Investigating the Spatio-Temporal Signatures of Language Control-Related Brain Synchronization Processes.

Language control processes allow for the flexible manipulation and access to context-appropriate verbal representations. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have localized the brain regions involved in language control processes usually by comparing high vs. low lexical-semantic control conditions during verbal tasks.

Sensori-motor neurofeedback improves inhibitory control and induces neural changes: a placebo-controlled, double-blind, event-related potentials study.

Background/objective: Inhibition is crucial for controlling behavior and is impaired in various psychopathologies. Neurofeedback holds promise in addressing cognitive deficits, and experimental research is essential for identifying its functional benefits. This study aimed to investigate whether boosting sensorimotor activity (SMR) improves inhibitory control in a final sample of healthy individuals ( = 53), while exploring the underlying neurophysiological mechanism.

Cognition and communication in patients with spinal muscular atrophy: A systematic review.

•Synthesizes evidence from 12 studies on cognitive and communicative impacts in SMA, focusing on nuanced functional outcomes.•Highlights cognitive variability in SMA1, revealing subtle challenges in SMA2 and 3, and stresses tailored assessment methodologies.•Identifies communication barriers in SMA, emphasizing the urgency of investigating their potential interplay with cognitive functions.

Embracing sleep-onset complexity.

Sleep is crucial for many vital functions and has been extensively studied. By contrast, the sleep-onset period (SOP), often portrayed as a mere prelude to sleep, has been largely overlooked and remains poorly characterized. Recent findings, however, have reignited interest in this transitional period and have shed light on its neural mechanisms, cognitive dynamics, and clinical implications.

Sleepiness and the transition from wakefulness to sleep.

The transition from wakefulness to sleep is a progressive process that is reflected in the gradual loss of responsiveness, an alteration of cognitive functions, and a drastic shift in brain dynamics. These changes do not occur all at once. The sleep onset period (SOP) refers here to this period of transition between wakefulness and sleep.

Altered reinforcement learning in Narcolepsy type I and other central disorders of hypersomnolence.

Cognitive impairments are described in central disorders of hypersomnolence (CDH), but studies remain very limited and largely focused on narcolepsy type 1 (NT1). The precise nature and origin of these cognitive impairments is poorly understood. Specifically, impaired decision making under ambiguity has been reported in NT1 and suggested to be caused by dysregulation of the direct projections of hypocretin neurons to the dopamine network.

The ordinal distance effect in working memory: does it exist in the absence of confounds?

In most daily-life situations, briefly remembering actions or words is not sufficient to reach a goal. You often have to remember them in a specific order. One behavioural observation of the processing of ordinal information in working memory is the ordinal distance effect.

Speech-derived haptic stimulation enhances speech recognition in a multi-talker background.

Speech understanding, while effortless in quiet conditions, is challenging in noisy environments. Previous studies have revealed that a feasible approach to supplement speech-in-noise (SiN) perception consists in presenting speech-derived signals as haptic input. In the current study, we investigated whether the presentation of a vibrotactile signal derived from the speech temporal envelope can improve SiN intelligibility in a multi-talker background for untrained, normal-hearing listeners.

Feeling and deciding: Subjective experiences rather than objective factors drive the decision to invest cognitive control.

When presented with the choice to invest cognitive control in a task, several signals are monitored to reach a decision. Leading theoretical frameworks argued that the investment of cognitive control is determined by a cost-benefit computation. However, previous accounts remained silent on the potential role of subjective experience in this computation.

Case report: the effects of cerebellar tDCS in bilingual post-stroke aphasia.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation may be a useful neuromodulation tool for enhancing the effects of speech and language therapy in people with aphasia, but research so far has focused on monolinguals. We present the effects of 9 sessions of anodal cerebellar tDCS (ctDCS) coupled with language therapy in a bilingual patient with chronic post-stroke aphasia caused by left frontal ischemia, in a double-blind, sham-controlled within-subject design. Language therapy was provided in his second language (L2).

Contributions of age and clinical depression to metacognitive performance.

One aspect of metacognition is the ability to judge the accuracy of our own performance, even in the absence of external feedback, which is often measured using confidence ratings. Past research suggests that confidence is lower in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Less is known about the ability of MDD patients to discriminate correct from incorrect performance (metacognitive efficiency).

The cheese was green with… envy: An EEG study on minimal fictional descriptions.

Inconsistent information can be hard to understand, but in cases like fiction readers can integrate it with little to no difficulties. The present study aimed at examining if perspective switching can take place when only a minimal fictional description is provided (fictional world condition), as compared with general world knowledge (real world condition). Participants read sentences where food items had animated or inanimate features while EEG was recorded and performed a sentence completion task to evaluate recall.

Atypical procedural learning skills in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder.

We investigated the procedural learning deficit hypothesis in Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) while controlling for global performance such as slower reaction times (RTs) and variability. Procedural (sequence) learning was assessed in 31 children with DCD and 31 age-matched typically developing (TD) children through a serial reaction time task (SRTT). Sequential and random trial conditions were intermixed within five training epochs.

Executive functions in primary progressive aphasia: A meta-analysis.

Executive functions (EFs) refer to a set of cognitive processes, specifically shifting, inhibition, updating of working memory, and are involved in the cognitive control of behavior. Conflicting results have been reported regarding impairments of EFs in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). We performed a multi-level meta-analysis to confirm whether deficits of EFs exist in this population, focusing on a common EFs composite, and the components shifting, inhibition and updating separately.

Disentangling dyskinesia from parkinsonism in motor structures of patients with schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia frequently suffer from motor abnormalities, but underlying alterations in neuroarchitecture remain unclear. Here, we aimed to disentangle dyskinesia from parkinsonism in motor structures of patients with schizophrenia and to assess associated molecular architecture. We measured grey matter of motor regions and correlated volumetric estimates with dyskinesia and parkinsonism severity.

Predicting the loss of responsiveness when falling asleep in humans.

Falling asleep is a dynamical process that is poorly defined. The period preceding sleep, characterized by the progressive alteration of behavioral responses to the environment, which may last several minutes, has no electrophysiological definition, and is embedded in the first stage of sleep (N1). We aimed at better characterizing this drowsiness period looking for neurophysiological predictors of responsiveness using electro and magneto-encephalography.

Order matters: sleep spindles contribute to memory consolidation only when followed by rapid-eye-movement sleep.

Sleep is known to benefit memory consolidation, but little is known about the contribution of sleep stages within the sleep cycle. The sequential hypothesis proposes that memories are first replayed during nonrapid-eye-movement (NREM or N) sleep and then integrated into existing networks during rapid-eye-movement (REM or R) sleep, two successive critical steps for memory consolidation. However, it lacks experimental evidence as N always precedes R sleep in physiological conditions.

Atypical resting-state functional brain connectivity in children with developmental coordination disorder.

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) present lower abilities to acquire and execute coordinated motor skills. DCD is frequently associated with visual perceptual (with or without motor component) impairments. This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study compares the brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and spectral power of children with and without DCD.

Visual statistical learning in infancy: Discrimination of fine-grained regularities depends on early test trials.

Infants' ability to detect statistical regularities between visual objects has been demonstrated in previous studies (e.g., Kirkham et al.

A Systematic Review of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Primary Progressive Aphasia: Methodological Considerations.

A variety of tDCS approaches has been used to investigate the potential of tDCS to improve language outcomes, or slow down the decay of language competences caused by Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). The employed stimulation protocols and study designs in PPA are generally speaking similar to those deployed in post-stroke aphasic populations. These two etiologies of aphasia however differ substantially in their pathophysiology, and for both conditions the optimal stimulation paradigm still needs to be established.

The interaction between numerical and continuous non-numerical magnitudes in a double change detection paradigm.

In the field of numerical cognition, researchers conventionally assess nonsymbolic numerical abilities with the help of number comparison tasks, in which participants need to compare two arrays. Many studies emphasized that visual (non-numerical) dimensions can serve as strategic cues and influence the decision on numerosity in these tasks. In this study, we suggest the use of a novel paradigm based on the change detection paradigm.

The relation between task-relatedness of anxiety and metacognitive performance.

It is well established that anxiety influences a range of cognitive processes such as cognitive control or decision-making. What is less known is how anxiety influences the metacognitive evaluations individuals make about their own performance. The present study explored the importance of task-relatedness in the relation between anxiety and metacognitive awareness.

Automatic Processing of Numerosity in Human Neocortex Evidenced by Occipital and Parietal Neuromagnetic Responses.

Humans and other animal species are endowed with the ability to sense, represent, and mentally manipulate the number of items in a set without needing to count them. One central hypothesis is that this ability relies on an automated functional system dedicated to numerosity, the perception of the discrete numerical magnitude of a set of items. This system has classically been associated with intraparietal regions, however accumulating evidence in favor of an early visual number sense calls into question the functional role of parietal regions in numerosity processing.

Resting-state functional brain connectivity is related to subsequent procedural learning skills in school-aged children.

This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigates how procedural sequence learning performance is related to prior brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), and to what extent sequence learning induces rapid changes in brain rsFC in school-aged children. Procedural learning was assessed in 30 typically developing children (mean age ± SD: 9.99 years ± 1.