Cortex最新文献

{"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}

{"title":"Beyond the cortex: Cerebellar contributions to apraxia of speech in stroke survivors","authors":"Makayla Gibson,&nbsp;Alberto Maydeu-Olivares,&nbsp;Roger Newman-Norlund,&nbsp;Christopher Rorden","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder affecting speech planning and coordination, often co-occurring with aphasia after left hemisphere stroke. While commonly linked to cortical damage, the cerebellum’s role remains underexplored. This study examined associations between cerebellar gray matter volume and AOS severity in individuals with chronic left hemisphere cortical stroke.</div><div>Participants from the Aphasia Recovery Cohort (<em>N</em> = 142) completed structural MRI and AOS assessment using the Apraxia of Speech Rating Scale. Regional cerebellar gray matter volumes were extracted from T1-weighted scans using MATLAB, SPM12, CAT12, and the SUIT atlas, adjusted for total intracranial volume. Multiple linear regressions and partial correlations tested relationships between cerebellar volume and AOS severity, controlling for lesion volume, age, and time post-stroke.</div><div>Reduced volume in right cerebellar regions was significantly associated with greater AOS severity. Right lobule V was the strongest predictor (<em>R</em>² = .167, <em>β</em> = −.346, <em>p</em> &lt; .001), followed by lobule VI (<em>R</em>² = .130, <em>β</em> = −.290, <em>p</em> &lt; .001) and vermis VIIb (<em>R</em>² = .117, <em>β</em> = −.262, <em>p</em> &lt; .001). Right hemisphere volume overall was more predictive (<em>R</em>² = .116) than the left (<em>R</em>² = .080). Dysarthria models showed weaker associations, indicating specificity to AOS.</div><div>These findings demonstrate that cerebellar structural integrity, particularly in the contralateral right hemisphere, contributes to AOS severity models. Results support expanding AOS models beyond cortical regions and suggest cerebellar-targeted strategies may enhance post-stroke speech rehabilitation models.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"191 ","pages":"Pages 1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757580","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":"Abstract word dropout and cross-speaker misalignment of word concreteness are features of conversation in aging","authors":"Jamie Reilly ,&nbsp;Virginia Ulichney ,&nbsp;Benjamin Sacks ,&nbsp;Anna Duncan ,&nbsp;Sarah M. Weinstein ,&nbsp;Tania Giovannetti ,&nbsp;Chelsea Helion ,&nbsp;Gus Cooney","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Language development is significant for an abstractness shift where the early concrete lexicon of childhood steadily expands to incorporate abstract concepts (e.g., mental states, emotions, ideas). Much remains to be learned about the trajectories of concrete versus abstract words across the span of development, especially within the domain of discourse production. We investigated the prevalence of abstract word use in dyadic conversations between adults of different ages (range 18–66). Our aim was to adjudicate between two opposing trajectories of language use in normal cognitive aging. The <em>vocabulary growth</em> perspective holds that aging is associated with a steady accrual of vocabulary knowledge resulting in greater lexical diversity and a larger pool of abstract words to draw upon in conversation. In contrast, <em>resource pruning</em> predicts the opposite trajectory such that age-associated gains in vocabulary acquisition are offset by diminished executive resources. Since abstract words tend to have higher lexical retrieval demands than concrete words, normal aging will result in an apparent dropout of abstract words. Moreover, this concreteness effect will be amplified within a resource-intensive communication modality such as conversation. We analyzed distributions of abstract and concrete words and cross-speaker alignment within unscripted conversations between adults of different ages (N = 1565 conversations, &gt;8 million words, age range 19–66). Aging was associated with abstract word dropout, and misalignment between conversation partners on concreteness expanded in parallel with their respective age differences. These results add to a growing body of research that implicates executive functioning in controlled lexical retrieval of abstract words. We discuss significance of these results for understanding intergenerational communication and relationships between aging, executive functioning, and lexical retrieval in high-level discourse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 286-303"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144738352","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":"Registered reports in neuropsychology: Insights from the burning houses study","authors":"Margaret Jane Moore ,&nbsp;Nele Demeyere","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We recently completed our first registered report project within a neuropsychological population (Moore et al., 2025). In this project, we set out to evaluate the replicability of the seminal case study by Marshall &amp; Halligan (1988) on pre-attentive semantic processing in neglect, and replicated this effect under stringent experimental conditions. Our undertaking of this registered report study spanned over five years. In this viewpoint, we aim to share our personal reflections on this project in the hope that our experiences (and setbacks) can prove helpful for future studies aiming to conduct registered reports in neuropsychological populations. More broadly, our experience with this project provides a salient example of the challenges faced by registered report studies which may help account for the low uptake of this format in neuropsychology. Ultimately, we believe that encouraging adherence to fundamental open science practices including openly pre-registering plans and open reporting of data/code should be prioritised in neuropsychology and call for targeted discussions surrounding registered report formats specific to neuropsychological studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 155-159"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656199","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":"Effects of alertness on perceptual detection and discrimination","authors":"Yanzhi Xu ,&nbsp;Martijn Wokke ,&nbsp;Valdas Noreika ,&nbsp;Corinne Bareham ,&nbsp;Sridhar Jagannathan ,&nbsp;Stanimira Georgieva ,&nbsp;Caterina Trentin ,&nbsp;Tristan Bekinschtein","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.018","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.018","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The level of alertness fluctuates throughout the day, exerting modulatory effects on human cognitive processes at any moment. However, our knowledge of how alertness level interacts with specific cognitive demands and perceptual rules of a task is still limited. Here we used perceptual decision-making paradigms to explore this issue. We analysed data from four different experiments involving a total of 113 participants: 1) auditory masking detection, 2) sensorimotor detection, 3) auditory spatial discrimination, and 4) auditory phoneme discrimination. We examined participant performance during the natural transition from awake (high alertness) to drowsy (low alertness). First, we fitted psychometric functions to the performance in EEG-defined high and low alertness metastable states. Second, we modelled slope and threshold from the fitted sigmoidal curves as well as signal detection theory measures, including perceptual sensitivity (d’) and response bias (criterion). We found lower detection and discrimination sensitivity to stimuli as alertness level decreases, signalled by a shallower slope and a lower d’, while the threshold increases slightly and equivalently across experiments. We observed no change in criterion during the transition. Zooming in, we observed that the decrease in sensitivity measured by slope was stronger for discrimination than for detection decisions, indicating that lower alertness impairs the precision of decisions in discriminating alternatives more than in identifying the presence of a stimulus around the threshold. Taken together, these results suggest that alertness has a common effect on perceptual decision-making and differentially modulates detection and discrimination decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 262-285"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144694704","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":"Cardiac signals and the interference of reward on attention and inhibitory control","authors":"Mateo Leganes-Fonteneau ,&nbsp;Annelise Theis ,&nbsp;Irene Dolfini ,&nbsp;Reinout W. Wiers ,&nbsp;Maurage Pierre ,&nbsp;Charlotte L. Rae","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.013","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Interoceptive responses can modulate cognition and behavior; discrete cardiac signals can shape emotional and motivational adaptation towards reward-related cues, but also affect response inhibition. Novel addiction perspectives posit an interoceptive basis for the interplay between substance-related reward processing and inhibitory control, but there is a lack of behavioral evidence for this relationship. In this registered report, we investigated whether reward cues modulate cardiac-facilitated attention and motor inhibition. Fifty social drinkers completed an attentional visual search task and two instances of a stop signal task, in which alcohol or neutral stimuli were presented as targets or distractors. Stimuli were presented in synchrony with participants’ cardiac phase (systole vs. diastole). This design allowed us to test whether cardiac signals amplify attentional biases in the presence of alcohol cues and influences inhibitory control. Overall, our results were predominantly null: alcohol cues did not produce significant attentional interference in any task, limiting conclusions about interoceptive modulation of cognitive abilities by cardiac phase. However, we replicated a previous finding that synchronizing stop signals at systole improved motor inhibition. This provides strong evidence that cardiac phase can facilitate inhibitory processes in the stop signal task. Although more sensitive paradigms are needed to clarify how cardiac rhythms interact with alcohol cues to influence attention and inhibition, our replication of systolic facilitation highlights the promise of cardiac cycle-based approaches in interoception research. Future studies may benefit from refining task design and considering craving states to more effectively capture the potential interoceptive influences on attention and inhibitory control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 216-230"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662782","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":"Balancing act: A neural trade-off between coherence and creativity in spontaneous speech","authors":"Tanvi Patel,&nbsp;Sarah E. MacPherson,&nbsp;Paul Hoffman","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.07.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Effective communication involves a delicate balance between generating novel, engaging content and maintaining a coherent narrative. The neural mechanisms underlying this balance between coherence and creativity in discourse production remain unexplored. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between coherence and creativity in spontaneous speech, with a specific focus on the interaction among three key neural networks: the Default Mode Network, Multiple-Demand Network, and the Semantic Control Network. To this end, we conducted a two-part analysis. At the behavioural level, we analysed speech samples produced in response to topic cues, computing measures of global coherence (indexing the degree of connectedness to the main topic) and Divergent Semantic Integration (DSI; reflecting the diversity of ideas incorporated in the narrative). Coherence and divergence in speech were negatively correlated, suggesting a trade-off between maintaining a coherent narrative structure and incorporating creative elements. At the neural level, higher global coherence was associated with greater activation in the Multiple-Demand Network, emphasising its role in organising and sustaining logical flow in discourse production. In contrast, functional connectivity analyses demonstrated that higher DSI was related to greater coupling between the Default Mode and Multiple-Demand Networks, suggesting that creative speech relies on a dynamic interplay between associative and executive processes. These results provide new insights into the cognitive and neural processes underpinning spontaneous speech production, highlighting the complex interplay between different brain networks in managing competing demands of being coherent and creative.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 242-261"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144687077","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":"How can the research on cortical topography and connectivity fingerprint shed light on the neural processing of event segmentation? – A commentary on Wu et al. (2025)","authors":"Rocco Chiou","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.017","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.017","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The angular gyrus (AG) is widely implicated in language, memory, multisensory perception, and has been found to be a hub of connectivity. However, different strands of research on AG functions and structures have seldom been integrated. Recent event segmentation research, including Wu et al. (2025), shows that the AG robustly encodes event boundaries during spoken narratives, with stronger and more reliable involvement than the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). This commentary situates such findings within broader insights from connectomic fingerprints and cortical topography – using the contrast between AG and PCC as an example – to suggest that different regions' topographic juxtaposition and connectivity pattern may underlie their differential roles in representing event structure across modalities. Integrating perspectives from research on event segmentation and the brain connectome offers new avenues for understanding how the brain encodes continuous streams of information from vision, hearing, and action to form a coherent experience.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 192-197"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656387","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":"Visibility manipulations affect the functional connectivity related to illusory body ownership","authors":"Gustavo S.P. Pamplona ,&nbsp;Lena Salzmann ,&nbsp;Amedeo Giussani ,&nbsp;Lavinia Albanese ,&nbsp;Philipp Staempfli ,&nbsp;Stefan Schneller ,&nbsp;Roger Gassert ,&nbsp;Silvio Ionta","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.016","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2025.06.016","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The rubber hand illusion is a multisensory phenomenon where congruent visual and tactile stimulation induces ownership over a visible dummy hand. Manipulating visual inputs during the RHI experimental procedure may affect the strength of the illusion and alter the activation of relevant brain regions. This suggests that visual input modifications could influence the normal interconnectivity among brain regions. To test this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 45 neurotypical adults to assess how functional connectivity (FC) was influenced by changes in the visibility of a virtual hand during the visuo-tactile stimulation related to a virtual hand illusion (VHI). The visibility manipulations concerned only the virtual hand, not the entire visual scene, and were accomplished through video editing. Tactile stimulation was administered by an MRI-compatible robot capable of delivering precise, repeatable stroking patterns on the participant’s hand. Visibility and visuo-tactile congruence modulated FC between occipital, sensorimotor, and default mode regions. FC between these regions also modulated with the time phase of VHI induction. These findings suggest that reducing visibility of the virtual hand shifted the balance between vision and touch in the mental representation of the body, especially in later stages of visuo-tactile stimulation. Revealing that altered hand visibility dynamically modulates the FC related to multisensory integration during the VHI, our study underscores the critical role of visual input in shaping body representation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"190 ","pages":"Pages 198-215"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656198","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}