Cortex最新文献

{"title":"The potential risks of opening the mind’s eye with psychedelic therapies","authors":"Roger Koenig-Robert ,&nbsp;Rebecca Keogh ,&nbsp;Joel Pearson","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Psychedelic therapy is on the rise, as its legalisation is ongoing in multiple countries. Here, we write a note of warning regarding recent reports that people with aphantasia (a blind mind’s eye) have acquired visual mental imagery after using psychedelics. While the prospect of gaining, or indeed increasing, visual mental imagery is appealing to many, strong mental imagery has been associated with a range of mental conditions. How ‘switching on’ visual imagery in people with aphantasia or increasing its strength in neurotypical individuals might impact mental health remains unknown. We advocate for increased awareness of this issue and its ethical implications, particularly regarding informed consent.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 167-171"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144889298","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":"Bodily perception links memory and self: A case study of an amnesic patient","authors":"Nathalie H. Meyer ,&nbsp;Mariana Babo-Rebelo ,&nbsp;Jevita Potheegadoo ,&nbsp;Lea Duong Phan Thanh ,&nbsp;Juliette Boscheron ,&nbsp;Bruno Herbelin ,&nbsp;Loup Vuarnesson ,&nbsp;Sara Stampacchia ,&nbsp;Iris M. Toye ,&nbsp;Fabienne Esposito ,&nbsp;Marilia Morais Lacerda ,&nbsp;Arthur Trivier ,&nbsp;Elena Beanato ,&nbsp;Vincent Alvarez ,&nbsp;Michela Bassolino ,&nbsp;Olaf Blanke","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) is a building block of self-consciousness, involving recollection and subjective re-experiencing of personal past experiences. Any life episode is originally encoded by a subject within a body. This raises the possibility that memory encoding is shaped by bodily self-consciousness (BSC), a basic form of self-consciousness arising from the multisensory and sensorimotor perceptual signals from the body. Recent studies in healthy subjects showed that embodied encoding improves EAM, with the involvement of the hippocampus. However, there are only few imaging studies to date, hippocampal data are not consistent, and the role of hippocampal damage is not understood. We investigated how different BSC states during encoding, modulate later EAM retrieval, in a patient with severe amnesia caused by rare bilateral hippocampal damage. We performed three separate behavioral experiments using immersive virtual reality. The patient showed consistently more difficulties recollecting information encoded in embodied versus disembodied states, particularly when asked to recall her perspective experienced at encoding. These results contrasted with the usual beneficial effect of BSC on EAM, and significantly differed from controls. These data provide consistent evidence that BSC impacts encoding and later reliving, and shows that the hippocampus is not just a critical structure for EAM, but also for effects of embodiment on memory. Additional fMRI data extend these findings by revealing that hippocampal-parietal connectivity mediates BSC-EAM coupling. Our findings plead for an important role of BSC in EAM, mediated by the hippocampus and its connectivity, leading to embodied memories that are experienced as belonging to the self.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 245-265"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144988199","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":"Evaluation of long-term cognitive organization after hemispherotomy in Rasmussen's encephalitis: A behavioral and network-level perspective","authors":"Anna Borne ,&nbsp;Christine Bulteau ,&nbsp;Sarah Ferrand-Sorbets ,&nbsp;Georg Dorfmüller ,&nbsp;Monica Baciu ,&nbsp;Marcela Perrone-Bertolotti","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Hemispherotomy, a neurosurgical procedure that functionally disconnects the affected hemisphere, is the recommended curative treatment for Rasmussen's encephalitis. Following a typically normal developmental period, individuals with Rasmussen's encephalitis develop progressive hemispheric dysfunction and severe epilepsy, ultimately resulting in exclusive “mono-hemispheric” functioning after hemispherotomy. The aim of this study was to provide an in-depth assessment of long-term cognitive outcomes in Rasmussen's encephalitis patients, several years after hemispherotomy. Eighteen patients with Rasmussen's encephalitis (11 on the left hemisphere) underwent extensive cognitive assessment on average more than 14 years after surgery, using a battery of tasks evaluating language, memory, executive functions, and social cognition. The cognitive scores were compared to those of 175 healthy control participants. In addition, graph-based network analyses were conducted on cognitive scores to examine the organization and interactions within the cognitive system. In this extreme mono-hemispheric condition, the entire cognitive network is reorganized. While hemispherotomy maintains a subnormal intellectual efficiency, some functions, such as semantics, memory, and inhibition, tend to be relatively preserved, whereas working memory, syntax, and theory of mind remain impaired in the long term. In the intact hemisphere, strengthened interactions between cognitive functions were observed, especially among patients with a shorter duration of epilepsy before surgery and favorable cognitive recovery. Adopting a network-based perspective on cognition in this clinical context provides novel insights into how cognitive organization and reorganization occur under conditions of profound neuroplasticity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 140-153"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144866227","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":"Colour is irrelevant for familiar face recognition: Evidence from event-related brain potentials","authors":"Holger Wiese,&nbsp;Emma Ablott,&nbsp;Milena M. Bojdo,&nbsp;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":"2025-08-08","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}

{"title":"Vocabulary learning and regularity extraction: Temporal dynamics of consolidation and associations with slow-wave sleep and sleep spindles","authors":"Eva Kimel ,&nbsp;Ilana S. Hairston ,&nbsp;Dafna Ben-Zion ,&nbsp;Yekete Akal ,&nbsp;Anat Prior ,&nbsp;M. Gareth Gaskell ,&nbsp;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":"2025-08-07","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}

{"title":"Spatial sensorimotor mismatch increases the excitability of the primary somatosensory cortex: Insight from an EEG-virtual reality study","authors":"Matteo Girondini ,&nbsp;Tommaso Bertoni ,&nbsp;Massimo Montanaro ,&nbsp;Andrea Serino ,&nbsp;Alberto Gallace","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Under typical conditions, the somatosensory system maintains stable functionality. However, the somatosensory cortex can rapidly reorganize in response to sensory input changes, as demonstrated by studies on sensory deprivation and experience-dependent plasticity. Nevertheless, somatosensory plasticity related to unusual sensorimotor activation, such as spatial incongruence between motor commands and somatosensory feedback patterns during body–environment interactions, remains less investigated. This study aims to extend the evidence for functional reorganization of the somatosensory cortex by investigating the interdependency between motor and somatosensory activity during environmental interactions. We employed an innovative virtual reality (VR) paradigm to investigate the effects of spatial mismatch in sensorimotor loops, dissociating motor and somatosensory components in thespatial domain during sensorimotor interactions. Participants (<em>n</em> = 21) performed two experimental sessions composed of 10 minutes each, involving an interaction task in VR, whereby they interacted with a virtual object with their right hand and received either congruent (on the right hand) or incongruent (on their left ankle) sensory tactile feedback. To assess changes in somatosensory processing, we measured EEG-somatosensory evoked potentials elicited by right median nerve stimulation before and after the task. Our results evidenced increased excitability in the early component of somatosensory evoked potentials (P45) following the incongruent condition, with an opposite trend (decrease of excitability) on the congruent condition. These findings may suggest functional changes in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI), likely driven by the temporal coupling of neural activity from unrelated body parts during the task. However, attentional mechanisms may also contribute to this effect. While preliminary, these results open new avenues for investigating sensorimotor adaptation driven by repeated associative activity between motor and somatosensory cortices during active interactions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 154-166"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144879886","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":"Neuro-cognitive development of semantic and syntactic bootstrapping in 7- to 9-year-old children","authors":"Neelima Wagley ,&nbsp;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 &amp; 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":"2025-07-31","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}

{"title":"Evidence for the efficacy of theta-burst stimulation above the angular gyrus for reducing mind wandering propensity: A successful pre-registered study","authors":"Andreas Alexandersen,&nbsp;Steffen Rygg Aasen,&nbsp;Gábor Csifcsák,&nbsp;Matthias Mittner","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mind wandering (MW) is a common mental phenomenon where attention shifts spontaneously from an external task to internal trains of thought. Recent studies propose that non-invasive brain stimulation methods hold potential for influencing attentional shifts between on-task and MW states. Exploratory analysis from a recent repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) study reported that targeting the left angular gyrus (AG) with continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) reduced MW compared to sham stimulation, without affecting executive performance (Drevland et al., 2025). The present study is a pre-registered, direct replication of the study by Drevland et al., but also expands their protocol by applying intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) targeting the same cortical area. Using a triple-blind crossover design, healthy participants completed four blocks of the Finger-Tapping Random Sequence Generation Task (FT-RSGT) in three sessions on separate days. Each session included three rounds of either real (cTBS or iTBS) or sham stimulation in an accelerated rTMS design. We successfully replicated the effect of cTBS in reducing MW propensity but failed to find the expected increase in MW post-iTBS. Furthermore, based on a joint analysis of the current data and that from Drevland et al., we found compelling evidence for cTBS being efficient both in reducing MW and improving executive performance. Our results provide evidence for the causal relationship between the left AG and shifts of attention during an executive task, highlighting the role of the default mode network in the generation and maintenance of MW episodes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 25-40"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144781196","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":"Altered effective connectivity in cortico-striatal pathways during sentence processing and oral motors in Parkinson’s disease","authors":"Ehsan Hemmati ,&nbsp;Mohammad-Reza Nazem-Zadeh ,&nbsp;Alireza Fallahi ,&nbsp;Zahra Vahabi ,&nbsp;Mohammad Taghi Joghataei ,&nbsp;Laila Alibiglou","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.019","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.019","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous studies have demonstrated that sentence processing can be impaired in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, it remains unclear whether the neural mechanisms underlying language impairments in PD are like the motor symptoms and related to dysfunction observed in cortico-striatal pathways. On the other hand, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is recognized as a significant non-genetic risk factor for developing PD later in life. This study investigated the functional changes in cortico-striatal pathways that impact sentence comprehension and oral motor functions in individuals with PD. It compared PD patients with a history of TBI to those without. Twenty-four PD patients (12 with and 12 without TBI) along with 12 age- and sex-matched controls, underwent functional MRI (fMRI) and dynamic causal modeling. These assessments aimed to evaluate brain activity and effective connectivity during sentence comprehension and oral motor tasks. Significant disruptions were observed in both activated brain regions and effective connectivity within cortico-striatal pathways in PD patients (<em>p</em> &lt; .05). Those with TBI exhibited altered brain activity during canonical sentence comprehension when compared to those without TBI. The PD group without TBI displayed greater bidirectional connectivity between cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical areas during oral motor tasks (<em>p</em> &lt; .05). These findings suggest that reduced effective connectivity in motor and language networks may contribute to language and motor impairments in individuals with PD. Utilizing fMRI to evaluate activated brain regions and effective connectivity within motor and language networks may help identify TBI patients who are at a higher risk of developing PD in the future.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 41-54"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144781109","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":"Rapid auditory and phonemic processing relies on the left planum temporale","authors":"Kelly C. Martin ,&nbsp;Andrew T. DeMarco ,&nbsp;Sara M. Dyslin ,&nbsp;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":"2025-07-25","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}