Experimental Brain Research最新文献

{"title":"Consolidation of cognitive maps as a gradual process.","authors":"Otmar Bock","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07236-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07236-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cognitive maps of the environment are initially encoded in a fragile form susceptible to interference, but they can stabilize over time-a process called \"consolidation\". This study investigated whether consolidation is a gradual or an all-or-none process. In the main condition, participants formed first a map of environment A, then a map of environment B, and then returned to A (sequence: A₁ -> B -> A₂). Performance increased from A₁ to A₂, but this increase was smaller than in a control condition where B was replaced by a pause filled with unrelated activities (sequence: A₁ -> pause -> A₂). Adding a pause after A₁ in the main condition (sequence: A₁ -> pause -> B -> A₂) had no substantiable effect on performance. In contrast, adding a replica of A₁ (sequence: A₁ -> A_R -> B -> A₂) improved performance so that it no longer differed significantly from the control condition. This pattern of findings is consistent with the view that (1) cognitive maps consolidate gradually rather than abruptly, and (2) consolidation proceeds during task learning but not during pauses filled with other activities.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Agents' awareness of visuo-motor incongruency determines changes in haptic sensitivity.","authors":"Yanick Kloss, Wilfried Kunde","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07309-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00221-026-07309-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>When body movements are transformed into somewhat discrepant effects in the environment, agents are surprisingly unaware of what their body is doing exactly (e.g., Knoblich and Kircher 2004; Fourneret and Jeannerod 1998; Sutter et al. 2008). Presumably, that is because agents control such movements primarily via their transformed visual effects while downregulating the processing of haptic movement effects (for a review, see Sutter et al. 2013). In two experiments, we measured tactile sensitivity on the moving effector as a proxy for the up- or downregulation of processing haptic effects during continuous visuo-motor congruent or incongruent tool transformations. As expected, tactile sensitivity was modulated by incongruency, but only when individuals became aware of it. Awareness came with an increase in tactile sensitivity, suggesting that haptic processing is upregulated once agents notice that their movements are not congruent with intended visual effects. These findings challenge the presumed dominance of environment-related action consequences in movement control, demonstrating the breakthrough of tactile perception in case of visuo-haptic incongruency.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13149653/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Influence of surgical intervention on pre- and post-surgery patient specific muscle synergies in children with cerebral palsy.","authors":"Tiana Breust, Jiayin Lin, Vincent C K Cheung, Firooz Salami, Sebastian I Wolf, Gursel Alici, Manish Sreenivasa","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07308-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00221-026-07308-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Muscle synergy analysis has been explored as means to better understand changes in motor control, with the aim to improve treatment outcomes after Single Event Multilevel Surgery (SEMLS) for children with cerebral palsy (CP). In this single-group study, we assess changes between pre- and post-surgery muscle synergies at both patient specific, and cohort levels after surgical intervention for children with CP. We analysed the walking data of 11 patients between the ages of 7-18 years old, including surface electromyography, joint angles and ground reaction forces, recorded before and after surgery. Muscle synergies were extracted and assessed for changes in dimensionality and sparseness between pre- and post-surgery. Our results show that at a patient specific level, pre- and post-surgery muscle synergies were not highly similar, with only 41% of paired synergies showing high correlation ([Formula: see text] > 0.8) after surgery, and an overall mean correlation of 0.53 ± 0.25. On the other hand, synergies obtained at the cohort level were highly similar post-surgery ([Formula: see text] > 0.87). These findings suggest that at an individual level, pre-surgery motor control cannot be assumed to be preserved post-surgery. CP synergies obtained at the cohort level from pre-surgery data can demonstrate more reliable preservation in post-surgery motor control. We also observed sparseness increasing with the number of synergies, which provides an interesting future research direction exploring the link with more complex motor control and a more typical gait pattern.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13139245/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147812712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does crossmodal attentional blink depend on spatial congruency?","authors":"Amanda J Sinclair, Kelsey D Croshaw, Steven L Prime","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07271-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07271-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147812651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effects of a secondary mental task and additional auditory feedback on body movements and EEG.","authors":"Swapno Aditya, Adam Clarke, Lucy Armitage, Evangelos Pappas, Victoria Traynor, Winson Chiu-Chun Lee","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07313-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00221-026-07313-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Previous studies have shown that additional cognitive load from a secondary task can adversely affect movement performance. However, how externally provided auditory pacing influences motor and neural responses under dual-task conditions remains unclear. This study employed a repeated-measures experimental design, studying eighteen young adults (Mean age 23.5 ± 4 years) who underwent three conditions: (1) foot tapping only (single task), (2) foot tapping and a mental task (dual task), and (3) foot tapping, mental task, and auditory pacing biofeedback (dual task + biofeedback). Ankle joint movements using Xsens IMU's (Inertial Motion Units) and brain activities using EEG (electroencephalography) were measured in these three conditions. Results showed that dual tasks significantly reduced (p < 0.01) the range of motion and increased (p < 0.05) the variability of ankle joint range of motion, suggesting a decline in foot tapping performance compared to the single-task condition. The decline was accompanied by significant increases (p < 0.05) in relative high-beta power in EEG, consistent with heightened cognitive-motor demand during dual-tasking. In the dual-task + biofeedback condition, kinematic measures returned to values statistically indistinguishable from the single-task condition and response times in the cognitive task were significantly reduced, without a loss of accuracy. The relative high-beta power was also significantly reduced, compared with the dual-task condition, which may reflect increased entrainment to external cues or a reduction in cognitive load. These results support the role of auditory pacing in facilitating movement performance under dual-tasking conditions, while highlighting the need for future studies to dissociate entrainment effects from changes in cognitive workload.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13139276/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147812679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anodal HD-tDCS attenuates forearm muscle fatigue via enhanced beta-band corticomuscular coherence.","authors":"Bo Zhu, Yong Li, Xiaofeng Wang, Cui Wang, Chenxin Shen","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07314-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07314-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aims to investigate the fatigue-attenuating effects of anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) on the forearm flexor muscles during isometric contractions and clarify whether these effects are mediated by enhanced corticomuscular coherence (CMC) in beta and gamma frequency bands.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Twenty healthy young male participants underwent anodal HD-tDCS intervention on the contralateral motor cortex (left hemisphere) of the forearm flexor muscles at 2 mA for 20 min, prior to performing a 30% maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) isometric endurance task. This study employed a crossover sham-controlled design, with participants receiving either anodal stimulation (HD-tDCS) or sham stimulation prior to the task. During the task, electroencephalography (EEG) and surface electromyography (sEMG) of the forearm flexor muscles signals were recorded. CMC areas in EEG beta and gamma bands, as well as the frequency of the maximal peak of the coherence (Cohmax) in the beta and gamma bands, were calculated.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The time to failure (TTF) was significantly greater in the anodal HD-tDCS group compared to the baseline and sham groups (P < 0.05). Subjective perception of fatigue assessed by the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) was also significantly lower in the anodal HD-tDCS group compared to the baseline and sham groups (P < 0.05). The anodal HD-tDCS group exhibited significantly higher beta-band (13-30 Hz) CMC during fatigue compared to both the baseline and sham groups (P < 0.05), especially in terms of the frequency of Cohmax in the beta band. There were no significant differences in gamma-band (31-50 Hz) CMC. Correlation analysis showed that TTF was negatively correlated with RPE (r=-0.58, P = 0.0073) and positively correlated with beta-band CMC area (r = 0.54, P = 0.015).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Anodal HD-tDCS applied to the contralateral motor cortex (M1) can effectively prolong the TTF of the forearm flexor muscles and reduce perception of fatigue. This may be attributed to the enhancement of synchronized activity between the brain and muscles induced by anodal HD-tDCS, resulting in improved muscle function.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147812498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of varying cursor latency on visuomotor tracking.","authors":"Lucy J Turner, Steven D Wiederman, Jessica L O'Rielly, Anna Ma-Wyatt","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07291-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00221-026-07291-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The visuomotor system compensates for sensory feedback delays, enabling the integration of visual information with motor commands to track moving objects with precision. However, when latency associated with a movement outcome becomes variable or noisy, this ability to compensate is tested. We aimed to identify the thresholds at which delays disrupt tracking to understand the limits of visuomotor prediction and error correction. Participants performed a visually guided pursuit task following a target along a curvilinear path, while eye and cursor movements were recorded under various latency conditions. Cursor position was recorded throughout each trial to quantify mouse-to-cursor latency, cursor velocity, and cursor-target error. In the first study, latency was constant within trials. Six latency magnitudes (0-300 ms) were tested and their impact on tracking performance analysed. Spectral analysis of cursor velocity showed that under high latency, pursuit submovements shifted to lower frequencies interspersed with high frequency corrective actions, whereas under low latency conditions, smoother tracking dominated. In the second study, abrupt changes in cursor latency were introduced mid-trial. Step increases in latency resulted in larger positional errors and increased corrective submovements, while decreases in latency led to rapid error reduction and a return to smoother tracking. These transitions highlight the visuomotor system's ability to recalibrate in response to latency variability. Together these results show that error correction mechanisms rapidly respond to changes in latency depending on its magnitude. These results may inform the design of assistive display technologies that maintain performance under challenging conditions and increase safety in high-risk environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13135551/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147812638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Causal reasoning guides visual exploration.","authors":"Luigi Valio, Donatella Ferrante, Roberto Montanari, Maria Antonella Brandimonte, Giovanni Federico","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07280-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07280-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans interpret the visual world by integrating objects with their surrounding context. When this coherence is disrupted, perception may reorganise in search of new meaning. Here, we test whether such reorganisation may be guided by causal reasoning, namely, the ability to infer how one element might act upon another. Tools provide an ideal test case because their design explicitly separates a functional part (what they do) from a manipulable part (how they are used). While the manipulable part enables grasping, the functional part determines the effect the tool produces and the kind of physical interaction it affords with other objects. For instance, the handle of a hammer provides a stable grasp, whereas the striking head transmits impact force, inviting a causal link with another object, such as a nail. Fifty-six participants (34 females; mean age = 23.02 years, SD = 3.31) looked at naturalistic scenes in which tools appeared in incongruent contexts (e.g., a hammer in a cinema), while their eye movements were recorded. Participants rapidly directed their gaze to the functional part of the tool before expanding to the broader scene. Fixations then shifted systematically from the functional component toward contextual regions that could plausibly interact with the tool. By contrast, evidence that the manipulable part guided exploration in this way was weaker, and once gaze left the tool, it was less likely to return to it. These findings suggest that visual exploration is shaped by meaning and may reflect an implicit drive to impose causal structure on perception.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147766829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perceptual sensitivity, but not metacognitive monitoring, is shaped by increases and decreases in control.","authors":"Kazuma Takada, Wen Wen, Shunichi Kasahara, Tom Froese","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07306-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00221-026-07306-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over one's actions in the environment. It is typically thought to arise from comparisons between predicted action outcomes and actual sensory feedback. However, previous studies have shown that, in addition to this error detection process, a process that detects regularities between sensory input and one's actions is also involved in the emergence of the sense of agency. It remains unclear whether these distinct perceptual processes share a common metacognitive monitoring system. We addressed this question using a control change detection task, in which participants moved a single dot on a screen and judged whether their control over the dot changed during the trial, along with their confidence in each response. Detection of a decrease in control is expected to engage the error detection process underlying the sense of agency, whereas detection of an increase in control is expected to engage the regularity detection process. Across two experiments, the results showed that detection of decreases in control was more accurate than detection of increases, whereas the m-ratio did not differ between conditions. These findings suggest that the processes underlying the detection of increases and decreases in control are distinct, but may rely on a shared metacognitive monitoring system.</p>","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13128714/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147766785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neutrophil responses are substantially prolonged and robust following early postnatal chorda tympani or lingual nerve transection.","authors":"Jacquelyn M Omelian, Andrew J Riquier, Suzanne I Sollars","doi":"10.1007/s00221-026-07303-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07303-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12268,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Brain Research","volume":"244 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13121521/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147766832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}