Binding of Task-Irrelevant Action Features and Auditory Action Effects.

Discrete task-relevant features of an overt response, such as response location, are bound to, and retrieved by coincidentally occurring auditory stimuli. Here we studied whether continuous, task-irrelevant response features like force or response duration also become bound to, and retrieved by such stimuli. In two experiments we asked participants to carry out a pinch which produced a certain auditory effect in a prime part of each trial.

The effect of ambiguous and unambiguous stimuli on target processing in less creative and more creative groups.

In the present study our aim was to examine how the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli changes with creativity and aging, and how this processing influences task-relevant responding. We hypothesized that the degree in which irrelevant stimuli attract attention and occupy cognitive capacity, thereby interfering with the motor task, depends not only on the stimuli's saliency, but also on the participants' creativity and age. We investigated event-related potentials (ERP) and behavioural data in four groups - more creative and less creative younger (18-30 years) and older (60-75 years) adults - by presenting unambiguous and ambiguous portrait paintings and photos of faces in equal proportions before and after the target stimuli.

Huygens synchronization of medial septal pacemaker neurons generates hippocampal theta oscillation.

Episodic learning and memory retrieval are dependent on hippocampal theta oscillation, thought to rely on the GABAergic network of the medial septum (MS). To test how this network achieves theta synchrony, we recorded MS neurons and hippocampal local field potential simultaneously in anesthetized and awake mice and rats. We show that MS pacemakers synchronize their individual rhythmicity frequencies, akin to coupled pendulum clocks as observed by Huygens.

Physiological measurements in social acceptance of self driving technologies.

The goal of the present study is to examine the cognitive/affective physiological correlates of passenger travel experience in autonomously driven transportation systems. We investigated the social acceptance and cognitive aspects of self-driving technology by measuring physiological responses in real-world experimental settings using eye-tracking and EEG measures simultaneously on 38 volunteers. A typical test run included human-driven (Human) and Autonomous conditions in the same vehicle, in a safe environment.

AgRP neurons control structure and function of the medial prefrontal cortex.

Hypothalamic agouti-related peptide and neuropeptide Y-expressing (AgRP) neurons have a critical role in both feeding and non-feeding behaviors of newborn, adolescent, and adult mice, suggesting their broad modulatory impact on brain functions. Here we show that constitutive impairment of AgRP neurons or their peripubertal chemogenetic inhibition resulted in both a numerical and functional reduction of neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of mice. These changes were accompanied by alteration of oscillatory network activity in mPFC, impaired sensorimotor gating, and altered ambulatory behavior that could be reversed by the administration of clozapine, a non-selective dopamine receptor antagonist.

Turning a blind eye to motor differences leads to bias in estimating action-related auditory ERP attenuation.

Event-related potential (ERP) studies investigating the processing of self-induced stimuli often rely on the assumption that ballistic actions and motor ERPs are constant across different sets of action effects. Since recent studies challenge this motor equivalence assumption, we examined whether neglecting effect-related motor differences can bias the estimation of auditory ERPs in a typical action-related ERP attenuation paradigm. We increased action variability with a force production task and selected an event subset in which the motor equivalence assumption was true.

Reduced functional connectivity supports statistical learning of temporally distributed regularities.

Statistical learning is a powerful ability that extracts regularities from our environment and makes predictions about future events. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we aimed to probe how a wide range of brain areas are intertwined to support statistical learning, characterising its architecture in the whole-brain functional connectivity (FC). Participants performed a statistical learning task of temporally distributed regularities.

Histological and electrophysiological evidence on the safe operation of a sharp-tip multimodal optrode during infrared neuromodulation of the rat cortex.

Infrared neuromodulation is an emerging technology in neuroscience that exploits the inherent thermal sensitivity of neurons to excite or inhibit cellular activity. Since there is limited information on the physiological response of intracortical cell population in vivo including evidence on cell damage, we aimed to create and to validate the safe operation of a microscale sharp-tip implantable optrode that can be used to suppress the activity of neuronal population with low optical power continuous wave irradiation. Effective thermal cross-section and electric properties of the multimodal microdevice was characterized in bench-top tests.

From End to End: Gaining, Sorting, and Employing High-Density Neural Single Unit Recordings.

The meaning behind neural single unit activity has constantly been a challenge, so it will persist in the foreseeable future. As one of the most sourced strategies, detecting neural activity in high-resolution neural sensor recordings and then attributing them to their corresponding source neurons correctly, namely the process of spike sorting, has been prevailing so far. Support from ever-improving recording techniques and sophisticated algorithms for extracting worthwhile information and abundance in clustering procedures turned spike sorting into an indispensable tool in electrophysiological analysis.

Tracking the contribution of inductive bias to individualised internal models.

Internal models capture the regularities of the environment and are central to understanding how humans adapt to environmental statistics. In general, the correct internal model is unknown to observers, instead they rely on an approximate model that is continually adapted throughout learning. However, experimenters assume an ideal observer model, which captures stimulus structure but ignores the diverging hypotheses that humans form during learning.

Force and electromyography reflections of sensory action-effect weighting during pinching.

Ideomotor theories suggest that different action-effects are not equally important in goal-directed actions, and that task-relevant information are weighted stronger during the representation of actions. This stronger weighting of task-relevant action-effects might also enable to utilize them as retrieval cues of the corresponding motor patterns. The aim of the present study was to investigate how the consistent presence or absence of a sound action-effect influenced the retrieval of the motor components of a simple, everyday action (pinching) as reflected by the pattern of force application and surface electromyogram (sEMG) recorded from the abductor pollicis brevis (APB) and first dorsal interosseous (FDI).

The modulatory effect of adaptive task-switching training on resting-state neural network dynamics in younger and older adults.

With increasing life expectancy and active aging, it becomes crucial to investigate methods which could compensate for generally detected cognitive aging processes. A promising candidate is adaptive cognitive training, during which task difficulty is adjusted to the participants' performance level to enhance the training and potential transfer effects. Measuring intrinsic brain activity is suitable for detecting possible distributed training-effects since resting-state dynamics are linked to the brain's functional flexibility and the effectiveness of different cognitive processes.

Positive schizotypy is associated with amplified mnemonic discrimination and attenuated generalization.

Tendency to experience inaccurate beliefs alongside perceptual anomalies constitutes positive schizotypal traits in the general population and shows continuity with the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. It has been hypothesized that the positive symptomatology of schizophrenia, and by extension, the odd beliefs and unusual perceptual experiences in the general population, are associated with specific alterations in memory functions. An imbalance between memory generalization and episodic memory specificity has been proposed on several counts; however, the direction of the imbalance is currently unclear.

Thalamic activity during scalp slow waves in humans.

Slow waves are major pacemakers of NREM sleep oscillations. While slow waves themselves are mainly generated by cortical neurons, it is not clear what role thalamic activity plays in the generation of some oscillations grouped by slow waves, and to what extent thalamic activity during slow waves is itself driven by corticothalamic inputs. To address this question, we simultaneously recorded both scalp EEG and local field potentials from six thalamic nuclei (bilateral anterior, mediodorsal and ventral anterior) in fifteen epileptic patients (age-range: 17-64 years, 7 females) undergoing Deep Brain Stimulation Protocol and assessed the temporal evolution of thalamic activity relative to scalp slow waves using time-frequency analysis.

More efficient formation of longer-term representations for word forms at birth can be linked to better language skills at 2 years.

Infants are able to extract words from speech early in life. Here we show that the quality of forming longer-term representations for word forms at birth predicts expressive language ability at the age of two years. Seventy-five neonates were familiarized with two spoken disyllabic pseudowords.

The emergence of action-effect-related motor adaptation amidst outcome unpredictability.

Previous research indicates that quick, repetitive actions (pinches, taps, button presses) are executed with smaller force when followed by predictable and salient action effects (tones, light flashes). It has been suggested that successive actions become gradually softer until an optimum is reached, which presumably reflects a balance between the ability to maintain a high probability of action success, and the reduction of exerted force to conserve energy. In the present experiments, we investigated whether this appeared when the arrival of the action effect was unpredictable.

Inhibitory control hinders habit change.

Our habits constantly influence the environment, often in negative ways that amplify global environmental and health risks. Hence, change is urgent. To facilitate habit change, inhibiting unwanted behaviors appears to be a natural human reaction.

Musical training improves fine motor function in adolescents.

Background: Adolescence is a sensitive period in motor development but little is known about how long-term learning dependent processes shape hand function in tasks of different complexity.

Procedure: We mapped two fundamental aspects of hand function: simple repetitive and complex sequential finger movements, as a function of the length of musical instrumental training. We controlled maturational factors such as chronological and biological age of adolescent female participants (11 to 15 years of age, n = 114).

Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Auditory Looming Bias.

Our auditory system constantly keeps track of our environment, informing us about our surroundings and warning us of potential threats. The auditory looming bias is an early perceptual phenomenon, reflecting higher alertness of listeners to approaching auditory objects, rather than to receding ones. Experimentally, this sensation has been elicited by using both intensity-varying stimuli, as well as spectrally varying stimuli with constant intensity.

Topographical relocation of adolescent sleep spindles reveals a new maturational pattern in the human brain.

Current theories of human neural development emphasize the posterior-to-anterior pattern of brain maturation. However, this scenario leaves out significant brain areas not directly involved with sensory input and behavioral control. Suggesting the relevance of cortical activity unrelated to sensory stimulation, such as sleep, we investigated adolescent transformations in the topography of sleep spindles.

An event-related potential study of the testing effect: Electrophysiological evidence for context-dependent processes changing throughout repeated practice.

The testing effect refers to a special form of performance improvement following practice. Specifically, repeated retrieval attempts improve long-term memory. In the present study we examined the underlying mechanisms of the testing effect as a function of time by investigating the electrophysiological correlates of repeated retrieval practice.

The adolescent pattern of sleep spindle development revealed by HD-EEG.

Sleep spindles are developmentally relevant cortical oscillatory patterns; however, they have mostly been studied by considering the entire spindle frequency range (11-15 Hz) without a distinction between the functionally and topographically different slow and fast spindles, using relatively few electrodes and analysing wide age-ranges. Here, we employ high-density night sleep electroencephalography in three age-groups between 12 and 20 years of age (30 females and 30 males) and analyse the adolescent developmental pattern of the four major parameters of slow and fast sleep spindles. Most of our findings corroborate those very few previous studies that also make a distinction between slow and fast spindles in their developmental analysis.