Cerebral cortex最新文献

{"title":"Gender powers perception of \"dancing circles in love\".","authors":"Laila Naamnih, Alexander N Sokolov, Andreas J Fallgatter, Marina A Pavlova","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag092","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag092","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans tend to attribute social characteristics to moving geometric shapes as if they were animate beings (eg, kissing each other while dancing). This ability is considered an integral component of day-to-day life and a fundamental key to navigating effective social communication. The Heider-and-Simmel (HS)-like paradigm is suitable for investigating mechanisms of social attribution across lifespans and population groups, particularly in clinical contexts. As vast majority of mental and neurodevelopmental disorders are gender-specific, the present study delves into possible gender impacts on inferring social interaction in HS-like movies. The outcome indicates that typically developing females and males do not differ in recognition accuracy and processing speed of social interaction in HS-like animations, though males take longer and tend to be less accurate in recognition of similar control movies, more often mistaking them for social interaction. The signal detection analysis shows that females tend to be more tuned to social interaction (in terms of sensitivity index, d') without gender difference in response bias (decision criterion c). In both genders, decision criteria are liberal (c < 0), pointing to a tendency to anthropomorphize control animations. The outcome sheds light on the nature of gender impact on perception of interaction as well as on neural underpinnings of social attribution in the gendered brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148435259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Distinct neural oscillations predict individual differences in feedback-guided cognitive flexibility.","authors":"Judith Sattelberger, Hamed Haque, Liu Mengxing, Jaana Simola, Jaakko Matias Palva, Michael M Halassa, Satu Palva","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag101","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag101","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cognitive flexibility is the ability to keep or update contextual cognitive representations. The underlying neural mechanisms and how it is influenced by individual sensitivity to feedback are not known. We measured cognitive flexibility under uncertainty with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and brain activity with magnetoencephalography. Cognitive flexibility had large interindividual variability as indexed by the learning speed. Using a behavioral sequential learning model, we show that this variability in cognitive flexibility is predicted by individual sensitivity to feedback and anticipation and exploration tendencies, and we uncover their brain oscillatory signatures. Individual learning speed was predicted by suppressed alpha-beta (7-32 Hz) and increased broad-band gamma (32-143 Hz) amplitudes along with concurrent large-scale alpha (7-13 Hz) desynchronization. In contrast, we found no evidence for theta-band amplitudes enhancing performance directly, but rather an inverted relationship with rule certainty across a trial series. Importantly, these oscillatory sub-processes were explained by individual levels of distinct feedback sensitivity. These results provide a novel account on neural sub-computations underlying flexible feedback-guided contextual maintenance and updating of cognitive rule representations. Significance statement Cognitive flexibility is the ability to keep or update cognitive representations of context and allows us to make decisions under uncertainty. The ability to learn information from external cues has a large inter-individual variability, of which neural mechanisms are largely unknown. Here, we combine for the first time behavioral measures from the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task with MEG data and apply a sequential learning model to titrate the neural subcomponents underlying performance differences. We show that individual variability in learning under uncertainty is associated with differences in sensitivity to contextual cues, revealing distinct spectral profiles for learning from positive versus negative cues. Our findings demonstrate that cognitive flexibility relies on neural oscillations which are specific to the feedback cue type.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13456332/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148705479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The tangential growth of the human visual cortex and maternal smoking during pregnancy.","authors":"Xavier Navarri, Zhijie Liao, James B Hengenius, Florian Bénitière, Sébastien Jacquemont, Zdenka Pausova, Tomáš Paus","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag105","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag105","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Exposure to maternal cigarette smoking in utero is a prenatal adversity due, in part, to the pharmacological effects of nicotine. During gestation, thalamocortical inputs-generated by cholinergic retinal waves-contribute to the development of the visual cortex (V1). First, we investigated the relationship between prenatal exposure to maternal cigarette smoking (PEMCS) and the tangential growth of V1. We observed a robust association between PEMCS and V1 surface area in the UK Biobank (n = 26,987 adults, 30% exposed) and replicated this relationship in the Saguenay Youth Study (n = 944 adolescents, 47% exposed). Subsequent in silico analyses suggested that PEMCS may influence V1 prenatal growth by disrupting the proliferation of intermediate progenitor cells and inhibitory neurons. Second, we explored the role of cholinergic retinal waves as a mechanistic pathway underlying this exposure-outcome relationship. To do so, we used causal variants in genes sensitive to retinal waves (identified in retinal ganglion cells). These variants were related to V1 surface area only among exposed individuals; deletions in these genes and putative loss-of-function single-nucleotide variants were associated with lower V1 surface area. These results suggest that PEMCS influences the prenatal tangential growth of the human V1 via the retina.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13456333/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148705509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transcriptomic analysis of Perirhinal and Lateral Entorhinal cortex regions in mice.","authors":"Beatriz B Aoyama, Saúl Lindo-Samanamud, João P D Machado, Henrique N de Araújo, Maria C P Athié, André Schwambach Vieira","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhag104","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The perirhinal cortex (PER) is crucial for object recognition memory and comprises areas 35 and 36 (A35 and A36). The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), subdivided into dorsolateral (DLE), dorsal intermediate (DIE), and ventral intermediate (VIE) regions, plays a key role in encoding representations of objects, events, contextual details, and sequential information. Despite their anatomical distinctions, gene expression profiling of these subregions remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted transcriptome analysis of these regions in C57BL/6 mice. Tissue samples were collected using laser microdissection, isolating A35, A36, DLE, and VIE, and subsequently they were analyzed via RNA sequencing. Our results revealed no significant gene expression differences between PER A35 and A36, yet substantial molecular divergence emerged when comparing PER to LEC subregions. The PER exhibited higher expression of genes related to nutritional state sensitivity compared to the LEC, while the DLE showed elevated expression of genes implicated in axonal guidance, neurotrophic support, and glutamatergic neurotransmission relative to the VIE. These findings advance our understanding of the molecular profiles unique to PER and LEC regions, and may support the generation of novel hypotheses regarding functional roles of these cortical populations that may be explored in future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148705512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"For better and worse: neural self-partner overlap during social feedback is associated with relationship satisfaction and depressive symptoms.","authors":"Shanshan Ma, Andrea M Coppola, Erin L Maresh, Diego Guevara Beltran, Kayleigh M Rhodes, John J B Allen, David A Sbarra, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag073","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag073","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In close relationships, the boundary between self and partner can blur-a phenomenon known as self-other overlap. This overlap may be especially pronounced during social-emotional contexts, where partners share one another's joys and distress. Yet little is known about how the brain represents this overlap during social-emotional experiences. More specifically, it is unclear whether it differs by emotional valence, whether it relates to relational and personal well-being, and whether these associations vary across social-emotional contexts. To address these questions, we scanned 90 romantic couples (n = 180) processing positive and negative social feedback directed toward themselves or their partners. We assessed neural self-partner representational similarity (RS) in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in self-referential processing. Participants showed greater self-partner RS during negative than positive feedback. Across both valences, higher RS was associated with greater partner-reported relationship satisfaction. Under negative feedback, greater RS was associated with higher concurrent relationship satisfaction for both partners via daily support provided to the partner, as well as higher self-reported concurrent and 6-month depressive symptoms via daily affect. These findings reveal the mechanisms through which neural self-other overlap simultaneously relates to relational closeness and emotional risk under distressing conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13327108/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148374669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Music-selective cortex is sensitive to structure in both pitch and time.","authors":"Dana Boebinger, Josh H McDermott, Nancy Kanwisher, Sam Norman-Haignere","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag072","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag072","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Music is distinguished from other natural sounds by the presence of relatively discrete notes, which are then organized across pitch and time to convey melody, harmony, and rhythm. Growing evidence suggests that small clusters of neural populations within anterior and posterior human non-primary auditory cortex respond selectively to musical structure. However, it is unclear whether this selectivity reflects short-term musical structure at the level of individual notes and/or the patterning of notes in pitch and time. We used fMRI voxel decomposition to measure the response of music-selective and non-selective auditory neural populations to synthetic music and drum stimuli whose notes were scrambled in pitch and/or time, disrupting musical pattern structure while largely preserving note-level structure. We observed reliably stronger responses to music with intact pitch and temporal pattern structure in both anterior and posterior music-selective regions bilaterally, but little difference between intact and scrambled music in non-selective populations. Further, only music-selective populations showed reliably stronger responses to note-scrambled music compared with non-music sounds. These results suggest that musical structure involving both individual notes and their patterning over time is specifically represented in localized music-selective neural populations of human non-primary auditory cortex.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13293250/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148315909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lip-reading and eye-gaze discrimination are functionally lateralized across the left and right posterior superior temporal sulci.","authors":"Magdalena W Sliwinska, Theodoros Karapanagiotidis, Lara Nikel, Sara L Simone, Jonathan Smallwood, Elizabeth Jefferies, Andre Gouws, David Pitcher","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag088","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag088","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) processes information from the eyes and the mouth that support social perception. To investigate the laterality of how these mechanisms function, we performed three experiments on lip and eye-gaze discrimination. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 18) performed lip-position and eye-gaze discrimination tasks in static facial expressions while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was delivered over the left and right pSTS. Results showed a double dissociation in which disruption of the left pSTS impaired the lip-position task, while disruption of the right pSTS impaired the eye-gaze matching task. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 16) performed a lip-reading task using dynamic video clips of a speaker while TMS was delivered over the left and right pSTS. Task performance was impaired when TMS was delivered over the left pSTS only. In Experiment 3, participants (n = 256) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results demonstrated that the left pSTS exhibited greater connectivity to language processing brain areas in the left hemisphere. In contrast, the right pSTS exhibited greater connectivity to visual areas specialized for face processing and spatial attention processing. Our study suggests that lip and eye-gaze discrimination are preferentially lateralized across the bilateral pSTS.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13293074/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148315924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Garbage in, garbage out: stringent quality control of behavioral data boosts signal in brain-behavior associations.","authors":"Mahmoud Elsayed, Wei Q Deng, Kyla L Belisario, James MacKillop","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag037","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag037","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Low reproducibility in brain-behavior association studies has prompted calls for larger samples, but rigorous quality control (QC) of behavioral measures may also strengthen the robustness of observed associations. This study examined how varying levels of behavioral QC affect brain-behavior associations using delay discounting, a widely studied measure of immediate reward orientation. Data were drawn from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (n = 10,936), and delay discounting data were subjected to eight increasingly stringent QC levels. Associations between delay discounting and brain structural morphometry were evaluated in 15 bilateral a priori regions of interest (ROIs), and changes in effect size, significant associations, and multivariate behavioral prediction were quantified across QC levels. Greater QC stringency substantially amplified association strength, with effect sizes increasing by an average of 188.52% across ROIs, the number of statistically significant associations more than doubling, and multivariate prediction improving by 267%. Although higher QC levels reduced sample size by up to 65%, strengthening of associations plateaued at intermediate levels, suggesting asymptotic improvements in resolution. Overall, stringent behavioral QC substantially increased the magnitude of brain-behavior associations, suggesting this is a critical methodological consideration for improving reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13280937/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148276130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking the extrastriate body area: from body perception to action priors.","authors":"Sebastiano Cinetto, Anastasia Dimakou, Maurizio Corbetta","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag086","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhag086","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Perception of bodies underpins social cognition, action, and self-representation, and is often attributed to the extrastriate body area (EBA). Building on recent data, we argue that the function of the EBA goes beyond body perception. We propose that the EBA operates within a predictive, distributed architecture, encoding body-related priors that have been shaped by evolution and experience, and that bias ongoing behavior. Evidence from multivariate analyses and resting-state dynamics suggests that body representations are flexible, shared across categories, and not confined to a single locus. Accordingly, the EBA is better understood as a dynamic node supporting context-dependent behavior rather than a specialized module.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13347400/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148410604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relationships between bilateral tapping skills and brain gray matter volumes: a voxel-based morphometry study.","authors":"Sho Kojima, Kazuaki Nagasaka, Kei Saito, Noriko Sakurai, Naoki Kodama, Hideaki Onishi","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhag094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhag094","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Brain activity associated with bilateral hand movements has been reported to involve multiple regions. However, the association between gray matter (GM) volume in these regions and bilateral hand movement remains unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate the association between tapping skills using both hands and GM volume. This study included 61 healthy adults. Each participant's Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans and bilateral motor task performance were evaluated. The motor task was a finger-tapping task, and the movement conditions were set as in-phase and antiphase. The participants were instructed to open and close their thumb and index finger as quickly and widely as possible, either simultaneously (in-phase condition) or alternately (antiphase condition) on both sides. Using voxel-based morphometry, we measured brain GM volume associated with the performance in the bilateral finger-tapping task. The results indicated a significant negative correlation between the similarity index of bilateral movement under the antiphase condition and GM volume around the left cingulate motor cortex. This result suggests that participants who were able to smoothly move both hands under the antiphase condition had greater GM volume in the left cingulate motor cortex. This GM volume may serve as a neurophysiological indicator of bilateral hand movement.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"36 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148350881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}