{"title":"What Is Faster than Where in Vocal Emotional Perception","authors":"Sara Temudo;Ana P. Pinheiro","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02251","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02251","url":null,"abstract":"Voices carry a vast amount of information about speakers (e.g., emotional state; spatial location). Neuroimaging studies postulate that spatial (“where”) and emotional (“what”) cues are processed by partially independent processing streams. Although behavioral evidence reveals interactions between emotion and space, the temporal dynamics of these processes in the brain and its modulation by attention remain unknown. We investigated whether and how spatial and emotional features interact during voice processing as a function of attention focus. Spatialized nonverbal vocalizations differing in valence (neutral, amusement, anger) were presented at different locations around the head, whereas listeners discriminated either the spatial location or emotional quality of the voice. Neural activity was measured with ERPs of the EEG. Affective ratings were collected at the end of the EEG session. Emotional vocalizations elicited decreased N1 but increased P2 and late positive potential amplitudes. Interactions of space and emotion occurred at the salience detection stage: neutral vocalizations presented at right (vs. left) locations elicited increased P2 amplitudes, but no such differences were observed for emotional vocalizations. When task instructions involved emotion categorization, the P2 was increased for vocalizations presented at front (vs. back) locations. Behaviorally, only valence and arousal ratings showed emotion–space interactions. These findings suggest that emotional representations are activated earlier than spatial representations in voice processing. The perceptual prioritization of emotional cues occurred irrespective of task instructions but was not paralleled by an augmented stimulus representation in space. These findings support the differential responding to emotional information by auditory processing pathways.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 2","pages":"239-265"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142331919","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}
William Matchin;Diogo Almeida;Gregory Hickok;Jon Sprouse
{"title":"A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Phrase Structure and Subject Island Violations","authors":"William Matchin;Diogo Almeida;Gregory Hickok;Jon Sprouse","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02266","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02266","url":null,"abstract":"In principle, functional neuroimaging provides uniquely informative data in addressing linguistic questions, because it can indicate distinct processes that are not apparent from behavioral data alone. This could involve adjudicating the source of unacceptability via the different patterns of elicited brain responses to different ungrammatical sentence types. However, it is difficult to interpret brain activations to syntactic violations. Such responses could reflect processes that have nothing intrinsically related to linguistic representations, such as domain-general executive function abilities. To facilitate the potential use of functional neuroimaging methods to identify the source of different syntactic violations, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment to identify the brain activation maps associated with two distinct syntactic violation types: phrase structure (created by inverting the order of two adjacent words within a sentence) and subject islands (created by extracting a wh-phrase out of an embedded subject). The comparison of these violations to control sentences surprisingly showed no indication of a generalized violation response, with almost completely divergent activation patterns. Phrase structure violations seemingly activated regions previously implicated in verbal working memory and structural complexity in sentence processing, whereas the subject islands appeared to activate regions previously implicated in conceptual-semantic processing, broadly defined. We review our findings in the context of previous research on syntactic and semantic violations using ERPs. Although our results suggest potentially distinct underlying mechanisms underlying phrase structure and subject island violations, our results are tentative and suggest important methodological considerations for future research in this area.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 2","pages":"414-442"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607240","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}
Jourdan J. Pouliot;Richard T. Ward;Caitlin M. Traiser;Payton Chiasson;Faith E. Gilbert;Andreas Keil
{"title":"Neurophysiological and Autonomic Dynamics of Threat Processing during Sustained Social Fear Generalization","authors":"Jourdan J. Pouliot;Richard T. Ward;Caitlin M. Traiser;Payton Chiasson;Faith E. Gilbert;Andreas Keil","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02276","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02276","url":null,"abstract":"Survival in dynamic environments requires that organisms learn to predict danger from situational cues. One key facet of threat prediction is generalization from a predictive cue to similar cues, ensuring that a cue-outcome contingency is applied beyond the original learning environment. Generalization has been observed in laboratory studies of aversive conditioning: Behavioral and physiological processes generalize responses from a stimulus paired with threat (the conditioned stimulus [CS+]) to unpaired stimuli, with response magnitudes varying with CS+ similarity. In contrast, work focusing on sensory responses in visual cortex has found a sharpening pattern, in which responses to stimuli closely resembling the CS+ are maximally suppressed, potentially reflecting lateral inhibitory interactions with the CS+ representation. Originally demonstrated with simple visual cues, changes in visuocortical tuning have also been observed in threat generalization learning across facial identities. It is unclear to what extent these visuocortical changes represent transient or sustained effects and if generalization learning requires prior conditioning to the CS+. The present study addressed these questions using EEG and pupillometry in an aversive generalization paradigm involving hundreds of trials using a gradient of facial identities. Visuocortical steady-state visual evoked potential sharpening occurred after dozens of trials of generalization learning without prior differential conditioning, but diminished as learning continued. By contrast, generalization of alpha power suppression, pupil dilation, and self-reported valence and arousal was seen throughout the experiment. Findings are consistent with threat processing models emphasizing the role of changing visucocortical and attentional dynamics when forming, curating, and shaping fear memories as observers continue learning about stimulus-outcome contingencies.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 2","pages":"482-497"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142631925","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":"The Impact of Selective Attention and Musical Training on the Cortical Speech Tracking in the Delta and Theta Frequency Bands","authors":"Alina Schüller;Annika Mücke;Jasmin Riegel;Tobias Reichenbach","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02275","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn_a_02275","url":null,"abstract":"Oral communication regularly takes place amidst background noise, requiring the ability to selectively attend to a target speech stream. Musical training has been shown to be beneficial for this task. Regarding the underlying neural mechanisms, recent studies showed that the speech envelope is tracked by neural activity in auditory cortex, which plays a role in the neural processing of speech, including speech in noise. The neural tracking occurs predominantly in two frequency bands, the delta and the theta bands. However, much regarding the specifics of these neural responses, as well as their modulation through musical training, still remain unclear. Here, we investigated the delta- and theta-band cortical tracking of the speech envelope of target and distractor speech using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. We thereby assessed both musicians and nonmusicians to explore potential differences between these groups. The cortical speech tracking was quantified through source-reconstructing the MEG data and subsequently relating the speech envelope in a certain frequency band to the MEG data using linear models. We thereby found the theta-band tracking to be dominated by early responses with comparable magnitudes for target and distractor speech, whereas the delta band tracking exhibited both earlier and later responses that were modulated by selective attention. Almost no significant differences emerged in the neural responses between musicians and nonmusicians. Our findings show that only the speech tracking in the delta but not in the theta band contributes to selective attention, but that this mechanism is essentially unaffected by musical training.","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"37 2","pages":"464-481"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607310","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}
Colin G DeYoung, Kirsten Hilger, Jamie L Hanson, Rany Abend, Timothy A Allen, Roger E Beaty, Scott D Blain, Robert S Chavez, Stephen A Engel, Ma Feilong, Alex Fornito, Erhan Genç, Vina Goghari, Rachael G Grazioplene, Philipp Homan, Keanan Joyner, Antonia N Kaczkurkin, Robert D Latzman, Elizabeth A Martin, Aki Nikolaidis, Alan D Pickering, Adam Safron, Tyler A Sassenberg, Michelle N Servaas, Luke D Smillie, R Nathan Spreng, Essi Viding, Jan Wacker
{"title":"Beyond Increasing Sample Sizes: Optimizing Effect Sizes in Neuroimaging Research on Individual Differences.","authors":"Colin G DeYoung, Kirsten Hilger, Jamie L Hanson, Rany Abend, Timothy A Allen, Roger E Beaty, Scott D Blain, Robert S Chavez, Stephen A Engel, Ma Feilong, Alex Fornito, Erhan Genç, Vina Goghari, Rachael G Grazioplene, Philipp Homan, Keanan Joyner, Antonia N Kaczkurkin, Robert D Latzman, Elizabeth A Martin, Aki Nikolaidis, Alan D Pickering, Adam Safron, Tyler A Sassenberg, Michelle N Servaas, Luke D Smillie, R Nathan Spreng, Essi Viding, Jan Wacker","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02297","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Linking neurobiology to relatively stable individual differences in cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior can require large sample sizes to yield replicable results. Given the nature of between-person research, sample sizes at least in the hundreds are likely to be necessary in most neuroimaging studies of individual differences, regardless of whether they are investigating the whole brain or more focal hypotheses. However, the appropriate sample size depends on the expected effect size. Therefore, we propose four strategies to increase effect sizes in neuroimaging research, which may help to enable the detection of replicable between-person effects in samples in the hundreds rather than the thousands: (1) theoretical matching between neuroimaging tasks and behavioral constructs of interest; (2) increasing the reliability of both neural and psychological measurement; (3) individualization of measures for each participant; and (4) using multivariate approaches with cross-validation instead of univariate approaches. We discuss challenges associated with these methods and highlight strategies for improvements that will help the field to move toward a more robust and accessible neuroscience of individual differences.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962469","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":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02299","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-43"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","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}
Kirsten C S Adam, Laura-Isabelle Klatt, Jacob A Miller, Marlene Rösner, Keisuke Fukuda, Anastasia Kiyonaga
{"title":"Beyond Routine Maintenance: Current Trends in Working Memory Research.","authors":"Kirsten C S Adam, Laura-Isabelle Klatt, Jacob A Miller, Marlene Rösner, Keisuke Fukuda, Anastasia Kiyonaga","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02298","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory (WM) is an evolving concept. Our understanding of the neural functions that support WM develops iteratively alongside the approaches used to study it, and both can be profoundly shaped by available tools and prevailing theoretical paradigms. Here, the organizers of the 2024 Working Memory Symposium-inspired by this year's meeting-highlight current trends and looming questions in WM research. This review is organized into sections describing (1) ongoing efforts to characterize WM function across sensory modalities, (2) the growing appreciation that WM representations are malleable to context and future actions, (3) the enduring problem of how multiple WM items and features are structured and integrated, and (4) new insights about whether WM shares function with other cognitive processes that have conventionally been considered distinct. This review aims to chronicle where the field is headed and calls attention to issues that are paramount for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962471","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":"Saccades and Blinks Index Cognitive Demand During Auditory Noncanonical Sentence Comprehension.","authors":"Arianna N LaCroix, Ileana Ratiu","doi":"10.1162/jocn_a_02295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02295","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Noncanonical sentence structures pose comprehension challenges because they require increased cognitive demand. Prosody may partially alleviate this cognitive load. These findings largely stem from behavioral studies, yet physiological measures may reveal additional insights into how cognition is deployed to parse sentences. Pupillometry has been at the forefront of investigations into physiological measures of cognitive demand during auditory sentence comprehension. This study offers an alternative approach by examining whether eye-tracking measures, including blinks and saccades, index cognitive demand during auditory noncanonical sentence comprehension and whether these metrics are sensitive to reductions in cognitive load associated with typical prosodic cues. We further investigated how eye-tracking patterns differ across correct and incorrect responses, as a function of time, and how each related to behavioral measures of cognition. Canonical and noncanonical sentence comprehension was measured in 30 younger adults using an auditory sentence-picture matching task. We also assessed participants' attention and working memory. Blinking and saccades both differentiate noncanonical sentences from canonical sentences. Saccades further distinguish noncanonical structures from each other. Participants made more saccades on incorrect than correct trials. The number of saccades also related to working memory, regardless of syntax. However, neither eye-tracking metric was sensitive to the changes in cognitive demand that was behaviorally observed in response to typical prosodic cues. Overall, these findings suggest that eye-tracking indices, particularly saccades, reflect cognitive demand during auditory noncanonical sentence comprehension when visual information is present, offering greater insights into the strategies and neural resources participants use to parse auditory sentences.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962525","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":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02294","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-33"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","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}
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":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02296","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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, ages 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.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","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}