Search results for " EXPERIMENTAL"
showing 10 items of 3530 documents
Cognitive and Motor Loops of the Human Cerebro-cerebellar System
2010
Abstract We applied fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI to study the segregation of cognitive and motor functions in the human cerebro-cerebellar 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 negat…
Cerebellar, but not Motor or Parietal, High-Density Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Facilitates Motor Adaptation.
2016
AbstractObjectives: Although motor adaptation is a highly relevant process for both everyday life as well as rehabilitation many details of this process are still unresolved. To evaluate the contribution of primary motor (M1), parietal and cerebellar areas to motor adaptation processes transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been applied. We hypothesized that anodal stimulation of the cerebellum and the M1 improves the learning process in mirror drawing, a task involving fine grained and spatially well-organized hand movements. Methods: High definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) allows a focal stimulation to modulate brain processes. In a single-session double-blind study, we compared the ef…
The impact of maternal emotional intelligence and parenting style on child anxiety and behavior in the dental setting
2012
Objective. The present study investigated the correlations between maternal emotional intelligence (EQ), parenting style, child trait anxiety and child behavior in the dental setting. Study design. One-hundred seventeen children, aged 4-6 years old (mean 5.24 years), and their mothers participated in the study. The BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory and Bumrind�s parenting style questionnaire were used to quantify maternal emotional intelligence and parenting style. Children�s anxiety and behavior was evaluated using the Spence Children�s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and Frankl behavior scale. Results. Significant correlation was found between maternal EQ and child behavior (r=0.330; p<0.01); but n…
Negative emotional state modulates visual working memory in the late consolidation phase
2020
Although a considerable literature has grown up around the interactions between emotional state and visual working memory (VWM) performance, the mechanism underlying the impact of the negative emotional state on VWM remains unclear. The present study aimed to test whether the influence of emotional state is related to the early phase or late phase of VWM consolidation process. Across three experiments, we found that the negative emotional state did not affect VWM performance when the presentation time of stimuli was short. However, when the presentation time was long, the negative emotional state increased the VWM precision and reduced the VWM number. According to the two-phase model propos…
Encoding, storage, and response preparation-Distinct EEG correlates of stimulus and action representations in working memory.
2019
Working memory (WM) allows for the active storage of stimulus- and higher level representations, such as action plans. This electroencephalography (EEG) study investigated the specific electrophysiological correlates dissociating action-related from stimulus-related representations in WM using three different experimental conditions based on the same stimulus material. In the experiment, a random sequence of single numbers (from 1 to 6) was presented and participants had to indicate whether the current number (N0 condition), the preceding number (N-1 condition), or the sum of the current and the preceding number (S-1 condition) was odd or even. Accordingly, participants had to store a stimu…
Automatic numerical-spatial association in synaesthesia: An fMRI investigation
2016
A horizontal mental number line (MNL) is used to describe how quantities are represented across space. In humans, the neural correlates associated with such a representation are found in different areas of the posterior parietal cortex, especially, the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). In a phenomenon known as number-space synaesthesia, individuals visualise numbers in specific spatial locations. The experience of a MNL for number-space synaesthetes is explicit, idiosyncratic, and highly stable over time. It remains an open question whether the mechanisms underlying numerical-spatial association are shared by synaesthetes and nonsynaesthetes. We address the neural correlates of number-space assoc…
A ventral striatal prediction error signal in human fear extinction learning.
2021
Animal studies have shown that the prediction error (PE) signal that drives fear extinction learning is encoded by phasic activity of midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons. Thus, the extinction PE resembles the appetitive PE that drives reward learning. In humans, fear extinction learning is less well understood. Using computational neuroimaging, a previous study from our group reported hemodynamic activity in the left ventral putamen, a subregion of the ventral striatum (VS), to correlate with a PE function derived from a formal associative learning model. The activity was modulated by genetic variation in a DA-related gene. To conceptually replicate and extend this finding, we here asked whether…
Breathe out and learn: Expiration-contingent stimulus presentation facilitates associative learning in trace eyeblink conditioning.
2019
Rhythmic variation in heart rate and respiratory pattern are coupled in a way that optimizes the level of oxygen in the blood stream of the lungs and the body as well as saves energy in pulmonary gas exchange. It has been suggested that the cardiac cycle and respiratory pattern are coupled to neural oscillations of the brain. Yet, studies on how this rhythmic coupling is related to behavior are scarce. There is some evidence that, for example, the phase of respiration affects memory retrieval and the electrophysiological oscillatory state of the limbic system. It is also known that the phase of the cardiac cycle and hippocampal electrophysiological oscillations alone affect learning. Here, …
Neuroanatomical basis of number synaesthesias: A voxel-based morphometry study
2016
In synaesthesia, a specific sensory dimension leads to an involuntary sensation in another sensory dimension not commonly associated with it; for example, synaesthetes may experience a specific colour when listening or thinking of numbers or letters. Large-scale behavioural studies provide a rich description of different synaesthesia phenotypes, and a great amount of research has been oriented to uncovering whether a single or multiple brain mechanisms underlie these various synaesthesia phenotypes. Interestingly, most of the synaesthetic inducers are conceptual stimuli such as numbers, letters, and months. However, the impact of these concepts on the synaesthetic brain remains largely unex…
Bodily self-relatedness in vicarious touch is reflected at early cortical processing stages.
2019
Studies have suggested that there is a strong link between the bodily self and the mechanisms underlying vicarious representations. Here, we used somatosensory ERPs to investigate the temporal dynamics of vicarious touch for stimuli that are more or less related to one's own body (human hands vs. rubber gloves). We found that vicarious touch effects were restricted to self-relatable events (human hands) at early implicit stages of somatosensory processing (P45). At later more cognitive stages of processing (late positive complex, LPC), the vicarious touch effect was stronger for self-relatable events (touch on human hands) than nonself-relatable events (touch on rubber gloves) but present f…