NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-08-13DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109250
Federica Conti , Hashim El-Omar , Her Teng , Rebekah M. Ahmed , Olivier Piguet , Muireann Irish
{"title":"The effect of congruency on visual exploration and episodic memory performance in Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia","authors":"Federica Conti , Hashim El-Omar , Her Teng , Rebekah M. Ahmed , Olivier Piguet , Muireann Irish","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109250","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109250","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mounting evidence points to the role of semantic knowledge in modulating how we perceive, and subsequently remember, experiences. In healthy aging, prior knowledge becomes increasingly important to guide visual exploration during episodic encoding and retrieval and can hinder performance when incongruous with to-be-learned information. It remains unclear, however, how the dynamic integration of visual information and prior knowledge is altered in neurodegenerative disorders, and whether this impacts oculomotor behaviour. Here, we explored how degradation of the conceptual knowledge base in semantic dementia (SD) impacts the acquisition and retrieval of new information, and how such changes relate to oculomotor behaviour. Ten well-characterised cases of SD were compared to 12 disease-matched cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 24 healthy older Controls. Participants completed a visual search task followed by a surprise memory task where target objects were displayed in either semantically congruent or semantically incongruent locations. Oculomotor performance was evaluated by measuring the time participants spent exploring target congruent areas in each condition. Relative to Controls, visual search and memory performance was significantly compromised in AD, as indexed by slower response times, reduced task accuracy, and more extensive visual exploration directed towards target congruent areas. In contrast, SD patients scored in line with Controls for all behavioural and oculomotor measures on the visual search task when target objects were displayed in semantically incongruent locations. Overall, our findings suggest that degradation of the semantic and episodic memory systems in dementia differentially impacts visual exploration and memory retrieval depending on stimulus congruency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109250"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144841302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neural encoding of temporal and spatial plausibility in naturalistic motion: an awake monkey fMRI study","authors":"Reiji Tanaka , Kei Watanabe , Hiroshi Ban , Shigeru Kitazawa","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109247","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109247","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Time flows in one direction, a physical constraint humans recognize, as reflected in proverbs such as “there is no crying over spilt milk.” Recent work from our laboratory has demonstrated that human participants rely on specific cues to discriminate the direction of time's arrow, with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) identifying neural networks selective for temporal directionality. These neural bases are likely shared across species, as the physical constraint of time is universal, even if other species may not “recognize” it as a law. In this study, we investigated whether and how the non-human primate brain encodes the naturalistic dynamics (plausibility) of biological and non-biological motion in temporal and spatial domains by presenting monkeys with video clips of biological and non-biological motion under three conditions: (1) normal (forward and upright), (2) temporally reversed, and (3) spatially inverted. Whole-brain analyses revealed that the superior temporal sulcus (STS) preferentially responded to forward, upright biological motion, reflecting sensitivity to naturalistic dynamics (plausibility) in both temporal and spatial domains. Within the STS, a consistent posterior-to-anterior gradient was observed in both monkeys: temporal plausibility was encoded posteriorly, spatial plausibility anteriorly, and both in the intermediate region. These results suggest that the primate STS is selectively tuned to the naturalistic dynamics of biological motion, with its posterior subregion contributing to the evaluation of temporal plausibility, which may underlie time-direction judgments in specific perceptual contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109247"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144859398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Follow the script: the role of vmPFC in the reinstatement and instantiation of event schemata during event construction","authors":"Debora Stendardi , Nicola Ciavatti , Eloisa Bianchi Rossi , Erida Meminaj , Luana Valeri , Elena Mengoli , Davide Braghittoni , Elisa Ciaramelli","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109249","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109249","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous evidence has shown that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has a role in schematic processing and event construction. Here, we tested whether vmPFC mediates the activation of event schemata (scripts; i.e. <em>reinstatement</em>), or their <em>instantiation</em> during event construction. vmPFC patients and healthy and brain-damaged controls performed (1) a script production task and (2) an event generation task in three experimental conditions: in one condition the to be imagined events did not obey a script (non-scripted condition), in one condition they obeyed a script (scripted condition), and in one condition they obeyed a script that served as an external cue for event generation (cued-scripted condition). At the script production task, vmPFC patients showed accurate knowledge of the main structure of scripts, but insufficient knowledge of their finer details, suggesting impaired script reinstatement. In line with previous studies, vmPFC patients’ event construction performance was impaired in the non-scripted and scripted condition; however, it significantly improved when the script of the to be constructed events was externally cued during event generation, suggesting preserved schema instantiation. These findings indicate that vmPFC integrity is crucial for the reinstatement of scripts, but not for their instantiation when externally provided.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109249"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144841300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nightly dynamics of emotional content in dreams","authors":"Jessica Palmieri , Valentina Elce , Monika Schönauer","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109248","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109248","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emotional processing is a crucial adaptive function. Research suggests that sleep, particularly rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, may have a role in processing the emotional load of past events. Notably, dream experiences may offer insight into this nighttime process. Some studies have reported increased emotionality in dreams as the night progresses, possibly reflecting ongoing emotional processing in the sleeping brain. However, findings on how dream affect evolves throughout the night remain mixed. In this study, we investigated how emotional intensity in conscious experiences during sleep changes across the night and sleep stages. Participants (N<sub>subjects</sub> = 20) were subjected to a multiple awakening paradigm, where they were awakened 4–5 times throughout the night and asked to recall their dreams (N<sub>dreams</sub> = 61). Additionally, they rated the emotional intensity of their experiences using a structured cued questionnaire. Emotional intensity in dreams increased significantly throughout the night, with late-night dreams being more emotional than dreams collected during earlier sleep. Contrary to our expectation, this increase was not driven by dream reports obtained from REM sleep awakenings. Moreover, late-night dream reports were also significantly longer than those from early sleep, yet the length of the dream reports did not correlate with their emotional intensity. This suggests that the emotionality of dreams is not directly linked to the ability to recall the dream or its narrative complexity. Instead, it could be driven by emotional processes occurring independently throughout the night, or by other factors that regulate our access to dream experiences and their emotional content.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109248"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144841303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-08-09DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109246
Jipeng Duan , Qingqing Ye , Yinfeng Hu , Ying Zhou , Xinnan Zhang , Jun Yin
{"title":"The medial prefrontal cortex contributes to representing shared goals among group Members: Evidence from tDCS","authors":"Jipeng Duan , Qingqing Ye , Yinfeng Hu , Ying Zhou , Xinnan Zhang , Jun Yin","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109246","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109246","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>People often generalize the actions of known group members to unfamiliar members based on their goals. This goal-based action generalization is constrained by the belief that group members have a shared goal, which typically results in a nongraded pattern where the extent of generalization does not gradually increase with the prevalence of action goals. In the present study, 90 healthy participants (aged 15–27) were randomly assigned to three equal groups, each receiving one of three types of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC): anodal (anodal electrode over Fpz, return electrode over Oz), cathodal (reverse montage), or sham stimulation. In the implicit task, cathodal stimulation—diminishing mPFC excitability—weakened the representation of the shared-goal belief, leading to a graded generalization pattern in which expectations increased with action prevalence. In contrast, both anodal and sham stimulation produced the typical nongraded pattern. In the explicit task, both anodal and cathodal stimulation produced the similar graded generalization, while sham stimulation preserved the nongraded pattern. These findings suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is involved in representing the belief that group members have a shared goal. This study advances our understanding of how the mPFC contributes to social cognition by integrating beliefs with statistical evidence to guide action expectations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109246"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144822137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-08-07DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109245
Nunzia Valentina Di Chiaro , Nicole Koh Sze Kyi , Nicholas Paul Holmes
{"title":"In the Flanker response congruency task, motor evoked potential amplitude increases in the chosen hand prior to response, but does not change in the unchosen hand","authors":"Nunzia Valentina Di Chiaro , Nicole Koh Sze Kyi , Nicholas Paul Holmes","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109245","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109245","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The coloured Flanker task examines preparatory motor processes, providing insights into stimulus-interference (distracting stimuli requiring the same response) and response-interference (distracting stimuli triggering competing responses). Continuous measurement of the responses – using dynamometers and electromyography (EMG) – provides information about ongoing motor processes in both hands simultaneously, from stimulus onset until response production. The present study investigated the representations of chosen and unchosen hand responses using dual simultaneous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over left and right primary motor cortices (M1), evoking EMG activity in first dorsal interosseous and thenar muscles. We hypothesised to find decreased activation of the unchosen hand (associated with the flankers) and increased activation of the chosen hand (associated with the target), starting about 150 ms before the manual reaction time. Fifteen adults performed the coloured Flanker task. We delivered, simultaneously, two single-pulses of TMS, one over left and one over right M1 within a time window from target presentation to the mean RT in the prior block. In the chosen hand, motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes started increasing 156 ms before the reaction time, with no differences across stimulus and response interference conditions. In the unchosen hand, MEP amplitudes did not differ significantly from baseline throughout response preparation. These findings suggest that preparatory motor processes of the chosen hand seem not to be influenced by stimulus or response interference. Double-coil stimulation, coupled with continuous bilateral measurement of motor responses using grip force, EMG, and MEPs, provides a valuable alternative to discrete measures of stimulus and response interference.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109245"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144812145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-08-06DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109244
A.M. Williams , K. Zentgraf
{"title":"Neuroscience, cognitive function, and expertise in sport","authors":"A.M. Williams , K. Zentgraf","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109244","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109244","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"217 ","pages":"Article 109244"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144804384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-08-04DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109242
Xinjing Li , Qian Chu , Yuhan Lu , Yuqi Su , Xing Tian
{"title":"Motor-based and memory-based predictions distinctively modulate sensory processes","authors":"Xinjing Li , Qian Chu , Yuhan Lu , Yuqi Su , Xing Tian","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109242","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109242","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Action suppresses the neural responses to its sensory feedback. The phenomenon, termed action-induced suppression, highlights the predictive processes in sensorimotor integration but remains controversial regarding the underlying mechanisms. The predictive coding framework posits that action-induced suppression is a general, non-action-specific process driven by predictions. In contrast, the Dual-Stream Prediction Model (DSPM) argues that motor-based and memory-based predictions are mediated by distinct processes — motor predictions rely on precise action-perception mappings and temporal synchrony, whereas memory predictions are based on learned associations. To test these competing theories, we compared auditory ERP responses elicited by self-initiated keypresses (motor-based) and visually cued auditory events (memory-based) in a matching judgment task. Results revealed significant suppression at the P2 component, when the prediction matched the auditory feedback only in the motor-auditory task but not in the visual-auditory task. The findings qualitatively replicated common observations of action-induced suppression; the suppression effects are at a later component rather than N1, indicating the interaction between prediction and perception at a higher level, such as syllable categorization in the current experimental design. Surprisingly, we observed N1 enhancement to the auditory probe in both conditions, with greater enhancement in the motor-auditory task compared to the visual-auditory task. The enhancement effects likely reflect a prediction-induced attentional-like modulation at an early auditory processing stage, potentially driven by the demands of the matching judgment task. Together, these findings support the DSPM by demonstrating functional dissociable mechanisms of motor-based and memory-based predictions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"218 ","pages":"Article 109242"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144772985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Manipulating visual, rule and motor conflict partially dissociates multiple demand cortex sub-regions","authors":"Bryony Goulding Mew , Darije Custovic , Eyal Soreq , Romy Lorenz , Ines R. Violante , Stefano Sandrone , Adam Hampshire","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109236","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109236","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Flexible behaviour requires cognitive-control mechanisms to efficiently mediate conflict between competing information and alternative actions. Whether a global neural resource mediates all forms of conflict or this is achieved within domain-specific systems remains unclear. We use a novel fMRI paradigm to orthogonally manipulate rule, response and stimulus-based conflict within a full-factorial design. Whole-brain voxelwise analyses show that activation patterns associated with these conflict types are distinct, but they partially overlap within the Multiple Demand Cortex (MDC) regions that are most commonly active during cognitive tasks. Region of interest analysis shows that most MDC sub-regions are activated for all conflict types, but to significantly varying levels. We propose that conflict resolution is an emergent property of distributed brain networks, the functional-anatomical components of which place on a continuous, not categorical, scale from domain-specialised to domain general. MDC brain regions place towards one end of that scale but still exhibit significant functional heterogeneity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"217 ","pages":"Article 109236"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NeuropsychologiaPub Date : 2025-07-30DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109234
Jinkang Derrick Xiang , Julio C. Martinez-Trujillo , Taylor W. Schmitz , Marieke Mur
{"title":"Toward task mapping of primate prefrontal cortex","authors":"Jinkang Derrick Xiang , Julio C. Martinez-Trujillo , Taylor W. Schmitz , Marieke Mur","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109234","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109234","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) flexibly supports diverse cognitive functions, including working memory, decision making, and inhibitory control. Unlike neurons in sensory cortices, LPFC neurons exhibit adaptive coding, dynamically changing their tuning to encode task-relevant information across domains. These context-dependent responses challenge traditional approaches to functional mapping. In this review, we propose adapting stimulus mapping techniques for ’task mapping’ of LPFC. We highlight key challenges in this endeavour, arising from the structural and functional properties of LPFC, including large spatiotemporal receptive fields, dynamic tuning, and integrative connectivity. To address these challenges, we introduce topographic similarity analysis (TSA), an approach inspired by representational similarity analysis (RSA). We discuss the potential of TSA for detecting reorganization of functional topographies with learning and changing task demands, with empirical work applying TSA to macaque cell recordings underway. This work motivates further exploration of topographies across a richer task space. By extending TSA to high-field fMRI in humans, future research may uncover cognitive dimensions underlying LPFC function, fostering a deeper understanding of flexible cognition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109234"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144765109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}