搜索结果：Frontiers in human neuroscience

Insomnia is a prevalent and burdensome condition in primary care, associated with impaired functioning, increased health risks, and suffering. Infra-slow neurofeedback (ISF-NF) has been proposed as an intervention for stress-related sleep dysregulation, yet empirical evidence from primary care remains scarce. To examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of ISF-NF for insomnia in primary care using a single-case experimental design. A single-case experimental design with repeated measures was applied. Ten patients with insomnia and related comorbidities (e.g., stress-related exhaustion, migraine, anxiety) were enrolled. Nine completed the intervention, and eight had sufficient data for analysis following a 2-week baseline and 12 weekly ISF-NF sessions with individualized adjustment of the temporal integration (frequency) parameter. Subjective sleep quality was assessed daily using the Brief Self-Reported Sleep Quality Assessment (BSRSQA). Standardized questionnaires including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) were collected at baseline, post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up. Treatment effects were evaluated using visual analysis and non-parametric Tau-U statistics. Wearable sleep data (Fitbit Inspire 3) were analyzed descriptively to contextualize subjective outcomes. Visual single-case analyses revealed heterogeneous but interpretable trajectories, with several participants showing improved perceived sleep quality. Five of eight participants demonstrated statistically significant Tau-U effects (p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.05). Group-level analyses showed reductions in sleep problems (PSQI) and depressive symptoms (PHQ-9) from pre to post-intervention, with partial return toward baseline at three-month follow-up. Wearable sleep metrics indicated variability and limited convergence with total sleep time but suggested improvements in sleep consolidation and timing in some cases. Feasibility and acceptability were supported by high treatment adherence, therapeutic alliance, and few reported adverse effects. These findings suggest that ISF-NF may be a feasible and well-tolerated intervention in a primary care context, with preliminary indications of benefit in a subset of individuals. Effects were heterogeneous and should be interpreted cautiously. Individualized parameter adjustment and visual single-case analysis may provide a useful framework for capturing treatment dynamics in adaptive interventions. Wearable sleep data may offer contextual information but should be interpreted alongside subjective outcomes. Controlled studies are needed to evaluate efficacy and underlying mechanisms.

Auditory event-related potential (ERP) brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) offer communication support for individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who eventually progress to completely locked-in states. However, individual-specific BCI pipeline optimization is technically demanding and time-consuming, leaving substantial room for performance improvement in practice. A central challenge is increasing selection speed while maintaining reliable classification accuracy, since slower selections reduce the sense of agency and undermine the motivational and feedback dynamics essential for sustained BCI use. We investigated whether an AI coding assistant could address this challenge for individual patients. A three-class auditory ERP-BCI was optimized for a single ALS patient using Claude Code (Anthropic, Inc.), which iteratively generated and evaluated 23 optimization scripts over approximately 24 hours with minimal human-in-the-loop oversight. The resulting AI-Designed ERP classifier (AIDE) was evaluated on 189 EEG trials spanning 3.5 years using five cross-validation strategies. For the baseline models, halving the stimulus repetitions to shorten selection time degraded classification accuracy; AIDE prevented this degradation, achieving 85.03% mean cross-validation accuracy (selection time 17 s; ITR 2.92 bits/min). This doubled the information transfer rate from 1.43 to 2.92 bits/min. Accuracy exceeded 84% across four of five cross-validation strategies. Feature space visualization revealed that the AI autonomously selected and combined EEG features established in prior studies into an effective discriminative architecture, without domain-specific algorithmic guidance from the human researcher. In addition, online test confirmed 66.7% accuracy for AIDE versus 50.0% for the baseline model. These findings provide proof of concept that single-subject BCI performance can be improved via a single prompt, offering an efficient pathway to individualized optimization in clinical and research settings.

In motor learning, post-trial feedback provides critical information for interpreting action outcomes and adjusting subsequent motor output. One factor that may influence how feedback is processed is agency. Thirty-two healthy young adults performed a standing weight-shifting task in which they reached targets without an online center of pressure (COP) display. Feedback was displayed using colors and arrows. We compared self-initiated feedback (sFB), which participants obtained by pressing a button, with externally provided feedback (eFB), which was delivered by the experimenter. Electroencephalography (EEG) data were analyzed using a counterbalanced within-subject crossover design to compare feedback-related neural responses between conditions. Because the same task was performed in both phases, motor performance was compared between groups using data from the first phase only in order to avoid carryover effects. Reward positivity (RewP) was measured as a neural indicator of reward processing. Motor performance was evaluated as the distance error between the maximal COP position and the target location. RewP was significantly larger in the sFB condition than in the eFB condition, suggesting enhanced reward processing under self-initiated feedback. During the training sessions, distance error decreased in both groups, indicating a learning effect. In the post-training test sessions, a significant main effect of group was observed. Exploratory post hoc comparisons suggested smaller distance errors in the sFB group during retention and transfer. In a standing weight-shifting task, self-initiated feedback enhanced RewP amplitude, which reflects reward processing, and improved retention of postural control ability. These findings suggest that obtaining feedback with a sense of agency influences neural reward processing and the retention of motor learning effects.

Sleep deprivation impairs core cognitive functions, such as working memory. Previous studies focused on global working memory performance, and direct comparisons of how different cognitive enhancers mitigate sleep deprivation-induced deficits in object working memory remain limited, particularly regarding the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. This study compared the counteractive effects of caffeine and modafinil after 36&#x202f;h of total sleep deprivation and elucidated their stage-specific neural mechanisms during object working memory processing. A randomized, double-blind, crossover design was used with 14 healthy male participants. Participants completed a 2-back object working memory task at baseline and after 36&#x202f;h of sleep deprivation under caffeine and modafinil conditions. Event-related potentials were recorded to assess key component changes, including P2, N2, P3, and LPC. Behaviorally, modafinil significantly improved accuracy after sleep deprivation, surpassing baseline performance, with an exploratory trend toward shorter reaction times. In contrast, caffeine maintained behavioral performance at baseline levels without significant change. Neurophysiologically, caffeine markedly increased P2 amplitude but significantly decreased LPC amplitude after sleep deprivation, reflecting enhanced early perceptual processing alongside a decline in late-stage cognitive maintenance resources. However, modafinil stabilized P2 and LPC responses, suggesting improved neural efficiency and sustained top-down cognitive control during stimulus evaluation. Although caffeine and modafinil mitigate sleep deprivation induced decline in object working memory, they operate through distinct neural mechanisms. Caffeine relies on generalized compensatory arousal mechanisms, whereas modafinil exerts a more efficient and targeted enhancement of executive control. These findings provide electrophysiological evidence supporting the differential application of cognitive enhancers under extreme sleep loss.

Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic known to alter subjective experience and induce lasting psychological changes, including increased cognitive flexibility and reduced rigid self-related beliefs. Contextual factors, including preparatory mental states, are thought to play a key role in shaping these effects. Compassion imagery, which engages care-affiliative motivational systems, may represent a promising priming approach in this context. Here, we investigated the neural and psychological effects of psilocybin under compassion imagery priming using self-report questionnaires and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a naturalistic sample of 105 participants. Participants were primed with either compassion imagery or attention to breathing prior to psilocybin intake. We observed sustained increases in absorption over time, particularly in the high-dose compassion imagery condition. Additional within-group increases were found in measures of decentering and self-compassion. Using functional connectivity features, fMRI-based classifiers distinguished between resting state and compassion imagery conditions prior to intake, and between priming conditions following psilocybin, with significant classification performance observed only in the high-dose group. These findings suggest that psilocybin is associated with lasting changes in absorption and may be modulated by contextual priming to shape both psychological outcomes and large-scale brain network dynamics. More generally, our results highlight the potential role of compassion-based practices as preparatory interventions in psychedelic contexts. Future confirmatory studies are needed to further characterize these effects and their underlying mechanisms.

Long COVID, or post-COVID-19 syndrome, is characterized by persistent symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection, including cognitive impairments such as "brain fog" that adversely affect quality of life. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of long COVID on working memory using a single, rapid, anonymous online survey and visual working memory quiz. We analyzed working memory scores in relation to reported long COVID status (clinically diagnosed, self-reported, and non-long COVID), age, number of COVID-19 infections, long COVID duration, and subjective ratings of brain fog severity and the overall life impact of symptoms. The study utilized the Rapid Objective Working Memory Assessment (ROWMA), a brief, gamified visual recognition task designed to maximize compliance and minimize fatigue. A total of 1,064 participants aged 16 to over 85&#x202f;years were recruited, with 39% reporting long COVID. Categorical regression revealed that long COVID status was the strongest predictor of working memory performance, followed by age and number of infections. Participants with long COVID performed significantly worse on the working memory quiz than non-long COVID controls, with the lowest scores observed in the clinically diagnosed group. Furthermore, working memory scores declined with age, particularly among those aged 35 and older, and decreased with multiple COVID-19 infections within the diagnosed group. Individuals in the diagnosed group reported the most severe brain fog and the greatest life impact, both of which strongly correlated with lower memory scores. Although longer long COVID duration was associated with lower memory performance, an exploratory analysis indicated this trend may have been influenced by the SARS-CoV-2 variant. Our results support the hypothesis that long COVID is associated with objective working memory impairment, particularly among individuals with a clinical diagnosis. These findings add to the growing body of evidence linking long COVID to objective cognitive difficulties. Moreover, the study advocates the use of rapid, single-task online cognitive assessments as a practical, scalable, and low-burden approach for evaluating working memory function in this population.

In everyday life, individuals often search for one of several items stored in memory. This cognitive process, known as hybrid search, is critical for tasks like navigating using landmarks. While the behavioral aspects of hybrid search have been extensively studied, the underlying neural mechanisms remain less understood. In this study, we combined concurrent magnetoencephalography (MEG) and eye movement recordings to investigate the oscillatory and evoked neural dynamics supporting hybrid search under naturalistic viewing conditions. Twenty-one participants (12 males, 9 females) performed a free-viewing task involving visual search for targets embedded in memory (hybrid search) across structured, context-rich scenes. Time-Frequency analyses revealed specific neural signatures during memory encoding, retention, and visual search. During encoding and retention, posterior alpha-band power decreased with memory load, and frontoparietal beta-band activity scaled with memory load during visual search. By aligning MEG signals to eye movement events and applying source reconstruction, we identified an early visually evoked lambda response, localized to V1, followed by a distributed P3m component, with maximum activation in the right inferior parietal lobe, that discriminated target from distractor fixations. These findings were further confirmed by a deconvolution approach to account for overlapping neural signals linked to eye movements. These results show that distinct oscillatory and evoked signatures track the dynamic brain responses during hybrid search. Alpha-band modulation reflects heightened perceptual and mnemonic demands, whereas beta-band increases index cognitive control engaged during search. The fixation-locked responses highlight how classic electrophysiological signatures, such as target-related components, generalize to free viewing conditions. Together, these findings demonstrate how oscillatory and evoked responses dynamically support hybrid search under naturalistic viewing conditions, revealing how memory, attention, and visual processing interact during active vision.

Dual-task gait paradigms are widely used to assess cognitive-motor integration, however considerable methodological heterogeneity remains. Fixed-speed locomotion and limited assessment of repeatability have contributed to inconsistent baseline findings in healthy adults, complicating interpretation of dual-task effects reported in clinical populations. This study aimed to examine the reliability and baseline gait behaviour associated with a dual-task paradigm combining non-immersive virtual reality (VR)-based self-paced treadmill walking and parametrically modulated working memory load. The purpose was to establish a robust reference profile in healthy adults to support subsequent clinical and reliability and baseline characterisation studies. Twenty-three healthy adult males (34.56&#x202f;&#xb1;&#x202f;5.12&#x202f;years) completed two gait assessment sessions using a self-paced treadmill within a non-immersive VR environment. Walking was assessed under three conditions: single-task walking, dual-task walking with a 1-back task, and dual-task walking with a 2-back task. Spatiotemporal gait parameters and dual-task costs were analysed across sessions and task conditions to evaluate between-session consistency and sensitivity to graded cognitive demand. Most spatiotemporal gait parameters demonstrated good consistency between sessions, with no statistically significant differences observed across days or task conditions (p&#x202f;&#x2265;&#x202f;0.05). A reduction in step length was observed during dual-task walking in the first session (p&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.02), alongside consistent directional modulation of stride-related measures with increasing cognitive load. These changes were modest and consistent with adaptive gait regulation in neurologically intact adults. The findings demonstrate that a self-paced treadmill VR dual-task gait protocol yields stable and repeatable gait measures following familiarisation in healthy adults. Rather than establishing criterion validity, this study provides baseline characterisation and reliability evidence necessary for future work evaluating clinical sensitivity, diagnostic utility, and intervention responsiveness in patient populations.

Huntington's disease is a rare neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by early disruption of frontostriatal systems, affecting motor, cognitive, and affective domains. Non-invasive brain stimulation targeting prefrontal networks may offer a means to modulate these distributed systems, although controlled evidence in Huntington's disease remains limited, particularly for accelerated stimulation protocols. To investigate whether accelerated intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with behavioral, motor and electrophysiological changes reflecting modulation of prefrontal network function in early-stage Huntington's disease. Ten patients with genetically confirmed Huntington's disease participated in a within-subject, fixed-order longitudinal study, which included a sham exposure phase followed by active stimulation. Assessments were conducted at baseline (T0), after sham stimulation (T1), after active accelerated iTBS (T2), and at 60-day follow-up (T3). Clinical scales for motor impairment, behavioral measures targeting executive, affective, and social-cognitive domains were combined with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during cognitive and emotional Stroop tasks. The fixed-order design was chosen to minimize potential carry-over effects associated with accelerated stimulation protocols. No significant behavioral or electrophysiological changes were observed during the sham exposure phase. In contrast, active iTBS was associated with domain-specific behavioral changes, particularly in affective, executive, and social-cognitive domains, accompanied by changes in event-related potential activity, particularly within delayed N200-related responses during emotional interference. Effects were domain-specific and were not associated with normalization of electrophysiological latency profiles. Motor scales were not modified by either sham or real stimulation. Accelerated prefrontal iTBS was associated with behavioral and electrophysiological changes following active stimulation of prefrontal network in Huntington's disease. These findings support the feasibility of targeting distributed non-motor circuits in HD and designs accounting for cumulative and time-dependent effects of stimulation in early-phase neuromodulation studies.

Musical activity requires the coordinated integration of auditory, motor, and cognitive systems, making it an effective framework for studying brain plasticity. Previous studies have explored music training-related alterations in brain structure and function. However, the relationship between structure and function remains insufficiently understood. In this study, we applied a novel morphometric measure, morphometric inverse divergence, to assess the structural decoupling index (SDI) and evaluate differences in structure-function coupling between musicians and non-musicians. A total of 39 participants (22 musicians, 17 non-musicians) were enrolled. Group differences in SDI were examined to assess regional structure-function dependency. Within the musician group, correlation analyses were conducted between SDI and musical training experience and age of onset of training. Compared to non-musicians, musicians exhibited significantly lower SDI in the left superior frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, right parahippocampal gyrus and left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). Notably, the SDI in left pSTS showed a significant negative correlation with cumulative musical training experience and a positive correlation with age of onset of training. These findings demonstrate that long-term music training is associated with enhanced structure-function coupling in fronto-temporal networks, particularly in regions supporting auditory-motor integration and memory. Furthermore, the left pSTS appears specifically sensitive to training intensity and timing.

Peak alpha frequency (PAF) is negatively associated with experimental pain sensitivity. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) enables shifting neural frequency to modulate sensory perception, yet it has not been tested in pain perception. We hypothesized that tACS application at 1&#x202f;Hz above the individual PAF (iPAF) would increase PAF and reduce experimental pain ratings. This is a double-blind, sham-controlled, crossover, exploratory study with 15 healthy participants who completed 2 sessions; 20&#x202f;min of tACS was applied to the somatosensory cortex at 1&#x202f;Hz above the iPAF or sham stimulation (Intervention), administered in random order. Pain reports (4 time points) in response to a tonic heat pain (THP) stimulus were recorded before and after tACS. Five-minute electroencephalography was recorded in 4 conditions: baseline (iPAF identification), after THP stimulus, after tACS to test its effect on iPAF, and after another THP stimulus to test pain effects on iPAF following tACS. This paradigm examines associations between iPAF and pain, and the effects of pain and tACS on iPAF. There was no effect of real vs. sham tACS on iPAF, with a non-significant Condition &#xd7; Intervention interaction and a small effect size (partial &#x3b7; 2 0.01 and 0.03). Pain intensity increased across rating time points (p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001), but tACS had no effects. In this small-sample preliminary study, a single tACS session did not affect iPAF or pain ratings in response to THP stimulus. The current study may help shape methodologies for future pain studies investigating the effects of tACS on PAF and pain.

Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies and socially rich videos, are increasingly used in neuroimaging to study brain function under conditions that approximate real-world experience. This approach may be particularly informative for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), where social and emotional differences often emerge in complex, dynamic environments that simplified paradigms may not adequately capture. Here, we provide a systematic review of neuroimaging studies that have employed naturalistic stimuli in ASD research. Our goals are to: (i) summarize existing findings; (ii) identify convergent neural findings across different data analysis methods; and (iii) clarify conceptual and methodological limitations that constrain interpretation. Across studies, autistic individuals often show reduced intersubject neural synchronization during naturalistic viewing, particularly in brain regions supporting social cognition and theory of mind. Multiple reports additionally indicate alterations in large-scale functional network organization, although results vary with stimulus type and data analysis used. Some studies have also linked these neural differences to behavioral measures, including autistic traits. Together, these findings suggest that naturalistic stimuli offer a promising framework for capturing heterogeneity in ASD while also introducing challenges related to experimental design and interpretation. We conclude by outlining methodological recommendations to guide future work in this developing field.

Empathy research spans the social, natural, and clinical sciences, yet its translational impact has been limited by conflicting conceptual frameworks and incompatible methodologies. This paper addresses these barriers by introducing a transdisciplinary framework that consolidates predominant theories of empathy and integrates contemporary neuroscience findings. A conceptual synthesis was conducted to reconcile major theoretical perspectives and relevant neuroscience findings from empathy research. Cross-disciplinary constructs, mechanisms, and methodologies were examined and organized into an integrative framework intended to support interdisciplinary translation and collaboration. The resulting transdisciplinary framework unites Theory of Mind and Theory of Embodied Simulation by conceptualizing empathy as a process of social perception. Empathic experience is organized into four stages: (1) physiological mirroring, (2) affective resonance and responding, (3) cognitive understanding, and (4) appraisal/decision. Each stage is linked to its theoretical origins and associated with proposed neural mechanisms underlying self-other awareness. By reframing empathy as a neutral process of social perception, rather than a subjective virtue or innate trait, this framework makes the construct more accessible to scientific inquiry. Conclusion: The proposed framework supports interdisciplinary synthesis and collaboration, thereby enhancing the translational potential of empathy research to inform clinical practice, civic engagement, and broader efforts to strengthen human connection.

This paper proposes TEVSER (Theory of Evolving Self-Representations), a framework describing how increasingly complex forms of regulation give rise to psyche, consciousness, and intelligence. The central idea is that a living system is a self-regulating system that maintains homeostasis. Within this perspective, regulation can be described as a hierarchy of self-representations (&#x3a9;), emerging as control structures that guide behavior. Within this hierarchy, distinct functional levels correspond to qualitatively different forms of cognition. In particular, the framework identifies the emergence of a phenomenological internal world (&#x3a9;2), spatial subjectivity ("here," &#x3a9;3), temporal presence ("now," &#x3a9;6), behavioral intelligence (&#x3a9;8), self-consciousness ("who," &#x3a9;10), and abstract symbolic intellect (&#x3a9;11). Within this perspective, consciousness is not treated as a singular entity but as a structured and graded property arising from the organization of self-representing systems. The framework offers a constructive approach to the hard problem of consciousness, addressing the apparent paradox between the material nature of the brain and the seemingly immaterial character of subjective experience. TEVSER integrates and extends existing approaches, including predictive coding, active inference, higher-order theories, and integrated information theory, by situating them within a unified hierarchical architecture. Importantly, the framework generates a set of testable hypotheses linking levels of self-representation to neural organization, behavior, and evolutionary complexity. These predictions provide a basis for empirical validation and position TEVSER not only as a conceptual model but as a research program for investigating consciousness and intelligence in biological and artificial systems.

The neural mechanisms behind varying cognitive ability in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) remain unclear. This study compared cortical activation and brain connectivity across ASD subgroups stratified by Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ). Sixty-four children with ASD were divided into two groups based on their FSIQ scores: Group 1 (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;30, FSIQ &#x2265; 70) and Group 2 (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;34, FSIQ < 70). Using a 19-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system, we assessed cortical activation and functional connectivity in both groups during a Verbal Fluency Task (VFT) by monitoring changes in oxyhemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) concentration. Inter-group differences in brain activation and connectivity were compared, and correlations between cortical activation levels and clinical indices (FSIQ, verbal production) were examined. Compared to Group 2, Group 1 showed significantly stronger cortical activation in channels 1 and 2 [corresponding to the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)] (U&#x202f;=&#x202f;212.000, Z&#x202f;=&#x202f;-4.009, FDR-corrected p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001; U&#x202f;=&#x202f;160.000, Z&#x202f;=&#x202f;-4.709, FDR-corrected p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001). Global functional connectivity was also greater in Group 1 (mean&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.586, SD&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.521) relative to Group 2 (mean&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.413, SD&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.521) (permutation statistic&#x202f;=&#x202f;4.82, FDR-corrected p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001). Moreover, Oxy-Hb changes in channels 1 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.304, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.05), 2 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.405, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.01), and 10 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.253, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.05) were positively correlated with FSIQ scores. Activation in channels 1 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.529, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001), 2 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.569, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.001) and 10 (rs &#x202f;=&#x202f;0.290, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.05) were also significantly correlated with verbal production. Our findings provide neurofunctional evidence for the association between cognitive resource capacity and verbal-executive processing in ASD. ASD children with lower FSIQ exhibited lower prefrontal activation and lower functional connectivity during the VFT, particularly within the IFG, frontopolar cortex (FPC), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). These results underscore the utility of fNIRS in delineating distinct neurocognitive profiles within ASD and highlight the IFG as a key region where neural activity correlates with both cognitive ability and language output, offering a potential target for mechanism-based intervention strategies.

Phasic increase of frontal midline theta (Fm theta) power has been described as a key indicator of cognitive processing, while relatively lower task-related Fm theta power is associated with reduced cognitive strain, reflecting less intensive cognitive processing. In a previous investigation, reduced task-related Fm theta power in relation to higher expertise, as well as higher setting anticipation performance in the domain of volleyball was identified. In the present study a single-session sham-controlled neurofeedback training (NFT) intervention was conducted to investigate the feasibility of Fm theta downregulation for the improvement of volleyball setting anticipation. A total of 24 volleyball novices was allocated to "Real" (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;12) and "Sham" (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;12) Fm theta downregulation NFT groups. Event-related de-/synchronization (ERD/S) of Fm theta during the NFT intervention, as well as pre-/post-NFT setting anticipation task performance and corresponding Fm theta ERD/S were analyzed. Additionally, resting EEG power directly before and after the experiment was examined. Incongruous with our expectations, the Real NFT group showed a tendency toward stronger event-related Fm theta synchronization compared with the Sham group during NFT. Anticipation task performance did not change significantly from before to after NFT in both groups, yet a significantly stronger event-related desynchronization of Fm theta was observed in the Real NFT group, during the post-NFT anticipation task measurement. A post-NFT rebound of Fm theta power could be responsible for this result. With our findings we provide further evidence for the existence of an apparent paradox of Fm theta downregulation, in which cognitive control mechanisms, associated with oscillatory Fm theta activity, appear to hinder explicit downregulation of Fm theta power through classical neurofeedback learning mechanisms.

Socially meaningful symbolic cues are common in everyday visual environments, yet the timing with which they diverge from neutral objects during neural processing remains unclear. This study examined the temporal dynamics of one culturally meaningful class of symbolic cues, national-symbol icons, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Thirty-four Chinese university students completed a within-subject ERP task in which 30 national-symbol icons and 30 neutral-object icons were each presented twice. Participants indicated whether they would be willing to share each icon and then rated pleasantness, arousal, and patriotic feeling. Mean ERP amplitudes were analyzed in three predefined time windows: N1 (100-150&#x202f;ms), N400-range negativity (250-400&#x202f;ms), and late positive potential (LPP; 550-750&#x202f;ms). National-symbol icons were associated with greater willingness to share and higher ratings of pleasantness, arousal, and patriotic feeling than neutral-object icons. At the neural level, national-symbol icons elicited a more negative N1 and a larger N400-range negativity. The LPP difference was not statistically significant, although national-symbol icons showed numerically greater positivity. Overall, national-symbol icons differed from neutral-object icons in more than one predefined ERP time window, with the clearest effect in the 250-400&#x202f;ms interval. The findings are broadly consistent with enhanced mid-latency processing of socially shared meaning in one culturally meaningful class of symbolic cues, although this interpretation remains tentative because the present study provides condition-level behavioral convergence rather than definitive participant-level brain-behavior validation.

In addition to the language impairments experienced by people with aphasia (PWA), such as lexical access deficits, aphasia is often also accompanied by impaired attention, working memory, and verbal short-term memory. Growing evidence also suggests that difficulties in lexical access may be related to impaired domain-general cognitive processes, such as attention switching and processing speed. This study explored attentional shifting and processing speed in people with aphasia (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;14) and age-matched controls (n&#x202f;=&#x202f;18) using an Attentional Blink paradigm with both linguistic stimuli (letters) and nonlinguistic stimuli (shapes), along with tasks assessing overall processing speed. Compared to controls, PWA showed impaired attentional blink performance in the linguistic condition (F 1,20&#x202f;=&#x202f;7.35, p&#x202f;=&#x202f;0.01) and also impaired processing speed [&#x3c7; 2 (1)&#x202f;=&#x202f;13.38, p&#x202f;<&#x202f;0.05]. In addition, an exploratory mediation analysis revealed a potential association between severity of lexical access impairments and performance on the attentional blink task, when accounting for verbal short-term memory abilities. The nonlinguistic condition was found to be too difficult for the control participants to address the experimental questions, but identified issues to be addressed in future studies with this focus. These findings suggest that attentional shifting may play a foundational role in aphasic language processing and impairment. Further investigation is needed to understand the role of processing speed and whether attention shifting impairments are language-specific or extend to non-linguistic attentional shifting, as well.

We address two related questions in multisensory integration: What are suppressive multisensory and multimodal neurons good for, and how could neurons implement the earliest stages of weighted cue averaging often found in multisensory integration psychophysics? Mildly suppressive multisensory and binocular neurons are ideally positioned to implement weighted averaging. Of the many possible weighted averages, the two most interesting theoretical possibilities are Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) - a Bayesian methodology - and nonlinear magnitude weighting, posited by Erwin Schr&#xf6;dinger for binocular averaging. The MLE approach weights reliability (expressed as inverse relative variance), which is trickier to implement in neurons than nonlinear magnitude weighting. We tested these two models on three classes of cortical multisensory neurons. We find that suppressive audio-visual, visual-tactile and audio-tactile neurons are well positioned to implement a weighted average of their two inputs, a result consistent with our prior findings in binocular suppressive neurons. The actual neural firing rates more closely resemble Schr&#xf6;dinger's nonlinear weighted average, but the output of this Schr&#xf6;dinger model is well correlated with the output of a rigorously implemented MLE reliability-weighted average. One possible interpretation is that evolution pushed sensory integration towards a Bayesian-like outcome and settled - at least at an early neural level - for a nonlinear approximation that was easier than inverse-relative-variance-weighting to implement in neural systems.