{"title":"Optimal Word Reading Rate as Evidenced by Frequency-tagging Electrophysiology","authors":"Marion Marchive;Bruno Rossion;Aliette Lochy","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02286","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02286","url":null,"abstract":"Fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) coupled with EEG has been used for a decade to measure word-selective neural responses in (a)typical adults and developmental readers. Here, we used this FPVS-EEG approach to evaluate suitable and optimal stimulation frequency rates for prelexical and lexical word-selective responses and relate these rates to typical reading speed and interindividual variability in reading performance. EEG was recorded in 41 healthy adults who viewed words inserted periodically (1 Hz) at four different stimulation frequency rates (4 Hz, 6 Hz, 10 Hz, and 20 Hz). At all these stimulation rates but the highest (20 Hz), we found typical left-lateralized, word-selective, occipitotemporal responses, larger for the prelexical (words in nonwords) than lexical (words in pseudowords) contrast. Although significant responses were found at all frequency rates, these responses were negligible at 20 Hz, without any evidence of left lateralization at this frequency. The largest occipitotemporal response was found at a 4 Hz base rate in both hemispheres for the prelexical contrast, with increased left lateralization for the lexical discrimination. Moreover, word-selective responses for this discrimination (lexical), only at 4 Hz, were related to reading speed. The optimal 4 Hz rate finding is in line with the mean reading speed for expert readers as assessed during text reading. Overall, these findings further validate and optimize the FPVS-EEG approach for rapid implicit measurement of word-selective neural responses.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 5","pages":"988-1008"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958453","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}
Lucy R. J. Palmer;Dilini K. Sumanapala;Denis Mareschal;Iroise Dumontheil;the UnLocke Team
{"title":"Neural Associations between Inhibitory Control and Counterintuitive Reasoning in Science and Maths in Primary School Children","authors":"Lucy R. J. Palmer;Dilini K. Sumanapala;Denis Mareschal;Iroise Dumontheil;the UnLocke Team","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02303","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02303","url":null,"abstract":"Emerging evidence suggests that inhibitory control (IC) plays a pivotal role in science and maths counterintuitive reasoning by suppressing incorrect intuitive concepts, allowing correct counterintuitive concepts to come to mind. Neuroimaging studies have shown greater activation in the ventrolateral and dorsolateral pFCs when adults and adolescents reason about counterintuitive concepts, which has been interpreted as reflecting IC recruitment. However, the extent to which neural systems underlying IC support science and maths reasoning remains unexplored in children. This developmental stage is of particular importance, as many crucial counterintuitive concepts are learned in formal education in middle childhood. To address this gap, fMRI data were collected while fifty-six 7- to 10-year-olds completed counterintuitive science and math problems, plus IC tasks of interference control (Animal Size Stroop) and response inhibition (go/no-go). Univariate analysis showed large regional overlap in activation between counterintuitive reasoning and interference control, with more limited activation observed in the response inhibition task. Multivariate similarity analysis, which explores fine-scale patterns of activation across voxels, revealed neural activation similarities between (i) science and maths counterintuitive reasoning and interference control tasks in frontal, parietal, and temporal regions, and (ii) maths reasoning and response inhibition tasks in the precuneus/superior parietal lobule. Extending previous research in adults and adolescents, this evidence is consistent with the proposal that IC, specifically interference control, supports children's science and maths counterintuitive reasoning, although further research will be needed to demonstrate the similarities observed do not reflect more general multidemand processes.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 5","pages":"915-940"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10960512","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048579","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}
Martyna Brylka;Jakub Wojciechowski;Tomasz Wolak;Hanna B. Cygan
{"title":"Frontal Deactivation and the Efficacy of Statistical Learning: Neural Mechanisms Accompanying Exposure to Visual Statistical Sequences","authors":"Martyna Brylka;Jakub Wojciechowski;Tomasz Wolak;Hanna B. Cygan","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02283","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02283","url":null,"abstract":"Statistical learning is the cognitive ability to rapidly identify structure and meaning in unfamiliar streams of sensory experience, even in the absence of feedback. Despite extensive studies, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this phenomenon still require further clarification under varying cognitive conditions. Here, we examined neural mechanisms during the first exposure to visually presented sequences in 47 healthy participants. We used two types of visual objects: abstract symbols and pictures of cartoon-like animals. This allowed us to compare informational processing mechanisms with defined distinguishing features. Participants achieved better performance for sequences with easy-to-name than difficult-to-name abstract stimuli. fMRI results revealed greater activation in widespread brain regions in response to random versus statistical sequences for all stimuli types. Behavioral accuracy was associated with increased deactivation of the ventromedial PFC for easy-to-name statistical versus random sequences. For difficult-to-name statistical versus random sequences, performance correlated with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex deactivation. ROI analysis showed a generally positive involvement of the caudate head in sequence processing with significantly stronger activity during the first run of performing the task. Functional connectivity analysis of prefrontal deactivation regions revealed significant connectivity with nodes of the salience network for both object types and inverse connectivity with the caudate head only for easy-to-name objects. The results indicated that distinct subregions of PFC modulate task performance depending on the visual stimulus characteristic. They also showed that among striatal regions, only the head of the caudate was sensitive to initial exposure to visual statistical information.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"895-914"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142774303","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}
Kyoko Leaman;Nadira Yusif Rodriguez;Aarit Ahuja;Debaleena Basu;Theresa H. McKim;Theresa M. Desrochers
{"title":"Monkey Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Subregions Differentiate between Perceptual Exposure to Visual Stimuli","authors":"Kyoko Leaman;Nadira Yusif Rodriguez;Aarit Ahuja;Debaleena Basu;Theresa H. McKim;Theresa M. Desrochers","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02291","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02291","url":null,"abstract":"Each day, humans must parse visual stimuli with varying amounts of perceptual experience, ranging from incredibly familiar to entirely new. Even when choosing a novel to buy at a bookstore, one sees covers they have repeatedly experienced intermixed with recently released titles. Visual exposure to stimuli has distinct neural correlates in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) of nonhuman primates. However, it is currently unknown if this function may be localized to specific subregions within LPFC. Specifically, we aimed to determine whether the posterior fundus of Area 46 (p46f), an area that responds to deviations from learned sequences, also responds to less frequently presented stimuli outside of the sequential context. We compare responses in p46f to the adjacent subregion, posterior ventral area 46 (p46v), which we propose may be more likely to show exposure-dependent responses due to its proximity to novelty-responsive regions. To test whether p46f or p46v represent perceptual exposure, we performed awake fMRI on three male monkeys as they observed visual stimuli that varied in their number of daily presentations. Here, we show that p46v, but not p46f, shows preferential activation to stimuli with low perceptual exposure, further localizing exposure-dependent effects in monkey LPFC. These results align with previous research that has found novelty responses in ventral LPFC and are consistent with the proposal that p46f performs a sequence-specific function. Furthermore, they expand on our knowledge of the specific role of LPFC subregions and localize perceptual exposure processing within this broader brain region.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 4","pages":"802-814"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958426","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}
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}