{"title":"Has stopping stopped making sense? Disentangling the processes elicited by complex action cancellation paradigms.","authors":"Simon Weber, Sarah A Kemp, Mark R Hinder","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01440-2","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01440-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Action cancellation represents a fundamental aspect of human motor control. Nonetheless, the behavioural paradigms used to study it are methodologically diverse and capture an incompletely understood combination of processes. Advancing theoretical accounts of action cancellation have motivated increasingly complicated experimental designs, leading some authors to draw comparisons between \"simple\" and \"complex\" stopping tasks. The latter describes a mix of paradigms, which variably require increased working memory demands, stimulus discrimination, distractor interference, or more complex stimulus-response mappings. This narrative review provides an accessible explanation of commonly implemented complex stopping tasks, selected based on their relevance to current theoretical debates. Throughout, we describe the challenges associated with interpreting performance in these tasks and highlight future directions for research. Notably, much of the past work using these tasks has applied traditional methods of indexing the speed of stopping, which were developed specifically for simple stopping tasks, and do not generalise well beyond this context. Recent research using cognitive modelling and physiological approaches has failed to replicate earlier findings, raising fundamental questions regarding how action cancellation should be indexed. Furthermore, physiological observations in complex stopping tasks appear to be incompatible with current accounts of the neurological mechanisms that underpin action cancellation. We propose potential ways forward, highlighting how the current lack of well-controlled comparisons between task types means the literature risks extensive task-specific findings that fail to generalise between laboratories, and-critically-beyond the laboratory.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1945-1961"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615106/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147647197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcel R Oelerich, Yannis Pfleger, Mesbah Alam, Joachim K Krauss, Kerstin Schwabe, Franziska M Decker
{"title":"Modulating auditory attention and stimulus evaluation in the medial prefrontal cortex: A translational tone approach oddball paradigm in rats.","authors":"Marcel R Oelerich, Yannis Pfleger, Mesbah Alam, Joachim K Krauss, Kerstin Schwabe, Franziska M Decker","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01473-7","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01473-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The three-class auditory oddball paradigm is used to study sensory processing, attention, and decision-making. In this paradigm, a rare behaviorally relevant target is presented among frequent behaviorally irrelevant standard and rare distractor tones. The Tone Approach Paradigm (TAP) was designed as a variation of this paradigm in which task difficulty increases as the target and distractor frequencies sequentially approach the frequency of the standard tone to investigate neurocognitive aspects of processing behaviorally relevant auditory stimuli under challenging hearing conditions in rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 10) were trained to respond to target (5000 Hz), while ignoring distractor (1500 Hz) and standard tones (3000 Hz) in baseline (BSL) condition. After training, electrodes were implanted in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) for local field potential recording during behavioral testing. Starting from BSL, the frequency differences between target and distractor to standard tones in the TAP sessions were reduced by 500 Hz per session. Hit ratios for targets declined with increasing difficulty of TAP sessions (p < 0.05). Cumulative distributions of reaction times shifted from a sigmoidal profile with stimulus-locked behavior to a more linear profile, suggesting less temporally clustered responding. Event-related potential amplitudes increased at low and moderate TAP difficulty, indicating higher processing effort, but decreased at the highest difficulty, suggesting impaired processing. Our findings show that manipulating task difficulty via frequency changes directly affects behavior and neural processing within the mPFC. TAP provides a translational framework for investigating neurophysiological mechanisms of attention and stimulus evaluation, with relevance for models of attention-related dysfunction.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2105-2117"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13614979/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148406680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Substance use and the value of control.","authors":"Elle M Giovanni, Mimi Liljeholm","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01451-z","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01451-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Clinical criteria for substance-use disorder collectively specify a loss of instrumental control over consumption; yet little empirical work has addressed how substance use shapes the utility of agency in motivated behavior. We combined a hierarchical gambling task with cross-sectional substance-use surveys and computational cognitive modeling to assess the preference for controllable environments in adult humans with self-reported abstinence from psychostimulants, opioids, alcohol, or sedatives. For psychostimulant use, longer abstinence selectively increased the preference for instrumental control. In contrast, for opioids and alcohol, longer abstinence respectively predicted increased preferences for divergent outcome distributions and free choice, regardless of controllability. These associations between substance use and decision making were dissociable from participants' ability to maximize monetary payoffs in controllable environments. Our findings implicate the dopaminergic system in agency coding.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2311-2320"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615113/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147845723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of experimenter identification on (dis)obedience and its mechanisms.","authors":"Anh H Le, Emilie A Caspar","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01447-9","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01447-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent studies following Milgram's seminal experiment have provided insights into what neural, psychological, and contextual factors influence disobedience to immoral orders. According to the engaged followership model, greater identification with the experimenter leads to greater obedience. However, such results were not always replicated. It remains unclear how identifying with the person giving orders modulates (dis)obedience and related mechanisms. Therefore, the current study focussed on neurocognitive mechanisms and cultural factors related to identification with the experimenter to explain one's decision to (dis)obey. We investigated an ecologically valid paradigm wherein participants received orders from the experimenter to send real, mildly painful shocks to a victim. Participants were divided into Low or High identification groups via a median-split on their experimenter identification scores. The results showed that identification with the experimenter did not influence prosocial disobedience (i.e., refusing to obey the orders to send a shock) rate or the neural conflict markers (midfrontal-theta activity), but it modulated the implicit sense of agency (SoA). Participants in the Low identification group showed greater temporal binding effect (more SoA) when disobeying harmful orders than when obeying to shock, whereas this effect was not observed amongst those who identified more with the experimenter. Exploratory analyses revealed that prosocial disobedience was associated with multiple factors: responsibility rating, Right-wing Authoritarianism, and moral-foundation subscale (Authority/Respect). These findings highlight that prosocial disobedience may emerge from an interplay of cognitive processes and sociocultural values rather than from identification with the experimenter alone, indicating the need to study (dis)obedience with a pluralistic approach.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2205-2228"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148007368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"LPP slopes index attention dynamics: Evidence from mindfulness inductions.","authors":"Ben Swanson, Yanli Lin, Matt R Judah","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01457-7","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01457-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Substantial evidence suggests that the late positive potential (LPP) indexes motivated attention to salient stimuli. However, traditional measurement of the LPP via mean amplitude may not fully capture rapid attentional dynamics. A nascent line of work has sought to remediate this limitation by measuring the LPP slope (i.e., rate of amplitude change); yet its functional significance and sensitivity to direct experimental manipulation lacks validation. To address this gap, we re-analyzed data from a fully within-subject crossover experiment (N = 29), where attention was manipulated using focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) mindfulness inductions, contrasted against an active control condition, during an affective picture viewing task involving negative and neutral images. As hypothesized, the FA induction produced flatter, more positive slopes across both negative and neutral images, suggesting enhanced attentional stability. Intriguingly, the OM induction selectively produced flatter slopes on negative but not neutral image trials, aligning with prior postulations that OM may reduce reactive disengagement from aversive stimuli. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that LPP slopes are sensitive to direct manipulations of attentional control, providing much needed experimental evidence for their utility as a neural marker of attention dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2095-2104"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615096/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148213203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yannik Stegmann, Valentina Glück, Marta Andreatta, Julian Wiemer
{"title":"Attentional processing in individual anxiety: Electrocortical correlates of threat- and safety-related declarative memory formation.","authors":"Yannik Stegmann, Valentina Glück, Marta Andreatta, Julian Wiemer","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01450-0","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01450-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to accurately detect and remember threatening stimuli is essential for adaptive behavior in potentially dangerous environments. While threat-related defensive processes are increasingly well understood, recent research has begun to emphasize complementary safety-related attention and learning mechanisms, processes especially relevant to the development and maintenance of pathological anxiety. Prior fear conditioning studies have identified a key role for late positive event-related potentials, particularly the P300 and late positive potential (LPP) in the formation of declarative memories related to threat and safety. However, the influence of individual differences in anxiety on these mechanisms remains insufficiently explored. In the present study, we examined how anxiety sensitivity, a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety-related pathologies, modulates attention and memory processes during declarative threat and safety learning. Using a subsequent memory paradigm, we recorded event-related potentials as participants learned associations between neutral faces and either an aversive outcome or safety. Stronger P300 and LPP amplitudes were found for remembered compared with forgotten items. Crucially, elevated anxiety sensitivity was associated with increased P300 and LPP amplitudes at the onset of both threat and safety cues, indicating heightened attentional allocation to both types of stimuli. Despite these amplified neural responses during memory encoding, higher anxiety sensitivity did not correspond to enhanced memory performance. These results suggest that, while individuals at heightened risk for anxiety-related psychopathology exhibit generalized hypervigilance, this increased attentional engagement does not necessarily translate into enhanced memory formation during intentional learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2297-2310"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615150/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147935157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Distinct oscillatory signatures of emotional reactivity and cognitive reappraisal revealed through multiclass EEG decoding.","authors":"Marcos Domic-Siede, Carlos Calderón","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01462-w","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01462-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cognitive reappraisal is a core emotion-regulation strategy; yet identifying interpretable neurophysiological markers that distinguish emotional reactivity from regulation remains challenging using traditional univariate electroencephalography (EEG) approaches. This proof-of-concept study tested whether band-limited oscillatory EEG features extracted from a standard reappraisal task can discriminate three affective/regulatory states at the single-trial level: neutral viewing, natural negative viewing, and cognitive reappraisal of negative stimuli. Electroencephalography was recorded in 53 adults during a cued emotion-regulation task using neutral and attachment-related negative pictures. For each trial, band-limited power was computed within a stimulus window across predefined scalp regions and frequency bands (theta, alpha, and beta). Multiclass decoding was implemented by using a linear support vector machine within an error-correcting output code framework with repeated within-subject cross-validation and permutation testing. The classifier successfully discriminated the three conditions above chance, indicating that distributed oscillatory EEG features contain reliable information distinguishing emotional reactivity from cognitive reappraisal at the single-trial level. Among the tested representations, alpha-band power aggregated across scalp regions provided the most consistent restricted feature set for decoding. These findings suggest that large-scale oscillatory dynamics, particularly in the alpha band, capture a stable component of neural processing associated with regulatory control during emotional picture viewing.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2139-2166"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148058148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yafeng Pan, Franck Porteous, David Rosenbaum, Andreas Fallgatter, Anne-Christine Ehlis, Sander L Koole, Suzanne Dikker
{"title":"Inter-brain coupling tracks emotional co-regulation.","authors":"Yafeng Pan, Franck Porteous, David Rosenbaum, Andreas Fallgatter, Anne-Christine Ehlis, Sander L Koole, Suzanne Dikker","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01455-9","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01455-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>When we have a negative emotional experience, we often recount this experience to others. Such emotional sharing plays a key role in building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and is a vital component of most psychotherapies. Yet, while research shows the importance of social relationships for brain health, the neural underpinnings of emotional sharing remain largely unknown. Here, we asked whether successful processing and regulation of negative emotions can be linked to shared brain responses between dyads during and after emotional sharing. Participants watched videos eliciting either negative or neutral emotions, after which they shared their feelings about these videos with a friend. We simultaneously recorded the brain activity of both friends using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and compared inter-brain coupling within sharer-listener dyads before, during, and after sharing sessions. We found that shifts in inter-brain coupling were associated with changes in mood. Specifically, an increase in inter-brain coupling after recounting a video that elicited negative emotions was associated with reduced anger and dejection in listeners and increased vigor in sharers. These findings suggest that inter-brain coupling facilitates the co-regulation of negative emotions, and thereby maintaining a healthy homeostatic balance. This knowledge holds potential relevance for informing psychotherapeutic interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2167-2179"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615101/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148007378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gabrielle Pfaff, Elizabeth Paitel, Anja Soldan, Marilyn Albert, Lee Ryan, Chidi Ugonna, Nan-Kuei Chen, Matt Huentelman, Corinne Pettigrew
{"title":"Association of psychosocial stress with altered functional connectivity of large-scale brain networks in aging adults.","authors":"Gabrielle Pfaff, Elizabeth Paitel, Anja Soldan, Marilyn Albert, Lee Ryan, Chidi Ugonna, Nan-Kuei Chen, Matt Huentelman, Corinne Pettigrew","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01482-6","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01482-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although evidence suggests that psychosocial stress is a risk factor for cognitive decline in aging adults, potential mechanisms for this association are not well understood. This cross-sectional study examined associations of two measures of self-reported psychosocial stress, including the perceived stress scale (PSS) and a stressful life events (SLE) questionnaire, with functional connectivity in four large-scale, nonoverlapping brain networks derived from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Analyses included 426 late middle-aged and older participants from the Healthy Minds for Life study of the Precision Aging<sup>®</sup> Network (M (SD) age = 64.5 (7.8) years, 71% female, 33% from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups). Higher SLE scores were associated with lower functional connectivity in the default mode, salience/ventral attention, and dorsal attention networks. Higher SLE scores were additionally associated with lower cognitive performance. Patterns of results were similar when individuals with possible cognitive impairment were excluded. These findings indicate that higher levels of psychosocial stress, particularly stressful life events, are associated with lower connectivity in several large-scale functional brain networks and suggest one mechanism by which everyday experiences may shape the aging brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2229-2240"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13573637/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148690235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Predictive processing in time perception: Assessing prediction error minimization in the sub-second range.","authors":"Maki Uraguchi, Hideki Ohira","doi":"10.3758/s13415-026-01471-9","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13415-026-01471-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The predictive processing theory proposes that minimization of prediction error is a governing principle of perception, learning, and behavior, yet few studies have directly tested this hypothesis in time perception. We operationalized prediction error minimization as updating of an internal temporal reference and examined whether reference updating follows the direction required to reduce systematic prediction error. Across two experiments, 60 university students (Experiment 1) and 359 adults from a broader age range (Experiment 2) performed a temporal generalization task. Reference updating was assessed from changes in distributional asymmetry and peak shifts of temporal generalization gradients. This dissociated reference updating from possible perceptual bias that would alter gradient steepness without shifting the peak. In Experiment 1, frequent presentation of longer or shorter durations produced expected directional shifts of the internal temporal reference. In Experiment 2, consistent directional shifts emerged only when prediction error was sufficiently large, whereas smaller prediction error failed to induce reliable shifts. Together, these findings demonstrate that internal temporal reference updating in sub-second range time perception depends on the direction and magnitude of prediction error, providing a direct behavioral test of the prediction error minimization hypothesis.</p>","PeriodicalId":50672,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"2035-2056"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13615093/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148320459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}