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Error detection in typing is crucial for assessing the adequacy of ongoing actions, leveraging both predictive mechanisms for early detection and sensory feedback for late detection. Neurophysiological studies have supported the anticipation of errors through predictive models. This research extends the understanding of error detection in typing, focusing on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying errors in transparent and intransparent German words. Thirty-six volunteer students typed out aurally presented words, classified as either orthographically transparent or intransparent, on a computer keyboard without the possibility of correction. Because of poor spelling or excessive artifacts, the final sample comprised 27 participants. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained time-locked to key presses, and behavioral data on typing correctness and speed were collected. A higher error rate and longer latency for intransparent words compared to transparent ones were found, suggesting the complexity of spelling impacts typing correctness. Post-error slowing was observed, aligning with increased cognitive control following errors. ERPs revealed a negative component akin to the error-related negativity (ERN) for typing errors, with a pronounced ERN-like negativity preceding erroneous key-presses, particularly for intransparent words. The study provides evidence of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying typing errors, highlighting the impact of orthographic transparency. The detection of an ERN-like negativity before erroneous key-presses, especially in typing intransparent words, underscores the brain's use of predictive mechanisms for error detection.

Prenatal listening experience reportedly modulates how humans process speech at birth, but little is known about how speech perception develops throughout the perinatal period. The present experiment assessed the neural event-related potentials (ERP) and mismatch responses (MMR) to native vowels in 99 neonates born between 32 and 42 weeks of gestation. The vowels elicited reliable ERPs in newborns whose gestational age at time of experiment was at least 36 weeks and 1 day (36 + 1). The ERPs reflected spectral distinctions between vowel onsets from age 36 weeks + 6 days and durational distinctions at vowel offsets from age 37 weeks + 6 days. Starting at age 40 + 4, there was evidence of neural discrimination of vowel length, indexed by a negative MMR response. The present findings extend our understanding of the earliest stages of speech perception development in that they pinpoint the ages at which the cortex reliably responds to the phonetic characteristics of individual speech sounds and discriminates a native phoneme contrast. The age at which the brain reliably differentiates vowel onsets coincides with what is considered term age in many countries (37 weeks + 0 days of gestational age). Future studies should investigate to what extent the perinatal maturation of the cortical responses to speech sounds is modulated by the ambient language.

Purpose: In this study, the objectification of the subjective perception of loudness was investigated using electroencephalography (EEG). In particular, the emergence of objective markers in the domain of the acoustic discomfort threshold was examined. Methods: A cohort of 27 adults with normal hearing, aged between 18 and 30, participated in the study. The participants were presented with 500 ms long noise stimuli via in-ear headphones. The acoustic signals were presented with sound levels of [55, 65, 75, 85, 95 dB]. After each stimulus, the subjects provided their subjective assessment of the perceived loudness using a colored scale on a touchscreen. EEG signals were recorded, and afterward, event-related potentials (ERPs) locked to sound onset were analyzed. Results: Our findings reveal a linear dependency between the N100 component and both the sound level and the subjective loudness categorization of the sound. Additionally, the data demonstrated a nonlinear relationship between the P300 potential and the sound level as well as for the subjective loudness rating. The P300 potential was elicited exclusively when the stimuli had been subjectively rated as ”very loud” or ”too loud”. Conclusion: The findings of the present study suggest the possibility of the identification of the subjective uncomfortable loudness level by objective neural parameters.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period of biological and social change during which 1 in 3 youth experience significant anxiety symptoms. The social-emotional lives of the majority of adolescents are largely conducted via digital media use (DMU; e.g., social media, text messaging). Yet the past decade of research on DMU and anxiety has yielded mixed results (e.g., Keles et al., 2020 review), leaving the complex role that DMU might play in the emergence and maintenance of anxiety poorly understood. A key step forward is to leverage psychophysiology to identify individual differences in cognitive and emotional processes that confer vulnerability to potential negative effects of DMU. Further, given the ubiquity of DMU, a greater focus is needed on measurements that move beyond sheer frequency to capture DMU in comparison to face-to-face (FTF) social interactions. This study examined attention bias (AB), characterized by selective and exaggerated attention toward or away from threat, as a moderator of the link between DMU and anxiety in adolescents (N = 75; 42 female) aged 12–14 years (M = 13.28, SD = 0.87). AB was indexed during a dot probe task using reaction time metrics (i.e., trial-level bias) and via ERPs capturing attentional selection and discrimination (N170) and cognitive control (N2) to threat compared to neutral faces. AB moderated associations between DMU and anxiety. A greater preference to use DMU vs FTF predicted greater anxiety among those with a greater behavioral bias away from threat, blunted N170, and blunted N2 in the presence of threat. Future research should examine potential causal and bidirectional links between DMU and anxiety and explore whether preferences for technology-mediated interactions and individual differences in threat processing increase risk.

Background: The analysis and interpretation of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-evoked potentials (TEPs) relies on successful cleaning of the artifacts, which typically mask the early (0–30 ms) TEPs. Independent component analysis (ICA) is possibly the single most utilized methodology to clean these signals. Objective: ICA-based cleaning is reliable provided that the input data are composed of independent components. Differently, in case the underlying components are to some extent dependent, ICA algorithms may yield erroneous estimates of the components, resulting in incorrectly cleaned data. We aim to ascertain whether TEP signals are suited for ICA. Methods: We present a systematic analysis of how the properties of simulated artifacts imposed on measured artifact-free TEPs affect the ICA results. The variability of the artifact waveform over the recorded trials is varied from deterministic to stochastic. We measure the accuracy of ICA-based cleaning for each level of variability. Results: Our findings indicate that, when the trial-to-trial variability of an artifact component is small, which can result in dependencies between underlying components, ICA-based cleaning biases towards eliminating also non-artifactual TEP data. We also show that the variability can be measured using the ICA-derived components, which in turn allows us to estimate the cleaning accuracy. Conclusion: As TEP artifacts tend to have small trial-to-trial variability, one should be aware of the possibility of eliminating brain-derived EEG when applying ICA-based cleaning strategies. In practice, after ICA, the artifact component variability can be measured, and it predicts to some extent the cleaning reliability, even when not knowing the clean ground-truth data.

The mismatch-negativity (MMN) component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) reflects preattentive memory mechanisms encoding various types of regularities in the auditory environment. In an oddball paradigm, two types of deviant stimuli (in separate blocks) were presented among frequent standard stimuli: physical deviants (higher in pitch than the standards) and more complex, “abstract” deviants (tone pairs descending in pitch, presented among ascending standard tone pairs). The attentional load of the participant was manipulated under three conditions, where the participants either (1) watched a silent video, (2) played a computer game (Tetris) or (3) attended to the auditory stimuli and tried to detect infrequent target stimuli which were of lower intensity than the standard stimuli. The goal was to find out, whether the possible attention effects (suppression/enhancement) on the MMN are similar or different to stimuli requiring the extraction of either physical or abstract invariances. Both the physical and abstract deviants elicited in all conditions MMNs but no statistically significant amplitude differences between the conditions were found. The N2b and P3b components were elicited only in the attend condition and only by the soft target tones. The results further confirm that the MMN is a robust response to various types of regularity violations, showing no major effects of attentional manipulations. The results also suggest that the most commonly used primary task in MMN experiments, watching a silent video, usually keeps the participants' attention well enough directed away from the auditory stimuli. However, in cases where a cognitively more demanding but still participant-friendly primary task is needed, a simple computer game such as Tetris can be used, enabling better control of the participants’ attention and vigilance.

The etiological heterogeneity of depression poses a challenge for prevention and intervention efforts. One solution is to map unique etiological pathways for subgroups defined by a singular risk factor. A relevant population for this approach is women who carry the premutation of the fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1 (FMR1) gene, who are at high risk for adult-onset depression. This study explores a candidate neurophysiological marker of depression risk: reduced reward sensitivity, indexed by the reward positivity (RewP). The RewP has been linked to depression risk in the general population, but is unexplored within FMR1 premutation carriers. 16 women with the FMR1 premutation and a matched control group completed a simple guessing task while the electroencephalogram was recorded. Among premutation carriers, RewP difference score (win versus loss) was reduced. These preliminary finding suggest that the FMR1 premutation may confer increased risk for depression in part through abnormal neural sensitivity to rewards.

Athletes of skill-oriented sports (hereinafter referred to as “skilled athletes”), such as gymnasts and rhythmic gymnasts, have demonstrated better postural control than nonathletes. However, previous studies have mainly focused on single postural tasks and have not considered how skilled athletes use and allocate attentional resources during postural control. This research used the event-related potential (ERP) to explore the postural control performance of skilled athletes under cognitive processes and their utilization and allocation of attentional resources. A dual-task paradigm was used to simulate the actual situation in sports. 26 skilled athletes and 26 nonathletes were required to perform postural control and task-switching simultaneously. The results showed that skilled athletes demonstrated more postural control stability and a higher accuracy of task-switching than nonathletes in all dual tasks. Compared with nonathletes, they showed a stable enhanced N1 (electrodes: Oz, O1, and O2) amplitude during three postures. Moreover, larger N2 component on Fz, FCz, and Cz and theta band power was found in the frontal cortex (on Fz, FCz) of skilled athletes under feet together and single leg standing posture. The study illustrated that skilled athletes show greater frontal activation during dual tasks, which allows for more rational and flexible brain attentional resource input and allocation in cognitive processes, this may be due to long-term professional training, which enables them to have a higher level of automation of postural control and cognitive flexibility. This study’s results offer valuable insights into the interplay between postural control and multitasking in skilled athletes, and its outcomes carry significant implications for the training and assessment of athletes across various sports.

The present database contains brain activity of subjective tinnitus sufferers at identifying their sound tinnitus. The main objective of this database is to provide spontaneous Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity at rest, and evoked EEG activity when tinnitus sufferers attempt to identify their sound tinnitus among 54 tinnitus sound examples. For the database, 37 volunteers were recruited: 15 ones without tinnitus (Control Group – CG), and 22 ones with tinnitus (Tinnitus Group – TG). For EEG recording, 30 channels were used to record two conditions: 1) basal condition, where the volunteer remained in a state of rest with the open eyes for two minutes; and 2) active condition, where the volunteer must have identified his/her sound stimulus by pressing a key. For the active condition, a sound-tinnitus library was generated in accordance with the most typical acoustic properties of tinnitus. The library consisted in ten pure tones (250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 3 kHz, 3.5 kHz, 4 kHz, 6 kHz, 8 kHz, 10 kHz), a White Noise (WN), a Narrow Band noise-High frequencies (NBH, 4 kHz–10 kHz), a Narrow Band noise-Medium frequencies (NBM,1 kHz–4 kHz), a Narrow-Band noise Low frequencies (NBL, 250 Hz–1 kHz), ten pure tones combined with WN, ten pure tones superimposed with NBH, ten tones with NBM and ten pure tones combined with NBL. In total, 54 sound-tinnitus were applied for both groups. In the case of CG, volunteers must have identified a sound at 3.5 kHz. In addition to EEG information, a csv-file with audiometric and psychoacoustic information of volunteers is provided. For TG, this information refers to: 1) hearing level, 2) type of tinnitus, 3) tinnitus frequency, 4) tinnitus perception, 5) Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and 6) Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI). For CG, the information refers to: 1) hearing level, and 2) HADS.

An improved understanding of the factors associated with suicidal attempts in youth suffering from depression is crucial for the identification and prevention of future suicide risk. However, there is limited understanding of how neural activity is modified during the process of decision-making. Our study aimed to investigate the neural responses in suicide attempters with major depressive disorder (MDD) during decision-making. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 79 individuals aged 16–25 with MDD, including 39 with past suicide attempts (SA group) and 40 without (NSA group), as well as from 40 age- and sex- matched healthy controls (HCs) during the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). All participants completed diagnostic interviews, self-report questionnaires. Our study examined feedback processing by measuring the feedback-related negativity (FRN), ΔFN (FRN-loss minus FRN-gain), and the P300 as electrophysiological indicators of feedback evaluation. The SA group showed poorest IGT performance. SA group and NSA group, compared with HC group, exhibited specific deficits in decision-making (i.e., exhibited smaller (i.e., blunted) ΔFN). Post hoc analysis found that the SA group was the least sensitive to gains and the most sensitive to losses. In addition, we also found that the larger the value of ΔFN, the better the decision-making ability and the lower the impulsivity. Our study highlights the link between suicide attempts and impaired decision-making in individuals with major depressive disorder. These findings constitute an important step in gaining a better understanding of the specific reward-related abnormalities that could contribute to the young MDD patients with suicide attempts.

A wealth of functional magnetic resonance imaging monetary incentive delay task (MIDT) research has shown alcohol dependency is associated with a hypoactive striatal response during gain anticipation (gain > neutral) and loss anticipation (loss > neutral). Electroencephalography (EEG) holds clinical advantages over fMRI (high temporal resolution, low cost, portable) however its use to study reward processing in alcohol dependence is limited. We aimed to carry out the first EEG MIDT (eMIDT) study in alcohol dependence. 21 abstinent alcohol dependent individuals and 26 controls performed an MIDT while neural activity was recorded using 64-channel EEG. Trial averaged event-related potentials (ERPs) and single-trial machine learning discriminant analyses were applied to EEG data. Clinical variables related to severity of dependence were collected and relationships with ERP data explored. Alcohol dependent individuals, compared with healthy controls, had blunted cue-P3 amplitudes for gain and loss anticipation (interaction: p = 0.019); and elevated contingent negative variation amplitudes for all conditions (gain, loss, neutral)(main effect: p < 0.001) which was associated with increased alcohol consumption (p = 0.002). The machine learning analyses demonstrated alcohol dependent individuals had reduced ability to discriminate between loss and neutral cues between 328 – 350 ms (p = 0.040), 354 – 367 ms (p = 0.047) and 525 – 572 ms (p = 0.022). The eMIDT approach is demonstrated to be a low-cost, sensitive measure of dysfunctional anticipatory reward processing in alcohol dependence, which we propose is ideal for big data approaches to prognostic psychiatry and translation into clinical practice.

Household medical waste (HMW) recycling in the reverse supply chain has become a primary channel for infectious, toxic, or radioactive substances for environmental protection and a circular economy. Recycling managers need to understand the recycling decision-making mechanisms of households to improve the intention-behavior gap and recycling participation rate, especially in cognitive neuroscience. This study designed an event-related potential (ERPs) experiment to explore the differences in ERPs components between the willingness and unwillingness to make recycling decisions. Our findings confirmed that willingness and unwillingness to recycle can lead to a significant difference in the P300 and N400 scores. A larger P300 was evoked by willingness rather than unwillingness in the prefrontal, frontal, and frontal-temporal regions. This indicates that willingness to recycle results from a rational choice in the decision-making process. However, a larger N400 was evoked by unwillingness rather than willingness in the parietal, parietal-occipital, and occipital regions. A negative wave was evoked in households unwilling to recycle because they thought it was dangerous and unsanitary, causing a higher conflict with intrinsic cognition. The combination of HMW recycling decisions and neurology may accurately measure pro-environmental decision-making processes through brain science. Advancing the knowledge of psychological and brain mechanism activities for understanding pro-environmental choices. In turn, this can help recycling managers to accurately understand household demands for increasing the recycling intention and designing effective HMW take-back systems to solve the intention-behavior gap related to the global recycling dilemma.

The ability to acquire positive emotions from words is essential to psychological well-being. How word concreteness affects the process of positive emotion acquisition remains unknown. Here, using an evaluation conditioning paradigm, participants learned the association between pseudowords and concrete/abstract and positive/neutral words. Behavior and event-related potential data were recorded while participants performed emotional recognition tasks. Behavioral results showed that, for neutral words, concrete words were more accurate than abstract words, whereas for positive words, abstract words were more accurate than concrete words. Moreover, N1 and P2 amplitudes in the pseudowords were modulated by interacting word emotion and concreteness. Specifically, pseudowords associated with neutral concrete words elicited larger N1 and P2 amplitudes than pseudowords associated with neutral abstract words. Conversely, N1 and P2 amplitudes in pseudowords associated with positive abstract words were not significant compared to those in positive concrete words. Additionally, an emotional effect was observed when pseudowords were associated with abstract words, showing higher P3 amplitude for the pseudowords associated with positive abstract words than neutral abstract words. No significant effects were found for the pseudowords associated with positive abstract or concrete words. These findings suggest that association learning may influence the early attention processing of emotion acquisition from words, and emotional information of positive abstract words might boost positive emotion acquisition, thereby eliminating the acquisition advantage from positive concrete words.

Cue-induced reward-seeking behaviors are regulated by both the affective and cognitive control systems of the brain. This study aimed at investigating how individual differences in affective and cognitive responses to cues predicting food rewards contribute to the regulation of cue-induced eating. We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) from 59 adults while they viewed emotional and food-related images that preceded the delivery of food rewards (candies) or non-food objects (beads). We measured the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) in response to a variety of motivationally relevant images and power in the theta (4-8 Hz) frequency band after candies or beads were dispensed to the participants. We found that individuals with larger LPP responses to food images than to pleasant images (C>P group) ate significantly more during the experiment than those with the opposite response pattern (P>C group, p < 0.001). Furthermore, we found that individuals with higher theta power after dispensation of the candy than of the bead (qCA>qBE) ate significantly more than those with the opposite response pattern (qBE>qCA, p < 0.001). Finally, we found that the crossed P>C and qBE>qCA group ate less (p < 0.001) than did the other three groups formed by crossing the LPP and theta group assignments, who exhibited similar eating behavior on average (p = 0.662). These findings demonstrate that individual differences in both affective and cognitive responses to reward-related cues underlie vulnerability to cue-induced behaviors, underscoring the need for individualized treatments to mitigate maladaptive behaviors.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is characterized by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain and psychological distress. Research suggests people with FM experience increased somatosensory sensitization which generalizes to other sensory modalities and may indicate neural hyperexcitability. However, the available evidence is limited, and studies including measures of neural responsivity across sensory domains and both central and peripheral aspects of the neuraxis are lacking. Thirty-nine participants (51.5 ± 13.6 years of age) with no history of neurological disorders, psychosis, visual, auditory, or learning deficits, were recruited for this study. People with FM (N = 19) and control participants (CNT, N = 20) did not differ on demographic variables and cognitive capacity. Participants completed a task that combined innocuous auditory stimuli with electrocutaneous stimulation (ECS), delivered at individually-selected levels that were uncomfortable but not painful. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and electrodermal activity were analyzed to examine the central and sympathetic indices of neural responsivity. FM participants reported greater sensitivity to ECS and auditory stimulation, as well as higher levels of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and an array of pain-related experiences than CNT. In response to ECS, the P50 deflection was greater in FM than CNT participants, reflecting early somatosensory hyperexcitability. The P50 amplitude was positively correlated with the FM profile factor obtained with a principal component analysis. The N100 to innocuous tones and sympathetic reactivity to ECS were greater in FM participants, except in the subgroup treated with gabapentinoids, which aligns with previous evidence of symptomatic improvement with GABA-mimetic medications. These results support the principal tenet of generalized neural hyperexcitability in FM and provide preliminary mechanistic insight into the impact of GABA-mimetic pharmacological therapy on ameliorating the neural excitation dominance.

The ability of metaphor comprehension reflects the cognitive status of elders. This study explored the ability of Chinese aMCI patients to access metaphorical meaning based on linguistic models of metaphor processing. ERPs were recorded from 30 aMCI patients and 30 control participants when judging the meaningfulness of literal sentences, conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, and anomalous expressions. The lower accuracy of the aMCI group revealed an impairment in metaphoric comprehension ability, but this difference was not reflected in ERPs data. In all participants, anomalous endings to sentences evoked the most negative N400 amplitude, whereas conventional metaphors evoked the smallest N400 amplitude. The LPC amplitude might be masked by a metaphor rebound effect when processing novel metaphors, which was consistent with the Graded Salience Model that novel metaphors needed further semantic integration. The results suggest that the aMCI patients may suffer an impairment in metaphorical meaning recognition, which the declined working memory may cause.

Successful encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of information stored in working memory requires persistent coordination of activity among multiple brain regions. It is generally assumed that the pattern of such coordinated activity remains consistent for a given task. Thus, to separate this task-relevant signal from noise, multiple trials of the same task are completed, and the neural response is averaged across trials to generate an event-related potential (ERP). However, from trial to trial, the neuronal activity recorded with electroencephalogram (EEG) is actually spatially and temporally diverse, conflicting with the assumption of a single pattern of activity for a given task. Here, we show that variability in neuronal activity among single time-locked trials arises from the presence of multiple forms of stimulus dependent synchronized activity (i.e., distinct ERPs). We develop a data-driven classification method based on community detection to identify three discrete spatio-temporal clusters, or subtypes, of trials with different patterns of activation that are further associated with differences in decision-making processes. These results demonstrate that differences in the patterns of neural activity during working memory tasks represent fluctuations in the engagement of distinct brain networks and cognitive processes, suggesting that the brain can choose from multiple mechanisms to perform a given task.

Background: Accumulating evidence suggests that sports participation promotes the development of inhibitory control, but the influences of the sports category and inhibition type still remain unclear. The categorization of sports based on the open-skill (externally paced) and closed-skill (self-paced) continuum allows for the integration of the environment as a factor contributing to sports-related benefits for inhibitory control. Methods: Cross-sectional data from different studies were combined (n = 184) to examine the association between open- and closed-skill sports and cognitive control processes related to interference control and response inhibition. Participants (aged 9−14 years) filled in 7-day physical activity recall protocols and completed a Stroop Color−Word or a Go/NoGo task. The N200, N450, and P300 components of event-related potentials elicited by these tasks were recorded using electroencephalography. Results: Partial correlations supported the belief that time spent in open-skill sports was related to higher performance on inhibition trials. Additionally, path analyses revealed an association between this sports type and a greater negativity in the N200 and N450 amplitudes in both the full sample and group-level analyses. In contrast, no relation was found between sports type and P300 amplitude. Conclusion: The findings suggest that only the engagement in open-skill sports is associated with more effective conflict monitoring and higher performance on tasks demanding inhibitory control.

Finger counting facilitates numerical representations and mathematical processing. The current study investigated the association between finger counting habits and number processing by employing behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We explored whether small and large numerical primes influence the recognition of embodied target hand stimuli. Twenty-four right-handed participants that were grouped into right-starters (n = 13) and left-starters (n = 11) for finger counting performed a hand recognition task that consisted of numerical magnitudes as prime and hand recognition as targets. Based on the finger counting habits, congruent (i.e., left-starters: small number/left hand or large number/right hand; right-starters: small number/right hand or large number/left hand) and incongruent (i.e., left-starters: large number/left hand or small number/right hand; right-starters: large number/right hand or small number/left hand) conditions were presented to the participants. The participants were required to indicate whether the targets were left or right hand by simply pressing the left or the right key, respectively. Results indicated faster reaction times (RTs) for congruent as opposed to incongruent trials for all participants. The mean amplitude of the centro-parietal P300 component was significantly increased for the incongruent compared to congruent condition, indicating increased mental effort. Also, analysis of the latency of the P300 in terms of congruency effect in all participants revealed significant results. These combined results provide behavioral and electrophysiological evidence indicating the embodied nature of numbers. The results are interpreted in light of the general findings related to the P300 component. This research supports the association of number-hand representations and corroborates the idea of embodied numerosity.

Prenatal listening experience reportedly modulates how humans process speech at birth, but little is known about how speech perception develops throughout the perinatal period. The present experiment assessed the neural event-related potentials (ERP) and mismatch responses (MMR) to native vowels in 99 neonates born between 32 and 42 weeks of gestation. The vowels elicited reliable ERPs in newborns whose gestational age at time of experiment was at least 36 weeks and 1 day (36 + 1). The ERPs reflected spectral distinctions between vowel onsets from age 36 weeks + 6 days and durational distinctions at vowel offsets from age 37 weeks + 6 days. Starting at age 40 + 4, there was evidence of neural discrimination of vowel length, indexed by a negative MMR response. The present findings extend our understanding of the earliest stages of speech perception development in that they pinpoint the ages at which the cortex reliably responds to the phonetic characteristics of individual speech sounds and discriminates a native phoneme contrast. The age at which the brain reliably differentiates vowel onsets coincides with what is considered term age in many countries (37 weeks + 0 days of gestational age). Future studies should investigate to what extent the perinatal maturation of the cortical responses to speech sounds is modulated by the ambient language., 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.)

Cognitive aging is typically associated with a higher susceptibility to distraction by concurrent, but task-irrelevant stimuli. Here, we studied the cognitive sub-processes involved in a sample of 484 healthy adults aged 20-70 years from the Dortmund Vital Study (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05155397). Participants judged the duration of tone stimuli of a random sequence of long and short tones, having either a regular (standard) pitch or rare (deviant) pitch. Deviance-related ERPs were explored, reflecting neuro-cognitive correlates of pre-attentive deviance detection (MMN), attention allocation toward (P3a) and processing of (P3b) the deviance, and re-orienting toward the task-relevant stimulus feature (RON). Accuracy was reduced for deviant long tones, possibly due to withdrawing attention from processing the time information, making long stimuli appear shorter. This effect increased with age, and cluster-based permutation tests on the correlation of ERPs and age as well as linear mixed modeling indicated a decrease in MMN, an increase in P3a with long tones, and decreases in P3b and RON. This suggests a greater attentional orienting to the deviant stimulus feature and a reduced re-orienting to the task-relevant feature with increasing age., Competing Interests: Disclosure Statement All authors disclose that there are no actual or potential conflicts of interest including any financial, personal, or other relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. The Dortmund Vital Study is funded by the institute’s budget (no grant number). Thus, the study design, collection, management, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the report, and the decision to submit the report for publication is not influenced or biased by any sponsor., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Carotenoids are antioxidant pigments that deposit in human tissues (e.g., skin, macula, and brain) upon dietary consumption. The health implications of skin carotenoids, which reflect overall dietary carotenoid consumption, have not been adequately studied in younger populations., Objectives: This work aimed to examine links between skin carotenoids and cognitive, language, and motor skills among toddlers. A secondary aim explored relationships between skin carotenoids and neurophysiologic outcomes of sensory memory [i.e., mismatch negativity (MMN)] and the functional integrity of the visual pathway [i.e., visual evoked potentials (VEPs)]., Methods: Toddlers aged 12-18 mo (n = 45) were included in a cross-sectional study. Skin carotenoids were measured with reflection spectroscopy via the Veggie Meter®. Cognitive, language, and motor skills were measured using the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development IV Screening Test (BSID-IV). MMN and VEPs were collected with an auditory oddball task and a pattern reversal task, respectively, using electroencephalography. Analyses adjusted for age, household income, highest level of parental education, and total carotenoid intake (mg/1000 kcal)., Results: Regression modeling revealed that skin carotenoids significantly related to cognition (β = 0.24; P = 0.04) and not to any other BSID-IV subsets. Neither MMN nor VEP outcomes significantly related to skin carotenoids., Conclusions: Greater skin carotenoids were selectively related to cognition, indicating that carotenoids may play a role in cognition in toddlers. Additional research is needed to understand links between skin carotenoids and specific domains of cognitive function and brain health in early life., (Copyright © 2024 American Society for Nutrition. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Previous studies and theoretical models suggest that the decreasing effect of smoking-related cues on inhibitory control in individuals who smoke is one of the underlying mechanisms of smoking behavior. However, many studies have overlooked the effects of other types of smoking-related cues, such as social cues. Moreover, previous studies have lacked investigation into whether this decreasing effect is influenced by internal factors. The present study aims to integrate behavioral and electrophysiological indicators to investigate the effect of smoking social cues on inhibitory control in individuals who smoke, as well as the moderating role of social motivations., Method: In Experiment 1, a visual Go/NoGo paradigm with four types of backgrounds (neutral, neutral social, smoking object, and smoking social backgrounds) was used to record the error rates and reaction times of 32 participants who smoke. In Experiment 2, the Go/NoGo paradigm with two types of backgrounds (smoking object and smoking social backgrounds) was used to record the error rates, reaction times, and amplitudes of the N2 and P3 event-related potentials among 30 participants who smoke with varying degrees of primed smoking social motivation., Results: (1) Individuals who smoke had higher commission error rates and larger P3 amplitude under smoking social background than under smoking object background; (2) individuals who smoke with primed high smoking social motivation, rather than low motivation had higher commission error rates and larger P3 amplitude under smoking social background than under smoking object background., Conclusions: Smoking social cues have a greater capacity to decrease inhibitory control in people who smoke than smoking object cues, and this decreasing effect is bolstered by smoking social motivation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest No conflict of interest exits in the submission of this manuscript., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The Corollary Discharge (CD) mechanism inhibits self-generated speech sound perception, appearing disrupted in schizophrenia and potentially contributing to Anomalous Self-Experiences (ASEs). However, it remains unclear if this alteration and its correlation with ASEs extend to other psychotic disorders., Methods: Electroencephalography was used to study the N1 Event-Related Potential (ERP) as an index of CD-mediated suppression in the auditory cortex across thirty-five participants with schizophrenia, twenty-six with bipolar disorder, and thirty healthy controls. Auditory N1 was elicited by two conditions: real-time listening to self-pronounced vowels while speaking through connected microphone and earphones (listen/talk -or talk condition in previous literature-) and passive listening to the same previously recorded self-uttered vowels (listen/no talk -or listen condition-)., Results: N1 ERP amplitude was lower in the listen/talk condition compared to listen/no talk across all groups. However, N1 suppression was significantly reduced in schizophrenia, with bipolar patients showing intermediate attenuation between both groups (i.e., non-significantly different from controls). Furthermore, N1 suppression inversely correlated with ASEs severity only in schizophrenia., Conclusions: Dysfunction of the CD mechanism may be a defining feature of schizophrenia, where it is connected to ASEs., Significance: These results corroborate previous findings linking auditory N1 ERP suppression with disrupted CD mechanism in schizophrenia, but not in bipolar disorder., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement None of the authors have potential conflicts of interest to disclosed., (Copyright © 2024 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Error detection in typing is crucial for assessing the adequacy of ongoing actions, leveraging both predictive mechanisms for early detection and sensory feedback for late detection. Neurophysiological studies have supported the anticipation of errors through predictive models. This research extends the understanding of error detection in typing, focusing on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying errors in transparent and intransparent German words. Thirty-six volunteer students typed out aurally presented words, classified as either orthographically transparent or intransparent, on a computer keyboard without the possibility of correction. Because of poor spelling or excessive artifacts, the final sample comprised 27 participants. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained time-locked to key presses, and behavioral data on typing correctness and speed were collected. A higher error rate and longer latency for intransparent words compared to transparent ones were found, suggesting the complexity of spelling impacts typing correctness. Post-error slowing was observed, aligning with increased cognitive control following errors. ERPs revealed a negative component akin to the error-related negativity (ERN) for typing errors, with a pronounced ERN-like negativity preceding erroneous key-presses, particularly for intransparent words. The study provides evidence of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying typing errors, highlighting the impact of orthographic transparency. The detection of an ERN-like negativity before erroneous key-presses, especially in typing intransparent words, underscores the brain's use of predictive mechanisms for error detection., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This study investigated Cantonese and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) phonological activation patterns in Hong Kong deaf readers using the ERP technique. Two experiments employing the error disruption paradigm were conducted while recording participants' EEGs. Experiment 1 focused on orthographic and speech-based phonological processing, while Experiment 2 examined sign-phonological processing. ERP analyses focused on the P200 (180-220 ms) and N400 (300-500 ms) components. The results of Experiment 1 showed that hearing readers exhibited both orthographic and phonological effects in the P200 and N400 windows, consistent with previous studies on Chinese reading. In deaf readers, significant speech-based phonological effects were observed in the P200 window, and orthographic effects spanned both the P200 and N400 windows. Comparative analysis between the two groups revealed distinct spatial distributions for orthographic and speech-based phonological ERP effects, which may indicate the engagement of different neural networks during early processing stages. Experiment 2 found evidence of sign-phonological activation in both the P200 and N400 windows among deaf readers, which may reflect the involvement of sign-phonological representations in early lexical access and later semantic integration. Furthermore, exploratory analysis revealed that higher reading fluency in deaf readers correlated with stronger orthographic effects in the P200 window and diminished effects in the N400 window, indicating that efficient orthographic processing during early lexical access is a distinguishing feature of proficient deaf readers., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

While it is widely known that humans are typically highly accurate at recognizing familiar faces, it is less clear how efficiently recognition is achieved. In a series of three experiments, we used event-related brain potentials (ERP) in a repetition priming paradigm to examine the efficiency of familiar face recognition. Specifically, we varied the presentation time of the prime stimulus between 500 ms and 33 ms (Experiments 1 and 2), and additionally used backward masks (Experiment 3) to prevent the potential occurrence of visual aftereffects. Crucially, to test for the recognition of facial identity rather than a specific picture, we used different images of the same facial identities in repetition conditions. We observed clear ERP repetition priming effects between 300 and 500 ms after target onset at all prime durations, which suggests that the prime stimulus was sufficiently well processed to allow for facilitated recognition of the target in all conditions. This finding held true even in severely restricted viewing conditions including very brief prime durations and backward masks. We conclude that the facial recognition system is both highly effective and efficient, thus allowing for our impressive ability to recognise the faces that we know., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Recent ERP research using a gaze-contingent paradigm suggests the face-sensitive N170 component is modulated by the presence of a face outline, the number of parafoveal facial features, and the type of feature in parafovea (Parkington and Itier, 2019). The present study re-analyzed these data using robust mass univariate statistics available through the LIMO toolbox, allowing the examination of the ERP signal across all electrodes and time points. We replicated the finding that the presence of a face outline significantly reduced ERP latencies and amplitudes, suggesting it is an important cue to the prototypical face template. However, we found that this effect began around 114 ms, and was maximal during the P1-N170 and N170-P2 intervals. The number of features present in parafovea also impacted the entire waveform, with systematic reductions in amplitude and latency as the number of features increased. This effect was maximal around 120 ms during the P1-N170 interval and around 170 ms between the N170 and P2. The ERP response was also modulated by feature type; contrary to previous findings this effect was maximal around 200 ms and the P2 peak. Although we provide partial replication of the previous results on the N170, the effects were more temporally distributed in the present analysis. These effects were generally maximal before and after the N170 and were the weakest at the N170 peak itself. This re-analysis demonstrates that classical ERP analysis can obscure important aspects of face processing beyond the N170 peak, and that tools like mass univariate statistics are needed to shed light on the whole time-course of face processing.

Objective: There are few studies on long-latency auditory evoked potential (P300) in people with hearing loss who use a cochlear implant. Central auditory system evaluation with behavioral and electrophysiological tests is believed to help understand the neuroplasticity mechanisms involved in auditory functioning after cochlear implant surgery. This study investigated the electrophysiological processing of cortical level acoustic signals in a group of 21 adult individuals with postlingual bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss who were submitted to cochlear implant surgery. Methods: Data were collected in three phases: pre-cochlear implant surgery, at cochlear implant activation, and 6 months after surgery. P300 measures were also registered during all phases. Tone-burst and speech stimuli were used to elicit P300 and were presented in free field. Results: Mean P3 component latency with tone-burst and speech stimuli were 352.9 and 321.9 ms in the pre-cochlear implant phase, 364.9 and 368.7 ms in the activation phase, 336.2 and 343.6 ms 6 months after the surgery. The P3 component mean latency values using tone-burst at activation were significantly different from those 6 months after cochlear implant. They were also significantly different using speech, between pre-cochlear implant and activation phases. Lower P3 component latency occurred 6 months after cochlear implant activation with tone-burst and pre-cochlear implant with speech stimulus. There was a weak correlation between mean P3 component latency with speech stimulus and time of hearing loss. There was no difference in amplitude between phases or in the comparison with the other variables. Conclusion: There were changes in P3 component latency during the period assessed, for both speech and pure-tone stimuli, with increased latency in the activation phase and similar lower results in the two other phases, Pre-CI and 6 months after CI use. Mean amplitude measures did not vary in the three phases.

Purpose: Phantom eye pain (PEP) is a major clinical problem after eye removal with no standard treatment protocol to date. As pain is a multidimensional experience associated with emotional and cognitive components, this study aimed to explore the possible neuropsychological mechanisms of PEP in a perspective of emotional cognition, in order to provide a basis for clinical treatment. Methods: Visual oddball event-related potentials (ERPs) under different external emotional stimuli (Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Erotica and Neutral) were tested in 12 patients and 12 healthy volunteers. Participants' affective states were measured with the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ), the Hypomania Checklist-32 (HCL-32), and the Plutchik–van Praag Depression Inventory (PVP). The amplitudes and latencies of N1, P2, N2 and P3 components were analyzed by three-way ANOVA, i.e., group (2) ​× ​emotion (6) ​× ​electrode (3). Multiple comparisons were performed using Bonferroni's test. Results: Longer N1 latencies, increased N1 amplitudes; shorter P2 latencies under Disgust and Happiness, decreased P2 amplitudes; shorter N2 latencies under Erotica, increased N2 amplitudes were found in patients compared with controls. There was no main effect of group or interaction effect on P3 latencies and P3 amplitudes. The MDQ and HCL-32 scores were lower, and the N1 latencies under Sadness were negatively correlated with PVP scores in patients. Conclusions: PEP patients showed reversed patterns in exogenous attention allocation and enhanced involuntary attention to emotional stimuli compared with controls. This study demonstrated cortical processing of emotions in PEP patients and could provide a basis for developing emotional intervention therapy.

Clayson et al. (2021) describe an innovative multiverse analysis to evaluate effects of data processing choices on event-related potential (ERP) measures. Based on their results, they provide data processing recommendations for studies measuring the error-related negativity and error positivity components. We argue that, although their data-driven approach is useful for identifying how data processing choices influence ERP results, it is not sufficient for devising optimal data processing pipelines. As an example, we focus on the inappropriate use of pre-response ERP baselines in their analyses, which leads to biased error positivity amplitude measures. Results of multiverse analyses should be supplemented with further investigation into why differences in ERP results occur across data processing choices before devising general recommendations.

Infants rapidly advance in their speech perception, electrophysiologically reflected in the transition from an immature, positive-going to an adult-like, negative-going mismatch response (MMR) to auditory deviancy. Although the MMR is a common tool to study speech perception development, it is not yet completely understood how different speech contrasts affect the MMR’s characteristics across development. Thus, a systematic longitudinal investigation of the MMR’s maturation depending on speech contrast is necessary. We here longitudinally explored the maturation of the infant MMR to four critical speech contrasts: consonant, vowel, vowel-length, and pitch. MMRs were obtained when infants (n = 58) were 2, 6 and 10 months old. To evaluate the maturational trajectory of MMRs, we applied second-order latent growth curve models. Results showed positive-going MMR amplitudes to all speech contrasts across all assessment points that decreased over time towards an adult-like negativity. Notably, the developmental trajectories of speech contrasts differed, implying that infant speech perception matures with different rates and trajectories throughout the first year, depending on the studied auditory feature. Our results suggest that stimulus-dependent maturational trajectories need to be considered when drawing conclusions about infant speech perception development reflected by the infant MMR.

Background: Adolescent suicide is a major public health concern, and presently, there is a limited understanding of the neurophysiological correlates of suicidal behaviors. Cognitive models of suicide indicate that negative views of the self are related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and this study investigated whether behavioral and neural correlates of self-referential processing differentiate suicide ideators from recent attempters. Methods: Adolescents with depression reporting current suicidal ideation and no lifetime suicide attempts (suicide ideators, n = 30) and past-year suicide attempts (recent attempters, n = 26) completed a self-referential encoding task while high-density electroencephalogram data were recorded. Behavioral analyses focused on negative processing bias (i.e., tendency to attribute negative information as being self-relevant) and drift rate (i.e., slope of reaction time and response type that corresponds to how quickly information is accumulated to make a decision about whether words are self-referent). Neurophysiological markers probing components reflecting early semantic monitoring (P2), engagement (early late positive potential), and effortful encoding (late late positive potential) also were tested. Results: Adolescent suicide ideators and recent suicide attempters reported comparable symptom severity, suicide ideation, and mental disorders. Although there were no behavioral differences, compared with suicide ideators, suicide attempters exhibited greater P2 amplitudes for negative versus positive words, which may reflect enhanced attention and arousal in response to negative self-referential stimuli. There were no group differences for the early or late late positive potential. Conclusions: Enhanced sensory arousal in response to negative stimuli—that is, attentional orienting to semantic, emotional, and self-relevant features—differentiates adolescent suicide attempters from ideators and thus may signal risk for suicidal behavior.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a 16-week creative expression intervention program (CrExp) on the event-related potential (ERP) and task reaction time in older individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Methods: This study is a randomized controlled clinical trial conducted in the Memory Center of Fujian Provincial hospital. Thirty-six MCI patients were randomly distributed into two groups. One group underwent a 16-week creative expression program (CrExp, n = 18) and the other performed as a control group (CG, n = 18) by general social activities. The amplitude and latency of ERP-P300 from the central (Cz), parietal (Pz), frontal (Fz) cortices and task reaction time (RT) were assessed at baseline, post-interventi on, and 24-week follow-up. Results: The CrExp group showed greater differences than CG of P300 latency in Cz (F = 4.37, P = 0.015), Pz (F = 2.78, P = 0.009), Fz (F = 6.45, P = 0.031) brain area after 16 weeks of intervention and in Fz (F = 3.23, P = 0.028), Cz (F = 3.79, P = 0.024), and Pz (F = 5.60, P = 0.036) at 24 weeks follow-up. Also, we analyzed the task reaction time between two groups and found that a shorten reaction time at post-intervention (F = 4.47, P = 0.011) and 24 weeks follow-up (F = 3.12, P = 0.007) in the CrExp group. However, there was no difference in P300 amplitude in either brain area between the two groups. Conclusion: The electrophysiological results of the creative expression cognitive therapy group were more obvious than those of the general cognitive therapy group, and the latency and task reaction time may be considered as supported parameters in diagnosing the effects during non-drug therapy intervention in clinical practice.

Objectives: Primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) is a very common problem in school age children. It is thought that PMNE represents a maturational lag in the central nervous system of those children. We did this case control study to assess the selective attention and resource allocation in those children using the P300 wave of the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and its relation to disease severity. Methods: Forty four patients with PMNE and twenty three healthy controls were included in this study. Patients were diagnosed according to the criteria of international children’s continence society and were classified into two groups; patients with frequent wetting (≥4 episodes/week), and patients with infrequent wetting (

Reward is deemed a performance reinforcer. The current study investigated how social and monetary reward anticipation affected cognitive control in 39 children, 40 adolescents, and 40 adults. We found that cognitive control performance improved with age in a Simon task, and the reaction time (RT) was modulated by the reward magnitude. The conflict monitoring process (target N2 amplitudes) of adolescents and the attentional control processes (target P3 amplitudes) of adolescents and adults could be adjusted by reward magnitude, suggesting that adolescents were more sensitive to rewards compared to children. Reward magnitudes influenced the neural process of attentional control with larger P3 in congruent trails than that in incongruent trials only in low reward condition. The result of hierarchical drift-diffusion model indicated that children had slower drift rates, higher decision threshold, and longer non-decision time than adolescents and adults. Adolescents had faster drift rates in monetary task than in social task under the high reward condition, and they had faster drift rates under high reward condition than no reward condition only in the monetary task. The correlation analysis further showed that adults’ non-decision time and decision threshold correlated with conflict monitoring process (N2 responses) and attentional control process on conflicts (P3 responses). Adolescents’ drift rates associated with neural process of attentional control. The current study reveals that reward magnitude and reward type can modulate cognitive control process, especially in adolescents.

The dominant approach in investigating the individual reliability for event-related potentials (ERPs) is to extract peak-related features at electrodes showing the strongest group effects. Such a peak-based approach implicitly assumes ERP components showing a stronger group effect are also more reliable, but this assumption has not been substantially validated and few studies have investigated the reliability of ERPs beyond peaks. In this study, we performed a rigorous evaluation of the test-retest reliability of ERPs collected in a multisensory and cognitive experiment from 82 healthy adolescents, each having two sessions. By comparing group effects and individual reliability, we found that a stronger group-level response in ERPs did not guarantee higher reliability. A perspective of neural oscillation should be adopted for the analysis of reliability. Further, by simulating ERPs with an oscillation-based computational model, we found that the consistency between group-level ERP responses and individual reliability was modulated by inter-subject latency jitter and inter-trial variability. The current findings suggest that the conventional peak-based approach may underestimate the individual reliability in ERPs and a neural oscillation perspective on ERP reliability should be considered. Hence, a comprehensive evaluation of the reliability of ERP measurements should be considered in individual-level neurophysiological trait evaluation and psychiatric disorder diagnosis.

Tinnitus is hypothesised to be a predictive coding problem. Previous research indicates lower sensitivity to prediction errors (PEs) in tinnitus patients while processing auditory deviants corresponding to tinnitus-specific stimuli. However, based on research with patients with hallucinations and no psychosis we hypothesise tinnitus patients may be more sensitive to PEs produced by auditory stimuli that are not related to tinnitus characteristics. Specifically in patients with minimal to no hearing loss, we hypothesise a more top-down subtype of tinnitus that may be driven by maladaptive changes in an auditory predictive coding network. To test this, we use an auditory oddball paradigm with omission of global deviants, a measure that is previously shown to empirically characterise hierarchical prediction errors (PEs).We observe: (1) increased predictions characterised by increased pre-stimulus response and increased alpha connectivity between the parahippocampus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and parahippocampus, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and posterior cingulate cortex; (2) increased PEs characterised by increased P300 amplitude and gamma activity and increased theta connectivity between auditory cortices, parahippocampus and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the tinnitus group; (3) increased overall feed-forward connectivity in theta from the auditory cortex and parahippocampus to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; (4) correlations of pre-stimulus theta activity to tinnitus loudness and alpha activity to tinnitus distress. These results provide empirical evidence of maladaptive changes in a hierarchical predictive coding network in a subgroup of tinnitus patients with minimal to no hearing loss. The changes in pre-stimulus activity and connectivity to non-tinnitus specific stimuli suggest that tinnitus patients not only produce strong predictions about upcoming stimuli but also may be predisposed to stimulus a-specific PEs in the auditory domain. Correlations with tinnitus-related characteristics may be a biomarker for maladaptive changes in auditory predictive coding.

Background: Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) present with deficits in emotional reactivity. Conflicting models have been proposed to explain this effect. We sought to confirm reports of blunted reactivity to negatively-valanced emotional stimuli, in line with the emotional context insensitivity hypothesis of depression, in a preregistered study. Methods: Forty-one depressed participants and 41 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were presented a series of unpleasant and neutrally-valanced pictures in a passive view paradigm while acquiring electroencephalography (EEG). The late positive potential (LPP), an EEG correlate of emotional reactivity, was compared between groups using mixed-effects repeated-measures models and exploratory cluster-based permutation tests. A sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the robustness of LPP findings by reanalysing the LPPs using 24 EEG pipelines from studies identified in the literature. Results: We found no difference in LPP amplitudes between MDD and healthy individuals using the preregistered analysis pipeline. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the magnitude and direction of LPP effect sizes were affected by the analysis pipeline. Exploratory permutation analysis revealed an electrode cluster that showed a significant reduction in the LPP for MDD participants while viewing unpleasant pictures. Conclusions: These results do not provide evidence in support of the emotional context insensitivity hypothesis, except for the exploratory data-driven approach. Methodological differences, in particular in the analysis pipeline, contribute to the heterogeneity of LPP modulation in depression. A standardised approach to quantify EEG correlates of emotional reactivity is needed to evaluate alternative models of emotional reactivity in depression.

Facial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social cognitive skills, including non-verbal emotion recognition tasks. Here we investigated whether language is associated with specific neurophysiological indicators of FEP. One hundred and fourteen children (4–12 years) completed a language assessment and a FEP task including stimuli depicting anger, happiness, fear, and neutrality. EEG was used to record key event related potentials (ERPs; P100, N170, LPP at occipital and parietal sites separately) previously shown to be sensitive to faces and facial emotion. While there were no main effects of language, the P100 latency to negative expressions appeared to increase with language, while LPP amplitude increased with language for negative and neutral expressions. These findings suggest that language is linked to some early physiological indicators of FEP, but this is dependent on the facial expression. Future studies should explore the role of language in later stages of neural processing, with a focus on processes localised to ventromedial prefrontal regions.

Age-related cognitive decline has been attributed to degeneration of the corpus callosum (CC), which allows for interhemispheric integration and information processing [22,69]. Along with decreased structural integrity, altered functional properties of the CC may cause impaired cognitive performance in older adults, yet this aspect of age-related decline remains insufficiently researched [59]. In this context, potential sex-related differences have been proposed [31,58]. A promising parameter, which has been suggested to estimate functional properties of the CC is the interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT), which is ideally obtained from event-related potentials (ERP) evoked by lateralized stimuli [45]. To examine the possible functional consequences of aging with regards to the CC, the present study investigated the IHTT of 107 older (67.69 ± 5.18y) as well as of 23 younger participants (25.09 ± 2.59y). IHTT was obtained using an established letter matching task and targeting early N170 ERP components at posterior electrode sites. The results revealed significantly elongated IHTT in older compared to younger participants, but no significant sex differences. Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between IHTT and age, predominantly driven by the female participants. The present findings add support to the notion, that IHTT is subject to age-related elongation reflecting impaired interhemispheric transmission. Age-related decline in women appears to occur at a different age range compared to men.

Adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience significant difficulties in emotion regulation. This study aimed to explore emotion regulation in adolescents with depression using an emotion regulation paradigm combined with event-related potentials (ERP) while investigating the relationship between maternal emotion regulation and adolescent depressive symptoms through a mediation model. Overall, 38 healthy controls (HC) and 57 adolescents with depression (MDD) rated the pictures they saw according to aversive reappraisal (reappraisal of an aversive picture or down-regulate aversive emotions), aversive watch, and neutral conditions. Adolescents with depression gave more negative ratings to aversive images, and the emotional regulation success index (ERSI) of adolescents with depression was lower than that of healthy individuals. ERP data revealed an elevation in late positive potential (LPP) amplitude during the aversive reappraisal and aversive watch conditions compared with that in the neutral condition in the MDD group. Compared with the HC group, adolescents with depression showed larger LPP amplitudes under aversive watch conditions. The aversive reappraisal condition evoked a larger LPP than that in the other conditions in the HC group in the late time windows. The ΔLPP (separating the variability in the ERP wave associated with emotion regulation) was larger in the HC group than in the MDD group. Mediation analysis revealed that maternal emotion regulation influenced adolescent depression levels through its effect on the adolescent's emotion regulation. These findings provide important insights into the emotion regulation process in adolescents with depression and offer suggestions for clinical interventions., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest We declare that we possess no financial or personal affiliations with individuals or entities that may unduly impact our work. There exists no professional or personal interest, of any form, in any product, service, and/or company that could be perceived as influencing the stance articulated in, or the evaluation of, the manuscript titled “Maternal emotion regulation abilities affect adolescent depressive symptoms by mediating their emotion regulation ability: An ERP study.”, (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: We longitudinally investigated whether infant P1 and N2 ERPs recorded in newborns and at 28 months could predict pre-reading skills at 28 months and 4-5 years., Methods: We recorded ERPs to a pseudoword in newborns and at 28 months in a sample over-represented by infants with familial dyslexia risk. Using multiple linear regression models, we examined P1 and N2 associations with pre-reading skills at 28 months and 4-5 years., Results: Shorter latencies of the newborn P1 predicted faster serial naming at 28 months. Larger amplitudes and shorter latencies of P1 at 28 months predicted better serial naming abilities and auditory working memory across the pre-reading stage. Right-lateralized P1 and N2 were related to poorer pre-reading skills., Conclusions: Infant ERPs, particularly P1, providing information about neural speech encoding abilities, are associated with pre-reading skill development., Significance: Infant and early childhood neural speech encoding abilities may work as early predictive markers of reading development and impairment. This study may help to plan early interventions targeting phonological processing to prevent or ameliorate learning deficits., (Copyright © 2024 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Brain aging is associated with a decline in cognitive performance, motor function and sensory perception, even in the absence of neurodegeneration. The underlying pathophysiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood, though alterations in neurogenesis, neuronal senescence and synaptic plasticity are implicated. Recent years have seen advancements in neurophysiological techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), event-related potentials (ERP) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), offering insights into physiological and pathological brain aging. These methods provide real-time information on brain activity, connectivity and network dynamics. Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques promise as a tool enhancing the diagnosis and prognosis of age-related cognitive decline. Our review highlights recent advances in these electrophysiological techniques (focusing on EEG, ERP, TMS and TMS-EEG methodologies) and their application in physiological and pathological brain aging. Physiological aging is characterized by changes in EEG spectral power and connectivity, ERP and TMS parameters, indicating alterations in neural activity and network function. Pathological aging, such as in Alzheimer's disease, is associated with further disruptions in EEG rhythms, ERP components and TMS measures, reflecting underlying neurodegenerative processes. Machine learning approaches show promise in classifying cognitive impairment and predicting disease progression. Standardization of neurophysiological methods and integration with other modalities are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of brain aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Advanced network analysis techniques and AI methods hold potential for enhancing diagnostic accuracy and deepening insights into age-related brain changes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Dr. Angelo Pascarella reports no disclosures. Dr. Lucia Manzo reports no disclosures. Prof. Edoardo Ferlazzo reports no disclosures., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Objective: This systematic review aimed to evaluate if event-related potentials (ERPs) can be a relevant tool for cognitive dysfunction diagnosis in Multiple Sclerosis (MS)., Methods: Four databases were consulted (PubMed, Embase, Scielo, and Web of Science). The included studies should include adults with clear MS diagnoses, independently of having cognitive complaints, and all should have been submitted to ERPs (P300, N400 or mismatch negativity (MMN)). The main outcomes evaluated were ERPs' amplitude and/or latency., Results: 425 studies were obtained initially from all databases, with 26 studies fulfilling the eligibility criteria. P300 was the most used ERP (25 studies), showing a reduced amplitude or an increased latency in 84% of those. N400 was evaluated in one study, showing also abnormal results. MMN was addressed in two studies with inconsistent findings. Some studies further suggest that ERPs may show earlier abnormal results compared with neuropsychological tests., Conclusions: Most MS patient groups revealed ERP abnormalities, suggesting that these neurophysiological tests may be a relevant and appropriate diagnostic aid method for cognitive impairment in MS., Significance: The use of ERPs in MS patients seems able to demonstrate cognitive impairment and its use should be considered as part of the regular patient evaluation., (Copyright © 2024 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Remedies to counter the impact of misinformation are in high demand, but little is known about the neuro-cognitive consequences of untrustworthy information and how they can be mitigated. In this preregistered study, we investigated the effects of social-emotional headline contents on social judgments and brain responses and whether they can be modulated by explicit evaluations of the trustworthiness of the media source. Participants (N = 30) evaluated –and clearly discerned– the trustworthiness of news sources before they were exposed to person-related news headlines. Despite this intervention, social judgments and brain responses were dominated largely by emotional headline contents. Results suggest differential effects of source credibility might depend on headline valence. Electrophysiological indexes of fast emotional and arousal-related brain responses, as well as correlates of slow evaluative processing were enhanced for persons associated with positive headline contents from trusted sources, but not when positive headlines stemmed from distrusted sources. In contrast, negative headlines dominated fast and slow brain responses unaffected by explicit source credibility evaluations. These results provide novel insights into the brain mechanisms underlying the “success” of emotional news from untrustworthy sources, suggesting a pronounced susceptibility to negative information even from distrusted sources that is reduced for positive contents. The differential pattern of responses to misinformation in mind and brain sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of misinformation and possible strategies to avoid their potentially detrimental effects.

In decision-making with uncertain outcomes people may rely on external cues, such as expert advice, even if this information has no predictive value. While the fronto-parietal event-related potential (ERP) components feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3 are associated with both reward/punishment feedback processing, the relationship between ERP modulation and expert advice during decision making remains unclear. In this double-blind sham-controlled within-subject study transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at an intensity of 1 mA was applied to the frontal cortex in twenty-four healthy volunteers. The aim was to decrease reliance on expert advice by targeting FRN, P3a and P3b components. Following administration of frontal delta (2.5 Hz), theta (5 Hz) and sham tACS, ERPs and advice-guided decision making were evaluated. Results showed a tentative behavioral effect of delta tACS in the response bias. In contrast, theta tACS significantly lowered P3b and P3a amplitudes, but no effects of tACS were observed for the FRN. Effects on electrophysiology and advice following behavior were uncorrelated. Our findings suggest that theta tACS may modulate electrocortical signals and delta tACS advice following, yet the relationship between both remains unresolved.

Mechanical vibration of muscle tendons in specific frequencies – termed functional proprioceptive stimulation (FPS) – has the ability to induce the illusion of a movement which is congruent with a lengthening of the vibrated tendon and muscle. The majority of previous reports of the brain correlates of this illusion are based on functional neuroimaging. Contrary to the electroencephalogram (EEG) however, such technologies are not suitable for bedside or ambulant use. While a handful of studies have shown EEG changes during FPS, it remains underinvestigated whether these changes were due to the perceived illusion or the perceived vibration. Here, we aimed at disentangling the neural correlates of the illusory movement from those produced by the vibration sensation by comparing the neural responses to two vibration types, one that did and one that did not elicit an illusion. We recruited 40 naïve participants, 20 for the EEG experiment and 20 for a supporting behavioral study, who received functional tendon co-vibration on the biceps and triceps tendon at their left elbow, pseudo-randomly switching between the illusion and non-illusion trials. Time-frequency decomposition uncovered a strong and lasting event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the mu and beta band in both conditions, suggesting a strong somatosensory response to the vibration. Additionally, the analysis of the evoked potentials revealed a significant difference between the two experimental conditions from 310 to 990ms post stimulus onset. Training classifiers on the frequency-based and voltage-based correlates of illusion perception yielded above chance accuracies for 17 and 13 out of the 20 subjects respectively. Our findings show that FPS-induced illusions produce EEG correlates that are distinct from a vibration-based control and which can be classified reliably in a large number of participants. These results encourage pursuing EEG-based detection of kinesthetic illusions as a tool for clinical use, e.g., to uncover aspects of cognitive perception in unresponsive patients.

Facial emotion processing (FEP) develops throughout childhood and provides crucial social information necessary for the interpretation and prediction of others’ behaviour. This systematic review, which includes a meta-regression component, sought to explore the development of FEP event-related potentials (P100, N170, and late positive potential [LPP]) in children aged three to twelve years. Thirty-four studies, representing data from 1511 children, were included in the review. The combination of meta-regression and systematic review suggest that P100 amplitude decreases with increasing age in response to emotional facial stimuli. P100 latency may show a gradual decrease around the age of ten. In terms of the N170, it is suggested that amplitude follows a non-linear trend with age, and latency may decrease in early childhood before plateauing during middle childhood. Of note, review of the literature indicates that substantial methodological differences and high levels of heterogeneity exist. We suggest future research considers these results within the context of emotion-specific development, whilst also acknowledging how this may relate to individual social functioning skills across early-to-middle childhood.

To investigate the processing of environmental sounds, previous researchers have compared the semantic processing of words and sounds, yielding mixed results. This study aimed to specifically investigate the electrophysiological mechanism underlying the semantic processing of environmental sounds presented in a naturalistic visual scene. We recorded event-related brain potentials in a group of young adults over the presentation of everyday life actions that were either congruent or incongruent with environmental sounds. Our results showed that incongruent environmental sounds evoked both a P400 and an N400 effect, reflecting sensitivity to physical and semantic violations of environmental sounds’ properties, respectively. In addition, our findings showed an enhanced late positivity in response to incongruous environmental sounds, probably reflecting additional reanalysis costs. In conclusion, these results indicate that the crossmodal processing of the environmental sounds might require the simultaneous involvement of different cognitive processes.