Cortex最新文献

{"title":"Graspability in disguise: The cognitive and neural differences in processing words representing small and big objects","authors":"Ruifeng Yu ,&nbsp;Hongli Liu ,&nbsp;Yuyang Ran ,&nbsp;Feng Gu","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.04.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.04.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Size is a fundamental visual-spatial characteristic of the physical world. Previous studies have revealed distinct brain responses to small and big objects represented by pictures, implying that object size is a key dimension in organizing concrete concepts. However, it remains unknown whether the brain responses reflecting size-based categorization extend to symbolic input like words. Furthermore, several behavioral studies have indicated faster lexical decisions for words representing big objects (big words) than those representing small objects (small words). However, how this behavioral finding relates to potential neural differences in processing small and big words, as well as the underlying cognitive processes, remains unclear. Therefore, the present study investigates the cognitive and neural differences in processing small and big words. We compared the behavioral and neural responses (EEG) to small and big words using a lexical decision task (LDT) and a semantic decision task (SDT). Our results showed that in the LDT, reaction times to big words were significantly shorter than those to small words in the by-participant but not by-item analysis, suggesting a potential rather than robust processing advantage for big words. By contrast, no behavioral differences were observed in the SDT. Our EEG decoding results revealed distinct brain responses to small and big words at 190–250 msec in both tasks, with additional distinct neural responses at 390–520 msec only in the SDT. Importantly, the regression representational similarity analysis (RSA) suggested that these distinct brain responses could be explained by object graspability represented by small and big words, rather than object size. These findings illustrate the cognitive and neural differences in processing small and big words, identify graspability as the key influencing dimension, and demonstrate flexible, two-stage processing of semantic concepts. Moreover, we propose a novel hypothesis to explain the potential processing advantage for big words over small words.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"187 ","pages":"Pages 52-73"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143881321","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}

{"title":"Theory of mind deficits in non-fluent primary progressive aphasia","authors":"Eleni Peristeri ,&nbsp;Stephanie Durrleman ,&nbsp;Sokratis Papageorgiou ,&nbsp;Constantin Potagas ,&nbsp;Christos Frantzidis ,&nbsp;Anastasios Kotrotsios ,&nbsp;Nikolaos Scarmeas ,&nbsp;Kyrana Tsapkini","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Theory of Mind (ToM) is a complex socio-cognitive subdomain that is under-researched in neurodegenerative disorders, particularly in persons with primary progressive aphasia. We studied 14 persons with non-fluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (nfaPPA), and asked two questions: (1) whether persons with nfaPPA have intact or impaired ToM, with emphasis on their false belief attribution abilities, relative to healthy controls; and (2) whether false-belief attribution (a component of ToM) is associated with their syntactic and executive function (EF) abilities. False belief understanding was tested through nonverbal videos, with participants deciding whether the story ending was an appropriate end of each video scenario or not. Syntactic production abilities were measured through repetition of syntactically simple and complex sentences (comprising length-matched complement and adjunct sentences), and EF tasks, specifically, a digit-back and an attention-shifting task. Persons with nfaPPA were less accurate than controls in adapting their reasoning to the false beliefs of other agents in the nonverbal videos of the false belief attribution task. Their false belief attribution performance was significantly predicted primarily by their syntactic production, followed by their EF. The overall findings suggest that persons with nfaPPA may have impaired performances in ToM tasks, due to impairments in basic non-social cognitive functioning, such as syntactic and EF abilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"186 ","pages":"Pages 116-127"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143845014","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}

{"title":"Feeling touch through a mirror: The role of vision and body ownership in generating non-veridical tactile experiences","authors":"Emanuele Cirillo ,&nbsp;Claudio Zavattaro ,&nbsp;Roberto Gammeri ,&nbsp;Hilary Serra ,&nbsp;Raffaella Ricci ,&nbsp;Anna Berti","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tactile experience can be non-veridical, i.e., not related to the actual stimulation of one's body. Recently, using a mirror box procedure in healthy subjects, we found that during bilateral asymmetrical touches, the vision of the right-hand being stimulated, reflected in the mirror, elicited on the real left-hand the feeling of being touched in the same position as the right-hand. Because these errors resemble synchiria, we called these false feelings ‘synchiric errors' (SEs). Here, we investigated both the role of top-down feeling of body ownership (BO) over the mirrored hand—using explicit (BO questionnaires) and implicit (Electrodermal Activity) measures of BO- and bottom-up visual processing—by manipulating the presence/absence of visual feedback—in generating SEs during the Tactile Quadrant Stimulation Test (TQS). In TQS, subjects had to indicate the position of a tactile stimulus, applied in asymmetrical quadrants on the dorsum of the two hands, under three conditions: Baseline (no vision), Mirror Condition Vision (MCV; full visual feedback), and Mirror Condition Blind (MCB; visual feedback occluded). We tested 35 healthy individuals. First, measures of BO indicated that most subjects felt the right reflected hand as their own left hand. Moreover, we found a significant presence of SEs in the MCV. Crucially, SEs were significantly higher for the left hand in MCV compared to Baseline and MCB, confirming the critical role of vision in inducing the non-veridical tactile experience. Moreover, the absence of a correlation between SEs and body ownership measures, and a double dissociation between them, indicate that SEs are driven by vision and not by an alteration of BO.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"187 ","pages":"Pages 16-28"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143864618","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}

{"title":"The serial order system in word production and working memory: A case series approach","authors":"Yingxue Tian ,&nbsp;Marja-Liisa Mailend ,&nbsp;Erica L. Middleton","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.04.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.04.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Serial order is important in verbal behavior, such as sequencing words in working memory (WM) or arranging phonemes during speech. In both WM and word production, distinct processes are found for item identity and their serial order. In the current study, we investigated whether a shared system supports the serial order of verbal items (phonemes or words) across cognitive functions (WM and production) and tasks (repetition and naming). We recruited 30 participants with chronic stroke-induced aphasia. We examined WM abilities to recall item and serial order information using immediate serial recall tasks of words. We also assessed the ability to accurately sequence phonemes in word repetition and naming tasks, with its impairment indexed by the proportion of misordered phonemes among all incorrect phonemes compared to chance in phonologically related word and nonword responses. We examined how variability of this index of serial order impairment in repetition and naming relates to item and serial order WM capacities. Our findings reveal that serial order WM capacity, but not item WM capacity, was associated with the severity of serial order impairment in repetition, indicating a shared serial order system for WM and repetition. We also found that item WM, but not serial order WM, was associated with serial order impairment in naming, implying an item WM buffer for phonemic sequencing in naming. These results suggest distinct sequencing processes for repetition and naming, each linked to different WM mechanisms. Implications for word production models and the relationship between WM and word production are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"186 ","pages":"Pages 128-146"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143845015","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}

{"title":"Sensorimotor effects in surprise word memory – A registered report","authors":"Agata Dymarska ,&nbsp;Louise Connell","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sensorimotor grounding of semantic information elicits inconsistent effects on word memory, depending on which type of experience is involved, with some aspects of sensorimotor information facilitating memory performance while others inhibit it. In particular, information relating to the body appears to impair word recognition memory by increasing false alarms, which may be due either to an adaptive advantage for survival-relevant information (whereby words pertaining to the body spread activation to other concepts and generate a confusable memory trace) or to a somatic attentional mechanism (whereby words pertaining to the body activate a false sense of touch that renders their representations less distinctive as memory trace and retrieval cue). To date, the existing literature does not distinguish between these two explanations. We set out to adjudicate between them using a surprise (incidental) memory task, where participants study the words under a guise of a lexical decision task, which allowed us to examine how participants form a memory trace for words grounded in bodily experience. We found support for the somatic attentional account, as body-related words increased false alarms even when attention was not directed to them at the study phase. Overall, the results provide further evidence for the importance of distinctiveness in word memory, and suggest a reinterpretation of the role of semantic richness in word memory.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"186 ","pages":"Pages 99-115"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143839787","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}

{"title":"On the neural substrates of mind wandering and dynamic thought: A drug and brain stimulation study","authors":"Tara Rasmussen,&nbsp;Paul E. Dux,&nbsp;Hannah Filmer","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The impact of mind wandering on our daily lives ranges from diminishing productivity, to facilitating creativity and problem solving. There is evidence that distinct internal thought types can be modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), although little is known about optimal stimulation parameters or the mechanisms behind such effects. In addition, recent findings suggest changes in dopamine availability may alter the effect tDCS has on neural and behavioural outcomes. Dopaminergic functioning has also been implicated in executive processes anticorrelated with mind wandering such as attention and working memory, however the neurochemical mechanisms involved in internal thoughts are largely unknown. Here, we investigated the role of dopamine, and tDCS, on internal thought processes. Specifically, using an attentional control task, we tested whether dopamine availability (levodopa or placebo) mediated the effects of online high definition tDCS (HD-tDCS; 2 mA, or sham). There was no evidence for our hypothesised effect of left prefrontal cortex HD-tDCS reducing task unrelated thought, nor freely moving thought. This failure to replicate previous HD-tDCS findings emphasises the importance of employing robust methodological practices within this field to improve confidence in the findings. However, we did find that levodopa reduced freely moving thought, relative to placebo. We also found preliminary evidence that dopamine availability may moderate the relationship between stimulation and behavioural variability performance during periods of task unrelated thought. Overall, these findings suggest that stimulation does not affect dynamic internal thought, however there is initial evidence for the potential effectiveness of targeting the dopaminergic system to reduce spontaneous internal thoughts and improve behavioural performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"187 ","pages":"Pages 29-51"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143870233","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}

{"title":"Methods and Assumptions: A new section in Cortex","authors":"Anne M. Scheel ,&nbsp;Chris Allen ,&nbsp;Magdalena Chechlacz ,&nbsp;Marie K. Deserno ,&nbsp;Céline R. Gillebert ,&nbsp;Nicholas P. Holmes","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"185 ","pages":"Pages 336-339"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143742111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cover figure","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/S0010-9452(25)00090-5","DOIUrl":"10.1016/S0010-9452(25)00090-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"185 ","pages":"Page e1"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143800687","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}

{"title":"Data-driven classification of narrative speech characteristics in stroke aphasia distinguishes neurological and strategic contributions","authors":"Junhua Ding ,&nbsp;Daniel Mirman","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Narrative speech deficits are common in post-stroke aphasia, resulting in negative influences on social participation and quality of life. Speech rate, complexity, and informativeness deficits all contribute to narrative speech. Research studies typically (implicitly) assume that these aspects of narrative speech production are a result of cognitive/neurological impairment, but they may also result from strategic choices made as individuals with aphasia attempt to produce narrative speech. Here, we used data-driven methods to classify aphasic narrative speech patterns and evaluated their predictability from lesion patterns. 76 stroke aphasia patients completed 11 narrative speech production tasks. Quantitative Production Analysis (QPA) and Correct Information Unit (CIU) analysis were used to measure their structural and functional properties. Based on prior work, we selected QPA measures of speech rate (words per minute) and complexity (mean sentence length, inflection index, and auxiliary index) and four CIU measures of informativeness (#CIU, CIU/min, %CIU, #nonCIU). These measures produced two orthogonal dimensions with four orthogonal participant clusters. Comprehensive comparison between clusters revealed that speech rate and complexity were strongly associated with general aphasia severity and total lesion volume, and were predicted by frontoparietal grey matter and dorsal pathway white matter damage. In contrast, informativeness was independent of other behavioral and neurological deficits, and was not predictable from lesion patterns, suggesting that it reflects communication strategy rather than specific neurological impairment. These results provide an important step toward distinguishing neurological and strategic aspects of narrative speech deficits in post-stroke aphasia, with potential implications for treatment approaches that target communication strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"186 ","pages":"Pages 61-73"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143768476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modulation of ventral premotor and primary motor cortex interactions for accurate visuomotor force control","authors":"Tatsunori Watanabe ,&nbsp;Takayuki Kuwabara ,&nbsp;Takuya Matsumoto ,&nbsp;Keisuke Yunoki ,&nbsp;Takayuki Horinouchi ,&nbsp;Hikari Kirimoto","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.03.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Visually guided movements are mediated by visuomotor networks involving multiple cortical areas. While processing in the occipital-parietal-premotor pathway is relatively well understood, the mechanisms by which motor-related frontal and prefrontal regions influence the primary motor cortex (M1), which controls the moving hand during visuomotor tasks, remain unclear. Using dual-site transcranial magnetic stimulation, here we investigated interhemispheric influences from the right M1, dorsal premotor cortex (PMd), ventral premotor cortex (PMv), supplementary motor area (SMA), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on the left M1 during a visuomotor force control task with the right hand, examining how these influences change with enhanced visuomotor performance. Performance (i.e., amount of error) was manipulated by adjusting the visual gain of force feedback. Higher visual gain increases sensitivity to visual feedback, amplifying small force variations and improving error correction, which in turn reduces performance error. Performance enhancement was accompanied by a reduction in the facilitatory influence of the PMv on the contralateral M1. The M1 and DLPFC exerted an inhibitory influence on the contralateral M1 regardless of performance level. The PMd and SMA exerted neither facilitatory nor inhibitory influence on the contralateral M1. These findings suggest distinct modulation patterns of the M1 by different frontal cortical areas and underscore the critical importance of the PMv-M1 interaction in ensuring fine motor precision during visuomotor tasks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"186 ","pages":"Pages 51-60"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143725203","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}