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Attention: the selective aspect of perception, requires wakefulness (organism), activation (behavior) and inhibition (neuronal systems). It may be observed momentarily (concentration), over time (vigilance) and in the selection between channels (e.g. the rejection of irrelevance in focussed and divided conditions). Anatomical Organisation: Information ascending through the thalamus not only alerts the sensory cortices, but thalamic projections to association areas receive direct feedback allowing gating and preparation of sensory areas for further analysis. A frontal organizational role is subserved by descending pathways allowing for valuation (orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala), association (hippocampal complex) and response possibilities (basal forebrain). Interactions between the latter allow for automatic processes, but with the former limbic connections bring the possibility of conscious control. Neurotransmitters: Additional involvement of brainstem mechanisms allows for volume-control (serotonin, 5HT), tuning (noradrenaline, NA) and switching (dopamine, DA) mechanisms in determining priority in selective mechanisms. Failures of brainstem mechanisms can impair the modulation of several systems ranging from affect (e.g. 5HT, hostility) to the assessment of information relevance (DA, perseveration, switching). Such non-specific features of psychotic processes can be incurred by unusual amino-acid transmission (e.g. Glu, Asp, GABA) from the neo- and archicortices. Psychopathology: The locus of supra- or sub-liminal damage may provide specificity to the symptom and speculatively the schizophrenic syndromes of poverty, disorganization and reality distortion. Useful "attentional" paradigms for the study of the nature and distribution of these processes include sustained attention, the influence of irrelevant stimuli (learned inattention -"blocking"), the covert orienting of attention (cost/benefits of cueing), dichotic and multidiscrimination (allocation), prepulse inhibition and masking (sensory gating) and concept formation. Psychophysiology: Our own work shows, for example, that mismatch negativity is severely reduced in young patients with schizophrenia with or without reality distortion (by 50% and again by 50%, respectively). But only the non-paranoid patients show an abnormal loosening of selection processes, reflected in reduced conditioned blocking (that in turn reflects switching between relevant and irrelevant stimuli and learning about both). This latter result proved to be related to changes of daily DA utilization (measured in 24h-urine samples) consistent with a DA role in switching.

Background and Aims: The Incentive Sensitization Theory (IST) offers a comprehensive framework that explains how attentional mechanisms contribute to the maintenance and relapse of addictive behavior. However, the extent to which the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms are consciously accessible for report remains unknown. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the association between self-reported wanting and liking among smokers and its relationship with detecting changes in smoking-related stimuli., Design: An online experiment was designed deploying a flicker paradigm with neutral and smoking-related changes, completed by 422 individuals (mean age = 29.1 years, 214 non-smokers, 123 current smokers, and 85 former smokers). Additionally, the Fagerström Test for Cigarette Dependence and the Imaginative Wanting and Liking Questionnaire were administered., Findings: Consistent with prior research findings, smokers exhibited faster detection of smoking-related changes compared to non-smokers, while former smokers displayed an intermediate level of attentional bias, falling between the levels observed in smokers and non-smokers. Further, higher levels of nicotine dependence were associated with a greater discrepancy between self-reported wanting and liking, which was associated with better change detection performance for high salience smoking-related stimuli in smokers., Conclusion: These findings support the predictions of IST and support the notion that attentional bias might develops early in the course of nicotine addiction. Furthermore, the results indicate that the underlying cognitive mechanisms might be partially within conscious awareness, which opens up potential avenues for research design, treatment, and interventions., 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 File, Petro, Kojouharova, Kővári, Gaál, Demetrovics and Czigler.)

In this study, we investigated whether the cognitive system, known to be able to register regular visual event sequences and the violation of these sequences automatically, had the capacity of processing two sequences simultaneously. To this end, we measured the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of ERPs as interwoven event sequences simultaneously presented to the left and right side of the screen. One of the sequences consisted of geometric patterns (diamonds); the other, photographs of human faces. In successive cycles, parts of the stimuli vanished and then re-appeared (the OFF/ON method). The vanishing parts served as either standard (frequently vanishing parts) or infrequent (deviant) events, but these events were task-irrelevant. The 20 adult participants (age 21.40 ± 2.72 years) performed a visual tracking task, with the OFF/ON task being a passive oddball paradigm. According to the results, both OFF and ON events, and both diamond and face stimuli elicited the vMMN component, showing that the system underlying this activity is capable of processing two event sequences if the sequences consist of fairly different kind of objects as stimuli. The sLORETA analysis showed that the source of vMMN was more frequent contralaterally to the deviant event, and the sources comprised loci from ventral and dorsal structures, as well as some anterior loci., (© 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component generated when an unexpected deviant stimulus occurs in a pattern of standard stimuli. Several studies showed that the MMN response to both auditory and visual stimuli is attenuated in schizophrenia. While previous studies investigated auditory and visual MMN in different cohorts, here we examined the potential clinical utility of MMN responses to auditory and visual stimuli within the same group of patients. Altogether 39 patients with schizophrenia and 39 healthy controls matched in age, gender, and education were enrolled. We recorded EEG using 64 channels in eight experimental blocks where we presented auditory and visual stimulus sequences. Mismatch responses were obtained by subtracting responses to standard from the physically identical deviant stimuli. We found a significant MMN response to the acoustic stimuli in the control group, whereas no significant mismatch response was observed in the patient group. The group difference was significant for the acoustic stimuli. The 12 vane windmill pattern evoked a significant MMN response in the early time window in the control group but not in the patient group. The 6 vane windmill pattern evoked MMN only in the patient group. However, we found no significant difference between the groups. Furthermore, we found no correlation between the clinical variables and the MMN amplitudes. Our results suggest that predictive processes underlying mismatch generation in patients with schizophrenia may be more affected in the acoustic compared to the visual domain. Acoustic MMN tends to be a more promising biomarker in schizophrenia., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Competing Interests: The author declares 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.

The contextual cueing effect is the phenomenon observed when response time (RT) becomes faster in visual search in repeated context compared with a new one. In the present study, we explored whether the mechanisms involved in the effect are age dependent. We investigated it in younger (N = 20, 12 women, 21.2 ± 1.75 years) and older (N = 19, nine women, 67.05 ± 3.94 years) adults. We found a faster target identification in the repeated configurations with similar magnitude in the two age groups, which indicates that this contextual cueing effect remained intact even in the older participants. To shed light on the underlying mechanisms, we measured and compared the amplitude of three event-related potentials: N2pc, P3, and response-locked LRP. In the younger group, the larger contextual cueing effect (novel-minus-repeated RT difference) correlated positively with a larger difference in amplitude for repeated compared with novel configurations for both the N2pc and the P3 components, but there was no correlation with the response-locked lateralized readiness potential (rLRP) amplitude difference. However, in the older group, only the rLRP amplitude difference between novel and repeated configurations showed an enhancement with larger contextual cueing. These results suggest that different mechanisms are responsible for the contextual effect in the two age groups. It has both an early and an intermediate locus in younger adults: effective attentional allocation and successful stimulus categorization, or decision-making confidence are involved; while in older adults, a late locus was identified: a more efficient response organization led to a faster reaction., (© 2023 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

The cognitive system automatically develops predictions on the basis of regularities of event sequences and reacts to the violation of these predictions. In the visual modality, the electrophysiological signature of this process is an event-related potential component, the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN). So far, we have no data, whether the system underlying vMMN is capable of dealing with more than one event sequence simultaneously. To disclose this aspect of the capacity of the system, in a passive oddball paradigm, we presented two interwoven sequences. The stimuli were objects (diamond patterns with their diagonals), one of the sequences was presented to the left side and the other to the right side of the visual field. From time to time, two parallel lines of the diamonds disappeared (OFF event) and then reappeared (ON event). The frequently vanishing pair of lines on the left side (standard) was identical to the rarely vanishing lines of the objects on the right side (deviant) and vice versa. We found that deviant ON events elicited vMMN only for left-side deviants and deviant OFF events elicited vMMN only for right-side deviants. The standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) source localization showed vMMN sources both in posterior visual structures and in anterior locations, and activity was stronger in the hemisphere contralateral to the deviant event. According to the results, the system underlying vMMN is capable of dealing with two sequences, but within a sequence, it detected only one type (either OFF or ON) of deviancy., (© 2023 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The detection of unattended visual changes is investigated by the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials (ERPs). The vMMN is measured as the difference between the ERPs to infrequent (deviant) and frequent (standard) stimuli irrelevant to the ongoing task. In the present study, we used human faces expressing different emotions as deviants and standards. In such studies, participants perform various tasks, so their attention is diverted from the vMMN-related stimuli. If such tasks vary in their attentional demand, they might influence the outcome of vMMN studies. In this study, we compared four kinds of frequently used tasks: (1) a tracking task that demanded continuous performance, (2) a detection task where the target stimuli appeared at any time, (3) a detection task where target stimuli appeared only in the inter-stimulus intervals, and (4) a task where target stimuli were members of the stimulus sequence. This fourth task elicited robust vMMN, while in the other three tasks, deviant stimuli elicited moderate posterior negativity (vMMN). We concluded that the ongoing task had a marked influence on vMMN; thus, it is important to consider this effect in vMMN studies., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Based on the two-factor model of creativity, two distinct types of creative problem solving can be differentiated: innovative ("do things differently") and adaptive ("do things better"). Flexible cognitive control is a crucial concept in connection with both general and specific styles of creativity: innovative problem-solving benefits from broader attention and flexible mental set shifting; while adaptive creativity relies on focused attention and persistent goal-oriented processes. We applied an informatively cued task-switching paradigm which is suitable for measuring different cognitive control processes and mechanisms like proactive and reactive control. We hypothesized that adaptive creativity is connected to effective proactive control processes, while innovative creativity is based on reactive task-execution. As we have found no previous evidence how age-related changes in cognitive control affects creative cognition; we also examined the effect of healthy aging on different problem-solving styles in an explorative way., Methods: Our participants, 37 younger (18-30 years) and 37 older (60-75 years) adults, were divided into innovative and adaptive creative groups according to the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking's Figural Subtest (Hungarian version)., Results: Our results showed that among younger adults the adaptively creative group had larger cue-locked CNV component (effective preparatory activity connected to proactive control), while the innovatively creative group had a larger target-locked P3b component (effective target evaluation and categorization in line with reactive control) which supports a functional difference in the two creative styles. By contrast, in older adults innovative problem-solving showed larger mixing costs (less effective maintenance and selection of task sets), and the lack of trial type effect on target-locked N2b (target-induced goal reactivation and less effective conflict resolution); while adaptive problem-solving caused them to make fewer errors (accuracy-oriented behavior)., Discussion: All in all, innovative and adaptive creativity is based on distinct cognitive control mechanisms in both age-groups, but their processing level is affected by age-related changes., 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 Nagy, Czigler, Csizmadia, File, Fáy and Gaál.)

In the present study our aim was to examine how the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli changes with creativity and aging, and how this processing influences task-relevant responding. We hypothesized that the degree in which irrelevant stimuli attract attention and occupy cognitive capacity, thereby interfering with the motor task, depends not only on the stimuli's saliency, but also on the participants' creativity and age. We investigated event-related potentials (ERP) and behavioural data in four groups - more creative and less creative younger (18-30 years) and older (60-75 years) adults - by presenting unambiguous and ambiguous portrait paintings and photos of faces in equal proportions before and after the target stimuli. Our results showed that aging affected behavioural and ERP responses, but there were no interactions between age groups, creativity and the three types of stimuli. Older adults were not more exposed to the interference caused by distractor stimuli as they compensated with bilateral activity to reach a similar performance to the younger group. The reaction time was faster for targets when they followed the faces rather than the portrait paintings, so, faces may have been less salient to the participants than paintings. The three types of stimuli were differentiated in all the processing stages. Creativity had a measured effect in the earliest (P1) stage with more creative groups being able to distinguish between unambiguous and ambiguous stimuli; and also, in the last processing stage (CNV), in which task-irrelevant stimuli, particularly photos of faces, were less distracting for more creative participants in task preparation. The results show that creativity in general has an influence even at the earliest stage of visual perception., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Change blindness experiments had demonstrated that detection of significant changes in natural images is extremely difficult when brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene. On the other hand, research on the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of the event-related potentials (ERPs) identified sensitivity to events (deviants) different from the regularity of stimulus sequences (standards), even if the deviant and standard events are non-attended. The present study sought to investigate the apparent controversy between the experience under the change blindness paradigm and the ERP results. To this end, the stimulus of Rensink, O'Reagen, and Clark (1997) was adapted to a passive oddball ERP paradigm to investigate the underlying processing differences between the standard (original) and deviant (altered) stimuli measured in 22 subjects. Posterior negativity within the 280-330 ms latency range emerged as the difference between ERPs elicited by standard and deviant stimuli, identified as visual mismatch negativity (vMMN). These results raise the possibility that change blindness is not based on the lack of detailed visual representations or the deficiency of comparing two representations. However, effective discrimination of the two scene versions requires considerable frequency differences between them., 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 File, Petro, Gaál, Csikós and Czigler.)

With increasing life expectancy and active aging, it becomes crucial to investigate methods which could compensate for generally detected cognitive aging processes. A promising candidate is adaptive cognitive training, during which task difficulty is adjusted to the participants' performance level to enhance the training and potential transfer effects. Measuring intrinsic brain activity is suitable for detecting possible distributed training-effects since resting-state dynamics are linked to the brain's functional flexibility and the effectiveness of different cognitive processes. Therefore, we investigated if adaptive task-switching training could modulate resting-state neural dynamics in younger (18-25 years) and older (60-75 years) adults (79 people altogether). We examined spectral power density on resting-state EEG data for measuring oscillatory activity, and multiscale entropy for detecting intrinsic neural complexity. Decreased coarse timescale entropy and lower frequency band power as well as increased fine timescale entropy and higher frequency band power revealed a shift from more global to local information processing with aging before training. However, cognitive training modulated these age-group differences, as coarse timescale entropy and lower frequency band power increased from pre- to post-training in the old-training group. Overall, our results suggest that cognitive training can modulate neural dynamics even when measured outside of the trained task., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

In this mini-review, we summarized the results of 12 visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) studies that attempted to use this component as a tool for investigating differences between non-clinical samples of participants as well as the possibility of automatic discrimination in the case of specific categories of visual stimuli. These studies investigated the effects of gender, the effects of long-term differences between the groups of participants (fitness, experience in different sports, and Internet addiction), and the effects of short-term states (mental fatigue and hypoxia), as well as the vMMN effect elicited by artworks as a special stimulus category., 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 Czigler and Kojouharova.)

We do not know enough about the cognitive background of creativity despite its significance. Using an active oddball paradigm with unambiguous and ambiguous portrait paintings as the standard stimuli, our aim was to examine whether: creativity in the figural domain influences the perception of visual stimuli; any stages of visual processing; or if healthy aging has an effect on these processes. We investigated event related potentials (ERPs) and applied ERP decoding analyses in four groups: younger less creative; younger creative; older less creative; and older creative adults. The early visual processing did not differ between creativity groups. In the later ERP stages the amplitude for the creative compared with the less creative groups was larger between 300 and 500 ms. The stimuli types were clearly distinguishable: within the 300-500 ms range the amplitude was larger for ambiguous rather than unambiguous paintings, but this difference in the traditional ERP analysis was only observable in the younger, not elderly groups, who also had this difference when using decoding analysis. Our results could not prove that visual creativity influences the early stage of perception, but showed creativity had an effect on stimulus processing in the 300-500 ms range, in indexing differences in top-down control, and having more flexible cognitive control in the younger creative group., 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 Csizmadia, Czigler, Nagy and Gaál.)

The human face is one of the most frequently used stimuli in vMMN (visual mismatch negativity) research. Previous studies showed that vMMN is sensitive to facial emotions and gender, but investigations of age-related vMMN differences are relatively rare. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the models' age in photographs were automatically detected, even if the photographs were not parts of the ongoing task. Furthermore, we investigated age-related differences, and the possibility of different sensitivity to photographs of participants' own versus different ages. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to faces of young and old models in younger ( N = 20; 18-30 years) and older groups ( N = 20; 60-75 years). The faces appeared around the location of the field of a tracking task. In sequences the young or the old faces were either frequent (standards) or infrequent (deviants). According to the results, a regular sequence of models' age is automatically registered, and faces violating the models' age elicited the vMMN component. However, in this study vMMN emerged only in the older group to same-age deviants. This finding is explained by the less effective inhibition of irrelevant stimuli in the elderly, and corresponds to own-age bias effect of recognition studies., 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 reviewer MZ declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with several of the authors (PC and BN) to the handling editor at the time of the review., (Copyright © 2021 Csizmadia, Petro, Kojouharova, Gaál, Scheiling, Nagy and Czigler.)

Although human adaptation to spaceflight has been studied for decades, little is known about its long-term effects on brain and behavior. The present study investigated visuospatial performance and associated electrophysiological responses in astronauts before, during, and after an approximately half-year long mission to the International Space Station. Here we report findings demonstrating that cognitive performance can suffer marked decrements during spaceflight. Astronauts were slower and more error-prone on orbit than on Earth, while event-related brain potentials reflected diminished attentional resources. Our study is the first to provide evidence for impaired performance during both the initial (~ 8 days) and later (~ 50 days) stages of spaceflight, without any signs of adaptation. Results indicate restricted adaptability to spaceflight conditions and calls for new research prior to deep space explorations.

This study examined the practice-related sensitivity of automatic change detection. The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials was compared in handball players and in sport shooters. Whereas effective performance in handball requires processing of a wide visual field, effective performance in shooting requires concentration to a narrow field. Thus, we hypothesized larger sensitivity to peripheral stimuli violating the regularity of sequential stimulation in handball players. Participants performed a tracking task, while task-irrelevant checkerboard patterns (a frequent and an infrequent type) were presented in the lateral parts of the visual field. We analyzed the vMMN, a signature of automatic detection of violating sequential regularity, and sensory components (P1, N1, and P2). We obtained larger vMMN in the handball players' group indicating larger sensitivity to peripheral stimuli. These results suggest the plasticity of the automatic visual processing, i.e., it can adapt to sport-specific demands, and this can be captured even in a short experimental session in the laboratory.

The N1 event-related potential (ERP) enhancement to auditory transients preceded briefly by another transient has been interpreted as a reflection of latent inhibition, or alternatively, as a superimposing mismatch negativity (MMN) to rare transient event combinations. In a previous study (Volosin, Gaál, & Horváth, 2017a), when rare glides preceded frequent gaps by 150 ms in continuous tones, gap-related N1 was enhanced in younger adults while P2 was attenuated both in younger and older adults, which could be parsimoniously explained by MMN overlap which was delayed with aging. The present study replicated and extended these results with a condition in which the roles of the two event types were reversed. Transients separated by 150 ms elicited delayed MMN in older adults, supporting the MMN interpretation over the latent inhibition account. Furthermore, the divergence of N1 and MMN elicitation patterns demonstrated the independence of N1 and MMN., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is the electrophysiological correlate of automatic detection of unattended changes in the visual environment. However, vMMNs' relatedness to spatial attention has not been explicitly tested. Thus, the aim of the study was to investigate the effects of spatial attention on the vMMN event-related potential component. To this end, participants were instructed to fixate and attend to task-related stimuli. In an oddball sequence, offset stimuli were applied, i.e., from time-to time, the two sides of permanently presented objects disappeared. Distance between the task-related and unrelated events resulted in the typical finding of spatial attention; the amplitude of the N1 component was larger at the shorter distance between the two kinds of events. VMMN was elicited by the deviant vanishing parts, with no reliable effect of distance between the task-field and vMMN-related stimuli. In terms of the difference potentials, vMMN was followed by a positive posterior component in the 270-330 ms range. This positivity was much larger when the task-field was close to vMMN-related stimuli. The reappearance of the vanishing parts was also investigated. The reappearance of the whole objects after a deviant offset elicited vMMN but only when the task-field was close to the oddball sequence. We concluded that infrequently vanishing parts of objects are detected automatically. However, these deviant events initiate orientation only if the objects are close to the field of task-relevant events. Similarly, automatic registration of the rare but expected events are registered only in the visual field close to the focus of attention., (© 2018 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Current theories of object perception emphasize the automatic nature of perceptual inference. Repetition suppression (RS), the successive decrease of brain responses to repeated stimuli, is thought to reflect the optimization of perceptual inference through neural plasticity. While functional imaging studies revealed brain regions that show suppressed responses to the repeated presentation of an object, little is known about the intra-trial time course of repetition effects to everyday objects. Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to task-irrelevant line-drawn objects, while participants engaged in a distractor task. We quantified changes in ERPs over repetitions using three general linear models that modeled RS by an exponential, linear, or categorical "change detection" function in each subject. Our aim was to select the model with highest evidence and determine the within-trial time-course and scalp distribution of repetition effects using that model. Model comparison revealed the superiority of the exponential model indicating that repetition effects are observable for trials beyond the first repetition. Model parameter estimates revealed a sequence of RS effects in three time windows (86-140, 322-360, and 400-446 ms) and with occipital, temporoparietal, and frontotemporal distribution, respectively. An interval of repetition enhancement (RE) was also observed (320-340 ms) over occipitotemporal sensors. Our results show that automatic processing of task-irrelevant objects involves multiple intervals of RS with distinct scalp topographies. These sequential intervals of RS and RE might reflect the short-term plasticity required for optimization of perceptual inference and the associated changes in prediction errors and predictions, respectively, over stimulus repetitions during automatic object processing., (© 2018 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

We investigated the effects of distractors in older and younger participants in choice and simple reaction time tasks with concurrent registration of event-related potentials. In the task the participants had to prevent a disk from falling into a bin after a color or luminosity change (target stimuli). Infrequently, task-irrelevant stimuli (schematic faces or threatening objects) were superimposed on the target stimuli (distractors), or the bin disappeared which required no response (Nogo trials). Reaction time was delayed to the distractors, but this effect was similar in the two age groups. As a robust age-related difference, in the older group a large anterior positivity and posterior negativity emerged to the distractors within the 100-200 ms post-stimulus range, and these components were larger for schematic faces than for threatening objects. sLORETA localized the age-specific effect to the ventral stream of the visual system and to anterior structures considered as parts of the executive system. The Nogo stimuli elicited a late positivity (Nogo P3) with longer latency in the older group. We interpreted the age-related differences as decreased but compensated resistance to task-irrelevant change of the target stimuli., 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 © 2020 Kojouharova, Gaál, Nagy and Czigler.)

We studied whether, due to deteriorating inhibitory functions, older people are more likely to process irrelevant stimuli; and if so, could they later use this information better than young adults. In the study phase of our experiment, a Posner-type gaze-cued version of a Simon task was performed in which we presented task-irrelevant cues, where faces or patches with either left- or right-looking dots for the pupil of the eye preceded the task to press a button congruent or incongruent with the presentation side of the target stimulus. In the follow-up test phase, participants completed an unexpected facial recognition test. In the study phase not only a decreased P1, but also an increased N170 amplitude of the event-related potentials (ERPs) were found in older, compared to younger adults, and also for faces compared to patches. Even though in the test phase both age-groups could recognize the faces better than statistically by chance, neither the older nor the younger participants could discriminate them effectively. The late positive component (LPC)-the ERP correlates of the old/new effect, being the higher amplitude for the earlier presented stimuli when compared with the unseen stimuli during the recognition test-was not evolved in the older group, while a reversed old/new effect was seen in younger participants: higher amplitude was found in New-Right and Old-Wrong conditions (for faces they did not recognize independent of seeing them before) compared to Old-Right and New-Wrong conditions (for faces they thought they recognized from the study phase). In conclusion, although older adults showed enhanced processing of task-irrelevant stimuli compared to younger adults, as indicated by the N170 amplitude, however, they were not able to utilize this information in a later task, as was suggested by the recognition rate and LPC amplitude results., (Copyright © 2020 Gaál, Nagy, File and Czigler.)

We studied a Posner-type gaze-cued version of a Simon task to characterize age-related changes in visuospatial attention and inhibitory control. Earlier results had indicated that the direction of gaze is a strong social cue that speeds response times; so we wondered whether, as a task-irrelevant stimulus, it could compensate for age-related impairment of inhibitory processes in the elderly. Our results assessed the Simon effect by: reaction time, error rate, the P3 component and the lateralized readiness potential (LRP). We found that the Simon effect was larger in the older group confirming an increased sensitivity to interference and also suggesting a decreased inhibitory control in older adults. LRP results showed that aging and stimulus-response incongruency delayed the selection of the responses-indexed by longer s-LRP latency data-, and also decreased the efficiency of motor inhibition in the Simon task-the s-LRP amplitude of both wrong- and correct-side activation was larger in older adults, and the latency difference of these two components was longer in this age-group. Also a larger N2pc amplitude in the congruent, compared to incongruent gaze condition, showed an increased visuospatial attention when the gaze-cueing drew attention to the target stimulus. This gaze-cueing could not be ignored and hence it modified task processing in the older age group, which was evident in the incongruent Simon condition where the congruent gaze increased older adults' reaction time and their error rate; but there was no difference observed in the congruent Simon condition. Since the anticipated facilitation of reaction times did not occur, we suggest that general slowing and decreased inhibitory functions in the elderly caused the social cue not to be a supporting stimulus but rather to be a further burden on their cognitive processing., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

We investigated the effects of voluntary hand movements and continuously present objects on the automatic detection of deviant stimuli in a passive oddball paradigm. The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials (ERPs) was measured as the index of automatic deviant detection. The stimuli were textures consisting of parallel, oblique bars with frequent (standard) and infrequent (deviant) orientation. Traditional vMMN was measured by the difference between ERPs to frequent (standard) and infrequent (deviant) textures. Additionally, we measured 'genuine' vMMN by comparing the ERPs to deviant and control textures in the equal probability procedure. Compatible and incompatible hand movement directions to the standard texture had no influence on 'traditional' vMMN and elicited no 'genuine' vMMN. However, the deviant texture elicited 'genuine' vMMN if the orientation of a continuously present rectangle was different from the standard (and identical to the deviant) texture orientation. Our results suggest that the direction of voluntary hand movement and the orientation of task-irrelevant visual patterns do not acquire common memory representation, but a continuously present object contributes to the detection of sequential regularity violation., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The current study investigated how experimentally induced acute normobaric hypoxia affects attentional control functions during easy, monotonous visual sustained attention and response inhibition (modified Continuous Performance Task) and executive control tasks (number-size Stroop task). Along with behavioral efficiency, task-relevant and task-irrelevant information processing were investigated by measuring event related brain potentials (ERP) evoked by target stimuli (Target P3), task-relevant stimuli with no response needed (NoGo P3), and task-irrelevant novel stimuli (Novelty P3) during acute hypoxia exposure. Normobaric hypoxia was induced by adjusting the O 2 content of the breathing mixture to obtain 80% peripheral oxygen saturation, equivalent of 5500 m above sea level. Here we report decreased Novelty P3 during acute normobaric hypoxia exposure, while Target P3 and NoGo P3, as well as behavioral efficiency remained intact. Our paper is the first to provide evidence for impaired novelty processing along with intact task-relevant information processing and response inhibition during normobaric hypoxic exposure., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.)