CortexPub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.006
Robert D. McIntosh , Stephanie Rossit , Nicoletta Beschin
{"title":"Spatial working memory predicts re-cancellation behaviour in neglect","authors":"Robert D. McIntosh , Stephanie Rossit , Nicoletta Beschin","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The lateralised bias of spatial neglect can be modulated by concurrent non-lateralised impairments. For instance, people with left neglect may have spatial working memory deficits that prevent them from keeping track of locations visited in visual search tasks such as target cancellation. Not only do they omit targets in some parts of the array but they may revisit and re-cancel targets in other parts, and this re-cancellation behaviour increases dramatically in ‘invisible’ conditions, in which touching a target leaves no visible trace. It has been proposed that spatial memory deficits are the main reason for the rise of re-cancellation errors in invisible cancellation conditions. This idea predicts that spatial memory abilities should correlate with re-cancellation behaviour; but this expected relationship has never been demonstrated. The present study takes an exploratory approach to describing the behaviour of 18 people with left visual neglect, following right hemisphere stroke, on touchscreen tests of spatial working memory and target cancellation. We show that people with neglect who are less able to remember locations in a spatial memory task tend to make more re-cancellation errors in invisible cancellation conditions. We also describe an apparent trade-off, in which some people with neglect make many more re-cancellation errors, whilst others make many more target omissions. We suggest that the influence of spatial memory deficits on invisible cancellation tasks can be more fully captured by considering both types of errors, rather than re-cancellations only.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 135-146"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142791216","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}
CortexPub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.014
Jean-Paul Fischer
{"title":"Mirror writing of digits: Is there a difference between boys and girls?","authors":"Jean-Paul Fischer","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The neurological process of mirror generalization in memory, also known as mirror symmetrization, presents a real dilemma for typically developing 5- to 6-year-olds when learning to write characters (digits and letters). Should they write the digit 3 oriented to the left, that is correctly, or to the right, which leads to its mirror image <span><math><mrow><mo>ε</mo></mrow></math></span>? It has been anecdotally suggested that boys are more prone to mirror-writing than girls, but there is no scientific evidence for this idea. The present article gathers data from 691 children in the upper section of the French école maternelle (age between 5 and 6 ½), who each wrote the digits 0 to 9 four times under dictation and not necessarily in their natural order. Both simple and complex (mixed-effects linear regression) statistical comparisons on the percentages of digit reversal, show a substantial difference: girls produce more mirror reversals than boys. And yet the reversal curves as a function of the digits are quite similar between the two sexes (<em>r</em> = .97).</div><div>It has been proposed that mirror reversal of characters results from the left orientation of some of them (e.g., 3, 7, J, Z), that is, in an orientation contrary to the direction of writing in our Western cultures. The present investigation shows that (1) this character orientation hypothesis (choosing to write characters in the same orientation as sentence writing) better explains reversals than the counterclockwise hypothesis (children are trained to draw circles counter-clockwise to prepare for attached cursive writing); (2) the study of the stability of reversals additionally supports the explanation of mirror writing by the left orientation of the digits (1, 2, 3, 7 and, less obviously, 9); but (3) neither of the preceding findings (left-right orientation and stability) provided a convincing explanation for the aforementioned gender difference.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 124-134"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142754841","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 : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.010
Lisa Cipolotti , Joe Mole , James K. Ruffle , Amy Nelson , Robert Gray , Parashkev Nachev
{"title":"Cognitive control & the anterior cingulate cortex: Necessity & coherence","authors":"Lisa Cipolotti , Joe Mole , James K. Ruffle , Amy Nelson , Robert Gray , Parashkev Nachev","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Influential theories of complex behaviour invoke the notion of cognitive control modulated by conflict between counterfactual actions. Medial frontal cortex, notably the anterior cingulate cortex, has been variously posited as critical to such conflict detection, resolution, or monitoring, largely based on correlative data from functional imaging. Examining performance on the most widely used “conflict” task—Stroop—in a large cohort of patients with focal brain injury (<em>N</em> = 176), we compare anatomical patterns of lesion-inferred neural substrate dependence to those derived from functional imaging, meta-analytically summarised. Our results show that whereas performance is sensitive to the integrity of left lateral frontal regions implicated by functional imaging, it does not depend on medial frontal cortex, despite sampling adequate to reveal robust medial effects in the context of phonemic fluency. We suggest that medial frontal cortex is not critically invoked by Stroop and proceed to review the conceptual grounds for rejecting the core notion of conflict-driven cognitive control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 87-99"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142790992","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}
CortexPub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.001
Jordan Grafman
{"title":"Brothers in Cortex: For Sergio","authors":"Jordan Grafman","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 197-198"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143001624","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 : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.004
Mike Anderson
{"title":"Editorial integrity in the era of cancel culture","authors":"Mike Anderson","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.11.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 203-207"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143001627","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 : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.002
Brigitte C. Kaufmann , Paolo Bartolomeo , Monica N. Toba
{"title":"Unveiling spatial and non-spatial aspects of neglect in everyday behavior","authors":"Brigitte C. Kaufmann , Paolo Bartolomeo , Monica N. Toba","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 208-211"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142557344","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 : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.018
N. De Lucia , H.B. Coslett , E. Ambron
{"title":"A 20-year tale on closing-in behavior in graphic copying tasks: Revisiting Della Sala's findings in new samples of patients with dementia and stroke","authors":"N. De Lucia , H.B. Coslett , E. Ambron","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.018","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.018","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Closing-in behavior (CIB) is characterized by the placement of the graphic copy near (Near CIB) or even on the top of (Overlap CIB) the stimulus to be reproduced. Although CIB has received little attention in the literature, Sergio Della Sala and colleagues made important contributions to the understanding of the phenomenon. They noted that CIB is often observed in Alzheimer's Disease but is also present in other forms of dementia and mild cognitive impairment and stroke; they argued that CIB may reflect a deficit in executive function, rather than working memory, and that the phenomenon occurs more frequently in dual task conditions. Importantly, they demonstrated that CIB may not be specific to copying but may instead reflect a general deficit in decoupling movement location from the focus of attention. In the present study, we explored these observations in a mixed sample of 106 participants (AD n = 37, frontal stroke n = 25, other forms of dementia n = 24, and normal controls n = 20). First, we confirmed that CIB is equally common in AD, other forms of dementia and frontal stroke. Second, we confirmed the association between CIB and executive function deficits. Third, we showed that individuals with CIB are more likely to exhibit the phenomenon in dual task situations, in which line-drawing is associated with an unrelated secondary task (tapping, counting, or counting backward). The present work supports and extends the contributions of Della Sala and colleagues demonstrating that CIB is enhanced when the general attentional load of the task increases.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 42-52"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142749664","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 : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.002
Elena Allegretti , Marika Mauti , Moreno I. Coco
{"title":"Visual short-term memory binding and attentional processes during object-scene integration are preserved in mild cognitive impairment","authors":"Elena Allegretti , Marika Mauti , Moreno I. Coco","doi":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cortex.2024.12.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Binding, a critical cognitive process likely mediated by attention, is essential for creating coherent object representations within a scene. This process is vulnerable in individuals with dementia, who exhibit deficits in visual working memory (VWM) binding, primarily tested using abstract arrays of standalone objects. To explore how binding operates in more realistic settings across the lifespan, we examined the impact of object saliency and semantic consistency on VWM binding and the role of overt attention. Using an eye-tracking change detection task, we compared younger adults, healthy older adults, and individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Participants were presented with naturalistic scenes and asked to detect changes in the identity and/or location of objects that were either semantically consistent or inconsistent with their scene context. Across all age groups, semantically inconsistent objects were prioritised during encoding, leading to better change detection than consistent objects. Highly salient objects decreased the inconsistency advantage while being detrimental to detection accuracy when inspected at longer latencies to the first fixation. Longer fixation durations on the critical object were beneficial for recognition. In contrast, delayed initial inspection or frequent subsequent fixations on other objects were detrimental to detection, regardless of age or cognitive impairment. These findings challenge the notion of generalised semantic memory impairment in the prodromal stages of dementia and highlight the importance of efficient attentional control in supporting VWM binding, even in the face of cognitive decline. Overall, preserved low-level and high-level mechanisms of object-scene integration can compensate for age-related cognitive decline, enabling successful binding in naturalistic contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10758,"journal":{"name":"Cortex","volume":"182 ","pages":"Pages 53-70"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142913840","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}