CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.005
Manuel Leitner, Daniela Pinter, Stefan Ropele, Marisa Koini
{"title":"Functional connectivity changes in long-Covid patients with and without cognitive impairment.","authors":"Manuel Leitner, Daniela Pinter, Stefan Ropele, Marisa Koini","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Long-Covid is associated with cognitive deficits in memory, attention, or executive function. However, the associated cerebral structural and functional changes are insufficiently studied to date. We investigated 39 long-Covid patients with (n = 16) and without (n = 23) cognitive impairment. Impairment was defined by a pronounced deficit (-1.5 SD) in at least one cognitive domain including memory, attention, executive function, and verbal fluency. All participants underwent structural and functional resting-state magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We assessed differences in resting-state networks (within and between networks) between both groups as well as structural differences in total gray matter and subcortical volumes. Both groups did not differ in demographic or disease-related characteristics. Patients with cognitive deficits showed higher functional connectivity (FC) between the default mode network (DMN) and parts of the posterior supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus and posterior-occipital part of the middle temporal gyrus, compared to those cognitively unimpaired. In addition, inter-network analyses indicated a stronger connectivity between the visual and ventral stream network in those with cognitive impairment. We found no volumetric differences between the two groups. Our results indicate that altered FC with the DMN as well as a stronger connectivity between the visual and ventral stream network in cognitively impaired long-Covid patients are associated with worse cognitive performance and therefore suggests a maladaptive functional change.</p>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"74-89"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144803832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.014
Kelly C. Martin , Andrew T. DeMarco , Sara M. Dyslin , Peter E. Turkeltaub
{"title":"Rapid auditory and phonemic processing relies on the left planum temporale","authors":"Kelly C. Martin , Andrew T. DeMarco , Sara M. Dyslin , Peter E. Turkeltaub","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>After initial bilateral acoustic processing of the speech signal, much of the subsequent language processing is left-lateralized, perhaps due to a left hemisphere (LH) advantage for rapidly unfolding components of speech. Here we investigated whether and where damage to the LH predicted impaired performance on judging the directionality of frequency modulated (FM) sweep stimuli that changed within short (25 msec) or longer (250 msec) temporal windows. Performance was significantly lower for stroke survivors (<em>n</em> = 50; 18 female) than controls (<em>n</em> = 61; 34 female) on FM Sweeps judgments, particularly on the short sweeps. Support vector regression lesion-symptom mapping revealed that part of the left planum temporale (PT) was related to worse performance on the short FM sweeps, controlling for performance on the long sweeps. We then investigated whether damage to this region related to diminished performance on stop consonant identification and pseudoword repetition, which theoretically depend on rapid auditory processing. Indeed, participants with PT lesions (PT lesion+, <em>n</em> = 24) performed worse than those without (PT lesion-, <em>n</em> = 26) on stop consonant identification and pseudoword repetition, controlling for lesion size and hearing ability. PT lesions impacted pseudoword repetition more than real word repetition, which is of interest because pseudowords rely solely on speech sound perception and sequencing, whereas words can also rely on lexical-semantic knowledge. We conclude that the left PT is a critical region for processing auditory information in short temporal windows, and it may also be an essential transfer point in auditory-to-linguistic processing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 12-24"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-14DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.001
Oris Shenyan , Laura Haye , Georgia A. Milne , Matteo Lisi , John A. Greenwood , Jeremy I. Skipper , Tessa M. Dekker
{"title":"Reduced susceptibility to experimentally-induced complex visual hallucinations with age","authors":"Oris Shenyan , Laura Haye , Georgia A. Milne , Matteo Lisi , John A. Greenwood , Jeremy I. Skipper , Tessa M. Dekker","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Visual hallucinations occur across many clinical conditions, but can also be induced experimentally in healthy individuals, using high-frequency flicker (Ganzflicker) and sensory deprivation (Ganzfeld). It is unclear how hallucinatory proneness changes across the lifespan, with prior questionnaire-based studies showing mixed results. As factors such as multi-sensory acuity loss and relatively increased reliance on prior knowledge may increase as we age, and these are considered risk factors for hallucination proneness, we hypothesised that reported decreases in hallucinations might reflect underreporting due to stigma. We therefore sought to measure hallucination proneness in 44 healthy adults spanning the adult lifespan (younger age group; n = 22; age 19–39 years, mean 27.2 ± 5.5; older age group n = 22; age 59–79 years, mean 68.0 ± 5.8), quantifying the tendency to experience complex and simple hallucinations in an experimental environment designed to elicit hallucinations. We find that reports of complex hallucinations (those representing objects, scenes, etc) are lower in older adults than in younger adults, both in real time and retrospectively. None of our measured cognitive or sensory measures (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, perceptual reorganisation, imagery vividness, memory inhibition, and suggestibility) mediate this relationship. We conclude that reduced complex hallucination proneness is likely to be a feature of typical ageing, and that experiencing hallucinations in older individuals may signal underlying pathology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 188-204"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144913672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-31DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.008
Neelima Wagley , James R. Booth
{"title":"Neuro-cognitive development of semantic and syntactic bootstrapping in 7- to 9-year-old children","authors":"Neelima Wagley , James R. Booth","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examined longitudinal relations of brain and behavior assessing semantic and syntactic language bootstrapping in children from ages 7- to 10.5-years-old. This study is a direct extension of our earlier investigation on 5- to -7-year-old children (Wagley & Booth, 2021). In a series of preregistered and exploratory analyses, we tested how semantic and syntactic knowledge may influence the development of left hemisphere brain regions implicated in these processes, i.e., inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis (IFGop) and pars triangulairs (IFGtri), posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). We also tested how engagement of these brain regions may influence the development of children’s semantic and syntactic knowledge. Participants were 7–8.5 years old at Time 1 and 9–10.5 years old at Time 2 of data collection. Hierarchical regression analyses included data from <em>N</em> = 53 participants for the semantic task and <em>N</em> = 41 for the syntax task, controlling for baseline effects. In line with our previous study, we found that early behavior predicted later brain activation but that earlier brain activation did not predict later behavior. Across the analyses, there was weak evidence of semantic bootstrapping in the pSTG but strong evidence in support of syntactic bootstrapping in the IFGtri. We observed no support of either semantic or syntactic bootstrapping in IFGop or pMTG. These results complement prior behavioral models of language suggesting close relations between lexical and grammatical development in older elementary school age children, as well as neurocognitive models that highlight the importance of semantic and syntactic integration for language comprehension.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 105-119"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144893751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-08DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.013
Holger Wiese, Emma Ablott, Milena M. Bojdo, Linda H. Lidborg
{"title":"Colour is irrelevant for familiar face recognition: Evidence from event-related brain potentials","authors":"Holger Wiese, Emma Ablott, Milena M. Bojdo, Linda H. Lidborg","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.013","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Familiar face recognition is based on image-invariant representations of known faces which can be activated from highly variable instances. While the existence of such representations is well-established, it is less clear what specific information is stored in them. Here, we examined whether colour, and more specifically hue and saturation, is beneficial for activating familiar face representations. In a series of three experiments, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an immediate repetition priming paradigm. In all three experiments, we observed clear ERP priming effects, with more negative amplitudes at occipito-temporal channels when identity was repeated between prime and target, relative to the non-repetition conditions, starting approximately 220 msec after target onset. In Experiment 1, these ERP repetition effects were highly similar for colour and greyscale primes. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which used spatially low-pass filtered primes to reduce high spatial frequency identity cues. Finally, prime faces in Experiment 3 were presented with reversed hue and saturation values. Again, ERP repetition effects were highly similar as compared to naturally coloured faces. These findings suggest that colour information is not beneficial, and indeed largely irrelevant for facial identity processing. We therefore conclude that familiar face representations do not contain identity-specific colour information.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 120-139"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144866225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.005
Maria Z. Chroneos , Marlene Behrmann , J. Patrick Mayo
{"title":"Bidirectional and asymmetric smooth pursuit deficits in childhood hemispherectomy patients","authors":"Maria Z. Chroneos , Marlene Behrmann , J. Patrick Mayo","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The neural circuitry engaged in supporting eye movements has been well characterized, but fundamental questions remain about the necessity and sufficiency of the individual hemispheric contributions. To gain a better understanding of the neural correlates of oculomotor control, we measured horizontal smooth pursuit tracking behavior in 14 patients following childhood hemispherectomy. Relative to developmentally typical age-matched controls, patients exhibited a bilateral and asymmetric pursuit deficit with reduced ipsilesional but elevated contralesional eye speeds, and asymmetric accompanying ‘catch up’ saccades. The atypical pursuit behavior could not be explained by a sensory deficit associated with their hemianopia, as patients adjusted their eye position to maintain visibility of the target. The pursuit deficit was also not accounted for by a general motor impairment as patients made faster catch-up saccades than controls, particularly in the ipsilesional direction. These results, all of which hold irrespective of whether the right or left hemisphere is resected, demonstrate that patients can compensate for reduced pursuit speeds by modulating their saccade characteristics. Overall, this study represents the most comprehensive characterization of smooth pursuit disturbances in hemispherectomy patients. Our results elucidate: 1) the competence of a single hemisphere for generating pursuit and compensatory behaviors; 2) the lack of a hemispheric bias supporting pursuit given large-scale cortical disruptions; and 3) that intact horizontal pursuit likely requires the interaction of brain circuitry across both hemispheres.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 266-282"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144988197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-07DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.012
Eva Kimel , Ilana S. Hairston , Dafna Ben-Zion , Yekete Akal , Anat Prior , M. Gareth Gaskell , Tali Bitan
{"title":"Vocabulary learning and regularity extraction: Temporal dynamics of consolidation and associations with slow-wave sleep and sleep spindles","authors":"Eva Kimel , Ilana S. Hairston , Dafna Ben-Zion , Yekete Akal , Anat Prior , M. Gareth Gaskell , Tali Bitan","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fast sleep spindles and slow-wave sleep (SWS) have been linked to memory consolidation, however, their associations with learning and longer term retention of different aspects of language remain unclear. We investigated the temporal dynamics of consolidation of vocabulary and grammar, and their links with these sleep metrics. Young adult participants were trained in the evening on an artificial language that used plural inflections with an underlying morpho-phonological regularity that was not taught explicitly. Some of the words were presented frequently and others infrequently. Polysomnographic measures were collected during the night following learning; participants were tested on the vocabulary, trained inflections, and generalisation to untrained words at four time points across nine days.</div><div>Accuracy on the vocabulary test improved across the first night following learning, and the change was positively associated with SWS duration. Memory for infrequent words declined towards Day 9, but greater spindle density during the first night was associated with a smaller decline. Although mean group accuracy on trained inflections did not significantly change overnight, individually, the change was negatively correlated with spindle density. Generalisation accuracy showed no change across time and no correlations with sleep characteristics. Overall, the results demonstrate that vocabulary and grammar learning have different temporal dynamics of consolidation and distinct patterns of association with sleep metrics. The findings suggest a protective role of spindles for long-term retention of memory, particularly of weakly encoded items, and emphasise the need to dissociate the benefits of SWS from those of spindles.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 172-187"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144892248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-22DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.006
Riccardo Sacripante , Tabitha James , Michael Hornberger , Joshua Blake , Louis Renoult
{"title":"Semantic memory in healthy apolipoprotein ε4 carriers: A systematic review","authors":"Riccardo Sacripante , Tabitha James , Michael Hornberger , Joshua Blake , Louis Renoult","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Apolipoprotein epsilon 4 (<em>APOE</em> ε4) genetic variant is notoriously linked to enhanced risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Several studies have examined how this allele could influence cognitive functioning in healthy adults, and whether ε4 carriers show a subtle cognitive decline that would indicate preclinical AD pathology. Research has predominantly focused on episodic memory, where ε4 carriers are usually impaired, while semantic memory functioning has received less attention. To evaluate current evidence on the influence of <em>APOE</em> ε4 on semantic memory, we systematically reviewed the research literature assessing semantic memory in non-clinical adult populations according to the PRISMA guidelines. We reviewed 17 studies that revealed high heterogeneity in how semantic memory is conceptualised and assessed. When tested via standard neuropsychological tests (i.e., category fluency, naming, language comprehension, and general knowledge), ε4 carriers did not significantly differ from non-carriers. Instead, ε4 carriers showed lower performance than non-carriers when assessed via more complex semantic memory tasks (i.e., longer category fluency tasks, autobiographical memory tasks, measures of semantic clustering). The impact of <em>APOE</em> ε4 on semantic memory thus appears to be restricted to these more complex tasks, which could constitute a better match to episodic memory tasks for which <em>APOE</em> effects are typically observed, though a mediating role of executive functions should also be considered. Future research investigating autobiographical memory retrieval in ε4 carriers could provide a more sensitive and ecologically valid assessment of semantic memory and would help disentangle personal and general forms of semantic memory.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 228-244"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144932192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CortexPub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.007
Branislava Godic, Pippa Iva, Jess C S Chan, Russell Martin, Adam P Vogel, Ramesh Rajan
{"title":"Examination of speech processing in noise reveals cognitive deficits in early Huntington's disease.","authors":"Branislava Godic, Pippa Iva, Jess C S Chan, Russell Martin, Adam P Vogel, Ramesh Rajan","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Processing speech amongst noise requires sensory and cognitive abilities that are often affected by Huntington's Disease. However, their impact on daily communication remains unclear. We examined the effects of Huntington's Disease on speech-in-noise processing using everyday sentences and words in noise contexts and conditions that mimic different daily life scenarios. In Premanifest (n = 16) and Manifest Huntington's Disease (n = 12) and Control (n = 26) participants, we examined speech discrimination amongst non-demanding and attentionally demanding noise. We also examined how Huntington's Disease affected the ability to use spatial separation cues to disambiguate speech from noise in single-voice masker or multi-talker backgrounds. Finally, we administered a validated questionnaire where participants rated auditory processing difficulties during daily life activities. Sentence-in-noise discrimination was impaired in individuals with Manifest Huntington's Disease in almost all signal-to-noise ratio conditions with the attentionally-demanding masker and amongst the non-demanding noise masker with the most difficult signal-to-noise ratio. Premanifest Huntington's Disease participants had difficulty perceiving speech in some attentionally demanding noise conditions. Spatial cues provided situational benefits to speech processing under attentionally-demanding conditions for participants at all stages of Huntington's Disease, except for the Manifest Huntington's Disease group when stimuli included a single competing speaker. A logistic regression model using speech processing performance as a predictor successfully distinguished healthy control and Premanifest groups with 87.5% accuracy. Stage-dependent impairments in speech processing were observed under naturalistic noise conditions. These results further our understanding and contextualization of communication difficulties experienced by people with Huntington's Disease.</p>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"55-73"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144803831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}