Nicole L. Varga;Hannah E. Roome;Robert J. Molitor;Lucia Martinez;Elizabeth M. Hipskind;Michael L. Mack;Alison R. Preston;Margaret L. Schlichting
{"title":"Differentiation of Related Events in Hippocampus Supports Memory Reinstatement in Development","authors":"Nicole L. Varga;Hannah E. Roome;Robert J. Molitor;Lucia Martinez;Elizabeth M. Hipskind;Michael L. Mack;Alison R. Preston;Margaret L. Schlichting","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02299","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02299","url":null,"abstract":"Adults are capable of either differentiating or integrating similar events in memory based on which representations are optimal for a given situation. Yet how children represent related memories remains unknown. Here, children (7–10 years old) and adults formed memories for separate yet overlapping events. We then measured how successfully remembered events were represented and reinstated using fMRI. We found that children formed differentiated representations in the hippocampus—such that related events were stored as less similar to one another compared with unrelated events. Conversely, adults formed integrated representations, wherein related events were stored as more similar, including in medial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, hippocampal differentiation among children and medial prefrontal cortex integration among adults tracked neocortical reinstatement of the specific features associated with the individual events. Together, these findings reveal that the same memory behaviors are supported by different underlying representations across development. Specifically, whereas differentiation underlies memory organization and retrieval in childhood, integration exhibits a protracted developmental trajectory.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"853-894"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962476","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}
Jonathan D. Coutinho;Jeff Huang;Philippe Lefèvre;Gunnar Blohm;Douglas P. Munoz
{"title":"Main Sequence of Human Luminance-evoked Pupil Dynamics","authors":"Jonathan D. Coutinho;Jeff Huang;Philippe Lefèvre;Gunnar Blohm;Douglas P. Munoz","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02296","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02296","url":null,"abstract":"Pupil responses are commonly used to provide insight into visual perception, autonomic control, cognition, and various brain disorders. However, making inferences from pupil data can be complicated by nonlinearities in pupil dynamics and variability within and across individuals, which challenge the assumptions of linearity or group-level homogeneity required for common analysis methods. In this study, we evaluated luminance evoked pupil dynamics in young healthy adults (n = 10, M:F = 5:5, age 19–25 years) by identifying nonlinearities, variability, and conserved relationships across individuals to improve the ability to make inferences from pupil data. We found a nonlinear relationship between final pupil diameter and luminance, linearized by considering the logarithm of luminance. Peak diameter change and peak velocity were nonlinear functions of log-luminance for constriction but not dilation responses. Across participants, curve fit parameters characterizing pupil responses as a function of luminance were highly variable, yet there was an across-participant linear correlation between overall pupil size and pupil gain (i.e., diameter change per unit log-luminance change). In terms of within-participant trial-by-trial variability, participants showed greater variability in final pupil size compared with constriction peak diameter change as a function of log-luminance. Despite the variability in stimulus–response metrics within and across participants, we found that all participants showed a highly stereotyped “main sequence” relationship between peak diameter change and peak velocity (independent of luminance). The main sequence relationship can be used to inform models of the neural control of pupil dynamics and as an empirical analysis tool to evaluate variability and abnormalities in pupil behavior.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"840-852"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962522","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":"Neural Basis of Perceptual Surface Qualities and Materials: Evidence from Electroencephalogram Decoding","authors":"Taiki Orima;Suguru Wakita;Isamu Motoyoshi","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02279","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02279","url":null,"abstract":"The human visual system can easily recognize object material categories and estimate surface properties such as glossiness and smoothness. Recent psychophysical and computational studies suggest that the material perception depends on global feature statistics. To elucidate dynamic neural representations underlying surface property and material perception in humans, we measured visual evoked potentials (VEPs) for 191 natural images consisting of 20 categories of materials and then classified material categories and surface properties from the VEPs. As a result, we found that material categories were correctly classified by the VEPs even at latencies of 150 msec or less. The apparent surface properties were also significantly classified within 175 msec (lightness, colorfulness, and smoothness) and after 200 msec (glossiness, hardness, and heaviness). The subsequent reverse-correlation analysis revealed that the VEPs at these latencies are highly correlated with low- and high-level global feature statistics of the surface images, indicating that neural activities about such global features are reflected in the VEPs. Moreover, by using deep generative models (multimodal variational autoencoder models) to reconstruct surface images from the VEPs via style information, we demonstrated that the reconstructed surface images are judged by observers to have very similar material categories and surface properties as the original natural surfaces. These results support the notion that neural representations of statistical features in the early cortical response play a crucial role in the perception and recognition of surface materials in humans.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"815-839"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142774421","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":"Understanding Visual Perception","authors":"Dale Purves","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02292","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02292","url":null,"abstract":"Visual perception can be thought of in two fundamentally different ways: (1) that what we see is determined by circuitry for detecting and representing object features and conditions in the physical world or (2) that what we see is determined empirically by neural associations based on the relative success of accumulated trial-and-error behavior. The evidence reviewed here indicates that the qualities we perceive are determined empirically. The reasons for this way of seeing are discussed.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"791-801"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958456","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":"Bilingualism Is Associated with Significant Structural and Connectivity Alterations in the Thalamus in Adulthood","authors":"Behcet Ayyildiz;Dila Sayman;Sevilay Ayyildiz;Ece Ozdemir Oktem;Ruhat Arslan;Tuncay Colak;Belgin Bamac;Burak Yulug","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02304","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02304","url":null,"abstract":"Language is a sophisticated cognitive skill that relies on the coordinated activity of cerebral cortex. Acquiring a second language creates intricate modifications in brain connectivity. Although considerable studies have evaluated the impact of second language acquisition on brain networks in adulthood, the results regarding the ultimate form of adaptive plasticity remain inconsistent within the adult population. Furthermore, due to the assumption that subcortical regions are not significantly involved in language-related tasks, the thalamus has rarely been analyzed in relation to other language-relevant cortical regions. Given these limitations, we aimed to evaluate the functional connectivity and volume modifications of thalamic subfields using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modalities following the acquisition of a second language. Structural MRI and fMRI data from 51 participants were collected from the OpenNeuro database. The participants were divided into three groups: monolingual (ML), early bilingual (EB), and late bilingual (LB). The EB group consisted of individuals proficient in both English and Spanish, with exposure to these languages before the age of 10 years. The LB group consisted of individuals proficient in both English and Spanish, but with exposure to these languages after the age of 14 years. The ML group included participants proficient only in English. Our results revealed that the ML group exhibited increased functional connectivity in all thalamic subfields (anterior, intralaminar-medial, lateral, ventral, and pulvinar) compared with the EB and LB groups. In addition, a significantly decreased volume of the left suprageniculate nucleus was found in the bilingual groups compared with the ML group. This study provides valuable evidence suggesting that acquiring a second language may be protective against dementia, due to its high plasticity potential, which acts synergistically with cognitive functions to slow the degenerative process.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1238-1256"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048566","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":"Enhanced Delta Band Neural Tracking of Degraded Fundamental Frequency Speech in Noisy Environments","authors":"Yu-Jyun Guo;I-Hui Hsieh","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02302","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02302","url":null,"abstract":"Pitch variation of the fundamental frequency (F0) is critical to speech understanding, especially in noisy environments. Degrading the F0 contour reduces behaviorally measured speech intelligibility, posing greater challenges for tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese where the F0 pattern determines semantic meaning. However, neural tracking of Mandarin speech with degraded F0 information in noisy environments remains unclear. This study investigated neural envelope tracking of continuous Mandarin speech with three F0-flattening levels (original, flat-tone, and flat-all) under various signal-to-noise ratios (0, −9, and −12 dB). F0 contours were flattened at the word level for flat-tone and at the sentence level for flat-all Mandarin speech. Electroencephalography responses were indexed by the temporal response function in the delta (<4 Hz) and theta (4–8 Hz) frequency bands. Results show that delta-band envelope tracking is modulated by the degree of F0 flattening in a nonmonotonic manner. Notably, flat-tone Mandarin speech elicited the strongest envelope tracking compared with both original and flat-all speech, despite reduced F0 information. In contrast, the theta band, which primarily encodes speech signal-to-noise level, was not affected by F0 changes. In addition, listeners with better pitch-related music skills exhibited more efficient neural envelope speech tracking, despite being musically naive. These findings indicate that neural envelope tracking in the delta (but not theta) band is highly specific to F0 pitch variation and highlight the role of intrinsic musical skills for speech-in-noise benefits.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1216-1237"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048572","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":"Deconstructing Temporal Stages of Prosocial and Antisocial Risky Decision-making in Adolescence","authors":"Morteza Erfani Haromi;Soroosh Golbabaei;Khatereh Borhani","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02294","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02294","url":null,"abstract":"Risk-taking is a prominent aspect of adolescent behavior. A recent neurodevelopmental model suggests that this trait could influence prosocial and antisocial decision-making, proposing a new category known as prosocial and antisocial risk-taking. The primary objective of this study was to examine the electrophysiological underpinnings of prosocial and antisocial risk-taking in adolescence, a developmental period characterized by elevated risky, prosocial, and antisocial decisions. To this end, 32 adolescents aged 13–19 years completed a modified dictator game to choose between three options, representing prosocial and antisocial risk-taking constructs and a risk-free fair one. At the behavioral level, adolescents favored antisocial risky decisions over prosocial risky ones. ERP results at the electrophysiological level in the response selection stage demonstrated that decision preceding negativity was more negative-going before making prosocial risky decisions than other decisions. During the feedback evaluation stage, feedback-related negativity was the least negative after selecting the antisocial risky option and receiving successful feedback. However, choosing the fair option and receiving neutral feedback resulted in the most negative feedback-related negativity. Moreover, P300 showed the most positive mean amplitude following the selection of the antisocial risky option and facing successful feedback, with the lowest positive amplitude observed after choosing the fair option and encountering neutral feedback. These results underscore the distinct electrophysiological underpinnings associated with prosocial and antisocial decisions involving risks.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1257-1289"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962474","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":"Task-dependent Modulation Masking of 4 Hz Envelope Following Responses","authors":"Sam Watson;Torsten Dau;Jens Hjortkjær","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02309","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02309","url":null,"abstract":"The perception and recognition of natural sounds, like speech, rely on the processing of slow amplitude modulations. Perception can be hindered by interfering modulations at similar rates, a phenomenon known as modulation masking. Cortical envelope following responses (EFRs) are highly sensitive to these slow modulations, but it is unclear how modulation masking impacts these cortical envelope responses. To dissociate stimulus-driven and attention-driven effects, we recorded EEG responses to 4 Hz modulated noise in a two-way factorial design, varying the level of modulation masking and intermodal attention. Auditory stimuli contained one of three random masking bands in the stimulus envelope, at various proximities in modulation frequency to the 4 Hz target, or an unmasked reference condition. During EEG recordings, the same stimuli were presented while participants performed either an auditory or a visual change detection task. Attention to the auditory modality resulted in a general enhancement of sustained EFR responses to the 4 Hz target. In the visual task condition only, EFR 4 Hz power systematically decreased with increasing modulation masking, consistent with psychophysical masking patterns. However, during the auditory task, the 4 Hz EFRs were unaffected by masking and remained strong even with the highest degrees of masking. Rather than indicating a general bottom–up modulation selective process, these results indicate that the masking of cortical envelope responses interacts with attention. We propose that auditory attention allows robust tracking of masked envelopes, possibly through a form of glimpsing of the target, whereas envelope responses to task-irrelevant auditory stimuli reflect stimulus salience.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1189-1201"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143371297","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}
Nadine Dijkstra;Oliver Warrington;Peter Kok;Stephen M. Fleming
{"title":"Distinguishing Neural Correlates of Prediction Errors on Perceptual Content and Detection of Content","authors":"Nadine Dijkstra;Oliver Warrington;Peter Kok;Stephen M. Fleming","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02290","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02290","url":null,"abstract":"Accounting for why discrimination between different perceptual contents is not always accompanied by conscious detection of that content remains a challenge for predictive processing theories of perception. Here, we test a hypothesis that detection is supported by a distinct inference within generative models of perceptual content. We develop a novel visual perception paradigm that probes such inferences by manipulating both expectations about stimulus content (stimulus identity) and detection of content (stimulus presence). In line with model simulations, we show that both content and detection expectations influence RTs on a categorization task. By combining a no-report version of our task with functional neuroimaging, we reveal that violations of expectations (prediction errors [PEs]) about perceptual content and detection are supported by visual cortex and pFC in qualitatively different ways: Within visual cortex, activity patterns diverge only on trials with a content PE, but within these trials, further divergence is seen for detection PEs. In contrast, within pFC, activity patterns diverge only on trials with a detection PE, but within these trials, further divergence is seen for content PEs. These results suggest rich encoding of both content and detection PEs and highlight a distributed neural basis for inference on content and detection of content in the human brain.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1173-1188"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958407","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":"Temporal Unfolding of Spelling-to-Sound Mappings in Visual (Pseudo)word Recognition","authors":"Luís Faísca;Alexandra Reis;Susana Araújo","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02293","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02293","url":null,"abstract":"Behavioral research has shown that inconsistency in spelling-to-sound mappings slows visual word recognition and word naming. However, the time course of this effect remains underexplored. To address this, we asked skilled adult readers to perform a 1-back repetition detection task that did not explicitly involve phonological coding, in which we manipulated lexicality (high-frequency words vs. pseudowords) and sublexical spelling-to-sound consistency (treated as a dichotomous—consistent vs. inconsistent—and continuous dimension), while recording their brain electrical activity. The ERP results showed that the adult brain distinguishes between real and nonexistent words within 119–172 msec after stimulus onset (early N170), likely reflecting initial, rapid access to a primitive visuo-orthographic representation. The consistency of spelling-to-sound mappings exerted an effect shortly after the lexicality effect (172–270 msec; late N170), which percolated to the 353- to 475-msec range but only for real words. This suggests that, in expert readers, orthographic and phonological codes become available automatically and nearly simultaneously within the first 200 msec of the recognition process. We conclude that the early coupling of orthographic and phonological information plays a core role in visual word recognition by mature readers. Our findings support “quasiparallel” processing rather than strict cognitive seriality in early visual word recognition.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 7","pages":"1202-1215"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962528","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}