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The deficit in social interaction skills among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is strongly influenced by personal experiences and social environments. Neuroimaging studies have previously highlighted the link between social impairment and brain activity in ASD. This study aims to develop a method for assessing and identifying ASD using a social cognitive game-based paradigm combined with electroencephalo-graphy (EEG) signaling features. Typically developing (TD) participants and autistic preadolescents and teenagers were recruited to participate in a social game while 12-channel EEG signals were recorded. The EEG signals underwent preprocessing to analyze local brain activities, including event-related potentials (ERPs) and time-frequency features. Additionally, the global brain network’s functional connectivity between brain regions was evaluated using phase-lag indices (PLIs). Subsequently, machine learning models were employed to assess the neurophysiological features. Results indicated pronounced ERP components, particularly the late positive potential (LPP), in parietal regions during social training. Autistic preadolescents and teenagers exhibited lower LPP amplitudes and larger P200 amplitudes compared to TD participants. Reduced theta synchronization was also observed in the ASD group. Aberrant functional connectivity within certain time intervals was noted in the ASD group. Machine learning analysis revealed that support-vector machines achieved a sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 91.7%, and accuracy of 95.8% as part of the performance evaluation when utilizing ERP and brain oscillation features for ASD characterization. These findings suggest that social interaction difficulties in autism are linked to specific brain activation patterns. Traditional behavioral assessments face challenges of subjectivity and accuracy, indicating the potential use of social training interfaces and EEG features for cognitive assessment in ASD.

Previous studies have reported a role of alterations in the brain’s inhibitory control mechanism in addiction. Mounting evidence from neuroimaging studies indicates that its key components can be evaluated with brain oscillations and connectivity during inhibitory control. In this study, we developed an internet-related stop-signal task with electroencephalography (EEG) signal recorded to investigate inhibitory control. Healthy controls and participants with Internet addiction were recruited to participate in the internet-related stop-signal task with 19-channel EEG signal recording, and the corresponding event-related potentials and spectral perturbations were analyzed. Brain effective connections were also evaluated using direct directed transfer function. The results showed that, relative to the healthy controls, participants with Internet addiction had increased Stop-P3 during inhibitory control, suggesting that they have an altered neural mechanism in impulsive control. Furthermore, participants with Internet addiction showed increased low-frequency synchronization and decreased alpha and beta desynchronization in the middle and right frontal regions compared to healthy controls. Aberrant brain effective connectivity was also observed, with increased occipital-parietal and intra-occipital connections, as well as decreased frontal-paracentral connection in participants with Internet addiction. These results suggest that physiological signals are essential in future implementations of cognitive assessment of Internet addiction to further investigate the underlying mechanisms and effective biomarkers.

Social interaction enables the smooth progression of our daily lives. Mounting evidence from recent hyperscanning neuroimaging studies indicates that key components of social behavior can be evaluated using inter-brain oscillations and connectivity. However, mapping out inter-brain networks and developing neurocognitive theories that explain how humans co-create and share information during social interaction remains challenging. In this study, we developed a jigsaw puzzle-solving game with hyperscanning electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded to investigate inter-brain activities during social interactions involving cooperation and competition. Participants were recruited and paired into dyads to participate in the multiplayer jigsaw puzzle game with 32-channel EEG signals recorded. The corresponding event-related potentials (ERPs), brain oscillations, and inter-brain functional connectivity were analyzed. The results showed different ERP morphologies of P3 patterns in competitive and cooperative contexts, and brain oscillations in the low-frequency band may be an indicator of social cognitive activities. Furthermore, increased inter-brain functional connectivity in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands was observed in the competition mode compared to the cooperation mode. By presenting comparable and valid hyperscanning EEG results alongside those of previous studies using traditional paradigms, this study demonstrates the potential of utilizing hyperscanning techniques in real-life game-playing scenarios to quantitatively assess social cognitive interactions involving cooperation and competition. Our approach offers a promising platform with potential applications in the flexible assessment of psychiatric disorders related to social functioning.

The design goals of recently developed serious games are to improve attention, affective recognition, and social interactions among individuals with autism. However, most previous studies on serious games used behavioral questionnaires to evaluate their effectiveness. The cognitive assessment of individuals with autism after behavioral intervention or drug treatment has become important because it provides promising biomarkers to assess improvement after cognitive intervention. In this study, we developed a game-based social interaction platform incorporating an eye-tracking system for children and preadolescents with autism. Three modules (focusing on gaze following, facial emotion recognition, and social interaction skills) are included in the platform; participants with autism learn these according to their cognitive abilities. The eye-tracking results showed decreased fixation durations when autistic children looked at positive emotional expressions and focused on multiple targets. Prolonged saccade durations and shorter fixation times for social-related facial emotion expressions were also found in preadolescents and teenagers with autism. Our findings suggest that these atypical gaze patterns are reliable biomarkers for evaluating the social and cognitive functions of autistic individuals while playing serious games. The proposed platform’s game-based modules and the findings regarding aberrant gaze patterns in autistic individuals demonstrate the possibility of evaluating cognitive functions and intervention effectiveness by using eye-tracking signals in a serious game or real-life environment.

Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) is a well-established concept for evaluating the strength of memory coding within brain regions, and has been shown to possess the characteristic of presenting memory mechanisms. It has been demonstrated that oscillations of theta and gamma brain waves can represent the neural coding structure of memory retrieval. However, most previous studies have presented PAC-related memory mechanisms with visual modalities, and little is known about the influence of auditory stimuli. In this study, 18 participants were recruited and 36-channels electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded while they were performing an $n$ -back auditory working memory task. There were three experimental conditions with different levels of working memory load. Event-related phase-amplitude coupling (ERPAC) with the advantage of better temporal resolution was used to evaluate the coupling phenomenon from the reconstructed dipole brain sources. We primarily focused on independent components from the frontal and parietal regions, which were reported to be related to memory mechanisms. The results suggest that significant ERPAC was observed in both the frontal and parietal regions. In addition to the coupling between theta (4-7 Hz) and low gamma (30-40 Hz) frequency bands, pronounced high beta oscillations (20-30 Hz) were also observed to be modulated by the phases of theta oscillations. These findings suggest the existence of phase-amplitude coupling in the neocortex during auditory working memory, and provide a highly resolved timeline to evaluate brain dynamics. In addition, the ERPAC results also support the involvement of theta-gamma and theta-beta neural coding mechanisms in cognitive and memory tasks. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the existence of ERPAC within the frontal and parietal regions during an auditory working memory task using complex chords as stimuli, and prompt the use of complex stimuli in studies that are closer to the real-life applications of cognitive evaluations, mental treatments, and brain-computer interfaces.

There is a growing interest in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on connectivity networks in the brain when subjects are under exposure to natural sensory stimulation. Because of a complicated coupling between spontaneous and evoked brain activity under real-world stimulation, there is no critical mapping between the experimental inputs and corresponding brain responses. The dataset contains auditory fMRI scans and T1-weighted anatomical scans acquired under eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions. Within each scanning condition, the subject was presented 12 different sound clips, including human voices followed by animal vocalizations. The dataset is meant to be used to assess brain dynamics and connectivity networks under natural sound stimulation; it also allows for empirical investigation of changes in fMRI responses between eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions, between animal vocalizations and human voices, as well as between the 12 different sound clips during auditory stimulation. The dataset is a supplement to the research findings in the paper “Brain dynamics and connectivity networks under natural auditory stimulation” published in NeuroImage. Keywords: fMRI, Connectivity networks, Real-world, Auditory

Brain oscillations and connectivity have emerged as promising measures of evaluating memory processes, including encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, as well as the related executive function. Although many studies have addressed the neural mechanisms underlying working memory, most of these studies have focused on the visual modality. Neurodynamics and functional connectivity related to auditory working memory are yet to be established. In this study, we explored the dynamic of high density (128-channel) electroencephalography (EEG) in a musical delayed match-to-sample task (DMST), in which 36 participants were recruited and were instructed to recognize and distinguish the target melodies from similar distractors. Event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs), event-related phase-amplitude couplings (ERPACs), and phase-locking values (PLVs) were used to determine the corresponding brain oscillations and connectivity. First, we observed that low-frequency oscillations in the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions were increased during the processing of both target and distracting melodies. Second, the cross-frequency coupling between low-frequency phases and high-frequency amplitudes was elevated in the frontal and parietal regions when the participants were distinguishing between the target from distractor, suggesting that the phase-amplitude coupling could be an indicator of neural mechanisms underlying memory retrieval. Finally, phase-locking, an index evaluating brain functional connectivity, revealed that there was fronto-temporal phase-locking in the theta band and fronto-parietal phase-locking in the alpha band during the recognition of the two stimuli. These findings suggest the existence of functional connectivity and the phase-amplitude coupling in the neocortex during musical memory retrieval, and provide a highly resolved timeline to evaluate brain dynamics. Furthermore, the inter-regional phase-locking and phase-amplitude coupling among the frontal, temporal and parietal regions occurred at the very beginning of musical memory retrieval, which might reflect the precise timing when cognitive resources were involved in the retrieval of targets and the rejection of similar distractors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first EEG study employing a naturalistic task to study auditory memory processes and functional connectivity during memory retrieval, results of which can shed light on the use of natural stimuli in studies that are closer to the real-life applications of cognitive evaluations, mental treatments, and brain-computer interface.

Cognitive studies have suggested that anxiety is correlated with cognitive performance. Previous research has focused on the relationship between anxiety level and the perceptual load within the frontal region, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices. High-anxious individuals are predicted to have worse performance on cognitively-demanding tasks requiring efficient cognitive processing. A few functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have specifically discussed the performance and brain activity involving working memory for high-anxious individuals. This topic has been further explored with electroencephalography, although these studies have mostly provided results involving visual face-related stimuli. In this study, we used auditory stimulation to manipulate the working memory load and attempted to interpret the deficiency of cognitive function in high-anxious participants or patients using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The fNIRS signals of 30 participants were measured while they were performing an auditory working memory task. For the auditory n-back task, there were three experimental conditions, including two n-back task conditions of stimuli memorization with different memory load and a condition of passive listening to the stimuli. Hemodynamic responses from frontal brain regions were recorded using a wireless fNIRS device. Brain activation from the ventrolateral and orbital prefrontal cortex were measured with signals filtered and artifacts removed. The fNIRS signals were then standardized with statistical testing and group analysis was performed. The results revealed that there were significantly stronger hemodynamic responses in the right ventrolateral and orbital prefrontal cortex when subjects were attending to the auditory working memory task with higher load. Furthermore, the right lateralization of the prefrontal cortex was negatively correlated with the level of state anxiety. This study revealed the possibility of incorporating fNIRS signals as an index to evaluate cognitive performance and mood states given its flexibility regarding portable applications compared to other neuroimaging techniques.

Under the concept of meridian channels that belongs to traditional Chinese medicine, BIOCERAMIC Resonance (BR) has already been applied to many clinical medical research projects with functions mimicking of traditional acupuncture. Forty-five patients were recruited with chronic sleep disorders; 36 patients were given, applied to the device with BIOCERAMIC material and sound rhythm on chest skin surface; 9 patients were included as controls. All study participants completed a sleep pattern and quality of life questionnaire (assessment on psychological and physical causes of sleep disturbances), which was repeated before, during and after treatment. Electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings were analyzed before, during and after treatment. Functional MRI (fMRI) was also used for demonstration of BR effect for another 8 candidates. During the first 3 days of treatment, sleep quality improved in all 36 patients especially to psychological reasons; in 91.7% (33/36) treatment was associated with an elevation in the beta spectrum of the EEG (at 15–27 Hz). The result of fMRI found corresponding cerebral and cerebellar areas of activation and deactivation. BIOCERAMIC Resonance can improve sleep disorder due to psychological causes, with transient alter brain wave activity and functional activation on specific locations of brain. Keywords: EEG, BIOCERAMIC, Sound rhythm, Sleep disturbance, fMRI