Longitudinal variation in resilient psychosocial functioning is associated with ongoing cortical myelination and functional reorganization during adolescence.

Adolescence is a period of dynamic brain remodeling and susceptibility to psychiatric risk factors, mediated by the protracted consolidation of association cortices. Here, we investigated whether longitudinal variation in adolescents' resilience to psychosocial stressors during this vulnerable period is associated with ongoing myeloarchitectural maturation and consolidation of functional networks. We used repeated myelin-sensitive Magnetic Transfer (MT) and resting-state functional neuroimaging (n = 141), and captured adversity exposure by adverse life events, dysfunctional family settings, and socio-economic status at two timepoints, one to two years apart.

Are older adults less generous? Age differences in emotion-related social decision making.

In social interaction, age-related differences in emotional processing may lead to varied social decision making between young and older adults. However, previous studies of social decision making have paid less attention to the interactants' emotions, leaving age differences and underlying neural mechanisms unexplored. To address this gap, the present study combined functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, employing a modified dictator game task with recipients displaying either neutral or sad facial expressions.

Auditory associative word learning in adults: The effects of musical experience and stimulus ordering.

Evidence for sequential associative word learning in the auditory domain has been identified in infants, while adults have shown difficulties. To better understand which factors may facilitate adult auditory associative word learning, we assessed the role of auditory expertise as a learner-related property and stimulus order as a stimulus-related manipulation in the association of auditory objects and novel labels. We tested in the first experiment auditorily-trained musicians versus athletes (high-level control group) and in the second experiment stimulus ordering, contrasting object-label versus label-object presentation.

Structural covariation between cerebellum and neocortex intrinsic structural covariation links cerebellum subregions to the cerebral cortex.

The human cerebellum is increasingly recognized to be involved in nonmotor and higher-order cognitive functions. Yet, its ties with the entire cerebral cortex have not been holistically studied in a whole brain exploration with a unified analytical framework. Here, we characterized dissociable cortical-cerebellar structural covariation patterns based on regional gray matter volume (GMV) across the brain in = 38,527 UK Biobank participants.

Dissociating prosodic from syntactic delta activity during natural speech comprehension.

Decoding human speech requires the brain to segment the incoming acoustic signal into meaningful linguistic units, ranging from syllables and words to phrases. Integrating these linguistic constituents into a coherent percept sets the root of compositional meaning and hence understanding. One important cue for segmentation in natural speech is prosodic cues, such as pauses, but their interplay with higher-level linguistic processing is still unknown.

Mapping short association fibre connectivity up to V3 in the human brain in vivo.

Short association fibres (SAF) are the most abundant fibre pathways in the human white matter. Until recently, SAF could not be mapped comprehensively in vivo because diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging with sufficiently high spatial resolution needed to map these thin and short pathways was not possible. Recent developments in acquisition hardware and sequences allowed us to create a dedicated in vivo method for mapping the SAF based on sub-millimetre spatial resolution diffusion weighted tractography, which we validated in the human primary (V1) and secondary (V2) visual cortex against the expected SAF retinotopic order.

Shared structure facilitates working memory of multiple sequences.

Daily experiences often involve the processing of multiple sequences, yet storing them challenges the limited capacity of working memory (WM). To achieve efficient memory storage, relational structures shared by sequences would be leveraged to reorganize and compress information. Here, participants memorized a sequence of items with different colors and spatial locations and later reproduced the full color and location sequences one after another.

Neuroplasticity of Speech-in-Noise Processing in Older Adults Assessed by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS).

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a non-invasive optical neuroimaging technique that is portable and acoustically silent, has become a promising tool for evaluating auditory brain functions in hearing-vulnerable individuals. This study, for the first time, used fNIRS to evaluate neuroplasticity of speech-in-noise processing in older adults. Ten older adults, most of whom had moderate-to-mild hearing loss, participated in a 4-week speech-in-noise training.

Aberrant neural oscillations in poststroke aphasia.

Neural oscillations are electrophysiological indicators of synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. Recent work suggests aberrant patterns of neuronal activity in patients with poststroke aphasia. Yet, there is a lack of systematic explorations of neural oscillations in poststroke aphasia.

High or low expectations: Expected intensity of action outcome is embedded in action kinetics.

Goal-directed actions are performed in order to attain certain sensory consequences in the world. However, expected attributes of these consequences can affect the kinetics of the action. In a set of three studies (n = 120), we examined how expected attributes of stimulus outcome (intensity) shape the kinetics of the triggering action (applied force), even when the action kinetic and attribute are independent.

How adverse childhood experiences get under the skin: A systematic review, integration and methodological discussion on threat and reward learning mechanisms.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a major risk factor for the development of multiple psychopathological conditions, but the mechanisms underlying this link are poorly understood. Associative learning encompasses key mechanisms through which individuals learn to link important environmental inputs to emotional and behavioral responses. ACEs may impact the normative maturation of associative learning processes, resulting in their enduring maladaptive expression manifesting in psychopathology.

Verbal short term memory contribution to sentence comprehension decreases with increasing syntactic complexity in people with aphasia.

Sentence comprehension requires the integration of linguistic units presented in a temporal sequence based on a non-linear underlying syntactic structure. While it is uncontroversial that storage is mandatory for this process, there are opposing views regarding the relevance of general short-term-/working-memory capacities (STM/WM) versus language specific resources. Here we report results from 43 participants with an acquired brain lesion in the extended left hemispheric language network and resulting language deficits, who performed a sentence-to-picture matching task and an experimental task assessing phonological short-term memory.

Attachment and inter-individual differences in empathy, compassion, and theory of mind abilities.

Social processing, namely the ability to understand others' cognitive and affective states, is crucial for successful social interaction. It encompasses socio-affective abilities such as empathy and compassion, as well as socio-cognitive abilities such as theory of mind (ToM). This study examined the link between social processing and attachment.

Laminar dissociation of feedforward and feedback in high-level ventral visual cortex during imagery and perception.

Visual imagery and perception share neural machinery but rely on different information flow. While perception is driven by the integration of sensory feedforward and internally generated feedback information, imagery relies on feedback only. This suggests that although imagery and perception may activate overlapping brain regions, they do so in informationally distinctive ways.

Extent of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Is Lesion Level Dependent and Predictive of Recovery: A Multicenter Neuroimaging Study.

Assessing the extent of the intramedullary lesion after spinal cord injury (SCI) might help to improve prognostication. However, because the neurological level of injury impacts the recovery potential of SCI patients, the question arises whether lesion size parameters and predictive models based on those parameters are affected as well. In this retrospective observational study, the extent of the intramedullary lesion between individuals who sustained cervical and thoracolumbar SCI was compared, and its relation to clinical recovery was assessed.

Task imprinting: Another mechanism of representational change?

Research from several areas suggests that mental representations adapt to the specific tasks we carry out in our environment. In this study, we propose a mechanism of adaptive representational change, task imprinting. Thereby, we introduce a computational model, which portrays task imprinting as an adaptation to specific task goals via selective storage of helpful representations in long-term memory.

Temporal stability of optimism and pessimism (LOT-R) over 6 years in the general population.

Objective: The aims of this study were to examine changes in habitual optimism over a six-year period and to analyze the relationship between changes in optimism and changes in other quality of life-related variables.

Method: A randomly selected community sample of the German adult general population ( = 4,965) was surveyed twice, with a time interval of 6.04 years.

Investigating the neural mechanisms of transcranial direct current stimulation effects on human cognition: current issues and potential solutions.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been studied extensively for its potential to enhance human cognitive functions in healthy individuals and to treat cognitive impairment in various clinical populations. However, little is known about how tDCS modulates the neural networks supporting cognition and the complex interplay with mediating factors that may explain the frequently observed variability of stimulation effects within and between studies. Moreover, research in this field has been characterized by substantial methodological variability, frequent lack of rigorous experimental control and small sample sizes, thereby limiting the generalizability of findings and translational potential of tDCS.

Motion-BIDS: an extension to the brain imaging data structure to organize motion data for reproducible research.

We present an extension to the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) for motion data. Motion data is frequently recorded alongside human brain imaging and electrophysiological data. The goal of Motion-BIDS is to make motion data interoperable across different laboratories and with other data modalities in human brain and behavioral research.

Hippocampus and striatum show distinct contributions to longitudinal changes in value-based learning in middle childhood.

The hippocampal-dependent memory system and striatal-dependent memory system modulate reinforcement learning depending on feedback timing in adults, but their contributions during development remain unclear. In a 2-year longitudinal study, 6-to-7-year-old children performed a reinforcement learning task in which they received feedback immediately or with a short delay following their response. Children's learning was found to be sensitive to feedback timing modulations in their reaction time and inverse temperature parameter, which quantifies value-guided decision-making.

Age-related decline in GABAergic intracortical inhibition can be counteracted by long-term learning of balance skills.

Ageing induces a decline in GABAergic intracortical inhibition, which seems to be associated not only with decremental changes in well-being, sleep quality, cognition and pain management but also with impaired motor control. So far, little is known regarding whether targeted interventions can prevent the decline of intracortical inhibition in the primary motor cortex in the elderly. Therefore, the present study investigated whether age-related cortical dis-inhibition could be reversed after 6 months of balance learning and whether improvements in postural control correlated with the extent of reversed dis-inhibition.