Meytal Wilf, C. Dupuis, D. Nardo, Diana Huber, Sibilla Sander, Joud Al-Kaar, Meriem Haroud, Henri Perrin, E. Fornari, S. Crottaz-Herbette, Andrea Serino
{"title":"Virtual reality-based sensorimotor adaptation shapes subsequent spontaneous and naturalistic stimulus-driven brain activity","authors":"Meytal Wilf, C. Dupuis, D. Nardo, Diana Huber, Sibilla Sander, Joud Al-Kaar, Meriem Haroud, Henri Perrin, E. Fornari, S. Crottaz-Herbette, Andrea Serino","doi":"10.1101/2021.12.13.471903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.13.471903","url":null,"abstract":"Our everyday life summons numerous novel sensorimotor experiences, to which our brain needs to adapt in order to function properly. However, tracking plasticity of naturalistic behaviour and associated brain modulations is challenging. Here we tackled this question implementing a prism adaptation training in virtual reality (VRPA) in combination with functional neuroimaging. Three groups of healthy participants (N=45) underwent VRPA (with a spatial shift either to the left/right side, or with no shift), and performed fMRI sessions before and after training. To capture modulations in free-flowing, task-free brain activity, the fMRI sessions included resting state and free viewing of naturalistic videos. We found significant decreases in spontaneous functional connectivity between large-scale cortical networks – namely attentional and default mode/fronto-parietal networks - only for adaptation groups. Additionally, VRPA was found to bias visual representations of naturalistic videos, as following rightward adaptation, we found upregulation of visual response in an area in the parieto-occipital sulcus (POS) in the right hemisphere. Notably, the extent of POS upregulation correlated with the size of the VRPA induced after-effect measured in behavioural tests. This study demonstrates that a brief VRPA exposure is able to change large-scale cortical connectivity and correspondingly bias the representation of naturalistic sensory inputs. Significance statement In the current work, we tested how a brief sensorimotor experience changes subsequent brain activity and connectivity. Using virtual reality (VR) as a tool for sensorimotor training opens a window for creating otherwise impossible sensory experiences and sensorimotor interactions. Specifically, we studied how VR adaptation training in ecological conditions modulates spontaneous functional connectivity and brain representation of naturalistic real-life-like stimuli. Previous adaptation studies used artificial, lab-designed setups both during adaptation and while measuring subsequent aftereffects. Testing brain response while observing naturalistic stimuli and in resting state allowed us to stay as close as possible to naturalistic real-life-like conditions, not confounded by performance during a task. The current work demonstrates how rapid changes in free-flowing brain activity and connectivity occur following short-term VR visuomotor adaptation training in healthy individuals. Moreover, we found a link between sensory responses to naturalistic stimuli and adaptation-induced behavioural aftereffect, thus demonstrating a common source of training-induced spatial recalibration, which affects both behaviour and brain representations of naturalistic stimuli. These findings might have meaningful implications both for understanding the mechanisms underlying visuomotor plasticity in healthy individuals and for using VR adaptation training as a tool for rehabilitating brain-damaged patients suffering from","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"39 1","pages":"5163 - 5180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80165308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marianne van der Vaart, C. Hartley, L. Baxter, Gabriela Schmidt Mellado, Foteini Andritsou, Maria M. Cobo, Ria Evans Fry, Eleri Adams, S. Fitzgibbon, R. Slater
{"title":"Premature infants display discriminable behavioral, physiological, and brain responses to noxious and nonnoxious stimuli","authors":"Marianne van der Vaart, C. Hartley, L. Baxter, Gabriela Schmidt Mellado, Foteini Andritsou, Maria M. Cobo, Ria Evans Fry, Eleri Adams, S. Fitzgibbon, R. Slater","doi":"10.1101/2021.08.18.21262106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262106","url":null,"abstract":"Pain assessment in preterm infants is challenging, as behavioural, autonomic and neurophysiological measures of pain are reported to be less sensitive and specific than in term infants. Understanding the pattern of preterm infants' noxious-evoked responses is vital to improve pain assessment in this group. This study investigated the discriminability and development of multi-modal noxious-evoked responses in infants aged 28-40 weeks postmenstrual age. A classifier was trained to discriminate responses to a noxious heel lance from a non-noxious control in 47 infants, using measures of facial expression, brain activity, heart rate and limb withdrawal, and tested in two independent cohorts with a total of 98 infants. The model discriminates responses to the noxious from the non-noxious procedure from 28 weeks onwards with an overall accuracy of 0.77-0.83 and an accuracy of 0.78-0.79 in the 28-31 week group. Noxious-evoked responses have distinct developmental patterns. Heart rate responses increase in magnitude with age, while noxious-evoked brain activity undergoes three distinct developmental stages, including a previously unreported transitory stage consisting of a negative event-related potential between 30-33 weeks postmenstrual age. These findings demonstrate that while noxious-evoked responses change across early development, infant responses to noxious and non-noxious stimuli are discriminable from 28 weeks onwards.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"120 1","pages":"3799 - 3815"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87889299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elettra Capogna, Markus H. Sneve, Liisa Raud, Line Folvik, Hedda T Ness, K. Walhovd, A. Fjell, D. Vidal-Piñeiro
{"title":"Whole-brain connectivity during encoding: age-related differences and associations with cognitive and brain structural decline","authors":"Elettra Capogna, Markus H. Sneve, Liisa Raud, Line Folvik, Hedda T Ness, K. Walhovd, A. Fjell, D. Vidal-Piñeiro","doi":"10.1101/2021.08.10.455779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.10.455779","url":null,"abstract":"There is a limited understanding of age differences in functional connectivity during memory encoding. In the present study, a sample of cognitively healthy adult participants (n=488), a subsample of whom had longitudinal cognitive and brain structural data spanning 8 years back, underwent fMRI while performing an associative memory encoding task. We investigated 1) age changes in whole-brain connectivity during memory encoding; whether 2) encoding connectivity patterns overlap with the activity signatures of specific cognitive processes and whether 3) connectivity changes associated with memory encoding related to longitudinal brain structural and cognitive changes. Age was associated with decreased intranetwork connectivity and increased connectivity during encoding. Task-connectivity between mediotemporal and posterior parietal regions – which overlapped with areas involved in mental imagery – was related to better memory performance only in older age. The connectivity patterns supporting memory performance in older age reflected preservation of thickness of the medial temporal cortex. These investigations collectively indicate that functional patterns of connectivity should be interpreted in accordance with a maintenance rather than a compensation account.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"25 1","pages":"68 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74341878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Hardy, O. Jensen, L. Wheeldon, A. Mazaheri, K. Segaert
{"title":"Modulation in alpha band activity reflects syntax composition: an MEG study of minimal syntactic binding","authors":"S. Hardy, O. Jensen, L. Wheeldon, A. Mazaheri, K. Segaert","doi":"10.1101/2021.07.09.451797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.09.451797","url":null,"abstract":"Successful sentence comprehension requires the binding, or composition, of multiple words into larger structures to establish meaning. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neural mechanisms involved in binding at the syntax level, in a task where contributions from semantics were minimized. Participants were auditorily presented with minimal sentences that required binding (pronoun and pseudo-verb with the corresponding morphological inflection; “she grushes”) and pseudo-verb wordlists that did not require binding (“cugged grushes”). Relative to no binding, we found that syntactic binding was associated with a modulation in alpha band (8-12 Hz) activity in left-lateralized language regions. First, we observed a significantly smaller increase in alpha power around the presentation of the target word (“grushes”) that required binding (-0.05s to 0.1s), which we suggest reflects an expectation of binding to occur. Second, during binding of the target word (0.15s to 0.25s), we observed significantly decreased alpha phase-locking between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle/inferior temporal cortex, which we suggest reflects alpha-driven cortical disinhibition serving to strengthen communication within the syntax composition neural network. Together, our findings highlight the critical role of rapid spatial-temporal alpha band activity in controlling the allocation, transfer and coordination of the brain’s resources during syntax composition.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"66 1","pages":"497 - 511"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89869619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic signatures of the Eureka effect: an EEG study","authors":"Yiqing Lu, W. Singer","doi":"10.1101/2021.02.27.433162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.27.433162","url":null,"abstract":"The Eureka effect refers to the common experience of suddenly solving a problem. Here we study this effect in a pattern recognition paradigm that requires the segmentation of complex scenes and recognition of objects on the basis of Gestalt rules and prior knowledge. In the experiments both sensory evidence and prior knowledge were manipulated in order to obtain trials that do or do not converge towards a perceptual solution. Subjects had to detect objects in blurred scenes and signal recognition with manual responses. Neural dynamics were analyzed with high-density Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. The results show significant changes of neural dynamics with respect to spectral distribution, coherence, phase locking, and fractal dimensionality. The Eureka effect was associated with increased coherence of oscillations in the alpha and theta band over widely distributed regions of the cortical mantle predominantly in the right hemisphere. This increase in coherence was associated with a decrease of beta band activity over parietal and central regions, and with a decrease of alpha power over frontal and occipital areas. In addition, there was a lateralized reduction of fractal dimensionality for activity recorded from the right hemisphere. These results suggest that the transition towards the solution of a perceptual task is mainly associated with a change of network dynamics in the right hemisphere that is characterized by enhanced coherence and reduced complexity. We propose that the Eureka effect requires cooperation of cortical regions involved in working memory, creative thinking, and the control of attention.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"32 1","pages":"8679 - 8692"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80030485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Assem, Sneha Shashidhara, M. Glasser, J. Duncan
{"title":"Precise Topology of Adjacent Domain-General and Sensory-Biased Regions in the Human Brain","authors":"M. Assem, Sneha Shashidhara, M. Glasser, J. Duncan","doi":"10.1101/2021.02.21.431622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.21.431622","url":null,"abstract":"Recent functional MRI studies identified sensory-biased regions across much of the association cortices and cerebellum. However, their anatomical relationship to multiple-demand (MD) regions, characterized as domain-general due to their co-activation during multiple cognitive demands, remains unclear. For a better anatomical delineation, we used multimodal MRI techniques of the Human Connectome Project to scan subjects performing visual and auditory versions of a working memory (WM) task. The contrast between hard and easy WM showed strong domain generality, with essentially identical patterns of cortical, subcortical and cerebellar MD activity for visual and auditory materials. In contrast, modality preferences were shown by contrasting easy WM with baseline; most MD regions showed visual preference while immediately adjacent to cortical MD regions, there were interleaved regions of both visual and auditory preference. The results may exemplify a general motif whereby domain-specific regions feed information into and out of an adjacent, integrative MD core.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"25 1","pages":"2521 - 2537"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86702631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Messina, Davide Potrich, Ilaria Schiona, V. A. Sovrano, S. Fraser, C. Brennan, G. Vallortigara
{"title":"Neurons in the Dorso-Central Division of Zebrafish Pallium Respond to Change in Visual Numerosity","authors":"A. Messina, Davide Potrich, Ilaria Schiona, V. A. Sovrano, S. Fraser, C. Brennan, G. Vallortigara","doi":"10.1101/2020.11.11.377804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.11.377804","url":null,"abstract":"Non-symbolic number cognition based on an approximate sense of magnitude has been documented in zebrafish. Here we investigated for the first time its neural bases. Zebrafish were habituated to a set of three or nine small dots associated with food reward. During habituation trials, the dots changed in their individual size, position and density maintaining their numerousness and overall surface area. In the dishabituation test, zebrafish faced a change (i) in number (from three to nine or vice versa with the same overall surface), (ii) in shape (with the same overall surface and number), or (iii) in size (with the same shape and number); in a control group (iv) zebrafish faced the same familiar stimuli as during the habituation. Using qPCR to measure modulation of the expression of the immediate early genes c-fos and egr-1 and in-situ hybridization to count egr1-positive cells we found a specific and selective activation of the caudal part of the dorso-central (Dc) division of the zebrafish pallium upon change in numerosity. As pallial regions are implicated in number cognition in mammals and birds, these findings support the existence of an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for approximate magnitude and provide an avenue for exploring the underlying molecular correlates.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"56 9 1","pages":"418 - 428"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80108944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. W. de Gee, C. Correa, Matthew D. Weaver, T. Donner, S. van Gaal
{"title":"Pupil Dilation and the Slow Wave ERP Reflect Surprise about Choice Outcome Resulting from Intrinsic Variability in Decision Confidence","authors":"J. W. de Gee, C. Correa, Matthew D. Weaver, T. Donner, S. van Gaal","doi":"10.1101/2020.06.25.164962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.25.164962","url":null,"abstract":"Central to human and animal cognition is the ability to learn from feedback in order to optimize future rewards. Such a learning signal might be encoded and broadcasted by the brain’s arousal systems, including the noradrenergic locus coeruleus. Pupil responses and the positive slow wave component of event-related potentials reflect rapid changes in the arousal level of the brain. Here we ask whether and how these variables may reflect surprise: the mismatch between one’s expectation about being correct and the outcome of a decision, when expectations fluctuate due to internal factors (e.g., engagement). We show that during an elementary decision-task in the face of uncertainty both physiological markers of phasic arousal reflect surprise. We further show that pupil responses and slow wave ERP are unrelated to each other, and that prediction error computations depend on feedback awareness. These results further advance our understanding of the role of central arousal systems in decision-making under uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"15 1","pages":"3565 - 3578"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82025230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Convergence of Modality Invariance and Attention Selectivity in the Cortical Semantic Circuit","authors":"Tomoya Nakai, Hiroto Q. Yamaguchi, Shinji Nishimoto","doi":"10.1101/2020.06.19.160960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.19.160960","url":null,"abstract":"The human linguistic system is characterized by modality invariance and attention selectivity. Previous studies have examined these properties independently and reported perisylvian region involvement for both; however, their relationship and the linguistic information they harbor remain unknown. Participants were assessed by functional MRI, while spoken narratives (auditory) and written texts (visual) were presented, either separately or simultaneously. Participants were asked to attend to one stimulus when both were presented. We extracted phonemic and semantic features from these auditory and visual modalities, to train multiple, voxel-wise encoding models. Cross-modal examinations of the trained models revealed that perisylvian regions were associated with modality-invariant semantic representations. Attentional modulation was quantified by examining the modeling performance for attended and unattended conditions. We have determined that perisylvian regions exhibited attention selectivity. Both modality invariance and attention selectivity are both prominent in models that use semantic but not phonemic features. Modality invariance was significantly correlated with attention selectivity in some brain regions; however, we also identified cortical regions associated with only modality invariance or only attention selectivity. Thus, paying selective attention to a specific sensory input modality may regulate the semantic information that is partly processed in brain networks that are shared across modalities.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"50 1","pages":"4825 - 4839"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84775306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gelareh Mohammadi, D. Van de Ville, P. Vuilleumier
{"title":"Brain networks subserving functional core processes of emotions identified with componential modeling","authors":"Gelareh Mohammadi, D. Van de Ville, P. Vuilleumier","doi":"10.1101/2020.06.10.145201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.10.145201","url":null,"abstract":"Emotions have powerful effects on the mind, body, and behavior. Although psychology theories emphasized multi-componential characteristics of emotions, little is known about the nature and neural architecture of such components in the brain. We used a multivariate data-driven approach to decompose a wide range of emotions into functional core processes and identify their neural organization. Twenty participants watched 40 emotional clips and rated 119 emotional moments in terms of 32 component features defined by a previously validated componential model. Results show how different emotions emerge from coordinated activity across a set of brain networks coding for component processes associated with valuation appraisal, hedonic experience, novelty, goal-relevance, approach/avoidance tendencies, and social concerns. Our study goes beyond previous research that focused on either categorical or dimensional emotions and highlighting how novel methodology combined with componential modelling may allow emotion neuroscience to move forward and unveil the functional architecture of human affective experiences.","PeriodicalId":9825,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral Cortex (New York, NY)","volume":"1 1","pages":"7993 - 8010"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88644237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}