Journal of Neuroscience最新文献

{"title":"Task-Switch Related Reductions in Neural Distinctiveness in Children and Adults: Commonalities and Differences.","authors":"Sina A Schwarze,Sara Bonati,Radoslaw M Cichy,Ulman Lindenberger,Silvia A Bunge,Yana Fandakova","doi":"10.1523/jneurosci.2358-23.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2358-23.2025","url":null,"abstract":"Goal-directed behavior requires the ability to flexibly switch between task sets with changing environmental demands. Switching between tasks generally comes at the cost of slower and less accurate responses. Compared to adults, children often show greater switch costs, presumably reflecting the protracted development of the ability to flexibly update task-set representations. To test whether the distinctiveness of neural task-set representations is more strongly affected by a task switch in children compared to adults, we examined multi-voxel patterns of fMRI activation in 88 children (8-11 years, 49 girls, 39 boys) and 52 adults (20-30 years, 27 women, 25 men) during a task-switching paradigm. Using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), we investigated whether task-set representations were less distinct on switch than on repeat trials across frontoparietal, cingulo-opercular, and temporo-occipital regions. Children and adults showed lower accuracy and longer response times on switch than on repeat trials. Switch costs were similar across groups. Decoding accuracy was lower on switch than repeat trials, suggesting that switching reduces the distinctiveness of task-set representations. Reliable age differences in switch-related reductions of decoding accuracy were absent. More nuanced analyses using probability measures indicated that the distinctiveness of task sets was more affected by switch demand in children than in adults in a subset of frontal, cingulate and temporal regions. These results point to a remarkable degree of maturity of neural representations of task-relevant information in late childhood along with more subtle region-specific age differences in the effects of task switching on rule representation.Significance statement The ability to flexibly switch between tasks enables goal-directed behavior, but is particularly challenging for children, potentially due to protracted development in the ability to represent multiple and overlapping task rules that link stimuli to appropriate responses. We tested this hypothesis using functional MRI to measure brain activity during task switching in 8-11-year-olds and adults. Activation patterns in frontal, parietal, and temporal regions indicated with above-chance accuracy which task a person was performing when the task remained the same, but not when it had switched. Children showed larger differences in a subset of frontal and temporal regions when tasks switched, suggesting more subtle age differences in the contributions of developing rule representations to flexible behavior.","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":"129 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143982485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neural Dynamics in Extrastriate Cortex Underlying False Alarms.","authors":"Bikash Sahoo, Adam C Snyder","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1733-24.2025","DOIUrl":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1733-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The unfolding of neural population activity can be described as a dynamical system. Stability in the latent dynamics that characterize neural population activity has been linked with consistency in animal behavior, such as motor control or value-based decision-making. However, whether such characteristics of neural dynamics can explain visual perceptual behavior is not well understood. To study this, we recorded V4 populations in two male monkeys engaged in a non-match-to-sample visual change-detection task that required sustained engagement. We measured how the stability in the latent dynamics in V4 might affect monkeys' perceptual behavior. Specifically, we reasoned that unstable sensory neural activity around dynamic attractor boundaries may make animals susceptible to taking incorrect actions when withholding action would have been correct (\"false alarms\"). We made three key discoveries: (1) greater stability was associated with longer trial sequences; (2) false alarm rate decreased (and response times slowed) when neural dynamics were more stable; and (3) low stability predicted false alarms on a single-trial level, and this relationship depended on the position of the neural activity within the state space, consistent with the latent neural state approaching an attractor boundary. Our results suggest the same outward false alarm behavior can be attributed to two different potential strategies that can be disambiguated by examining neural stability: (1) premeditated false alarms that might lead to greater stability in population dynamics and faster response time and (2) false alarms due to unstable sensory activity consistent with misperception.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12079754/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143755537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dissociable Causal Roles of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and Primary Motor Cortex over the Course of Motor Skill Development.","authors":"Quynh N Nguyen, Katherine J Michon, Michael Vesia, Taraz G Lee","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2015-23.2025","DOIUrl":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2015-23.2025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Established models of motor skill learning posit that early stages of learning are dominated by an attentionally demanding, effortful mode of control supported by associative corticostriatal circuits involving the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). As skill develops, automatic and \"effortless\" performance coincides with a transition to a reliance on sensorimotor circuits that include primary motor cortex (M1). However, the dynamics of how control evolves during the transition from novice to expert are currently unclear. This lack of clarity is due, in part, to the fact that most motor learning studies comprise a limited number of training sessions and rely on correlative techniques such as neuroimaging. Here, we train human participants (both sexes) on a discrete motor sequencing task over the course of 6 weeks, followed by an assessment of the causal roles of DLPFC and M1 at varying levels of expertise. We use repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to transiently disrupt activity in these regions immediately prior to performance in separate sessions. Our results confirm the dissociable importance of DLPFC and M1 as training progresses. DLPFC stimulation leads to larger behavioral deficits for novice skills than more highly trained skills, while M1 stimulation leads to relatively larger deficits as training progresses. However, our results also reveal that prefrontal disruption causes performance deficits at all levels of training. These findings challenge existing models and indicate an evolving rather than a strictly diminishing role for DLPFC throughout learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12079722/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143765619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sex differences in histamine regulation of striatal dopamine.","authors":"Meghan Van Zandt,Christopher Pittenger","doi":"10.1523/jneurosci.2182-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2182-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"Dopamine modulation of the basal ganglia differs in males and females and is implicated in numerous neuropsychiatric conditions, including some, like Tourette Syndrome (TS) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), that have marked sex differences in prevalence. Genetic studies in TS and subsequent work in animals suggest that a loss of histamine may contribute to dysregulation of dopamine. Motivated by this, we characterized the modulation of striatal dopamine by histamine, using microdialysis, targeted pharmacology, and shRNA knockdown of histamine receptors. Intracerebroventricular (ICV) histamine reduced striatal dopamine in male mice, replicating previous work. In contrast, and unexpectedly, ICV histamine increased striatal dopamine in females. ICV or targeted infusion of agonists revealed that the effect in males depends on H2R receptors in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Knockdown of H2R in SNc GABAergic neurons abrogated the effect, identifying these cells as a key locus of histamine's regulation of dopamine in males. In females, however, H2R had no discernible role; instead, H3R agonists in the striatum increased striatal dopamine. Strikingly, the effect of histamine on dopamine in females was modulated by the estrous cycle, appearing only in estrus/proestrus, when estrogen levels are high. These findings confirm the regulation of striatal dopamine by histamine but identify marked sexual differences in and estrous modulation of this effect. These findings may shed light on the mechanistic underpinnings of sex differences in the striatal circuitry, and in several neuropsychiatric conditions.Significance Statement Dysregulation of the basal ganglia contributes to the pathophysiology of numerous neuropsychiatric diseases, including several, such as Tourette syndrome (TS), that are characterized by sex differences. Previous genetic studies in humans identified histamine dysregulation as a potential to the development of TS; follow-up work in mice highlighted the role of histamine in regulating striatal dopamine tone. Striatal dopamine dysregulation has been implicated in numerous neuropsychiatric disorders, including TS, schizophrenia, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Here, we uncover novel and significant sex differences in histamine regulation of dopaminergic modulation of the striatum. A better understanding of these differences may provide insight into the mechanisms underlying sex-dependent outcomes in neuropsychiatric disease.","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":"121 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143945216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Neurobiology of Cognitive Fatigue and Its Influence on Effort-Based Choice.","authors":"Grace Steward, Vivian Looi, Vikram S Chib","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1612-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1612-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Feelings of cognitive fatigue emerge through repeated mental exertion and are ubiquitous in our daily lives. However, there is a limited understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the influence of cognitive fatigue on decisions to exert. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants (18 female, 10 male) choose to exert effort for reward, before and after bouts of fatiguing cognitive exertion. We found that when participants became cognitively fatigued, they were more likely to choose to forgo higher levels of reward for more effort. We describe a mechanism by which signals related to cognitive exertion in dlPFC influence effort value computations, instantiated by the insula, thereby influencing an individual's decisions to exert while fatigued. Our results suggest that cognitive fatigue plays a critical role in decisions to exert effort and provides a mechanistic link through which information about cognitive state shapes effort-based choice.<b>Significance statement</b> Cognitive fatigue influences decisions to exert effort throughout our daily lives. However, it is unclear how the brain integrates information about cognitive fatigue to influence effort-based decision-making. We found that when individuals engage in repeated cognitive exertion, exertion-related signals in dlPFC influence effort value computations in insular cortex, thereby influencing an individual's decisions to exert while fatigued. These results provide a mechanistic account of how information about cognitive state impacts choice.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144062975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gestational Chlorpyrifos Exposure Imparts Lasting Alterations to the Rat Somatosensory Cortex.","authors":"Jeffrey A Koenig, Catherine Haga, Nathan Cramer, Asaf Keller","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0363-25.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0363-25.2025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphorus pesticide used extensively in agricultural and residential settings for nearly 60 years. Gestational, sub-acute exposure to chlorpyrifos is linked to increased prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders. Animal studies have modeled these neurobehavioral detriments, however, the functional alterations in the brain induced by this exposure remain largely unknown. To address this, we used a rat model of gestational chlorpyrifos exposure to interrogate the alterations in the developing somatosensory (barrel) cortex. Rat dams were exposed to chlorpyrifos (5 mg/kg) or vehicle on gestational days 18-21 via subcutaneous injection, with no overt acute toxicity. Acetylcholinesterase was modestly inhibited but returned to baseline levels by postnatal day 12. We performed whole-cell patch clamp recordings on postnatal days 12-20 in both male and female progeny of the treated dams. A spike timing dependent plasticity protocol revealed changes to the normal development of use-dependent plasticity, including interference in long-term synaptic depression. Recording inhibitory synaptic activity revealed an increase in the frequency of spontaneous postsynaptic currents and in paired pulse ratios, in conjunction with a significant decrease in miniature postsynaptic currents. These findings suggest a presynaptic mechanism of inhibited GABA release, with potential disinhibition of inhibitory neurons. Evaluation of barrel cortex development displayed disruptions to normal barrel field patterning, with increases in both the septal area and total barrel field. We provide evidence for functional and structural alterations during brain development induced by <i>in utero</i> exposure to the organophosphorus pesticide chlorpyrifos that may account for the well-established behavioral outcomes.<b>Significance statement</b> We demonstrate persistent alterations to synaptic function and plasticity in the somatosensory cortex following a brief, sub-acute exposure to the organophosphorus pesticide chlorpyrifos in a gestational rat model. These occur in conjunction with structural changes to cellular patterning of this brain region. These previously unknown consequences are potential causal mechanisms to the well-established neurodevelopmental detriments associated with early life exposure to chlorpyrifos. Clarifying these mechanisms could aid in ameliorating or preventing their persistent effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144056838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Target selection signals causally influence human perceptual decision making.","authors":"Daniel J Pearce,Gerard M Loughnane,Trevor T-J Chong,Nele Demeyere,Jason B Mattingley,Margaret J Moore,Peter W New,Redmond G O'Connell,Megan H O'Neill,Dragan Rangelov,Renerus J Stolwyk,Sam S Webb,Shou-Han Zhou,Méadhbh B Brosnan,Mark A Bellgrove","doi":"10.1523/jneurosci.2048-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2048-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to form decisions is a foundational cognitive function which is impaired across many psychiatric and neurological conditions. Understanding the neural processes underpinning clinical deficits may provide insights into the fundamental mechanisms of decision making. The N2c has been identified as an EEG signal indexing the efficiency of early target selection, which subsequently influences the timing of perceptual reports through modulating neural evidence accumulation rates. Evidence for the contribution of the N2c to human decision making however has thus far come from correlational research in neurologically healthy individuals. Here, we capitalised on the superior temporal resolution of EEG to show that unilateral brain lesions in male and female humans were associated with specific deficits in both the timing and strength of the N2c in the damaged hemisphere, with corresponding deficits in the timing of perceptual reports contralaterally. The extent to which the N2c influenced clinical deficits in perceptual reporting speed depended on neural rates of evidence accumulation. This work provides causal evidence that the N2c indexes an early, hemisphere-specific process supporting human decision making. This non-invasive EEG marker could be used to monitor novel approaches for remediating clinical deficits in perceptual decision making across a range of brain disorders.Significance Statement Understanding how particular brain processes contribute to decision-making is crucial for our treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders. This study provides causal evidence linking deficits in speed of visual processing to specific well-delineated EEG signals representing early target selection and evidence accumulation, in individuals with brain lesions. By showing how these lesions disrupt perceptual decisions, this work identifies a potential biomarker for decision-making deficits. This EEG measure offers a promising, non-invasive tool to track and refine treatments aimed at restoring decision-making abilities in affected patients.","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143932390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Zooming in and out: Selective attention modulates color signals in early visual cortex for narrow and broad ranges of task-relevant features.","authors":"Mert Özkan,Angus Chapman,Viola Störmer","doi":"10.1523/jneurosci.2097-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2097-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"Research on feature-based attention has shown that selecting a specific visual feature (e.g., the color red) results in enhanced processing in early visual cortex, providing the neural basis for the efficient identification of relevant features in many everyday tasks. However, many situations require the selection of entire feature ranges instead of just a single feature value, and recent accounts have proposed that broadly tuned attentional templates are often critical for guiding selection in cluttered visual scenes. To assess the neural implementation of such broad tuning of feature-based attention, we here recorded frequency-tagged potentials in human observers (male and female) while participants attended to narrow or broad ranges of colors of spatially intermingled dot fields. Our results show clear increases in the signal strength for the attended colors relative to unattended colors for both narrow and broad color ranges, though this increase was reduced for the broad-range condition, suggesting that limits in the breadth of attentional tuning arise at early processing stages. Overall, the present findings indicate that feature-selective attention can amplify multiple contiguous color values in early visual cortex, shedding light onto the neural mechanisms underlying broad search templates. More generally, they illustrate how feature-based attention can dynamically 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' in feature space, mirroring models of spatial attention.Significance statement Many daily situations require the human brain to focus attention to entire sets of feature values, for example when looking for apples in the supermarket which may range from red to yellow to green. How is such broad selection of perceptually contiguous features accomplished? Using electroencephalography, we directly measured early visual processing while participants attended to different color ranges. Our results demonstrate that processing of entire sets of colors is increased in early visual cortex, though the magnitude of this enhancement is modulated by the selected range. This result is important for our understanding of how attention is allocated in complex visual scenes in which relevant inputs are often variable and not defined by a single feature value.","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143932528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Functional Anatomy of Nociception: Effective Connectivity in Chronic Pain and Placebo Response.","authors":"Sanjeev Nara, Marwan N Baliki, Karl J Friston, Dipanjan Ray","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1447-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1447-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chronic pain presents a widespread and complex clinical puzzle, necessitating novel theoretical ap-proaches. This study expands upon our evolving comprehension of the brain's top-down information processing, encompassing functions such as prediction, expectation, and attention, These processes are believed to play a substantial role in shaping both chronic pain and placebo responses. To examine hierarchical cortical processing in pain, we define a minimal cortical pain network comprising the lateral frontal pole, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the posterior insula. Using spectral dynamic causal modeling on resting-state fMRI data we compare effective connectivity among these regions in chronic osteoarthritic patients (n=54, 29F: 25M) and healthy controls (n=18, 10F: 8M) and further analyse dif-ferences between placebo responders and non-responders within the patient group. Our findings reveal distinct patterns of altered top-down, bottom-up, and recurrent (i.e., intrinsic) effective connectivity within the network in chronic pain and placebo response. Specifically, recurrent effective connectivity within the lateral frontal pole becomes more inhibitory, while backward effective connectivity (higher- to-lower cortical regions) decreases in both pain perceivers and placebo responders. Conversely, forward connections exhibit opposite patterns: nociception is associated with more excitatory (disinhibited) con-nections, whereas placebo responses correspond to more inhibitory forward connections. The associated effect sizes were sufficiently large to survive a leave-one-out cross-validation analysis of predictive validity. The observed patterns of alteration are consistent with predictive processing accounts of placebo effects and chronic pain. Overall, effective extrinsic and intrinsic connectivity among cortical regions involved in pain processing emerge as potentially valuable and quantifiable candidate markers of pain perception and placebo response.<b>Significance statement</b> Chronic pain is a widespread and complex healthcare challenge. Cognitive functions such as prediction, expectation, and attention are believed to influence pain perception and placebo responses through top-down information processing in the brain. However, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis at the brain network level has been lacking. Our study addresses this gap by examining top-down, bottom-up, and recurrent effective connectivity within the brain's pain processing pathways using resting-state fMRI. We discovered consistent and significant alterations in effective connectivity patterns in chronic pain patients and placebo responders, with the potential to predict individual pain experiences and placebo responses. These findings open new research avenues into the neural mechanisms underlying chronic pain and placebo effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144029928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Complex impact of stimulus envelope on motor synchronization to sound.","authors":"Yue Sun,Georgios Michalareas,Oded Ghitza,David Poeppel","doi":"10.1523/jneurosci.1488-24.2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.1488-24.2025","url":null,"abstract":"The human brain tracks temporal regularities in acoustic signals faithfully. Recent neuroimaging studies have shown complex modulations of synchronized neural activities to the shape of stimulus envelopes. How to connect neural responses to different envelope shapes with listeners' perceptual ability to synchronize to acoustic rhythms requires further characterization. Here, we examine motor and sensory synchronization to noise stimuli with periodic amplitude modulations (AM) in human participants (14 females, 10 males). We used three envelope shapes that varied in the sharpness of amplitude onset. In a synchronous motor finger-tapping task, we show that participants more consistently align their taps to the same phase of stimulus envelope when listening to stimuli with sharp onsets than to those with gradual onsets. This effect is replicated in a sensory synchronization task, suggesting a sensory basis for the facilitated phase alignment to sharp-onset stimuli. Surprisingly, despite less consistent tap alignments to the envelope of gradual-onset stimuli, participants are equally effective in extracting the rate of amplitude modulation from both sharp and gradual-onset stimuli, and they tapped consistently at that rate alongside the acoustic input. This result demonstrates that robust tracking of the rate of acoustic periodicity is achievable without the presence of sharp acoustic edges or consistent phase alignment to stimulus envelope. Our findings are consistent with assuming distinct processes for phase and rate tracking during sensorimotor synchronization. These processes are most likely underpinned by different neural mechanisms whose relative strengths are modulated by specific temporal dynamics of stimulus envelope characteristics.Significance Statement Ample evidence demonstrates synchronized neurophysiological activity to the temporal regularities of sounds. This phenomenon has been proposed to reflect neural responses to onset edges in acoustic signals. Here, we examine listeners' ability to behaviorally synchronize to stimuli with sharp or gradual onsets. In two experiments, we show that while the sharp amplitude onsets facilitate temporal phase alignment between participants' behavioral output and the stimulus envelope, sharp onsets are not essential for tracking the rate of auditory rhythms in the acoustic input. The dissociation between phase and rate tracking suggests distinct underlying neural mechanisms that are separately modulated.","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143932391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}