Neuropsychologia最新文献

{"title":"Effects of online prefrontal transcranial alternating current stimulation in the alpha and theta frequency bands on latent-variable measures of executive functions","authors":"Sofia El Mouderrib ,&nbsp;Laurence Dumont ,&nbsp;Audrey Murray ,&nbsp;Manon Desforges ,&nbsp;Evelyne Wassef ,&nbsp;Amélie Cloutier ,&nbsp;Clarice Huard ,&nbsp;Cassandra Lévesque ,&nbsp;Dave Saint-Amour ,&nbsp;Hugo Théoret","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109318","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109318","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Executive functions (EFs) are high-level cognitive processes essential for adaptive, goal-directed behavior. They are supported by oscillatory neural activity, particularly in the alpha and theta frequency bands, across local and distributed brain networks involving prefrontal regions. Previous studies have used transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to modulate such activity and have reported significant performance improvement on EF tasks. However, most relied on single-task scores as outcome measures, which may reflect not only domain-general executive functioning but also task-specific or lower-level processes. This double-blind sham-controlled within-subject study examined the effects of online prefrontal tACS at alpha (10 Hz) and theta (6 Hz) frequencies on EF performance, measured via latent-variable scores that capture shared variance across multiple EF tasks, in healthy individuals (<em>n</em> = 24). Outcome measures were derived using the NIH EXAMINER battery, yielding latent scores for four EF components (common EF, cognitive control, working memory, and fluency) as well as task scores. Linear mixed models revealed significantly higher common EF and cognitive control scores during alpha-tACS, with large effect sizes, and smaller, more limited stimulation effects on task scores. Exploratory analyses suggested biological sex-specific response to stimulation, with alpha-tACS effects observed primarily in females. These findings support a causal role for prefrontal alpha-band oscillations in EFs and underscore the value of latent-variable measures of executive functioning in neuromodulation research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109318"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145541652","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":"Metacognition in Aphantasia: Taking the “conscious” view seriously","authors":"Lu Teng","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109331","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109331","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Whereas aphantasics report lacking voluntary conscious visual imagery, empirical findings indicate that they employ visual strategies to complete tasks. The discrepancy has led some researchers to propose that aphantasics rely on unconscious visual imagery. This paper instead motivates and defends a “conscious” view. Consciousness research uses both visibility and confidence measures. Participants in aphantasia studies are recruited based on their scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), which closely resembles a visibility measure. To assess whether aphantasics’ task-relevant visual imagery is truly unconscious, we should also investigate their confidence in their first-order task performance. The few studies that have explored this suggest that they exhibit good metacognition. These findings therefore support the conscious interpretation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109331"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145649084","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":"Minding mortality: A systematic review of the neural processing of death-related stimuli","authors":"Anna Bengtson ,&nbsp;Ida Nordin ,&nbsp;Joel Parthemore ,&nbsp;Antti Revonsuo","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109308","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109308","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The human relationship with mortality has been widely studied in psychology, with extensive studies suggesting that death-related stimuli impact behavior even without reflective awareness. In recent decades, neuroimaging studies have yielded various contenders for brain regions underlying the online processing of death-related stimuli. To the best of our knowledge, we present here the first systematic review of these findings. We conducted a comprehensive search for studies where participants were presented with death-related and death-unrelated but negatively valenced (unpleasant) stimuli while undergoing functional brain imaging. We found seven functional magnetic resonance imaging studies with a total of 204 participants. Five of six within-group studies found that unpleasant stimuli consistently elicited increased insular activity, but only when it was unrelated to mortality. This novel finding—that insular deactivation alone marks the processing of death-related stimuli—suggests a critical difference between the neural processing of death-related and non-death related, unpleasant stimuli. We argue that preexisting explanatory frameworks fail to unite our results with findings on threat processing mechanisms in the insula or lack evolutionary plausibility. We present an alternative explanation: death might be unique in that it evades the insula's typical threat-assessment mechanisms.</div><div>Further research is needed to determine whether this neural signature is robust and what its function and consequences may be. A better understanding of how individuals process death-related information promises deeper insight into the human relationship with mortality, with significant implications for individuals and society, not least for mental health interventions and end-of-life care.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109308"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145422260","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":"Emotion enhances metamemory judgments: An event-related potential comparison of judgments of learning and judgments of source","authors":"Xiaojun Sun ,&nbsp;Yingjie Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109312","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109312","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In episodic memory, emotional items often can be remembered better than neutral ones, whereas this emotional salience effect is not observed in source memory (neutral extrinsic or contextual details). However, it remains unclear whether this dissociation is evident in subjective metamemory judgments—specifically judgments of learning (JOLs) and judgments of sources (JOSs). To reveal the effects of emotions on these two types of metamemory judgments and their neural mechanisms, we used different emotion (negative, positive, and neutral) pictures with neutral contextual details. Results revealed that both JOLs and JOSs showed emotional salience effects, supporting the universal role of emotion as a metamemory cue. Event-related potential (ERP) results revealed shared neural mechanisms underlying both judgment types: early automatic processing (evidenced by enhanced P200 and reduced N400) and late controlled processing (late positive components). Crucially, the neural activity within this shared subjective pathway was functionally dissociated from the encoding processes diagnostic of subsequent memory success. Both judgment types exhibited right-hemisphere lateralization for high versus low metamemory ratings. Nevertheless, JOLs elicited more widespread and sustained neural activity patterns than JOSs in both emotion-neutral contrasts and high-low rating differences. These findings support the Dual-basis theory of metamemory (experience-belief interaction) and suggest that item and source metamemory judgments rely on partially distinct neural mechanisms. This provides neurophysiological insights for optimizing metacognitive training strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109312"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145445584","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 reinstatement and sequential reactivation of navigational episodic memory and its age-related decline","authors":"Jeonghyun Lee ,&nbsp;Sang-Eon Park ,&nbsp;Sang Ah Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109319","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109319","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When we retrieve memories of past navigational episodes, our brain reactivates cortical representations of the spatial information experienced along the way. Although navigation is temporally dynamic in nature, previous studies on cortical memory reactivation have mostly focused on single items or their associated contexts. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether sequential reactivation of navigational events can be measured from cortical electrophysiological activity and is influenced by factors such as age or the availability of spatial cues. Participants were passively navigated through virtual environments and then asked to remember the routes or destinations that they traveled to. Each navigational episodes contained an average of five turns and varied in the presence or absence of landmarks. Given the decline in navigational abilities in aging, we separately tested younger (ages 22–32) and middle-aged participants (ages 41–63) to identify age-related differences in cortical memory reactivation. Comparing EEG spectral patterns between navigational encoding and retrieval, we found that sequential reactivation of turn events was associated with successful spatial memory in younger adults. This sequential reactivation was correlated with the reinstatement of neural activity during distal landmark-viewing and was primarily driven by theta and alpha oscillations. Although middle-aged adults showed a decrease in sequential reactivation overall, those with preserved landmark reinstatement and sequential reactivation patterns exhibited better spatial memory. These results may have implications not only for our understanding of the electrophysiological correlates of navigation and its age-related changes but also for the broader importance of cortical reactivation in episodic memory retrieval.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109319"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145564514","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":"Visual agnosia in the era of behavioral and neural investigations","authors":"Marlene Behrmann","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109299","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109299","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Single case studies have long been used to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying normal cognition, including in the domains of memory, language and visuoperceptual function, and standardized testing has been a steadfast companion in such investigations. Experimental approaches designed to address specific hypotheses have also been conducted and analytic methods have been developed for the comparison of single subject data to a control group. However, a seismic shift has occurred in the last decade or two in which neuroimaging, primarily magnetic resonance imaging, has been added to the experimental toolbox. The question addressed in this article is whether, with these newer methodologies offering novel and previously unattainable evidence, single case studies have become obsolete. Here, in a single patient with integrative visual agnosia, tested repeatedly over three decades, behavioral, neuroimaging and joint behavioral-neuroimaging studies are described and their yield evaluated. Behavioral investigations have served to characterize the perceptual deficit well, and structural and functional neuroimaging data have furthered our understanding of the distributed circuit engaged in object recognition. However, imaging studies executed in concert with a behavioral task have offered more direct causal evidence, providing a more complete understanding of brain-behavior correspondences that goes beyond the sum of the parts. The conclusion reached is that the contribution of causal evidence from single cases remains a powerful methodology in advancing our knowledge of the neural basis of cognition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109299"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145471469","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":"MST in the wild: Optimizing the mnemonic similarity task for use in diverse environments","authors":"Lilian Azer ,&nbsp;Casey R. Vanderlip ,&nbsp;Lizabeth L. Mayer ,&nbsp;Luke Ehlert ,&nbsp;David Sultzer ,&nbsp;Hye-Won Shin ,&nbsp;Craig E.L. Stark","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109341","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109341","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><div>Clear guidelines and tools for reliable measures of cognitive decline have yet to be established. This may be due to the absence of access to fully automated, self-administered, and scored cognitive screening tools.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>We used the optimized Mnemonic Similarity Task (oMST; Stark et al., 2023), a web computer-based self-administered tool adapted from the MST. The oMST is designed for cognitive screening and population enrichment, offering a superior alternative to traditional neuropsychological tests. We tested the oMST’s reliability, validity, and accessibility across five experiments with 1685 participants.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>Lure discrimination was highly correlated between in-person and remote administration. These results were consistent across various testing sites, demonstrating the oMST’s robustness. Importantly, visual acuity did not impact performance.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>Our findings establish the oMST as a reliable and accessible tool for cognitive screening across diverse testing environments and administration methods, addressing critical gaps in early screening for cognitive decline.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109341"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145687758","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":"Reduced age differences in semantic memory networks: Evidence from semantically diverse free associations","authors":"Abigail L. Cosgrove,&nbsp;Roger E. Beaty,&nbsp;Chaleece W. Sandberg,&nbsp;Allison Link,&nbsp;Michele T. Diaz","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109324","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109324","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A hallmark of successful aging is increased life experiences and knowledge. Yet how this additional information is incorporated into semantic memory is unclear. Network science has proven to be a useful tool for modeling semantic memory networks in younger and older adults. Previous research suggests that although vocabulary and knowledge are largely stable across adulthood, older adults may have semantic memory networks that are less efficient, less interconnected, and more segregated. However, prior work, including our own, has largely focused on semantic memory networks derived from highly salient, physical concepts (e.g., animals). Though words essential for natural conversation vary greatly in terms of their psycholinguistic characteristics. In the present study, we examine age-related differences in semantic memory networks derived from a free association task, using both abstract and concrete cues that varied in semantic diversity - the number of unique contexts in which they could appear. Across several analytic approaches, we found that including abstract words in semantic memory networks minimized age-related differences: there were no age differences in network efficiency, but older adults had more interconnected and less segregated semantic memory networks compared to younger adults. Looking at word-level characteristics of the semantic memory networks suggested that for both younger and older adults, words that were high in semantic diversity and were more abstract had stronger connections to other words and were more interconnected. These results suggest that abstract and semantically diverse words are a cornerstone in maintaining older adults’ semantic memory networks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109324"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145588370","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":"Differentiation of physically and psychologically familiar voices and their roles in spoken word processing: Evidence from ERPs and neural oscillation","authors":"Yunxiao Ma ,&nbsp;Zhengkai Niu ,&nbsp;Xuliang Zhang ,&nbsp;Yan Zhang ,&nbsp;Zhengyuan Liu ,&nbsp;Keke Yu ,&nbsp;Ruiming Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109309","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109309","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Human voices carry rich information, including identity and linguistic information. The question of whether voice identity information affects linguistic information processing has long been debated among different scientific schools. Among the various factors that contribute to this debate, the effect of voice familiarity on linguistic information has been a critical pathway. The present study differentiated the physically from psychologically familiar voices and investigated how these two types of familiar voices affect spoken word processing. We conducted two experiments with event-related potentials (ERPs) and time-frequency analyses. Experiment 1 employed a lexical decision task with the emotional words spoken by unfamiliar, physically, and psychologically familiar speakers. The N100 and P200 results showed that participants could distinguish between physically and psychologically familiar voices and the voice familiarity would affect linguistic information processing at an early time window. The results of the Alpha frequency band indicated that linguistic information, in turn, affects the processing of different speakers in an later time window. Experiment 2 utilized a valence rating task that required more depth of semantic processing. The N100 and P200 results indicated similar findings to Experiment 1. The N400 results suggested that voice familiarity also affects the linguistic information processing at the semantic processing stage. Moreover, the Theta frequency band results suggested that linguistic information affects the processing of different speakers in an middle-later time window. Token together, these findings revealed that voice familiarity affects spoken word processing differently with regard to the time course of processing and task demands. We proposed a dynamic model of spoken word processing that incorporates voice familiarity, enhancing our understanding of the role of voice identity in linguistic information processing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109309"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145422191","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":"Memory consolidation during sleep: a facilitator of new learning?","authors":"Anna á V. Guttesen ,&nbsp;Marcus O. Harrington ,&nbsp;Melanie K. Fleming ,&nbsp;M. Gareth Gaskell ,&nbsp;Scott A. Cairney","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109320","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109320","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sleep plays a crucial role in consolidating recently acquired memories and preparing the brain for learning new ones, but the relationship between these two processes is currently unclear. According to the prominent Active Systems Consolidation model, memory representations that are initially reliant on the hippocampus are redistributed to neocortex during sleep for long-term storage. An indirect assumption of this model is that sleep-associated memory processing paves the way for next-day learning by freeing up hippocampal encoding resources. In this review, we evaluate two central tenets of this ‘resource reallocation hypothesis’: (i) sleep-associated memory consolidation reduces hippocampal engagement during retrieval, and (ii) this reduction in hippocampal burden enhances the brain's capacity for new learning. We then describe recent work that has directly tested the relationship between sleep-associated memory processing and next-day learning. In the absence of clear evidence supporting the resource reallocation hypothesis, we consider alternative accounts in which efficient learning is not contingent on prior overnight memory processing, but rather that sleep-associated consolidation and post-sleep learning rely on overlapping or independent mechanisms. We conclude by outlining how future research can rigorously test the resource reallocation hypothesis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 109320"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145557541","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}