effort. Someone who pays attention at the right time and place will have better memory, and performance. In adult cognitive research studies, participants' devotion of maximal task-focused effort is often taken for granted, but in infant studies researchers cannot make that assumption. Here we showcase how pupillometry can provide an easy-to-obtain physiological measure of , allowing us to better understand infants' emerging abilities. In our work, we used pupillometry to measure trial-by-trial fluctuations of effort, establishing that, just as in adults, it influences how well infants could encode information in visual working memory. We hope that by using physiological measures such as pupil dilation, there will be a renewed effort to investigate the interaction between infants' attentive states and cognition.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721420903015 | DOI Listing |
Birth Defects Res
January 2025
School of Nursing, Ulster University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
Introduction: While improved medical and surgical care for children with pina bifida has improved their survival, some may have lower cognitive, behavioral and educational performance. The paper assesses the effect of spina bifida on cognitive, behavioral, and educational outcomes in 5-11 year olds.
Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used where data were collected from parents/guardians and teachers using Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, second edition (BRIEF2), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and Teacher Academic Attainment Scale (TAAS).
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn
January 2025
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Greater neighborhood disadvantage is associated with poorer global cognition. However, less is known about the variation in the magnitude of neighborhood effects across individual cognitive domains and whether the strength of these associations differs by individual-level factors. The current study investigated these questions in a community sample of older adults ( = 166, mean age = 72.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroimage
January 2025
Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, 610066 Sichuan, China; Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience Research Center, Liaoning Normal University, 116029 Liaoning, China. Electronic address:
Alpha oscillations play a critical role in visual working memory (VWM), but the specific contributions of lower and upper alpha sub-bands remain unclear. To address this, we employed a whole-field change detection paradigm to investigate how alpha power modulation and decoding accuracy differ between these sub-bands in response to varying set sizes and spatial extents of memory arrays. Our results revealed that lower alpha (8-9 Hz) exhibits widespread event-related desynchronization (ERD) during the early maintenance phase, which increases with set size and reflects attentional allocation to individual memory items.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroscience
January 2025
Department of Radiology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210008 China; Medical Imaging Center, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210008 China; Institute of Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210008 China; Institute of Brain Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. Electronic address:
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is often accompanied by non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), both of which are related to brain damage and cognitive impairment. However, cortical structural alteration and its relationship with metabolism and cognition in T2D with NAFLD (T2NAFLD) and without NAFLD (T2noNAFLD) remain unclear. The brain MRI scans, clinical measures and neuropsychological test were evaluated in 50 normal controls (NC), 73 T2noNAFLD, and 58 T2NAFLD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Res Bull
January 2025
School of Life and Health Information Science and Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China; College of Computer Science and Technology, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China; Institute for Advanced Sciences, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China; Guangyang Bay Laboratory, Chongqing Institute for Brain and Intelligence, Chongqing 400064, China. Electronic address:
Working memory, a fundamental cognitive function of the brain, necessitates the evaluation of cognitive load intensity due to limited cognitive resources. Optimizing cognitive load can enhance task performance efficiency by preventing resource waste and overload. Therefore, identifying working memory load is an essential area of research.
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