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Chronic back pain (CBP) is a global health concern with significant societal and economic burden. While various predictors of back pain chronicity have been proposed, including demographic and psychosocial factors, neuroimaging studies have pointed to brain characteristics as predictors of CBP. However, large-scale, multisite validation of these predictors is currently lacking. In two independent longitudinal studies, we examined white matter diffusion imaging data and pain characteristics in patients with subacute back pain (SBP) over 6- and 12-month periods. Diffusion data from individuals with CBP and healthy controls (HC) were analyzed for comparison. Whole-brain tract-based spatial statistics analyses revealed that a cluster in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) tract had larger fractional anisotropy (FA) values in patients who recovered (SBPr) compared to those with persistent pain (SBPp), and predicted changes in pain severity. The SLF FA values accurately classified patients at baseline and follow-up in a third publicly available dataset (Area under the Receiver Operating Curve ~0.70). Notably, patients who recovered had FA values larger than those of HC suggesting a potential role of SLF integrity in resilience to CBP. Structural connectivity-based models also classified SBPp and SBPr patients from the three data sets (validation accuracy 67%). Our results validate the right SLF as a robust predictor of CBP development, with potential for clinical translation . Cognitive and behavioral processes dependent on the right SLF, such as proprioception and visuospatial attention, should be analyzed in subacute stages as they could prove important for back pain chronicity., Competing Interests: MM, NL, FZ, KS, KU, ML, MU, AF, GS, ZZ, FN, PG, HF No competing interests declared, (© 2024, Mišić, Lee et al.)

Background: Unpredictability is a core but understudied dimension of adversities and has been receiving increasing attention recently. The effects of unpredictability on psychopathology and the underlying neural mechanisms, however, remain unclear. It is also unknown how unpredictability interacts with other dimensions of adversities in predicting brain development and psychopathology of youth., Methods: We applied cluster robust standard errors to examine how unpredictability was associated with the developmental changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of large-scale brain networks implicated in psychopathology, as well as the moderating role of deprivation, using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which included four measurements from baseline (mean ± s.d. age, 119.13 ± 7.51 months; 2815 females) to 3-year follow-up ( N = 5885)., Results: After controlling for threat, unpredictability was associated with a smaller increase in rsFC within default mode network (DMN) and a smaller decrease in rsFC between cingulo-opercular network (CON) and DMN. Neighborhood educational deprivation moderated the associations between unpredictability and changes in rsFC within DMN and fronto-parietal network (FPN), as well as between CON and DMN. A smaller decrease in rsFC between CON and DMN mediated the association between unpredictability and externalizing problems. Neighborhood educational deprivation moderated the indirect pathway from unpredictability to externalizing problems via a smaller decrease in CON-DMN rsFC., Conclusions: Our findings shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying the associations between unpredictability and adolescents' psychopathology and the moderating role of deprivation, highlighting the significance of providing stable environment and abundant educational opportunities to facilitate optimal development.

Mathematical operations are cognitive actions we take to calculate relations among numbers. Arithmetic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are elemental in education. Addition is the first one taught in school and is most popular in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. Division, typically taught last is least studied with fMRI. fMRI meta-analyses show that arithmetic operations activate brain areas in parietal, cingulate and insular cortices for children and adults. Critically, no meta-analysis examines concordance across brain correlates of separate arithmetic operations in children and adults. We review and examine using quantitative meta-analyses data from fMRI articles that report brain coordinates separately for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in children and adults. Results show that arithmetic operations elicit common areas of concordance in fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks in adults and children. Between operations differences are observed primarily for adults. Interestingly, higher within-group concordance, expressed in activation likelihood estimates, is found in brain areas associated with the cingulo-opercular network rather than the fronto-parietal network in children, areas also common between adults and children. Findings are discussed in relation to constructivist cognitive theory and practical directions for future research., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Chronic back pain (CBP) is a global health concern with significant societal and economic burden. While various predictors of back pain chronicity have been proposed, including demographic and psychosocial factors, neuroimaging studies have pointed to brain characteristics as predictors of CBP. However, large-scale, multisite validation of these predictors is currently lacking. In two independent longitudinal studies, we examined white matter diffusion imaging data and pain characteristics in patients with subacute back pain (SBP) over six- and 12-month periods. Diffusion data from individuals with CBP and healthy controls (HC) were analyzed for comparison. Whole-brain tract-based spatial statistics analyses revealed that a cluster in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) tract had larger fractional anisotropy (FA) values in patients who recovered (SBPr) compared to those with persistent pain (SBPp), and predicted changes in pain severity. The SLF FA values accurately classified patients at baseline and follow-up in a third publicly available dataset (Area under the Receiver Operating Curve ~ 0.70). Notably, patients who recovered had FA values larger than those of HC suggesting a potential role of SLF integrity in resilience to CBP. Structural connectivity-based models also classified SBPp and SBPr patients from the three data sets (validation accuracy 67%). Our results validate the right SLF as a robust predictor of CBP development, with potential for clinical translation. Cognitive and behavioral processes dependent on the right SLF, such as proprioception and visuospatial attention, should be analyzed in subacute stages as they could prove important for back pain chronicity.

Objective: Recent studies have shown that transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (tVNS) holds promise as a treatment for neurological or psychiatric disease through the ability to modulate neural activity in some brain regions without an invasive procedure. The objective of this study was to identify the neural correlates underlying the effects of tVNS., Methods: Twenty right-handed healthy subjects with normal hearing participated in this study. An auricle-applied tVNS device (Soricle, Neurive Co., Ltd., Gyeongsangnam-do, Republic of Korea) was used to administer tVNS stimulation. A session consisted of 14 blocks, including 7 blocks of tVNS stimulation or sham stimulation and 7 blocks of rest, and lasted approximately 7 min (1 block = 30 s). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed during the stimulation., Results: No activated regions were observed in the fMRI scans following both sham stimulation and tVNS after the first session. After the second session, tVNS activated two clusters of brain regions in the right frontal gyrus. A comparison of the activated regions after the second session of each stimulation revealed that the fMRI following tVNS exhibited four surviving clusters. Additionally, four clusters were activated in the overall stimulated area during both the first and second sessions. When comparing the fMRI results after each type of stimulation, the fMRI following tVNS showed four surviving clusters compared to the fMRI after sham stimulation., Conclusion: tVNS could stimulate some brain regions, including the fronto-parietal network. Stimulating these regions for treating neurological or psychiatric disease might require applying tVNS for at least 3.5 min., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Han, Shim, Lee and Park.)

We characterized the neurocognitive profile of communed-based individuals and unaffected siblings of patients with psychosis from Brazil reporting psychotic experiences (PEs). We also analyzed associations between PEs and the intra and inter-functional connectivity (FC) in the Default Mode Network (DMN), the Fronto-Parietal Network (FPN) and the Salience Network (SN) measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The combined sample of communed-based individuals and unaffected siblings of patients with psychosis comprised 417 (neurocognition) and 85 (FC) volunteers who were divided as having low (<75th percentile) and high (≥75th percentile) PEs (positive, negative, and depressive dimensions) assessed by the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences. The neurocognitive profile and the estimated current brief intellectual quotient (IQ) were assessed using the digit symbol (processing speed), arithmetic (working memory), block design (visual learning) and information (verbal learning) subtests of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-third edition. Logistic regression models were performed for neurocognitive analysis. For neuroimaging, we used the CONN toolbox to assess FC between the specified regions, and ROI-to-ROI analysis. In the combined sample, high PEs (all dimensions) were related to lower processing speed performance. High negative PEs were related to poor visual learning performance and lower IQ, while high depressive PEs were associated with poor working memory performance. Those with high negative PEs presented FPN hypoconnectivity between the right and left lateral prefrontal cortex. There were no associations between PEs and the DMN and SN FC. Brazilian individuals with high PEs showed neurocognitive impairments like those living in wealthier countries. Hypoconnectivity in the FPN in a community sample with high PEs is coherent with the hypothesis of functional dysconnectivity in schizophrenia., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation (rhTMS) has been shown to enhance auditory working memory manipulation, specifically by boosting theta oscillatory power in the dorsal auditory pathway during task performance. It remains unclear whether these enhancements (i) persist beyond the period of stimulation, (ii) if they can accelerate learning and (iii) if they would accumulate over several days of stimulation. In the present study, we investigated the lasting behavioral and electrophysiological effects of applying rhTMS over the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) throughout the course of seven sessions of cognitive training on an auditory working memory task., Methods: A limited sample of 14 neurologically healthy participants took part in the training protocol with an auditory working memory task while being stimulated with either theta (5 Hz) rhTMS or sham TMS. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded before, throughout five training sessions and after the end of training to assess to effects of rhTMS on behavioral performance and on oscillatory entrainment of the dorsal auditory network., Results: We show that this combined approach enhances theta oscillatory activity within the fronto-parietal network and causes improvements in auditoryworking memory performance. We show that compared to individuals who received sham stimulation, cognitive training can be accelerated when combined with optimized rhTMS, and that task performance benefits can outlast the training period by ∼ 3 days. Furthermore, we show that there is increased theta oscillatory power within the recruited dorsal auditory network during training, and that sustained EEG changes can be observed ∼ 3 days following stimulation., Discussion: The present study, while underpowered for definitive statistical analyses, serves to improve our understanding of the causal dynamic interactions supporting auditory working memory. Our results constitute an important proof of concept for the potential translational impact of non-invasive brain stimulation protocols and provide preliminary data for developing optimized rhTMS and training protocols that could be implemented in clinical populations., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision., (Copyright © 2024 Whittaker, Khayyat, Fortier-Lavallée, Laverdière, Bélanger, Zatorre and Albouy.)

Schizophrenia is associated with a range of cognitive deficits, among which impairments in sustained attention are particularly significant. Previous research has investigated functional changes in the fronto-parietal network (FPN) related to attentional control in schizophrenia. However, the role of structural connectivity within the FPN in sustained attention deficits remains under-explored. Utilizing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), this study investigated white matter integrity in 75 participants, comprising 37 individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and 38 healthy controls (HC). Psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance was assessed to gauge sustained attention. The SZ group showed a significant reduction in fractional anisotropy (FA) and streamline counts within white matter tracts connecting frontal and parietal regions, compared to the HC group. Further, significant negative correlations were found between PVT performance and white matter integrity measures within the SZ group, specifically in the left FPN. Our findings indicate that structural abnormalities in the FPN are associated with sustained attention deficits in schizophrenia. These results contribute to our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognitive impairments in schizophrenia and offer potential avenues for targeted therapeutic interventions. Further research is warranted to validate these outcomes and explore their clinical implications., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The intricate relationship between sleep deprivation (SD) and cognitive performance has long been a subject of research. Our study offers a novel angle by closely examining the neurobiological underpinnings of sustained attention deficits through the lens of the fronto-parietal network (FPN). Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, we delve into the changes in spontaneous brain activity after SD and explore their associations with performance on the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT)., Methods: We conducted an elaborate investigation involving 64 healthy, right-handed participants who underwent resting-state functional MRI scans before and after experiencing 24 h of sleep deprivation. Employing sophisticated statistical analyses, we scrutinized the changes in fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) through paired t -tests. Pearson correlation analyses were then applied to dissect the associations between these neurobiological shifts and behavioral outcomes in PVT., Results: The study yielded remarkable findings, revealing a dramatic decrease in fALFF values within critical areas of the FPN following SD. These alterations predominantly occurred in the frontal and parietal gyri and were inversely correlated with PVT performance metrics. Furthermore, we discovered that baseline fALFF values in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) have the potential to serve as compelling neurobiological markers, with high discriminatory power in identifying individual responses to the adverse effects of SD on cognitive performance., Conclusion: Our groundbreaking research underscores the pivotal role that the FPN plays in modulating attention and executive function, especially under the challenging conditions brought about by sleep deprivation. The findings offer critical insights that could shape the way we understand, assess, and potentially mitigate the cognitive impacts of SD, setting the stage for future research in this riveting domain., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Yao, Wang, Gao, Gao and Guo.)

The present study uses functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) to examine the overlapping and specific neural correlates of contextualized emotional conflict control and domain-general conflict control. During a performance on emotional and domain-general conflict tasks, conjunction analyses showed that neural areas distributed in the frontoparietal network were engaged in both processes, supporting the notion that similar neural mechanisms are implemented in these two types of control. Importantly, disjunction analyses revealed a broader neural recruitment of emotional conflict control compared to domain-general conflict control as shown by the possible lateralization of the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC), such that emotional conflict control significantly involved the left lPFC while domain-general conflict control seemly involved the right lPFC. Results of generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analyses further demonstrated that emotional conflict control, compared to domain-general conflict control, elicited broader synergistic activities in individuals' brain networks. Together, these findings offer novel and compelling neural evidence that furthers our understanding of the complex relationship between domain-general and emotional conflict control., (© 2023 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has made an unprecedented shift in children's daily lives. Children are increasingly spending time with screens to learn and connect with others. As the online environment rapidly substitutes in-person experience, understanding children's neuropsychological trajectories associated with screen experiences is important. Previous findings suggest that excessive screen use can lead children to prefer more immediate rewards over delayed outcomes. We hypothesized that increased screen time delays a child's development of inhibitory control system in the brain (i.e., fronto-striatal circuitry). By analyzing neuropsychological data from 8324 children (9-11ys) from the ABCD Study, we found that children who had more screen time showed a higher reward orientation and weaker fronto-striatal connectivity. Importantly, we found that the daily screen exposure mediated the effect of reward sensitivity on the development of the inhibitory control system in the brain over a two year period. These findings suggest possible negative long-term impacts of increased daily screen time on children's neuropsychological development. The results further demonstrated that screen time influences dorsal striatum connectivity, which suggests that the effect of daily screen use is a habitual seeking behavior. The study provides neural and behavioral evidence for the negative impact of daily screen use on developing children., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: Using transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to improve visuospatial working memory (vsWM) has received considerable attention over the past few years. However, fundamental issues remain, such as the optimal frequency, the generality of behavioral effects, and the anatomical specificity of stimulation., Objectives: Here we examined the effects of two theory-driven tACS protocols for improving vsWM on behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures., Methods: Twenty adults each completed 3 HD-tACS conditions (Tuned, Slow, and Sham) on two separate days. The Tuned condition refers to a situation in which the frequency of tACS is tuned to individual theta peak measured during a vsWM task. By contrast, the frequency was fixed to 4 Hz in the Slow condition. A high-definition tACS was deployed to target smaller frontal and parietal regions for increasing their phase-locking values. During each tACS condition, participants performed vsWM, mental rotation (MR), and arithmetic tasks. Resting-state EEG (rs-EEG) was recorded before and after each condition., Results: Compared with Sham, Tuned but not Slow improved both vsWM and MR but not arithmetics. The rs-EEG recording showed an increased fronto-parietal synchrony for Tuned, and this increase in synchronicity was correlated with the behavioral improvement. A follow-up study showed no behavioral improvement in Tuned with an anti-phase setting., Conclusion: We provide the first evidence that simulating right fronto-parietal network with the tuned frequency increases the interregional synchronicity and improves performance on two spatial tasks. The results provide insight into the structure of spatial abilities as well as suggestions for stimulating the fronto-parietal network., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest none., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Attention is fundamental to all cognition. In the primate brain, it is implemented by a large-scale network that consists of areas spanning across all major lobes, also including subcortical regions. Classical attention accounts assume that control over the selection process in this network is exerted by 'top-down' mechanisms in the fronto-parietal cortex that influence sensory representations via feedback signals. More recent studies have expanded this view of attentional control. In this review, we will start from a traditional top-down account of attention control, and then discuss more recent findings on feature-based attention, thalamic influences, temporal network dynamics, and behavioral dynamics that collectively lead to substantial modifications. We outline how the different emerging accounts can be reconciled and integrated into a unified theory., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest None declared., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The current standard model of language production involves a sensorimotor dorsal stream connecting areas in the temporo-parietal junction with those in the inferior frontal gyrus and lateral premotor cortex. These regions have been linked to various aspects of word production such as phonological processing or articulatory programming, primarily through neuropsychological and functional imaging group studies. Most if not all the theoretical descriptions of this model imply that the same network should be identifiable across individual speakers. We tested this hypothesis by quantifying the variability of activation observed across individuals within each dorsal stream anatomical region. This estimate was based on electrical activity recorded directly from the cerebral cortex with millisecond accuracy in awake epileptic patients clinically implanted with intracerebral depth electrodes for pre-surgical diagnosis. Each region's activity was quantified using two different metrics-intra-cerebral evoked related potentials and high gamma activity-at the level of the group, the individual and the recording contact. The two metrics show simultaneous activation of parietal and frontal regions during a picture naming task, in line with models that posit interactive processing during word retrieval. They also reveal different levels of between-patient variability across brain regions, except in core auditory and motor regions. The independence and non-uniformity of cortical activity estimated through the two metrics push the current model towards sub-second and sub-region explorations focused on individualized language speech production. Several hypotheses are considered for this within-region heterogeneity., (© 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Balanced time perspective refers to the ability to flexibly switch between different temporal foci in an adaptive manner according to the current context. Functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) has been suggested to support balanced time perspective. The coupling between the DMN and fronto-parietal network (FPN) may drive many important expressions of internally directed cognition. However, it remains unclear whether balanced time perspective is supported by the interaction between the FPN and DMN. To examine these issues, we recruited 91 participants (52 males with mean age of 19.6, and 39 females with mean age of 20.0) to undergo resting-state brain imaging scan and to complete a questionnaire measuring balanced time perspective. Seed-based voxel-wise functional connectivity analyses implicated midline DMN regions including the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (amPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) along with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), precuneus, and cerebellum in supporting a balanced time perspective. More importantly, functional connectivity between the right amPFC and right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in the FPN was found to associate with balanced time perspective. Our findings suggest the importance of coordinated brain activity in supporting a balanced time perspective.

Purpose: The study aimed to assess how isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) mutation status in patients with glioma may alter functional connectivity (FC) in the default mode network (DMN) and fronto-parietal network (FPN)., Methods: Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, a seed-based FC analysis was employed to investigate connectivity within and between networks in seventeen patients with IDH1-mutant glioma (IDH1-M), eleven patients with IDH1-wildtype glioma (IDH1-WT), and nineteen healthy controls (HC)., Results: For FC within the DMN, compared to HC, both IDH1-M and IDH1-WT exhibited significantly increased FC between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the right retrosplenial cortex, right precuneus/cuneus, and right middle cingulate cortex and between the right lateral parietal cortex (LP&#95;R) and the right middle temporal gyrus. For FC within the FPN, compared with HC, IDH1-M showed significantly greater FC between the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC&#95;R) and the right inferior, right medial, and right middle frontal gyrus, and IDH1-WT showed significantly increased FC between the PPC&#95;R and the right middle frontal gyrus. For FC between the DMN and FPN, relative to IDH1-WT and HC, IDH1-M exhibited significantly increased FC between the LP&#95;R and the right superior frontal gyrus and between the PPC&#95;R and the right precuneus/cuneus. In contrast, compared to IDH1-M and HC, IDH1-WT showed significantly reduced FC between the PPC&#95;R and the right angular gyrus., Conclusion: The preliminary findings revealed that there should be differences in the patterns of network reorganization between IDH1-M and IDH1-WT with different growth kinetics., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

A right-hemisphere dominance for visuospatial attention has been invoked as the most prominent neural feature of pseudoneglect (i.e., the leftward visuospatial bias exhibited in neurologically healthy individuals) but the neurophysiological underpinnings of such advantage are still controversial. Previous studies investigating visuospatial bias in multiple-objects visual enumeration reported that pseudoneglect is maintained in healthy elderly and amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), but not in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we aimed at investigating the neurophysiological correlates sustaining the rearrangements of the visuospatial bias along the progression from normal to pathological aging. To this aim, we recorded EEG activity during an enumeration task and analyzed intra-hemispheric fronto-parietal and inter-hemispheric effective connectivity adopting indexes from graph theory in patients with mild AD, patients with aMCI, and healthy elderly controls (HC). Results revealed that HC showed the leftward bias and stronger fronto-parietal effective connectivity in the right as compared to the left hemisphere. A breakdown of pseudoneglect in patients with AD was associated with both the loss of the fronto-parietal asymmetry and the reduction of inter-hemispheric parietal interactions. In aMCI, initial alterations of the attentional bias were associated with a reduction of parietal inter-hemispheric communication, but not with modulations of the right fronto-parietal connectivity advantage, which remained intact. These data provide support to the involvement of fronto-parietal and inter-parietal pathways in the leftward spatial bias, extending these notions to the complex neurophysiological alterations characterizing pathological aging., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Bagattini, Esposito, Ferrari, Mazza and Brignani.)

Cognitive tasks induce fluctuations in the functional connectivity between brain regions which constitute cognitive networks in the human brain. Although several cognitive networks have been identified, consensus still cannot be achieved on the precise borders and distribution of involved brain regions for each network, due to the multifarious use of diverse brain atlases in different studies. To address the problem, the current study proposed a novel approach to generate a fused cognitive network with the optimal performance in discriminating cognitive states by using graph learning, following the synthesization of one cognitive network defined by different brain atlases, and the construction of a hierarchical framework comprised of one main version and other supplementary versions of the specific cognitive network. As a result, the proposed method demonstrated better results compared with other machine learning methods for recognizing cognitive states, which was revealed by analyzing an fMRI dataset related to the mental arithmetic task. Our findings suggest that the fused cognitive network provides the potential to develop new mind decoding approaches., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Zhang, Yang, Kuai, Chen, Huang, Liang and Zhong.)

Background: Healthy older adults show a decrease in motor performance and motor learning capacity as well as in working memory (WM) performance. WM has been suggested to be involved in motor learning processes, such as sequence learning. Correlational evidence has shown the involvement of the frontoparietal network (FPN), a network underlying WM processes, in motor sequence learning. However, causal evidence is currently lacking. Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) studies have focused so far predominantly on motor-related areas to enhance motor sequence learning while areas associated with more cognitive aspects of motor learning have not yet been addressed., Hypothesis: In this study, we aim to provide causal evidence for the involvement of WM processes and the underlying FPN in the successful performance of a motor sequence learning task by using theta transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) targeting the FPN during a motor sequence learning task., Methods: In a cohort of 20 healthy older adults, we applied bifocal tACS in the theta range to the FPN during a sequence learning task. With the use of a double-blind, cross-over design, we tested the efficacy of active compared to sham stimulation. Two versions of the motor task were used: one with high and one with low WM load, to explore the efficacy of stimulation on tasks differing in WM demand. Additionally, the effects of stimulation on WM performance were addressed using an N-back task. The tACS frequency was personalized by means of EEG measuring the individual theta peak frequency during the N-back task., Results: The application of personalized theta tACS to the FPN improved performance during the motor sequence learning task with high WM load (p < .001), but not with low WM load. Active stimulation significantly improved both speed (p < .001), and accuracy (p = .03) during the task with high WM load. In addition, the stimulation paradigm improved performance on the N-back task for the 2-back task (p = .013), but not for 1-back and 3-back., Conclusion: The performance during a motor sequence learning task can be enhanced by means of personalized bifocal theta tACS to the FPN when WM load is high, indicating that the efficacy of this stimulation paradigm is dependent on the cognitive demand during the learning task. These data provide further causal evidence for the critical involvement of WM processes and the FPN during the execution of a motor sequence learning task in healthy older. These findings open new exciting possibilities to counteract the age-related decline in motor performance, learning capacity and WM performance., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to test the functional role of parietal and prefrontal cortical regions activated during a playing card Guilty Knowledge Task (GKT). Single-pulse TMS was applied to 15 healthy volunteers at each of three target sites: left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and midline parietal cortex. TMS pulses were applied at each of five latencies (from 0 to 480 ms) after the onset of a card stimulus. TMS applied to the parietal cortex exerted a latency-specific increase in inverse efficiency score and in reaction time when subjects were instructed to lie relative to when asked to respond with the truth, and this effect was specific to when TMS was applied at 240 ms after stimulus onset. No effects of TMS were detected at left or right DLPFC sites. This manipulation with TMS of performance in a deception task appears to support a critical role for the parietal cortex in intentional false responding, particularly in stimulus selection processes needed to execute a deceptive response in the context of a GKT. However, this interpretation is only preliminary, as further experiments are needed to compare performance within and outside of a deceptive context to clarify the effects of deceptive intent., Competing Interests: BL, LB, HG, and SL were supported by the NIMH Intramural Research Program (ZIAMH002955). This work was done while BL and SL were at Columbia University, prior to their NIMH employment. SL is an inventor on a patent on TMS technology assigned to Columbia University. SL has received grant support from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Stanley Medical Research Foundation, Neosync, Nexstim, NIH, and Brainsway. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Luber, Beynel, Spellman, Gura, Ploesser, Termini and Lisanby.)

In real life, humans make decisions by taking into account multiple independent factors, such as delay and probability. Cognitive psychology suggests that cognitive control mechanisms play a key role when facing such complex task conditions. However, in value-based decision-making, it still remains unclear to what extent cognitive control mechanisms become essential when the task condition is complex. In this study, we investigated decision-making behaviors and underlying neural mechanisms using a multifactor gambling task where participants simultaneously considered probability and delay. Decision-making behavior in the multifactor task was modulated by both probability and delay. The behavioral effect of probability was stronger than delay, consistent with previous studies. Furthermore, in a subset of conditions that recruited fronto-parietal activations, reaction times were paradoxically elongated despite lower probabilistic uncertainty. Notably, such a reaction time elongation did not occur in control tasks involving single factors. Meta-analysis of brain activations suggested an interpretation that the paradoxical increase of reaction time may be associated with strategy switching. Consistent with this interpretation, logistic regression analysis of the behavioral data suggested a presence of multiple decision strategies. Taken together, we found that a novel complex value-based decision-making task cause prominent activations in fronto-parietal cortex. Furthermore, we propose that these activations can be interpreted as recruitment of cognitive control system in complex situations., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Verbal instructions allow fast and optimal implementation of novel behaviors. Previous research has shown that different control-related variables structure neural activity in frontoparietal regions during the encoding of novel instructed tasks. However, it is uncertain whether different task goals modulate the organizing effect of these variables. In this study, we investigated whether the neural encoding of three task-relevant variables (dimension integration, response set complexity and target category) is modulated by implementation and memorization demands. To do so, we combined functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), an instruction-following paradigm and multivariate analyses. We addressed how and where distributed activity patterns encoded the instructions' variables and the impact of the implementation and memorization demands on the fidelity of these representations. We further explored the nature of the neural code underpinning this process. Our results reveal, first, that the content of to-be-implemented and to-be-memorized instructions is represented in overlapping brain regions, flexibly using a common neural code across tasks. Importantly, they also suggest that preparing to implement the instructions increases the decodability of task-relevant information in frontoparietal areas, in comparison with memorization demands. Overall, our work emphasizes both similarities and differences in task coding under the two contextual demands. These findings qualify the previous understanding of novel instruction processing, suggesting that representing task attributes in a generalizable code, together with the increase in encoding fidelity induced by the implementation goals, could be key mechanisms for proactive control in novel scenarios., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The fronto-parietal network (FPN) is crucial for cognitively demanding tasks as it selectively represents task-relevant information and controls other brain regions. To implement these functions, it has been argued that it is a flexible hub that reconfigures its functional connectivity with other networks. This was supported by a study in which a set of demanding tasks were presented, that varied in their sensory features, comparison rules, and response mappings, and the FPN showed greater reconfiguration of functional connectivity between tasks than any other network. However, this task set was designed to engage the FPN, and therefore it remains an open question whether the FPN is in a flexible hub in general or only for such task sets. Using two freely available datasets (Experiment 1, N = 15, Experiment 2, N = 644), we examined dynamic functional connectivity during naturalistic cognition, while participants watched a movie. Many differences in the flexibility were found across networks but the FPN was not the most flexible hub in the brain, during either movie for any of two measures, using a regression model or a correlation model and across five timescales. We, therefore, conclude that the FPN does not have the trait of being a flexible hub, although it may adopt this state for particular task sets., (© 2021 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Oscillatory theta activity in a fronto-parietal network has been associated with working memory (WM) processes and may be directly related to WM performance. In their seminal study, Polanía et al. (2012) (de-)coupled a fronto-parietal theta-network by applying transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), and showed that anti-phase tACS led to slower and in-phase tACS to faster response times in a verbal WM task compared to placebo stimulation. In the literature, this 'synchronization-desynchronization' effect has only been partly replicated, and electric field modelling suggests that it might not be the fronto-parietal network that is primarily stimulated during in-phase tACS with a shared return electrode. This provides one possible reason for inconsistency in the literature. In this study, we aimed to reproduce the findings reported by Polanía et al. (2012). We also aimed to investigate whether in-phase theta tACS with multiple close-by return electrodes for focal stimulation of the frontal and the parietal cortex will have at least as much of a facilitatory effect as the in-phase stimulation as indicated by Polania et al. (2012). In a single-trial distributional analysis, we explored whether mean, variation and right-skewness of the response time distribution are affected. Against our hypothesis, we found no 'synchronization-desynchronization' effect by fronto-parietal theta tACS on response times using the same delayed letter discrimination task and stimulation parameters in two experiments, both between-subjects and within-subjects. However, we could show that in a more demanding 3-back task, fronto-parietal in-phase and in-phase focal theta tACS substantially improved task performance compared to placebo stimulation., (© 2021 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The ability to flexibly adapt thoughts and actions in a goal-directed manner appears to rely on cognitive control mechanisms that are strongly impacted by individual differences. A powerful research strategy for investigating the nature of individual variation is to study monozygotic (identical) twins. Evidence of twin effects have been observed in prior behavioral and neuroimaging studies, yet within the domain of cognitive control, it remains to be demonstrated that the neural underpinnings of such effects are specific and reliable. Here, we utilize a multi-task, within-subjects event-related neuroimaging design with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate twin effects through multivariate pattern similarity analyses. We focus on fronto-parietal brain regions exhibiting consistently increased activation associated with cognitive control demands across four task domains: selective attention, context processing, multi-tasking, and working memory. Healthy young adult monozygotic twin pairs exhibited increased similarity of within- and cross-task activation patterns in these fronto-parietal regions, relative to unrelated pairs. Twin activation pattern similarity effects were clearest under high control demands, were not present in a set of task-unrelated parcels or due to anatomic similarity, and were primarily observed during the within-trial timepoints in which the control demands peaked. Together, these results indicate that twin similarity in the neural representation of cognitive control may be domain-general but also functionally and temporally specific in relation to the level of control demand. The findings suggest a genetic and/or environmental basis for individual variation in cognitive control function, and highlight the potential of twin-based neuroimaging designs for exploring heritability questions within this domain., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Performance in complex tasks is essential for many high risk operators. The achievement of such tasks is supported by high-level cognitive functions arguably involving functional activity and connectivity in a large ensemble of brain areas that form the fronto-parietal network. Here we aimed at determining whether the functional connectivity at rest within this network could predict performance in a complex task: the Space Fortress video game. Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) data from 32 participants were recorded during a Resting-State period, the completion of a simple version of Space Fortress (monotask) and the original version (multitask). The intrinsic functional connectivity within the fronto-parietal network (i.e., during the Resting-State) was a significant predictor of performance at Space Fortress multitask but not at its monotask version. The same pattern was observed for the functional connectivity during the task. Our overall results suggest that Resting-State functional connectivity within the fronto-parietal network could be used as an intrinsic brain marker for performance prediction of a complex task achievement, but not for simple task performance., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Chenot, Lepron, De Boissezon and Scannella.)

Cognitive control is built upon the interactions of multiple brain regions. It is currently unclear whether the involved regions are temporally separable in relation to different cognitive processes and how these regions are temporally associated in relation to different task performances. Here, using stop-signal task data acquired from 119 healthy participants, we showed that concurrent and poststop cognitive controls were associated with temporally distinct but interrelated neural mechanisms. Specifically, concurrent cognitive control activated regions in the cingulo-opercular network (including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex [dACC], insula, and thalamus), together with superior temporal gyrus, secondary motor areas, and visual cortex; while regions in the fronto-parietal network (including the lateral prefrontal cortex [lPFC] and inferior parietal lobule) and cerebellum were only activated during poststop cognitive control. The associations of activities between concurrent and poststop regions were dependent on task performance, with the most notable difference in the cerebellum. Importantly, while concurrent and poststop signals were significantly correlated during successful cognitive control, concurrent activations during erroneous trials were only correlated with posterror activations in the fronto-parietal network but not cerebellum. Instead, the cerebellar activation during posterror cognitive control was likely to be driven secondarily by posterror activation in the lPFC. Further, a dynamic causal modeling analysis demonstrated that postsuccess cognitive control was associated with inhibitory connectivity from the lPFC to cerebellum, while excitatory connectivity from the lPFC to cerebellum was present during posterror cognitive control. Overall, these findings suggest dissociable but temporally related neural mechanisms underlying concurrent, postsuccess, and posterror cognitive control processes in healthy individuals., (© 2021 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Treatment of bipolar depression poses a significant clinical challenge. Lamotrigine is one of a few efficacious drugs, however, it needs to be titrated very slowly and response can only be assessed after 10-12 weeks. With only a proportion of patients responding, an exploration of factors underlying treatment responsivity is of paramount clinical importance, as it may lead to an allocation of the drug to those most likely to respond to it. This study aimed at identifying differences in patterns of pre-treatment resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) that may underlie response to lamotrigine in bipolar depression. After a baseline MRI scan, twenty-one patients with bipolar depression were treated with lamotrigine in an open-label design; response, defined as ≥50% decrease in Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) score, was assessed after 10-12 weeks of treatment. Twenty healthy controls had a baseline clinical assessment and scan but did not receive any treatment. Fifteen out of 21 (71%) patients responded to lamotrigine. Treatment responsivity was associated with enhanced pre-treatment rsFC of the right fronto-parietal network (FPN) and dorsal attention network (DAN) with left precuneus. The lack of treatment response was additionally characterised by reduced rsFC: of the DAN with right middle temporal gyrus; of the default mode network (DMN) with left precuneus; of the extended sensory-motor area with areas including the left hippocampus/left amygdala and left subcallosal cortex/nucleus accumbens; and of the left FPN with left inferior temporal gyrus/occipital fusiform gyrus/lateral occipital cortex. The results suggest that preserved rsFC between the FPN and DAN, the networks involved in cognitive control, and the hub of the posterior DMN, the left precuneus, may be critical for good response to lamotrigine as an add-on treatment in patients with bipolar depression. The study also suggests a more general decrease in rsFC to be related to poor treatment responsivity.

Investigating human consciousness based on brain activity alone is a key challenge in cognitive neuroscience. One of its central facets, the ability to form autobiographical memories, has been investigated through several fMRI studies that have revealed a pattern of activity across a network of frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobe regions when participants view personal photographs, as opposed to when they view photographs from someone else's life. Here, our goal was to attempt to decode when participants were re-experiencing an entire event, captured on video from a first-person perspective, relative to a very similar event experienced by someone else. Participants were asked to sit passively in a wheelchair while a researcher pushed them around a local mall. A small wearable camera was mounted on each participant, in order to capture autobiographical videos of the visit from a first-person perspective. One week later, participants were scanned while they passively viewed different categories of videos; some were autobiographical, while others were not. A machine-learning model was able to successfully classify the video categories above chance, both within and across participants, suggesting that there is a shared mechanism differentiating autobiographical experiences from non-autobiographical ones. Moreover, the classifier brain maps revealed that the fronto-parietal network, mid-temporal regions and extrastriate cortex were critical for differentiating between autobiographical and non-autobiographical memories. We argue that this novel paradigm captures the true nature of autobiographical memories, and is well suited to patients (e.g., with brain injuries) who may be unable to respond reliably to traditional experimental stimuli.

Intellectual disability (ID) is associated with aberrant structural and functional development of the brain, yet how the dynamical developmental changes of the structure and function of ID from childhood to around puberty remains unknown. To explore the abnormal developmental trajectories of structure and function, 40 children with ID aged 6-13 years and 30 sex-, age-, and educational level-matched healthy controls (HC) with age range from 6 to 13 were recruited. The automatic voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state functional connectivity (FC) analyses were adopted to delineate the structural and functional differences. Significantly decreased total gray matter volume (GMV) and white matter volume (WMV) in children with ID were found, and the developmental trajectories of GMV and WMV in children with ID showed an opposite direction as compared with HC. The voxel-wise VMB analysis further revealed significantly increased GMV in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), bilateral orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus (orb&#95;IFG.L, orb&#95;IFG.R), right cuneus (cuneus.R), and bilateral middle frontal gyrus (MFG.L, MFG.R) in children with ID. The following seed-based whole-brain functional connectivity analyses of the brain areas with changed GMV found decreased FCs between the cuneus.R and left intraparietal sulcus (IPS.L) and between the MFG.R and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in children with ID. Moreover, negative correlations between GMV values in the dmPFC, orb&#95;IFG.L, cuneus.R, and intelligence quotient (IQ) scores and positive correlations between the FCs of the cuneus.R with IPS.L and MFG.R with ACC and IQ scores were found in children with ID and HC. Our findings provide evidence for the abnormal structural and functional development in children with ID and highlight the important role of frontoparietal network in the typical development. The abnormal development of GMV and functional couplings found in this study may be the neuropathological bases of children with ID., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ma, Tan, Jiang, Wang, Cheng, Xie, Li, Wang and Li.)

Purpose: Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) is an emerging tool to explore the functional connectivity of different brain regions. We aimed to assess the disruption of functional connectivity of the Default Mode Network (DMN), Dorsal Attention Network(DAN) and Fronto-Parietal Network (FPN) in patients with glial tumors., Methods: rsfMRI data acquired on 3T-MR of treatment-naive glioma patients prospectively recruited (2015-2019) and matched controls from the 1000 functional-connectomes-project were analyzed using the CONN functional toolbox. Seed-Based Connectivity Analysis (SBCA) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA, with 10 to 100 components) were performed to study reliably the three networks of interest., Results: 35 patients with gliomas (17 WHO grade I-II, 18 grade III-IV) and 70 controls were included. Global increased DMN connectivity was consistently found with SBCA and ICA in patients compared to controls (Cluster1: Precuneus, height: p < 10 -6 ; Cluster2: subcallosum; height: p < 10 -5 ). However, an area of decreased connectivity was found in the posterior corpus callosum, particularly in high-grade gliomas (height: p < 10 -5 ). The DAN demonstrated small areas of increased connectivity in frontal and occipital regions (height: p < 10 -6 ). For the FPN, increased connectivity was noted in the precuneus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and frontal cortex. No difference in the connectivity of the networks of interest was demonstrated between low- and high-grade gliomas, as well as when stratified by their IDH1-R132H (isocitrate dehydrogenase) mutation status., Conclusion: Altered functional connectivity is reliably found with SBCA and ICA in the DMN, DAN, and FPN in glioma patients, possibly explained by decreased connectivity between the cerebral hemispheres across the corpus callosum due to disruption of the connections.

The driver's attentional state is a significant human factor in traffic safety. The executive control process is a crucial sub-function of attention. To explore the relationship between the driver's driving performance and executive control function, a total of 35 healthy subjects were invited to take part in a simulated driving experiment and a task-cuing experiment. The subjects were divided into three groups according to their driving performance (aberrant driving behaviors, including lapses and errors) by the clustering method. Then the performance efficiency and electroencephalogram (EEG) data acquired in the task-cuing experiment were compared among the three groups. The effect of group, task transition types and cue-stimulus intervals (CSIs) were statistically analyzed by using the repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the post hoc simple effect analysis. The subjects with lower driving error rates had better executive control efficiency as indicated by the reaction time (RT) and error rate in the task-cuing experiment, which was related with their better capability to allocate the available attentional resources, to express the external stimuli and to process the information in the nervous system, especially the fronto-parietal network. The activation degree of the frontal area fluctuated, and of the parietal area gradually increased along with the increase of CSI, which implied the role of the frontal area in task setting reconstruction and working memory maintaining, and of the parietal area in stimulus-Response (S-R) mapping expression. This research presented evidence of the close relationship between executive control functions and driving performance.

Working memory deficits are common in youth with epilepsy and consistently associated with long-term negative outcomes. Existing research on the neural basis of working memory disruptions in pediatric epilepsy is limited. The question of whether differences in the functional connectivity of neural networks underlie working memory disruptions in pediatric patients with epilepsy remains unanswered. A total of 49 adolescents between the ages of 13-17 years participated in this study. Twenty-nine adolescents had confirmed epilepsy (n = 17 generalized epilepsy, n = 6 localization-related, n = 6 unclassified). The control group included 20 healthy adolescents. A total of 10-min resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging was obtained for all participants. NeuroSynth-derived regions of interest were used as nodes that comprise working memory neural networks. Group differences in resting state functional connectivity were examined between adolescents with epilepsy and controls. Functional connectivity was computed as the temporal correlation of functional magnetic resonance imaging signal fluctuations between any two regions of interest. Compared to controls, adolescents in the epilepsy group demonstrated both hypoconnectivity and hyperconnectivity in cortical areas that map onto fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks, as well as cerebellar regions. Functional connectivity between pairs of regions of interest was also significantly associated with behavioral measures of working memory across epilepsy and control groups. This study demonstrates that the presence of abnormal patterns in resting state neural network connectivity may underlie the working memory disruptions that frequently characterize the neurocognitive profile of youth with epilepsy.

Prior knowledge and long-term memory can guide our attention to facilitate search for and detection of subtle targets embedded in a complex scene. A number of neuropsychological and experimental studies have investigated this effect, yet results in the field remain mixed, as there is a lack of consensus regarding the neural correlates thought to support memory-guided attention. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to identify a common set of brain structures involved in memory-guided attention. Statistical analyses were computed on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that presented participants with a task that required them to detect a target or a change embedded in repeated and novel complex visual displays. After a systematic search, 10 fMRI studies met the selection criteria and were included in the analysis. The results yielded four significant clusters. Activity in right inferior parietal (Brodmann area [BA] 9) and right superior parietal (BA 7) lobes suggests involvement of a fronto-parietal attention network, while activity in left mid-cingulate cortex (BA 23) and right middle frontal gyrus (BA 10) suggests involvement of a fronto-parietal control network. These findings are consistent with the notion that fronto-parietal circuits are important for interfacing retrieved memories with attentional systems to guide search. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory Psychology > Learning Psychology > Attention., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The gut microbiome appears to play an important role in human health and disease. However, only little is known about how variability in the gut microbiome contributes to individual differences during early and sensitive stages of brain and behavioral development. The current study examined the link between gut microbiome, brain, and behavior in newborn infants (N = 63; M [age] = 25 days). Infant gut microbiome diversity was measured from stool samples using metagenomic sequencing, infant functional brain network connectivity was assessed using a resting state functional near infrared spectroscopy (rs-fNIRS) procedure, and infant behavioral temperament was assessed using parental report. Our results show that gut microbiota composition is linked to individual variability in brain network connectivity, which in turn mediated individual differences in behavioral temperament, specifically negative emotionality, among infants. Furthermore, virulence factors, possibly indexing pathogenic activity, were associated with differences in brain network connectivity linked to negative emotionality. These findings provide novel insights into the early developmental origins of the gut microbiome-brain axis and its association with variability in important behavioral traits. This suggests that the gut microbiome is an important biological factor to consider when studying human development and health., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In healthy participants, the strength of task-evoked network reconfigurations is associated with cognitive performance across several cognitive domains. It is, however, unclear whether the capacity for network reconfiguration also plays a role in cognitive deficits in brain tumor patients. In the current study, we examined whether the level of reconfiguration of the fronto-parietal ('FPN') and default mode network ('DMN') during task execution is correlated with cognitive performance in patients with different types of brain tumors. For this purpose, we combined data from a resting state and task-fMRI paradigm in patients with a glioma or meningioma. Cognitive performance was measured using the in-scanner working memory task, as well as an out-of-scanner cognitive flexibility task. Task-evoked changes in functional connectivity strength (defined as the mean of the absolute values of all connections) and in functional connectivity patterns within and between the FPN and DMN did not differ significantly across meningioma and fast (HGG) and slowly growing glioma (LGG) patients. Across these brain tumor patients, a significant and positive correlation was found between the level of task-evoked reconfiguration of the FPN and cognitive performance. This suggests that the capacity for FPN reconfiguration also plays a role in cognitive deficits in brain tumor patients, as was previously found for normal cognitive performance in healthy controls.

Numerous studies have reported the beneficial effects of acute exercise on executive functions. Less is known, however, about the effects of exercise on working memory as one subcomponent of executive functions and about its effects on older adults. We investigated the effects of acute moderate-intensity exercise on working memory performance, the respective cortical hemodynamic activation patterns, and the development and persistence of such effects in healthy older adults. Forty-four participants ( M : 69.18 years ± 3.92; 21 females) performed a letter 2-back task before and at three time points after (post 15 min, post 30 min, and post 45 min) either listening to an audiobook or exercising (15 min; 50% VO 2 -peak). Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to assess cortical hemodynamic activation and brain-behavior correlations in the fronto-parietal working memory network. Overall, we found no group differences for working memory performance. However, only within the experimental group, 2-back performance was enhanced 15 min and 45 min post-exercise. Furthermore, 15 min post-exercise frontal activation predicted working memory performance, regardless of group. In sum, our results indicate slight beneficial effects of acute moderate-intensity exercise on working memory performance in healthy older adults. Findings are discussed in light of the cognitive aging process and moderators affecting the exercise-cognition relationship.

Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) allows mapping temporally coherent brain networks, and intra- and inter-network alterations have been described in different diseases. This prospective study investigated hemispheric resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) differences in the default-mode network (DMN) and fronto-parietal network (FPN) between patients with left- and right-hemispheric gliomas (LH PAT, RH PAT), addressing asymmetry effects the tumor might have on network-specific intrinsic functional connectivity under consideration of the prognostically relevant isocitrate-dehydrogenase (IDH) mutation status. Twenty-seven patients (16 LH PAT, 12 IDH-wildtype) and 27 healthy controls underwent anatomical and rs-fMRI as well as neuropsychological assessment. Independent component analyses were performed to identify the DMN and FPN. Hemispheric DMN- and FPN-RSFC were computed, compared across groups, and correlated with cognitive performance. Patient groups did not differ in tumor volume, grade or location. RH PAT showed higher contra-tumoral DMN-RSFC than controls and LH PAT. With regard to the FPN, contra-tumoral RSFC was increased in both patient groups as compared to controls. Higher contra-tumoral RSFC was associated with worse cognitive performance in patients, which, however, seemed to apply mainly to IDH-wildtype patients. The benefit of RSFC alterations for cognitive performance varied depending on the affected hemisphere, cognitive demand, and seemed to be altered by IDH-mutation status. At the time of study initiation, a clinical trial registration was not mandatory at our faculty, but it can be applied for if requested., (© 2020 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The present review covers the latest findings on the lateralization of the dorsal and ventral attention systems, their functional specialization, and their clinical relevance for stroke-induced attentional dysfunction. First, the original assumption of a bilateral dorsal system for top-down attention and a right-lateralized ventral system for stimulus-driven attention is critically reviewed. The evidence for the involvement of the left parietal cortex in attentional functions is discussed and findings on putative pathways linking the dorsal and ventral network are presented. In the second part of the review, we focus on the different attentional subsystems and their lateralization, discussing the differences between spatial, feature- and object-based attention, and motor attention. We also review studies based on predictive coding frameworks of attentional functions. Finally, in the third section, we provide an overview of the consequences of specific disruption within the attention networks after stroke. The role of the interhemispheric (im)balance is discussed, and the results of new promising therapeutic approaches employing brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are presented., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Sleep inertia refers to a distinct physiological state of waking up from sleep accompanied by performance impairments and sleepiness. The neural substrates of sleep inertia are unknown, but growing evidence suggests that this inertia state maintains certain sleep features. To investigate the neurophysiological mechanisms of sleep inertia, a comparison of pre-sleep and post-sleep wakefulness with eyes-open resting-state was performed using simultaneous EEG-fMRI, which has the potential to reveal the dynamic details of neuroelectric and hemodynamic responses with high temporal resolution. Our data suggested sleep-like features of slow EEG power and decreased BOLD activity were persistent during sleep inertia. In the pre-sleep phase, participants with stronger EEG vigilance showed stronger activity in the fronto-parietal network (FPN), but this phenomenon disappeared during sleep inertia. A time course analysis confirmed a decreased correlation between EEG vigilance and the FPN activity during sleep inertia. This simultaneous EEG-fMRI study advanced our understanding of sleep inertia and revealed the importance of the FPN in maintaining awareness. This is the first study to reveal the dynamic brain network changes from multi-modalities perspective during sleep inertia., (© 2020 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Previous studies have shown age-related impairments in the ability to suppress salient distractors. One possibility is that this is mediated by age-related impairments in the recruitment of the left intraparietal sulcus (Left IPS), which has been shown to mediate the suppression of salient distractors in healthy, young participants. Alternatively, this effect may be due to a shift in engagement from proactive control to reactive control, possibly to compensate for age-related impairments in proactive control. Another possibility is that this is due to changes in the functional specificity of brain regions that mediate salience suppression, expressed in changes in spontaneous connectivity of these regions. We assessed these possibilities by having participants engage in a proactive distractor suppression task while in an fMRI scanner. Although we did not find any age-related differences in behavior, the young (N = 15) and older (N = 15) cohorts engaged qualitatively distinctive brain networks to complete the task. Younger participants engaged the predicted proactive control network, including the Left IPS. On the other hand, older participants simultaneously engaged both a proactive and a reactive network, but this was not a consequence of reduced network specificity as resting state functional connectivity was largely comparable in both age groups. Furthermore, improved behavioral performance for older adults was associated with increased resting state functional connectivity between these two networks. Overall, the results of this study suggest that age-related differences in the recruitment of a left lateralized ventral fronto-parietal network likely reflect the specific recruitment of reactive control mechanisms for distractor inhibition., (© 2020 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The ability of chess experts depends to a large extent on spatial visual processing, attention, and working memory, all of which are thought to be mediated by the thalamus. This study explored whether continued practice and rehearsal over a long period of time results in structural changes in the thalamic region. We found smaller gray matter volume regions in the thalami of expert Chinese chess players in comparison with novice players. We then used these regions as seeds for resting-state functional connectivity analysis and observed significantly strengthened integration between the thalamus and fronto-parietal network in expert Chinese chess players. This strengthened integration that includes a group of brain regions showing an increase in activation to external stimulation, particularly during tasks relying on working memory and attention. Our findings demonstrate structural changes in the thalamus caused by a wide range of engagement in chess problem solving, and that this strengthened functional integration with widely distributed circuitry better supports high-level cognitive control of behavior., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permission@oup.com.)

Background : The rs405509 polymorphism ofthe apolipoprotein E (APOE) promoter is related to Alzheimer'sdisease (AD). The T/T allele of rs405509 is known to decrease the transcription of the APOE gene and lead to impairments in specific brain structural networks with aging; thus, it is an important risk factor for AD. However, it remains unknown whether rs405509 affects brain functional connectivity (FC) in aging. Methods : We investigated the effect of the rs405509 genotype (T/T vs. G-allele) on age-related brain FC using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Forty-five elderly TT carriers and 45 elderly G-allele carriers were scanned during a working memory (WM) task. Results : We found that TT carriers showed an accelerated age-related increase in functional activation in the left postcentral gyrus compared with G-allele carriers. Furthermore, the FC between the left postcentral gyrus and some key regions during WM performance, including the right caudal and superior frontal sulcus (SFS), was differentially modulated by age across rs405509 genotype groups. Conclusions : These results demonstrate that the rs405509 T/T allele of APOE causes an age-related brain functional decline in nondemented elderly people, which may be beneficial for understanding the neural mechanisms of rs405509-related cognitive aging and AD pathogenesis., (Copyright © 2020 Zhang, Wu, Du, Xu, Sun, Zhang, Li and Li.)

Anxiety is a common neuropsychiatric symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). Until now, anxiety has been consistently related to cognitive deficits and severity of motor symptoms, whereas the association between anxiety and motor subtypes (TD-PD, tremor dominant and PIGD-PD, postural instability/gait disturbances dominant) revealed contrasting results. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between PD motor subtypes and anxiety and to explore whether the relationship between anxiety and cognitive deficits occurs in a specific PD motor subtype. Consecutive PD outpatients were recruited and divided into TD-PD and PIGD-PD groups according to Jankovic et al.'s criteria. All participants underwent a neuropsychological battery to evaluate anxiety, apathy, the global cognitive functioning, memory abilities, executive and visuo-constructional functions. Thirty-six patients with TD-PD and 35 patients with PIGD-PD were enrolled. The two groups did not differ on demographical and clinical variables. As for the severity of anxiety, no significant difference between the two groups was found. Regression analysis revealed that higher anxiety score was associated with poorer performance on constructional visuospatial test in both TD-PD and PIGD-PD. Clinical variables were not associated with anxiety in the two groups. Our findings indicated that the severity of anxiety was not associated with any PD motor subtypes. Moreover, regression analysis revealed that impaired visuo-constructional abilities are related to anxiety independently of PD motor subtypes. Since altered fronto-parietal network might be one of the pathogenetic mechanisms underpinning anxiety and constructional visuospatial deficits, the treatment of cognitive dysfunctions might reduce anxious symptoms.

The present study investigated functional connectivity and white matter integrity of the fronto-parietal network (FPN) to reveal the neural mechanisms that underlie late-life depression (LLD). Fifty patients with LLD and 40 non-depressed controls were included in the study. A multi-parametric approach was used by applying independent component analysis (ICA) to estimate functional connectivity of the FPN and by applying tract-based spatial statistics to examine white-matter integrity in tracts to the FPN. Patients with LLD exhibited functional abnormalities in the right inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, and inferior parietal gyrus and lower white matter fractional anisotropy in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, and uncinate fasciculus. Alterations of functional connectivity and white matter fractional anisotropy in these regions were negatively correlated with the severity of symptomatic anxiety in LLD patients. The right inferior frontal gyrus might be a crucial hub in transferring information between these abnormal regions. Significant correlations were found between anxiety symptoms and brain alterations, suggesting that impairments in the FPN network might be involved in symptomatic anxiety in elderly individuals with depression., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

White matter hyperintensity (WMH) is widely observed in the elderly population and serves as a key indicator of cognitive impairment (CI). However, the underlying mechanism remains to be elucidated. Herein, we investigated the topological patterns of resting state functional networks in WMH subjects and the relationship between the topological measures and CI. A graph theory-based analysis was employed in the resting-state functional magnetic resonance scans of 112 subjects (38 WMH subjects with cognitive impairment without dementia (CIND), 36 WMH subjects with normal cognition and 38 healthy controls (HCs), and we found that WMH-CIND subjects displayed decreased global efficiency at the levels of the whole brain, specific subnetworks [fronto-parietal network (FPN) and cingulo-opercular network (CON)] and certain nodes located in the FPN and CON, as well as decreased local efficiency in subnetworks. Our results demonstrated that nodal global efficiency in frontal and parietal regions mediated the impairment of information processing speed related to periventricular WMH (PWMH). Additionally, we performed support vector machine (SVM) analysis and found that altered functional efficiency can identify WMH-CIND subjects with high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. These findings suggest impaired functional networks in WMH-CIND individuals and that decreased functional efficiency may be a feature of CI in WMH subjects., (Copyright © 2019 Chen, Huang, Yang, Ye, Guo, Qin, Luo, Li, Ye, Zhang and Xu.)

Previous electrophysiological studies of lateralized visual working memory (VWM) identified an ERP component, defined as contralateral delay activity (CDA), directly modulated by the number of items held in memory. One of the main candidate as the cortical source of this ERP component is the inferior intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Moreover, previous neuroimaging studies put forth evidence for the presence of a distributed VWM network involving also prefrontal areas and in particular the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Nonetheless, the understanding of the functional role of ACC is still debated. We recorded the high-density EEG in 20 healthy participants undergoing a VWM and a control task. Explorative cluster-based permutation statistics confirmed the posterior memory load dependent CDA modulation, but also identified an additional anterior cluster of electrodes whose amplitude was modulated by memory load. The source reconstruction revealed a memory load dependent activation in the IPS but also in the ACC, suggesting that these two areas might be nodes of a fronto-parietal circuit underlying VWM maintenance. Crucially, parietal and prefrontal areas showed a temporal dissociation, since IPS was more engaged in the early phase of visual information storage while the ACC was more active during the late phase. This pattern suggests a functional dissociation between the parietal cortex, which is involved in encoding and storage of information, and prefrontal areas, subserving cognitive control processes, including the boosting and protection of information from decay. Remarkably, the connection strength between IPS and ACC predicted the individual number of items held in memory. These findings are discussed within the theoretical account of a neural distributed model of VWM., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

During the last three decades our understanding of the brain processes underlying consciousness and attention has significantly improved, mainly because of the advances in functional neuroimaging techniques. Still, caution is needed for the correct interpretation of these empirical findings, as both research and theoretical proposals are hampered by a number of conceptual difficulties. We review some of the most significant theoretical issues concerning the concepts of consciousness and attention in the neuroscientific literature, and put forward the implications of these reflections for a coherent model of the neural correlates of these brain functions. Even though consciousness and attention have an overlapping pattern of neural activity, they should be considered as essentially separate brain processes. The contents of phenomenal consciousness are supposed to be associated with the activity of multiple synchronized networks in the temporo-parietal-occipital areas. Only subsequently, attention, supported by fronto-parietal networks, enters the process of consciousness to provide focal awareness of specific features of reality., (Copyright © 2019 Nani, Manuello, Mancuso, Liloia, Costa and Cauda.)

Long-range phase synchrony in the α-oscillation band (near 10 Hz) has been proposed to facilitate information integration across anatomically segregated regions. Which areas may top-down regulate such cross-regional integration is largely unknown. We previously found that the moment-to-moment strength of high-α band (10-12 Hz) phase synchrony co-varies with activity in a fronto-parietal (FP) network. This network is critical for adaptive cognitive control functions such as cognitive flexibility required during set-shifting. Using electroencephalography (EEG) in 23 patients with focal frontal lobe lesions (resected tumors), we tested the hypothesis that the FP network is necessary for modulation of high-α band phase synchrony. Global phase-synchrony was measured using an adaptation of the phase-locking value (PLV) in a sliding window procedure, which allowed for measurement of changes in EEG-based resting-state functional connectivity across time. As hypothesized, the temporal modulation (range and standard deviation) of high-α phase synchrony was reduced as a function of FP network lesion extent, mostly due to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions. Furthermore, patients with dlPFC lesions exhibited reduced cognitive flexibility as measured by the Trail-Making Test (set-shifting). Our findings provide evidence that the FP network is necessary for modulatory control of high-α band long-range phase synchrony, and linked to cognitive flexibility., (© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The success of humans in novel environments is partially supported by our ability to implement new task procedures via instructions. This complex skill has been associated with the activity of control-related brain areas. Current models link fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks with transient and sustained modes of cognitive control, based on observations during repetitive task settings or rest. The current study extends this dual model to novel instructed tasks. We employed a mixed design and an instruction-following task to extract phasic and tonic brain signals associated with the encoding and implementation of novel verbal rules. We also performed a representation similarity analysis to capture consistency in task-set encoding within trial epochs. Our findings show that both networks are involved while following novel instructions: transiently, during the implementation of the instruction, and in a sustained fashion, across novel trials blocks. Moreover, the multivariate results showed that task representations in the cingulo-opercular network were more stable than in the fronto-parietal one. Our data extend the dual model of cognitive control to novel demanding situations, highlighting the high flexibility of control-related regions in adopting different temporal profiles., (© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)