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The development of treatments for attention impairments is hampered by limited knowledge about the malleability of underlying neural functions. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to determine the modulations of brain activity associated with working memory (WM) training in adults with attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At baseline, we assessed the aberrant functional brain activity in the n‐back WM task by comparing 44 adults with ADHD with 18 healthy controls using fMRI. Participants with ADHD were then randomized to train on an adaptive dual n‐back task or an active control task. We tested whether WM training elicits redistribution of brain activity as observed in healthy controls, and whether it might further restore aberrant activity related to ADHD. As expected, activity in areas of the default‐mode (DMN), salience (SN), sensory‐motor (SMN), frontoparietal (FPN), and subcortical (SCN) networks was decreased in participants with ADHD at pretest as compared with healthy controls, especially when the cognitive load was high. WM training modulated widespread FPN and SN areas, restoring some of the aberrant activity. Training effects were mainly observed as decreased brain activity during the trained task and increased activity during the untrained task, suggesting different neural mechanisms for trained and transfer tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frontostriatal dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD) increases the risk for working memory (WM) impairment and depression, calling for counteractive measures. Computerised cognitive rehabilitation is a promising option, but targeted training protocols are lacking and lab-based training can be demanding due to the repeated visits. This study tested the feasibility and efficacy of home-based computerised training targeting mainly WM updating in PD. Fifty-two cognitively well-preserved PD patients were randomised to a WM training group and an active control group for five weeks of training (three 30-min sessions per week). WM training included three computerised adaptive WM tasks (two updating, one maintenance). The outcomes were examined pre- and post-training with trained and untrained WM tasks, tasks tapping other cognitive domains, and self-ratings of executive functioning and depression. Home-based training was feasible for the patients. The training group improved particularly on the updating training tasks, and showed posttest improvement on untrained WM tasks structurally similar to the trained ones. Moreover, their depression scores decreased compared to the controls. Our study indicates that patients with mild-to-moderate PD can self-administer home-based computerised WM training, and that they yield a similar transfer pattern to untrained WM tasks as has been observed in healthy older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mnemonic strategies can facilitate working memory performance, but our knowledge on strategy use as a function of task characteristics remains limited. We examined self-reported strategy use in several working memory tasks with pretest data from two large-scale online training experiments. A three-level measure of strategy sophistication (no strategy, maintenance, manipulation) was coded based on participants' open-ended strategy reports. A considerable portion of participants reported some memory strategy, and strategy sophistication was associated with objective task performance. We found a consistent effect of stimulus type: verbal stimuli (letters or digits) elicited higher strategy sophistication than nonverbal ones (colours or spatial positions). In contrast, the association between task paradigm and strategy sophistication was less consistent in the two experiments. The present results highlight the importance of self-generated strategies in understanding individual differences in working memory performance and the role of stimulus characteristics as one of the task-related determinants of strategy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present meta-analytic study examined brain activation changes following working memory (WM) training, a form of cognitive training that has attracted considerable interest. Comparisons with perceptual-motor (PM) learning revealed that WM training engages domain-general large-scale networks for learning encompassing the dorsal attention and salience networks, sensory areas, and striatum. Also the dynamics of the training-induced brain activation changes within these networks showed a high overlap between WM and PM training. The distinguishing feature for WM training was the consistent modulation of the dorso- and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC/VLPFC) activity. The strongest candidate for mediating transfer to similar untrained WM tasks was the frontostriatal system, showing higher striatal and VLPFC activations, and lower DLPFC activations after training. Modulation of transfer-related areas occurred mostly with longer training periods. Overall, our findings place WM training effects into a general perception-action cycle, where some modulations may depend on the specific cognitive demands of a training task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern environments are full of information, and place high demands on the attention control mechanisms that allow the selection of information from one (focused attention) or multiple (divided attention) sources, react to changes in a given situation (stimulus-driven attention), and allocate effort according to demands (task-positive and task-negative activity). We aimed to reveal how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects the brain functions associated with these attention control processes in constantly demanding tasks. Sixteen adults with ADHD and 17 controls performed adaptive visual and auditory discrimination tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Overlapping brain activity in frontoparietal saliency and default-mode networks, as well as in the somato-motor, cerebellar, and striatal areas were observed in all participants. In the ADHD participants, we observed exclusive activity enhancement in the brain areas typically considered to be primarily involved in other attention control functions: During auditory-focused attention, we observed higher activation in the sensory cortical areas of irrelevant modality and the default-mode network (DMN). DMN activity also increased during divided attention in the ADHD group, in turn decreasing during a simple button-press task. Adding irrelevant stimulation resulted in enhanced activity in the salience network. Finally, the irrelevant distractors that capture attention in a stimulus-driven manner activated dorsal attention networks and the cerebellum. Our findings suggest that attention control deficits involve the activation of irrelevant sensory modality, problems in regulating the level of attention on demand, and may encumber top-down processing in cases of irrelevant information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although working memory (WM) is amongst the most studied neurocognitive functions, temporal patterns of its component processes are not fully understood. We examined the neural underpinnings of active maintenance and interference management in the n-back task by manipulating load (1-back vs 3-back) and including so-called lure stimuli. ERPs of 27 young adults revealed that the 1-back condition enabling active maintenance showed a positive slow wave (PSW) prior to the next stimulus (−600–0 ms) and augmented P2 (190–290 ms) and P3b (330–430 ms) responses after the stimulus appeared, albeit the latter effects were driven by the initial PSW. Moreover, PSW amplitude correlated negatively with reaction time in the 1-back condition. Responses to lures showed interference, accompanied with different ERP effects for the two load levels. Our results support the view that PSW reflects efficient WM maintenance and suggest two distinct neuronal correlates for interference in WM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Empathizing-Systemizing theory (E-S Theory), individual differences in how people understand the physical world (systemizing) and the social world (empathizing), are two continuums in the general population with several implications, from vocational interests to skills in the social and physical domains. The underlying mechanisms of intuitive physics performance among individuals with strong systemizing and weak empathizing (systemizers) are, however, unknown. Our results affirm higher intuitive physics skills in healthy adult systemizers (N=36), and further reveal the brain mechanisms that are characteristic for those individuals in carrying out such tasks. When the participants performed intuitive physics tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging, combined higher systemizing and lower empathizing was associated with stronger activations in parts of the default mode network (DMN, cuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus), middle occipital gyrus, and parahippocampal region. The posterior cingulate gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus were specifically associated with systemizing “brain type” even after controlling for task performance, while especially in the parietal cortex, the activation changes were simply explained by higher task performance. We therefore suggest that utilization of DMN-parahippocampal complex, suggested to play a role in internalizing and activating long-term spatial memory representations, is the factor that distinguishes systemizers from empathizers with the opposite “brain type” in intuitive physics tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of previous studies have suggested segregated networks of brain areas for top-down controlled and bottom-up triggered orienting of visual attention. However, the corresponding networks involved in auditory attention remain less studied. Our participants attended selectively to a tone stream with either a lower pitch or higher pitch in order to respond to infrequent changes in duration of attended tones. The participants were also required to shift their attention from one stream to the other when guided by a visual arrow cue. In addition to these top-down controlled cued attention shifts, infrequent task-irrelevant louder tones occurred in both streams to trigger attention in a bottom-up manner. Both cued shifts and louder tones were associated with enhanced activity in the superior temporal gyrus and sulcus, temporo-parietal junction, superior parietal lobule, inferior and middle frontal gyri, frontal eye field, supplementary motor area, and anterior cingulate gyrus. Thus, the present findings suggest that in the auditory modality, unlike in vision, top-down controlled and bottom-up triggered attention activate largely the same cortical networks. Comparison of the present results with our previous results from a similar experiment on spatial auditory attention suggests that fronto-parietal networks of attention to location or pitch overlap substantially. However, the auditory areas in the anterior superior temporal cortex might have a more important role in attention to the pitch than location of sounds. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Prediction and Attention . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate potential differences in neural structure in individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS), high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main symptoms of AS are severe impairments in social interactions and restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests or activities. Methods: Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired for 14 adult males with AS and 19 age, sex and IQ-matched controls. Voxelwise group differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) were studied with tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). Based on the results of TBSS, a tract-level comparison was performed with constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD)-based tractography, which is able to detect complex (for example, crossing) fiber configurations. In addition, to investigate the relationship between the microstructural changes and the severity of symptoms, we looked for correlations between FA and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), Empathy Quotient and Systemizing Quotient. Results: TBSS revealed widely distributed local increases in FA bilaterally in individuals with AS, most prominent in the temporal part of the superior longitudinal fasciculus, corticospinal tract, splenium of corpus callosum, anterior thalamic radiation, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFO), posterior thalamic radiation, uncinate fasciculus and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). CSD-based tractography also showed increases in the FA in multiple tracts. However, only the difference in the left ILF was significant after a Bonferroni correction. These results were not explained by the complexity of microstructural organization, measured using the planar diffusion coefficient. In addition, we found a correlation between AQ and FA in the right IFO in the whole group. Conclusions: Our results suggest that there are local and tract-level abnormalities in white matter (WM) microstructure in our homogenous and carefully characterized group of adults with AS, most prominent in the left ILF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate potential differences in neural structure in individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS), high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main symptoms of AS are severe impairments in social interactions and restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests or activities. Methods: Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired for 14 adult males with AS and 19 age, sex and IQ-matched controls. Voxelwise group differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) were studied with tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). Based on the results of TBSS, a tract-level comparison was performed with constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD)-based tractography, which is able to detect complex (for example, crossing) fiber configurations. In addition, to investigate the relationship between the microstructural changes and the severity of symptoms, we looked for correlations between FA and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), Empathy Quotient and Systemizing Quotient. Results: TBSS revealed widely distributed local increases in FA bilaterally in individuals with AS, most prominent in the temporal part of the superior longitudinal fasciculus, corticospinal tract, splenium of corpus callosum, anterior thalamic radiation, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFO), posterior thalamic radiation, uncinate fasciculus and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). CSD-based tractography also showed increases in the FA in multiple tracts. However, only the difference in the left ILF was significant after a Bonferroni correction. These results were not explained by the complexity of microstructural organization, measured using the planar diffusion coefficient. In addition, we found a correlation between AQ and FA in the right IFO in the whole group. Conclusions: Our results suggest that there are local and tract-level abnormalities in white matter (WM) microstructure in our homogenous and carefully characterized group of adults with AS, most prominent in the left ILF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been associated with multiple stimulus-driven (e.g., processing stimulus movements, providing visual signals for the motor system), goal-directed (e.g., directing visual attention to a target, processing behavioral priority of intentions), and action-related functions in previous studies with non-naturalistic paradigms. Here, we examined how these functions reflect PPC activity during natural viewing. Fourteen healthy volunteers watched a re-edited movie during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants separately annotated behavioral priority (accounting for percepts, thoughts, and emotions) they had experienced during movie episodes. Movements in the movie were quantified with computer vision and eye movements were recorded from a separate group of subjects. Our results show that while overlapping dorsomedial PPC areas respond to episodes with multiple types of stimulus content, ventrolateral PPC areas exhibit enhanced activity when viewing goal-directed human hand actions. Furthermore, PPC activity related to viewing goal-directed human hand actions was more accurately explained by behavioral priority than by movements of the stimulus or eye movements. Taken together, our results suggest that PPC participates in perception of goal-directed human hand actions, supporting the view that PPC has a special role in providing visual signals for the motor system ('how'), in addition to processing visual spatial movements ('where'). Hum Brain Mapp 35:4767-4776, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how the brain processes stimuli in a rich natural environment is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. Here, we showed a feature film to 10 healthy volunteers during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of hemodynamic brain activity. We then annotated auditory and visual features of the motion picture to inform analysis of the hemodynamic data. The annotations were fitted to both voxel-wise data and brain network time courses extracted by independent component analysis (ICA). Auditory annotations correlated with two independent components (IC) disclosing two functional networks, one responding to variety of auditory stimulation and another responding preferentially to speech but parts of the network also responding to non-verbal communication. Visual feature annotations correlated with four ICs delineating visual areas according to their sensitivity to different visual stimulus features. In comparison, a separate voxelwise general linear model based analysis disclosed brain areas preferentially responding to sound energy, speech, music, visual contrast edges, body motion and hand motion which largely overlapped the results revealed by ICA. Differences between the results of IC- and voxel-based analyses demonstrate that thorough analysis of voxel time courses is important for understanding the activity of specific sub-areas of the functional networks, while ICA is a valuable tool for revealing novel information about functional connectivity which need not be explained by the predefined model. Our results encourage the use of naturalistic stimuli and tasks in cognitive neuroimaging to study how the brain processes stimuli in rich natural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We applied fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI to study the segregation of cognitive and motor functions in the human cerebrocerebellar system. Our fMRI results show that a load increase in a nonverbal auditory working memory task is associated with enhanced brain activity in the parietal, dorsal premotor, and lateral prefrontal cortices and in lobules VII-VIII of the posterior cerebellum, whereas a sensory-motor control task activated the motor/somatosensory, medial prefrontal, and posterior cingulate cortices and lobules V/ VI of the anterior cerebellum. The load-dependent activity in the crus I/ II had a specific relationship with cognitive performance: This activity correlated negatively with load-dependent increase in RTs. This correlation between brain activity and RTs was not observed in the sensory-motor task in the activated cerebellar regions. Furthermore, probabilistic tractography analysis of the diffusion-weighted MRI data suggests that the tracts between the cerebral and the cerebellar areas exhibiting cognitive loaddependent and sensory-motor activity are mainly projected via separated pontine (feed-forward tracts) and thalamic (feedback tracts) nuclei. The tractography results also indicate that the crus I/II in the posterior cerebellum is linked with the lateral prefrontal areas activated by cognitive load increase, whereas the anterior cerebellar lobe is not. The current results support the view that cognitive and motor functions are segregated in the cerebellum. On the basis of these results and theories of the function of the cerebellum, we suggest that the posterior cerebellar activity during a demanding cognitive task is involved with optimization of the response speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), our participants selectively attended to tone streams at the left or right, and occasionally shifted their attention from one stream to another as guided by a centrally presented visual cue. Duration changes in the to-be-attended stream served as targets. Loudness deviating tones (LDTs) occurred infrequently in both streams to catch attention in a bottom-up manner, as indicated by their effects on reaction times to targets. LDTs activated the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), posterior parts of the left inferior/middle frontal gyrus (IFG/MFG), ventromedial parts of the superior parietal lobule (SPL), and left frontal eye field/premotor cortex (FEF/PMC). In addition, LDTs in the to-be-ignored sound stream were associated with enhanced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) possibly related to evaluation of the distracting event. Top-down controlled cue-guided attention shifts (CASs) activated bilateral areas in the SPL, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), FEF/PMC, TPJ, IFG/MFG, and cingulate/medial frontal gyrus, and crus I/II of the cerebellum. Thus, our results suggest that in audition top-down controlled and bottom-up triggered shifting of attention activate largely overlapping temporo-parietal, superior parietal and frontal areas. As the IPS, superior parts of the SPL, and crus I/II were activated specifically by top-down controlled attention shifts, and the VMPFC was specifically activated by bottom-up triggered attention shifts, our results also suggest some differences between auditory top-down controlled and bottom-up triggered shifting of attention. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We studied orienting and maintenance of spatial attention in audition and vision. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in nine healthy subjects revealed activations in the same superior and inferior parietal, and posterior prefrontal areas in the auditory and visual orienting tasks when these tasks were compared with the corresponding maintenance tasks. Attention-related activations in the thalamus and cerebellum were observed during the auditory orienting and maintenance tasks and during the visual orienting task. In addition to the supratemporal auditory cortices, auditory orienting, and maintenance produced stronger activity than the respective visual tasks in the inferior parietal and prefrontal cortices, whereas only the occipital visual cortex and the superior parietal cortex showed stronger activity during the visual tasks than during the auditory tasks. Differences between the brain networks involved in auditory and visual spatial attention could be, for example, due to different encoding of auditory and visual spatial information or differences in stimulus-driven (bottom-up triggered) and voluntary (top-down controlled) attention between the auditory and visual modalities, or both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of orienting and maintenance of attention on performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in audition and vision. Our subjects selectively attended to sounds or pictures in one location (Maintenance of attention) or alternated the focus of their auditory or visual attention between left and right locations (Orienting of attention) in order to detect and press a response button to infrequent targets among the attended stimuli. Reaction times were longer in the Auditory Orienting condition and hit rates were lower and false alarm rates higher in the Visual Orienting condition than in the corresponding Maintenance conditions. Comparison of ERPs to the attended and unattended stimuli in the Auditory and Visual Orienting and Maintenance conditions revealed attention-related modulations of ERPs. In each modality, ERPs to attended stimuli were negatively displaced in relation to unattended stimuli at 100–250 ms from stimulus onset. These negative differences (Nds) showed modality-specific distributions and they were larger over the hemisphere contralateral to the attended sounds and pictures than over the ipsilateral hemisphere. Moreover, the Nd was larger in the Auditory Orienting condition than in the Auditory Maintenance condition, while no such difference was observed in the visual modality. In addition to the Nd, attended visual stimuli elicited a late positive response (LPR) in both Orienting and Maintenance conditions. In contrast to our recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study employing the same experimental paradigm and indicating orienting-related activity in the frontal and parietal cortices, no ERP responses specifically related to orienting were found in either modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We studied the relationship between sleep quality and quantity and subsequently recorded automatically evoked event-related potential (ERP) responses. In previous studies decrement of attentional processing has been associated with changes in sleep. Sleep is shown to associate also with ERPs elicited by unattended sound stream, however, there is no consensus on these effects. A recent study suggested that the early anterior P3a to novel stimuli in attended stream is attenuated and the late parietal P3a is strengthened by total sleep deprivation. We carried out 72-h consecutive actigraphy measurements in a naturalistic setting to collect information about variation in sleep duration, sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, and percentage of sleep. MMN and P3a deflections to infrequent changes in sound duration and pitch in unattended sound stream were obtained in a separate recording session from the same subjects when they were awake. No significant correlations were found between sleep and MMN parameters, indicating that MMN is resistant to normal variation in sleep. However, P3a to both pitch and duration changes correlated positively with sleep onset latency, and P3a to duration changes correlated negatively with sleep efficiency and percentage of sleep. The correlation was higher in the posterior scalp areas. Our results suggest that the involuntary attention switching system, reflected by the P3a is sensitized as a function of decreased sleep quality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties navigating dynamic everyday situations that contain multiple sensory inputs that need to either be attended to or ignored. As conventional experimental tasks lack this type of everyday complexity, we administered a film-based multi-talker condition with auditory distractors in the background. ADHD-related aberrant brain responses to this naturalistic stimulus were identified using intersubject correlations (ISCs) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected from 51 adults with ADHD and 29 healthy controls. A novel permutation-based approach introducing studentized statistics and subject-wise voxel-level null-distributions revealed that several areas in cerebral attention networks and sensory cortices were desynchronized in participants with ADHD (n = 20) relative to healthy controls (n = 20). Specifically, desynchronization of the posterior parietal cortex occurred when irrelevant speech or music was presented in the background, but not when irrelevant white noise was presented, or when there were no distractors. We also show regionally distinct ISC signatures for inattention and impulsivity. Finally, post-scan recall of the film contents was associated with stronger ISCs in the default-mode network for the ADHD and in the dorsal attention network for healthy controls. The present study shows that ISCs can further our understanding of how a complex environment influences brain states in ADHD. • We used a naturalistic multi-talker condition to reveal aberrant brain synchronization in ADHD. • Intersubject correlations (ISCs) in attention-related brain areas were decreased in ADHD. • ISCs in the parietal cortex were weaker in ADHD during irrelevant speech or music. • ISCs in different regions were associated with symptoms and with recall of the film content. • We demonstrate the advantages of using naturalistic conditions when studying the neural underpinnings of ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We characterized a cascade of brain responses modulated by working memory training. • These effects include P2-N2-P3 complex and slow waves that were differentially affected. • Reduced load-effect for P2-N2-P3 complex in the training group may reflect automatization. • Enhanced slow waves in a difficult condition was taken to indicate improved maintenance. The brain mechanisms of working memory (WM) training in humans remain unclear. Here we examined how WM updating training modulates a cascade of event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited at different processing stages. We hypothesized that WM updating training results to decreases in the early responses reflecting stimulus selection and response preparation, and increases the late slow responses reflecting maintenance of to-be-remembered materials. Healthy adults were randomized to a WM updating group that trained an adaptive dual n-back task (n = 20), and an active control group that played a computer game (n = 20). Both groups performed three 25-min training sessions per week for five weeks. Pretest-posttest comparisons showed that the training group significantly improved their performance as compared to the active controls, but this was limited to the trained task. In line with our hypothesis, P2-N2-P3 complex showed changes from pre- to posttest. In the training group this was observed as decreased load-effect while in the control group there was an opposite pattern at some latencies. Slow waves elicited during the maintenance were decreased in the easy task and increased in the difficult task. Taken together, our findings suggest that the early and late ERPs are differentially affected by training. When task demands are high, training may lead to an improved ability to actively maintain several stimuli in memory, and when they are low, training results in more efficient processing and automatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18–50 years of age. In the game, participants perform lists of everyday tasks from memory while navigating in a virtual apartment. Open-ended strategy reports were collected after each EPELI task block, and for comparison also after an EPELI Instruction Recall task and a Word List Learning task assessing episodic memory. On average, 45% of the participants reported using some strategy in EPELI, the most common types being grouping (e.g., performing the tasks room by room), utilising a familiar action schema, and condensing information (e.g., memorising only keywords). Our pre-registered hypothesis on the beneficial effect of self-initiated strategy use gained support, as strategy users showed better performance on EPELI as compared with no strategy users. One of the strategies, grouping, was identified as a clearly effective strategy type. Block-by-block transitions suggested gradual stabilisation of strategy use over the 10 EPELI blocks. The proneness to use strategies showed a weak but reliable association between EPELI and Word List Learning. Overall, the present results highlight the importance of internal strategy use for understanding individual differences in memory performance, as well as the potential benefit for internal strategy employment when faced with everyday memory tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives may be regarded as simulations of everyday social situations. They are key to studying the human mind in socio-culturally determined contexts as they allow anchoring to the common ground of embodied and environmentally-engaged cognition. Here we review recent findings from naturalistic neuroscience on neural functions in conditions that mimic lifelike situations. We will focus particularly on neurocinematics, a research field that applies mediated narratives as stimuli for neuroimaging experiments. During the last two decades, this paradigm has contributed to an accumulation of insights about the neural underpinnings of behavior and sense-making in various narratively contextualized situations particularly pertaining to socio-emotional encounters. One of the key questions in neurocinematics is, how do intersubjectively synchronized brain activations relate to subjective experiences? Another question we address is how to bring natural contexts into experimental studies. Seeking to respond to both questions, we suggest neurocinematic studies to examine three manifestations of the same phenomenon side-by-side: subjective experiences of narrative situations, unfolding of narrative stimulus structure, and neural processes that co-constitute the experience. This approach facilitates identifying experientially meaningful activity patterns in the brain and points out what they may mean in relation to shared and communicable contents. Via rich-featured and temporally contextualized narrative stimuli, neurocinematics attempts to contribute to emerging holistic theories of neural dynamics and connectomics explaining typical and atypical interindividual variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently developed virtual reality task, EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving), quantifies goal-directed behavior in naturalistic conditions. Participants navigate a virtual apartment, performing household chores given by a virtual character. EPELI aims to tap attention, executive function, and prospective memory. To ensure its applicability to further research and clinical work and to study its relationship to relevant background factors, we examined several key properties of EPELI in 77 typically developing 9–13-year-old children. These included EPELI's internal consistency, age and gender differences, sensitivity to gaming experience, head-mounted display (HMD) type, and verbal recall ability, as well as its relationships with parent-rated everyday executive problems. Of the eight EPELI measures, the following six showed acceptable internal consistency: task and navigation efficacy, number of correctly performed tasks and overall actions, time monitoring, and controller movement. Some measures were associated with age, gender, or verbal encoding ability. Moreover, EPELI performance was associated with parent-rated everyday executive problems. There were no significant associations of gaming background, task familiarity, or HMD type with the EPELI measures. These results attest to the reliability and ecological validity of this new virtual reality tool for the assessment of attention, executive functions, and prospective memory in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diagnosis of ADHD is based on real-life attentional-executive deficits, but they are harder to detect in adults than in children and objective quantitative measures reflecting these everyday problems are lacking. We developed an online version of EPELI 3D videogame for naturalistic and scalable assessment of goal-directed action and prospective memory in adult ADHD. In EPELI, participants perform instructed everyday chores in a virtual apartment from memory. Our pre-registered hypothesis predicted weaker EPELI performances in adult ADHD compared to controls. The sample comprised 112 adults with ADHD and 255 neurotypical controls comparable in age (mean 31, SD = 8 years), gender distribution (71% females) and educational level. Using web-browser, the participants performed EPELI and other cognitive tasks, including Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT). They also filled out questionnaires probing everyday executive performance and kept a 5-day diary of everyday prospective memory errors. Self-reported strategy use in the EPELI game was also examined. The ADHD participants' self-ratings indicated clearly more everyday executive problems than in the controls. Differences in the EPELI game were mostly seen in the ADHD participants' higher rates of task-irrelevant actions. Gender differences and a group × gender interaction was found in the number of correctly performed tasks, indicating poorer performance particularly in ADHD males. Discriminant validity of EPELI was similar to CPT. Strategy use strongly predicted EPELI performance in both groups. The results demonstrate the feasibility of EPELI for online assessment and highlight the role of impulsivity as a distinctive everyday life problem in adult ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) is a recently developed gaming tool for objective assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory (PM) in everyday contexts. This pre-registered study examined psychometric features of a new EPELI adult online version, modified from the original child version and further developed for self-administered web-based testing at home. A sample of 255 healthy adults completed EPELI where their task was to perform household chores instructed by a virtual character. The participants also filled out PM-related questionnaires and a diary and performed two conventional PM tasks and an intelligence test. We expected that the more "life-like" EPELI task would show stronger associations with conventional PM questionnaires and diary-based everyday PM reports than traditional PM tasks would do. This hypothesis did not receive support. Although EPELI was rated as more similar to everyday tasks, performance in it was not associated with the questionnaires and the diary. However, there were associations between time-monitoring behavior in EPELI and the traditional PM tasks. Taken together, online adult-EPELI was found to be a reliable method with high ecological face validity, but its convergent validity requires further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Top-down controlled selective or divided attention to sounds and visual objects, as well as bottom-up triggered attention to auditory and visual distractors, has been widely investigated. However, no study has systematically compared brain activations related to all these types of attention. To this end, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in participants performing a tone pitch or a foveal grating orientation discrimination task, or both, distracted by novel sounds not sharing frequencies with the tones or by extrafoveal visual textures. To force focusing of attention to tones or gratings, or both, task difficulty was kept constantly high with an adaptive staircase method. A whole brain analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed fronto-parietal attention networks for both selective auditory and visual attention. A subsequent conjunction analysis indicated partial overlaps of these networks. However, like some previous studies, the present results also suggest segregation of prefrontal areas involved in the control of auditory and visual attention. The ANOVA also suggested, and another conjunction analysis confirmed, an additional activity enhancement in the left middle frontal gyrus related to divided attention supporting the role of this area in top-down integration of dual task performance. Distractors expectedly disrupted task performance. However, contrary to our expectations, activations specifically related to the distractors were found only in the auditory and visual cortices. This suggests gating of the distractors from further processing perhaps due to strictly focused attention in the current demanding discrimination tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous functional connectivity studies have found both hypo- and hyper-connectivity in brains of individuals having autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here we studied abnormalities in functional brain subnetworks in high-functioning individuals with ASD during free viewing of a movie containing social cues and interactions. Twenty-six subjects (13 with ASD) watched a 68-min movie during functional magnetic resonance imaging. For each subject, we computed Pearson's correlation between haemodynamic time-courses of each pair of 6-mm isotropic voxels. From the whole-brain functional networks, we derived individual and group-level subnetworks using graph theory. Scaled inclusivity was then calculated between all subject pairs to estimate intersubject similarity of connectivity structure of each subnetwork. Additional 54 individuals (27 with ASD) from the ABIDE resting-state database were included to test the reproducibility of the results. Between-group differences were observed in the composition of default-mode and ventro-temporal-limbic (VTL) subnetworks. The VTL subnetwork included amygdala, striatum, thalamus, parahippocampal, fusiform, and inferior temporal gyri. Further, VTL subnetwork similarity between subject pairs correlated significantly with similarity of symptom gravity measured with autism quotient. This correlation was observed also within the controls, and in the reproducibility dataset with ADI-R and ADOS scores. Our results highlight how the reorganization of functional subnetworks in individuals with ASD clarifies the mixture of hypo- and hyper-connectivity findings. Importantly, only the functional organization of the VTL subnetwork emerges as a marker of inter-individual similarities that co-vary with behavioral measures across all participants. These findings suggest a pivotal role of ventro-temporal and limbic systems in autism. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1066-1079, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent brain imaging findings suggest that there are widely distributed abnormalities affecting the brain connectivity in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Using graph theoretical analysis, it is possible to investigate both global and local properties of brain's wiring diagram, i.e., the connectome. Methods: We acquired diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging data from 14 adult males with high-functioning ASD and 19 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched controls. As with diffusion tensor imaging-based tractography, it is not possible to detect complex (e.g., crossing) fiber configurations, present in 60-90% of white matter voxels; we performed constrained spherical deconvolution-based whole brain tractography. Unweighted and weighted structural brain networks were then reconstructed from these tractography data and analyzed with graph theoretical measures. Results: In subjects with ASD, global efficiency was significantly decreased both in the unweighted and the weighted networks, normalized characteristic path length was significantly increased in the unweighted networks, and strength was significantly decreased in the weighted networks. In the local analyses, betweenness centrality of the right caudate was significantly increased in the weighted networks, and the strength of the right superior temporal pole was significantly decreased in the unweighted networks in subjects with ASD. Conclusions: Our findings provide new insights into understanding ASD by showing that the integration of structural brain networks is decreased and that there are abnormalities in the connectivity of the right caudate and right superior temporal pole in subjects with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We used 3-T functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brain mechanisms underlying selective attention to sound location and pitch. In different tasks, the subjects (N = 10) attended to a designated sound location or pitch or to pictures presented on the screen. In the Attend Location conditions, the sound location varied randomly (left or right), while the pitch was kept constant (high or low). In the Attend Pitch conditions, sounds of randomly varying pitch (high or low) were presented at a constant location (left or right). Both attention to location and attention to pitch produced enhanced activity (in comparison with activation caused by the same sounds when attention was focused on the pictures) in widespread areas of the superior temporal cortex. Attention to either sound feature also activated prefrontal and inferior parietal cortical regions. These activations were stronger during attention to location than during attention to pitch. Attention to location but not to pitch produced a significant increase of activation in the premotor/supplementary motor cortices of both hemispheres and in the right prefrontal cortex, while no area showed activity specifically related to attention to pitch. The present results suggest some differences in the attentional selection of sounds on the basis of their location and pitch consistent with the suggested auditory “what” and “where” processing streams. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During a conversation or when listening to music, auditory and visual information are combined automatically into audiovisual objects. However, it is still poorly understood how specific type of visual information shapes neural processing of sounds in lifelike stimulus environments. Here we applied multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigate how naturally matching visual input modulates supratemporal cortex activity during processing of naturalistic acoustic speech, singing and instrumental music. Bayesian logistic regression classifiers with sparsity-promoting priors were trained to predict whether the stimulus was audiovisual or auditory, and whether it contained piano playing, speech, or singing. The predictive performances of the classifiers were tested by leaving one participant at a time for testing and training the model using the remaining 15 participants. The signature patterns associated with unimodal auditory stimuli encompassed distributed locations mostly in the middle and superior temporal gyrus (STG/MTG). A pattern regression analysis, based on a continuous acoustic model, revealed that activity in some of these MTG and STG areas were associated with acoustic features present in speech and music stimuli. Concurrent visual stimulus modulated activity in bilateral MTG (speech), lateral aspect of right anterior STG (singing), and bilateral parietal opercular cortex (piano). Our results suggest that specific supratemporal brain areas are involved in processing complex natural speech, singing, and piano playing, and other brain areas located in anterior (facial speech) and posterior (music-related hand actions) supratemporal cortex are influenced by related visual information. Those anterior and posterior supratemporal areas have been linked to stimulus identification and sensory-motor integration, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing the context of a discourse is an essential prerequisite for comprehension. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to disclose brain networks supporting context-dependent speech comprehension. During fMRI, 20 participants listened to 1-min spoken narratives preceded by pictures that were either contextually matching or mismatching with the narrative. Matching pictures increased narrative comprehension, decreased hemodynamic activity in Broca׳s area, and enhanced its functional connectivity with left anterior superior frontal gyrus, bilateral inferior parietal cortex, as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. Further, the anterior (BA 45) and posterior (BA 44) portions of Broca׳s area differed in their functional connectivity patterns. Both BA 44 and BA 45 have shown increased connectivity with right angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Whereas BA 44 showed increased connectivity with left angular gyrus, left inferior/middle temporal gyrus and left postcentral gyrus, BA 45 showed increased connectivity with right posterior cingulate cortex, right anterior inferior frontal gyrus, lateral occipital cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Our results suggest that a fronto-parietal functional network supports context-dependent narrative comprehension, and that Broca׳s area is involved in resolving ambiguity from speech when appropriate contextual cues are lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and magnetic fields (ERFs) were used to compare brain activity associated with selective attention to sound location or pitch in humans. Sixteen healthy adults participated in the ERP experiment, and 11 adults in the ERF experiment. In different conditions, the participants focused their attention on a designated sound location or pitch, or pictures presented on a screen, in order to detect target sounds or pictures among the attended stimuli. In the Attend Location condition, the location of sounds varied randomly (left or right), while their pitch (high or low) was kept constant. In the Attend Pitch condition, sounds of varying pitch (high or low) were presented at a constant location (left or right). Consistent with previous ERP results, selective attention to either sound feature produced a negative difference (Nd) between ERPs to attended and unattended sounds. In addition, ERPs showed a more posterior scalp distribution for the location-related Nd than for the pitch-related Nd, suggesting partially different generators for these Nds. The ERF source analyses found no source distribution differences between the pitch-related Ndm (the magnetic counterpart of the Nd) and location-related Ndm in the superior temporal cortex (STC), where the main sources of the Ndm effects are thought to be located. Thus, the ERP scalp distribution differences between the location-related and pitch-related Nd effects may have been caused by activity of areas outside the STC, perhaps in the inferior parietal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Strategies generated during training predict training gains. • These self-generated strategies stabilize early on. • Externally given strategy elicits only fleeting training task gain. • Working memory training represents cognitive skill learning. Cognitive mechanisms underlying the limited transfer effects of working memory (WM) training remain poorly understood. We tested in detail the Strategy Mediation hypothesis, according to which WM training generates task-specific strategies that facilitate performance on the trained task and its untrained variants. This large-scale pre-registered randomized controlled trial (n = 258) used a 4-week adaptive WM training with a single digit n-back task. Strategy use was probed with open-ended strategy reports. We employed a Strategy training group (n = 73) receiving external strategy instruction, a Traditional training group (n = 118) practicing without strategy instruction, and Passive controls (n = 67). Both training groups showed emerging transfer to untrained n-back task variants already at intermediate test after 3 training sessions, extending to all untrained n-back task variants at posttest after 12 training sessions. The Strategy training group outperformed the Traditional training group only at the beginning of training, indicating short-lived strategy manipulation effects. Importantly, in the Traditional training group, strategy evolvement modulated the gains in the trained and untrained n-back tasks, supporting the Strategy Mediation hypothesis. Our results concur with the view of WM training as cognitive skill learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]