Preliminary findings on the association between maternal salivary and hair cortisol and the mother-infant-interaction during the early postpartum period.

Maternal capabilities to engage in sensitive caregiving are important for infant development and mother-infant-interaction, however, can be negatively affected by cortisol due to a stress response. Previous research suggested that cortisol possibly impairs cognitive functions important for caregiving behavior, which potentially leads to less maternal sensitivity. However, studies investigating the influence of cortisol using endocrine parameters on the mother-infant-interaction during the early postpartum are lacking.

Serial dependencies in motor targeting as a function of target appearance.

In order to bring stimuli of interest into our central field of vision, we perform saccadic eye movements. After every saccade, the error between the predicted and actual landing position is monitored. In the laboratory, artificial post-saccadic errors are created by displacing the target during saccade execution.

Relative source credibility affects the continued influence effect: Evidence of rationality in the CIE.

The Continued Influence Effect (CIE) is the phenomenon that retracted information often continues to influence judgments and inferences. The CIE is rational when the source that retracts the information (the retractor) is less credible than the source that originally presented the information (the informant; Connor Desai et al., 2020).

Serial dependencies for externally and self-generated stimuli.

Our senses are constantly exposed to external stimulation. Part of the sensory stimulation is produced by our own movement, like visual motion on the retina or tactile sensations from touch. Sensations caused by our movements appear attenuated.

Not All Stroop-Type Tasks Are Alike: Assessing the Impact of Stimulus Material, Task Design, and Cognitive Demand via Meta-analyses Across Neuroimaging Studies.

The Stroop effect is one of the most often studied examples of cognitive conflict processing. Over time, many variants of the classic Stroop task were used, including versions with different stimulus material, control conditions, presentation design, and combinations with additional cognitive demands. The neural and behavioral impact of this experimental variety, however, has never been systematically assessed.

Evaluating the robustness of parameter estimates in cognitive models: A meta-analytic review of multinomial processing tree models across the multiverse of estimation methods.

Researchers have become increasingly aware that data-analysis decisions affect results. Here, we examine this issue systematically for multinomial processing tree (MPT) models, a popular class of cognitive models for categorical data. Specifically, we examine the robustness of MPT model parameter estimates that arise from two important decisions: the level of data aggregation (complete-pooling, no-pooling, or partial-pooling) and the statistical framework (frequentist or Bayesian).

Visuo-motor updating in individuals with heightened autistic traits.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) presents a range of challenges, including heightened sensory sensitivities. Here, we examine the idea that sensory overload in ASD may be linked to issues with efference copy mechanisms, which predict the sensory outcomes of self-generated actions, such as eye movements. Efference copies play a vital role in maintaining visual and motor stability.

Transfer of Tactile Learning to Untrained Body Parts: Emerging Cortical Mechanisms.

Pioneering investigations in the mid-19th century revealed that the perception of tactile cues presented to the surface of the skin improves with training, which is referred to as . Surprisingly, tactile learning also occurs for body parts and skin locations that are not physically involved in the training. For example, after training of a finger, tactile learning transfers to adjacent untrained fingers.

Compression of time in double-step saccades.

Temporal intervals appear compressed at the time of saccades. Here, I asked if saccadic compression of time is related to motor planning or to saccade execution. To dissociate saccade motor planning from its execution, I used the double-step paradigm, in which subjects have to perform two horizontal saccades successively.

Intentional binding - Is it just causal binding? A replication study of Suzuki et al. (2019).

Intentional actions produce a temporal compression between the action and its outcome, known as intentional binding. However, Suzuki et al. (2019) recently showed that temporal compression can be observed without intentional actions.

Active production and passive observation of hand movements shift visual hand location.

Which factors influence the perception of our hand location is a matter of current debate. Here, we test if sensorimotor processing contributes to the perception of hand location. We developed a novel visuomotor adaptation procedure to measure whether actively performing hand movements or passively observing them, influences visual perception of hand location.

Repulsive Aftereffects of Visual Space.

Prolonged exposure to a sensory stimulus induces perceptual adaptation aftereffects. Traditionally, aftereffects are known to change the appearance of stimulus features, like contrast, color, or shape. However, shifts in the spatial position of objects have also been observed to follow adaptation.

Brain Signatures of Embodied Semantics and Language: A Consensus Paper.

According to embodied theories (including embodied, embedded, extended, enacted, situated, and grounded approaches to cognition), language representation is intrinsically linked to our interactions with the world around us, which is reflected in specific brain signatures during language processing and learning. Moving on from the original rivalry of embodied vs. amodal theories, this consensus paper addresses a series of carefully selected questions that aim at determining and rather than motor and perceptual processes are involved in language processes.

Temporal adaptation of sensory attenuation for self-touch.

The sensory consequences of our actions appear attenuated to us. This effect has been reported for external sensations that are evoked by auditory or visual events and for body-related sensations which are produced by self-touch. In the present study, we investigated the effects of prolonged exposure to a delay between an action and the generated sensation on sensory attenuation for self-touch.

Protocol to conduct functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy in different age groups of human participants.

We present a protocol to conduct functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS) in human participants before, during, and after training on a visual task. We describe steps for participant setup, volume-of-interest placement, fMRS measurement, and post-scan tests. We discuss the design, analysis, and interpretation of fMRS experiments.

Altered oculomotor flexibility is linked to high autistic traits.

Autism is a multifaced disorder comprising sensory abnormalities and a general inflexibility in the motor domain. The sensorimotor system is continuously challenged to answer whether motion-contingent errors result from own movements or whether they are due to external motion. Disturbances in this decision could lead to the perception of motion when there is none and to an inflexibility with regard to motor learning.

Modulating prospective memory and attentional control with high-definition transcranial current stimulation: Study protocol of a randomized, double-blind, and sham-controlled trial in healthy older adults.

The ability to remember future intentions (i.e., prospective memory) is influenced by attentional control.

Lack of orientation specific adaptation to vertically oriented Glass patterns in human visual cortex: an fMRI adaptation investigation.

The perception of coherent form configurations in natural scenes relies on the activity of early visual areas that respond to local orientation cues. Subsequently, high-level visual areas pool these local signals to construct a global representation of the initial visual input. However, it is still debated whether neurons in the early visual cortex respond also to global form features.

Motor variability modulates calibration of precisely timed movements.

Interacting with the environment often requires precisely timed movements, challenging the brain to minimize the detrimental impact of neural noise. Recent research demonstrates that the brain exploits the variability of its temporal estimates and recalibrates perception accordingly. Time-critical movements, however, contain a sensory measurement and a motor stage.

Sensorimotor synchronization to music reduces pain.

Pain-reducing effects of music listening are well-established, but the effects are small and their clinical relevance questionable. Recent theoretical advances, however, have proposed that synchronizing to music, such as clapping, tapping or dancing, has evolutionarily important social effects that are associated with activation of the endogenous opioid system (which supports both analgesia and social bonding). Thus, active sensorimotor synchronization to music could have stronger analgesic effects than simply listening to music.

Serial dependencies in visual stability during self-motion.

Every time we move our head, the brain must decide whether the displacement of the visual scene is the result of external or self-produced motion. Gaze shifts generate the biggest and most frequent disturbance of vision. Visual stability during gaze shifts is necessary for both, dissociating self-produced from external motion and retaining bodily balance.

Intermediately synchronised brain states optimise trade-off between subject specificity and predictive capacity.

Functional connectivity (FC) refers to the statistical dependencies between activity of distinct brain areas. To study temporal fluctuations in FC within the duration of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning session, researchers have proposed the computation of an edge time series (ETS) and their derivatives. Evidence suggests that FC is driven by a few time points of high-amplitude co-fluctuation (HACF) in the ETS, which may also contribute disproportionately to interindividual differences.

Analysis of Functional Neuroplastic Changes in the Cortical Language System in Relation to Different Growth Patterns of Glioblastoma.

The interpretation of fMRI data in glioblastoma (GB) is challenging as these tumors exhibit specific hemodynamic processes which, together with malignancy, tumor volume and proximity to eloquent cortex areas, may lead to misinterpretations of fMRI signals. The aim of this study was to investigate if different radiologically defined GB tumor growth patterns may also influence the fMRI signal, activation pattern and functional connectivity differently. Sixty-four patients with left-hemispheric glioblastoma were included and stratified according to their radiologically defined tumor growth pattern into groups with a uniform (U-TGP) or diffuse tumor growth pattern (D-TGP).

Hierarchical categorization learning is associated with representational changes in the dorsal striatum and posterior frontal and parietal cortex.

Learning and recognition can be improved by sorting novel items into categories and subcategories. Such hierarchical categorization is easy when it can be performed according to learned rules (e.g.

That means something to me: How linguistic and emotional experience affect the acquisition, representation, and processing of novel abstract concepts.

We used a novel linguistic training paradigm to investigate the experience-dependent acquisition, representation, and processing of novel emotional and neutral abstract concepts. Participants engaged in mental imagery ( = 32) or lexico-semantic rephrasing ( = 34) of linguistic material during five training sessions and successfully learned the novel abstract concepts. Feature production after training showed that specifically emotion features enriched the emotional concepts' representations.