Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience最新文献

{"title":"Attention Modulates Stimulus Representations in Neural Feature Dimension Maps.","authors":"Daniel D Thayer, Thomas C Sprague","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.74","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn.a.74","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Computational theories posit that attention is guided by a combination of spatial maps for individual features that can be dynamically weighted according to task goals. Consistent with this framework, when a stimulus contains several features, attending to one or another feature results in stronger fMRI responses in regions preferring the attended feature. We hypothesized that multivariate activation patterns across feature-responsive cortical regions form spatial \"feature dimension maps,\" which combine to guide attentional priority. We tested this prediction by reconstructing spatial maps from fMRI activation patterns across retinotopic regions of visual cortex while participants performed a feature-selective attention task. Participants viewed a peripheral visual stimulus at a random location that always contained moving colored dots. On each trial, participants were precued to report the predominant direction of motion or color of the stimulus or to attend fixation. Stimulus representations in reconstructed maps based on a spatial inverted encoding model were selectively enhanced in color-selective regions when color was attended and in motion-selective regions when motion was attended. Whereas enhancement was localized to the stimulus position in color-selective regions, modulations in motion-selective regions were consistent with a more global enhancement when motion was task relevant. These results suggest feature-selective cortical regions support \"neural feature dimension maps\": spatial maps of different visual features that are dynamically reweighted based on task demands to guide visual behavior to the most relevant locations based on important features.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-22"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144612390","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":"Does the Default Mode Network Mediate an Ongoing Internal Narrative? An Evaluation of Menon's (2023) Hypothesis.","authors":"David Kemmerer","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.66","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.66","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The default mode network (DMN) is a collection of interconnected transmodal brain regions that is engaged during internally oriented thought processes. It has been linked with multiple functions, including self-referential judgment, social cognition, episodic memory, and semantic memory. In an effort to identify a unitary overarching purpose of the DMN, Menon [Menon, V. 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. Neuron, 111, 2469-2487, 2023] proposed that it uses its diverse capacities to create an \"ongoing internal narrative\" that represents dynamically shifting frames of thought and develops ontogenetically from self-directed overt speech during childhood. My aim was to evaluate this hypothesis. The core of the hypothesis is the notion of an ongoing internal narrative, but this is open to different interpretations. If it is interpreted rather narrowly as referring to a story-like stream of inner speech (IS), then Menon's hypothesis faces at least five challenges. First, regarding its developmental assumptions, research suggests that IS does not originate from self-directed overt speech. Second, there are huge individual differences in the frequency of IS, which implies that if the DMN does mediate an internal narrative, this narrative is not ongoing for everyone; instead, its rate of occurrence varies greatly across the population. Third, rodents and nonhuman primates possess a putative DMN, but they lack language and hence also IS, so the function of their DMN is left unclear. Fourth, IS often has a condensed, note-like form rather than being experienced as a full-fledged narrative. And fifth, so far only a couple neuroscientific studies support DMN engagement during IS. It is also possible, however, to interpret Menon's key notion of an ongoing internal narrative more broadly as involving a coherent sequence of situation models that are strongly influenced by language but not completely dependent on it. This interpretation not only obviates most of the problems just mentioned but also brings Menon's hypothesis more in line with other recent proposals regarding the DMN. Further work is needed, however, to refine and test this version of the hypothesis.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-8"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144486830","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":"Modeling the Role of the Alpha Rhythm in Attentional Processing during Distractor Suppression.","authors":"Mauro Ursino","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.65","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent experimental results suggest that alpha oscillations in brain neuroelectrical activity do not merely represent an idling phenomenon but actively participate in attention to suppress distractors and reduce cognitive workload. However, the exact mechanism responsible for this attentional processing is still a matter of research. In this work, we propose a simple mechanism for distractor suppression using a neural mass model of oscillating, interconnected cortical regions, based on alpha oscillations and their interaction with the gamma rhythm. Essentially, the model distinguishes between certain \"sensory\" areas, where stimuli are coded and represented via gamma oscillations, a downstream \"detection\" area dedicated to processing these stimuli, and a \"control\" region that generates the alpha rhythm. Unattended stimuli in a sensory area can be suppressed by simply imposing an alpha rhythm that is out of phase compared with the detection layer. A sensitivity analysis performed on a simple paradigmatic model emphasizes the robustness of the proposed mechanism versus parameter changes. Moreover, a more complex example (concerning spatial attention, where objects are represented through a Gestalt proximity rule) supports the capacity of the mechanism to suppress distractors in multi-unit networks. The model aligns with several experimental results and can be further utilized to investigate cognitive alterations in pathological conditions, such as schizophrenia, characterized by dysfunction in the gamma rhythm.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144486831","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":"Point-light Talkers: Multisensory Enhancement of Speech Tracking by Co-speech Movement Kinematics.","authors":"Jacob P Momsen, Seana Coulson","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.62","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.62","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While multisensory super-additivity has been demonstrated in the context of visual articulation, it is unclear whether speech and co-speech gestures are similarly subject to super-additive integration. The current study investigates multisensory integration of speech and bodily gestures, testing whether biological motion signatures of co-speech gestures enhance cortical tracking of the speech envelope. We recorded EEG from 20 healthy adults as they watched a series of multimodal discourse clips from four conditions: AV congruent clips with co-speech gestures that were naturally aligned with speech, AV incongruent clips in which gestures were not aligned with the speech, audio-only clips in which speech was delivered in isolation, and video-only clips presenting the gesture content with no accompanying speech. As we hypothesize that the kinematics of co-speech gestures are sufficient to drive gestural enhancement of speech, our clips employed minimalistic \"point-light\" depictions of a speaker's movements: point-light talkers. Using neural decoder models to predict the amplitude of the speech envelope from EEG elicited in all four conditions, we compared speech reconstruction performance between multisensory (AV congruent) and additive models, that is, those representing the summed neural response across the two unisensory conditions. We found significant improvement in decoder scores for models trained on AV congruent trials relative to both audio-only and additive models. Forward models of brain activity indicated signatures of multisensory integration 140-160 msec following changes to the speech envelope. These results provide novel evidence for a multisensory enhancement effect of co-speech gesture kinematics on continuous speech tracking.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144486833","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":"On the Causal Role of the Right Lateral Prefrontal Cortex in Active Forgetting.","authors":"Javier Pacios, Carlos J Gómez-Ariza","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.67","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.67","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Extensive research has demonstrated that people can intentionally forget by inhibiting the retrieval of unwanted memories, a phenomenon known as suppression-induced forgetting (SIF). Although neuroimaging studies have linked retrieval suppression to the right lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), direct evidence for the causal role of this region plays in supporting SIF is still lacking. In this registered report, our aim is putting to a strong empirical test such an idea by using cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation in a standard think/no-think procedure. Across two experiments, we will compare the SIF achieved by participants receiving cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the right LPFC-which has been shown to disrupt prefrontally mediated inhibitory control-with those receiving sham stimulation or cathodal stimulation over a control site. In addition, we will examine the lateralization of this effect by comparing stimulation of the right and left LPFC. Our results will provide novel and critical insights into the brain mechanisms of inhibitory control.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144486832","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":"Transient Inhibition of the Posterior Parietal Cortex Affects Action-related But Not Action-unrelated Visual Processing during Path Integration.","authors":"Florian Bublatzky, Martin Riemer","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.63","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.63","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Path integration refers to the ability to monitor self-motion cues to keep track of changes in position and orientation. This function is often assumed to rely predominantly on medial temporal lobe structures containing grid, place, and head direction cells. Recent evidence, however, suggests that key navigational computations may occur outside this system, for example, in posterior parietal areas. Here, we adopted a novel perspective derived from animal research and examined whether human path integration relies on processing streams in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), depending on the involvement of actively controlled motion as opposed to passive perception of visual optic flow. We compared the effects of inhibiting the PPC via TMS on two path integration tasks in a virtual reality, only one of which involved active control of a visually simulated forward movement. Behavioral performance showed that distance judgments were selectively affected in the action-related path integration task. This finding shows that the processing of actively controlled motion depends on computations in the PPC, whereas passive processing of optic flow is largely independent of the PPC computations. Our results reinforce the hypothesis that the PPC plays a critical role for the integration of goal locations and self-positional signals within an egocentric frame of reference. In addition to the medial temporal lobe, the posterior parietal system is recruited during tasks involving actively controlled movements, whereas medial temporal computations are sufficient for passive monitoring of positional changes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144486834","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":"Representing Visual Objects, Attention, and Load in Human Occipito-temporal and Posterior Parietal Cortices.","authors":"Yaoda Xu, Marvin Chun","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.64","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.64","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Stability and adaptability are two essential components of everyday vision, enabling us to maintain an object's identity as we attend to different features under varying task loads. We hypothesize that these two components of vision are supported by the interactions among object, attention, and load representations, and the interplay between the human occipito-temporal cortex (OTC), given its visual representation invariance, and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), an adaptive visual processing center. To test this, human participants performed four tasks on the same stream of colored objects with varying attention (attending to color or shape) and load (1-back or 2-back repetition detection). Although the exact neural mechanisms differ in how object, attention, and load modulate neural responses, by placing them as different factors in the same visual representational space using fMRI pattern decoding, we directly compared their effects on visual responses and interactions. We found significant object, attention, and load representations across OTC and PPC, with a gradual transition from more object-sensitive representations in OTC to more attention- and load-sensitive representations in PPC. Notably, object, attention, and load representations showed significant interactions and generalizations across changes with each other in both OTC and PPC. When objects were held constant, attention and load were represented independently of each other, showing their neural separability. Together, the invariant and adaptive nature of object, attention, and load representations in OTC and PPC provides both stability in visual processing and adaptation to the ever-changing visual input and task demands.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144530974","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":"Inhibition Resolves Simon Conflict: Evidence From Electroencephalogram Decoding.","authors":"Yoon Seo Lee, Gi-Yeul Bae, Yang Seok Cho","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.59","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.59","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The congruency sequence effect, a hypothesized marker of top-down cognitive control, refers to a reduced congruency effect after incongruent trials compared with congruent trials. Although this effect has been observed across various distractor interference tasks, the nature of the control processes underlying the congruency sequence effect remains a topic of active debate. It has been suggested that cognitive control may resolve conflicts in information processing either by (a) enhancing the representation of goal information and/or (b) suppressing the representation of distractor information. The present study aimed to identify the conflict resolution processes within the context of the color Simon task by decoding the goal and distracting information from human scalp EEG signals. For the decoding analysis, models were trained separately for color and location attributes corresponding to goal and distractor information. In addition, decoding accuracy was calculated in different frequency bands: theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), low beta (12-20 Hz), and high beta (20-30 Hz). Results showed that decoding accuracy for distractor information was reduced when cognitive control was activated, and this pattern was only observed in the high beta-frequency band (20-30 Hz). In contrast, no such difference was observed for target information. These findings suggest that cognitive control regulates Simon conflict by inhibiting distractor representation in the brain, thereby preventing unwanted distraction-driven behaviors.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144310789","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":"Bilateral Field Advantage of Spatial Attention in Macaque Lateral Prefrontal Cortex.","authors":"Maryam Nouri Kadijani, Theda Backen, Kaustubh Manchanda, Sandeep K Mody, Stefan Treue, Julio C Martinez-Trujillo","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.a.58","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Allocating visual attention to behaviorally relevant stimuli is easier when distractors are in the opposite visual hemifield relative to when they are in the same hemifield. The neural mechanisms underlying this bilateral field advantage remains unclear. We documented this effect in two macaques performing a covert spatial attention task in two different conditions: when the target and distracter were positioned in different hemifields (across condition), and when they were positioned on the top and bottom quadrants within the same visual hemifield (within condition). The animals' behavioral performance at detecting a change in the attended stimulus was higher in the across relative to the within condition. We recorded the responses of lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC, area 8A) neurons in one animal. The proportion of LPFC neurons encoding the allocation of attention was larger in the across relative to the within condition. The latter was accompanied by an increase in the ability of single neurons to discriminate the allocation of attention in the across relative to the within condition. Finally, we used linear classifiers to decode the allocation of attention from the activity of neuronal ensembles and found a similar bilateral field advantage in decoding performance in the across relative to the within condition that generalized to different integration time windows and number of neurons used by the classifier. Our finding provides a neural correlate of the bilateral field advantage reported in behavioral studies of attention and suggest a role of the LPFC circuitry in its origin.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144267855","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":"Semantic Dimensions Support the Cortical Representation of Object Memorability.","authors":"Matthew Slayton, Cortney M Howard, Shenyang Huang, Mariam Hovhannisyan, Roberto Cabeza, Simon W Davis","doi":"10.1162/jocn.a.60","DOIUrl":"10.1162/jocn.a.60","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent work in vision sciences contends that objects carry an intrinsic property called memorability that describes the likelihood that an object can be successfully encoded and later retrieved from memory. It has been shown that object memorability is supported by semantic information, but the neural correlates of this relationship are largely unexplored. The present study explores these premises and asks whether neural correlates of object memorability can be accounted for by semantic dimensions. We combine three data sets: (1) feature norms for a database of ∼1000 natural object images, (2) normative conceptual and perceptual memory data for those objects, and (3) neuroimaging data from an fMRI study collected using a subset (n = 360) of those objects. We found that object-wise memorability elicits consistent brain activation across participants in key mnemonic regions, including the hippocampus and rhinal cortex, and that the variance in this neural activity is mediated by the semantic factors describing these images. We propose that the features of memorable images may be facilitating memory formation by more deeply engaging encoding processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-27"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12371987/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144310790","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}