基于相似性的类别学习ERPs研究

目的:研究类别学习过程中,基于类别相似性的不同时间限制下被试分类学习脑激活机制.方法:通过对15名被试采用事件相关电位技术(ERPs),使用2相似程度不同(高相似vs低相似)×3呈现时间不同(10ms vs 200ms vs 600ms)的多因素实验设计,探讨不同相似程度及刺激呈现时间不同下的类别学习脑机制.结果:类别高相似的脑激活机制更加复杂,激活的脑区更多;刺激呈现时间为10ms的时候被试的波形图与200ms和600ms类似,但是其潜伏期更短,决策速度更快;三种时间条件下都激活了N400,可能存在语义加工.结论:类别学习在视觉加工阶段就已经发生;类别学习过程并非全或无的竞争机制,而是内隐和外显综合加工的结果.     

The Role of Phoneme in Mandarin Chinese Production: Evidence from ERPs

Established linguistic theoretical frameworks propose that alphabetic language speakers use phonemes as phonological encoding units during speech production whereas Mandarin Chinese speakers use syllables. This framework was challenged by recent neural evidence of facilitation induced by overlapping initial phonemes, raising the possibility that phonemes also contribute to the phonological encoding process in Chinese. However, there is no evidence of non-initial phoneme involvement in Chinese phonological encoding among representative Chinese speakers, rendering the functional role of phonemes in spoken Chinese controversial. Here, we addressed this issue by systematically investigating the word-initial and non-initial phoneme repetition effect on the electrophysiological signal using a picture-naming priming task in which native Chinese speakers produced disyllabic word pairs. We found that overlapping phonemes in both the initial and non-initial position evoked more positive ERPs in the 180- to 300-ms interval, indicating position-invariant repetition facilitation effect during phonological encoding. Our findings thus revealed the fundamental role of phonemes as independent phonological encoding units in Mandarin Chinese.     

Frontal EEG Activation Asymmetry Reflects Cognitive Biases in Anxiety: Evidence from an Emotional Face Stroop Task

Electroencephalography (EEG) has been extensively used in studies of the frontal asymmetry of emotion and motivation. This study investigated the midfrontal EEG activation, heart rate and skin conductance during an emotional face analog of the Stroop task, in anxious and non-anxious participants. In this task, the participants were asked to identify the expression of calm, fearful and happy faces that had either a congruent or incongruent emotion name written across them. Anxious participants displayed a cognitive bias characterized by facilitated attentional engagement with fearful faces. Fearful face trials induced greater relative right frontal activation, whereas happy face trials induced greater relative left frontal activation. Moreover, anxiety specifically modulated the magnitude of the right frontal activation to fearful faces, which also correlated with the cognitive bias. Therefore, these results show that frontal EEG activation asymmetry reflects the bias toward facilitated processing of fearful faces in anxiety.     

Electrophysiological Explorations of the Bilingual Advantage: Evidence from a Stroop Task

Bilinguals have been shown to exhibit a performance advantage on executive control tasks, outperforming their monolingual counterparts. Although a wealth of research has investigated this ‘bilingual advantage’ behaviourally, electrophysiological correlates are lacking. Using EEG with a Stroop task that manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of word and colour presentation, the current study addressed two facets of the bilingual advantage. The possibility that bilinguals experience superior conflict processing relative to monolinguals (a ‘conflict-specific advantage’) was investigated by comparing behavioural interference effects as well as the amplitude of the N_inc, a conflict-related ERP component occurring from approximately 300–500 ms after the onset of conflict. In contrast, the hypothesis that bilinguals experience domain-general, conflict-independent enhancements in executive processing (a ‘non-conflict-specific advantage’) was evaluated by comparing the control condition (symbol strings) between groups. There was some significant, but inconsistent, evidence for a conflict-specific bilingual advantage. In contrast, strong evidence emerged for a non-conflict-specific advantage, with bilinguals demonstrating faster RTs and reduced ERP amplitudes on control trials compared to monolinguals. Importantly, when the control stimulus was presented before the colour, ERPs to control trials revealed group differences before the onset of conflict, suggesting differences in the ability to ignore or suppress distracting irrelevant information. This indicates that bilinguals experience superior executive processing even in the absence of conflict and semantic salience, and suggests that the advantage extends to more efficient proactive management of the environment.     

Lexical Planning in Sentence Production Is Highly Incremental: Evidence from ERPs

The scope of lexical planning, which means how far ahead speakers plan lexically before they start producing an utterance, is an important issue for research into speech production, but remains highly controversial. The present research investigated this issue using the semantic blocking effect, which refers to the widely observed effects that participants take longer to say aloud the names of items in pictures when the pictures in a block of trials in an experiment depict items that belong to the same semantic category than different categories. As this effect is often interpreted as a reflection of difficulty in lexical selection, the current study took the semantic blocking effect and its associated pattern of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a proxy to test whether lexical planning during sentence production extends beyond the first noun when a subject noun-phrase includes two nouns, such as “The chair and the boat are both red” and “The chair above the boat is red”. The results showed a semantic blocking effect both in onset latencies and in ERPs during the utterance of the first noun of these complex noun-phrases but not for the second noun. The indication, therefore, is that the lexical planning scope does not encompass this second noun-phrase. Indeed, the present findings are in line with accounts that propose radically incremental lexical planning, in which speakers plan ahead only one word at a time. This study also provides a highly novel example of using ERPs to examine the production of long utterances, and it is hoped the present demonstration of the effectiveness of this approach inspires further application of ERP techniques in this area of research.     

Horizontal Body Position Reduces Cortical Pain-Related Processing: Evidence from Late ERPs

The present study investigated the influence of short-term horizontal body position on pain-related somatosensory processing, by measuring subjective and cortical responses to electrical pain stimulation. Twenty-eight healthy women were randomly assigned to either the experimental horizontal group (Bed Rest, BR) or to the sitting control group (Sitting Control, SC). After 90 minutes in either horizontal or sitting position, the individual pain thresholds were assessed and EEG/self-evaluations recorded during the administration of 180 stimuli delivered to the left forearm. Electrical pain stimuli, calibrated to subjects’ individual pain thresholds, consisted of two different intensity levels: no pain (40% below pain threshold) and pain (40% above pain threshold). Compared with control, BR condition significantly inhibited subjective sensitivity to painless stimuli, whereas electrophysiological results pointed to a reduced slow cortical wave (interval: 300-600 ms) at all stimulus intensities, and smaller amplitude in BR’s right vs. left prefrontal sites. sLORETA analysis revealed that cortical responses were associated with a decreased activation of superior frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex (BA 6/24). Interestingly, BR group only showed significant negative correlations between self-evaluation of painful intensities and frontal cortical negativity, revealing increasingly differentiated responses in bed rest: indeed those BR participants who reported lower pain ratings, displayed reduced negativity within anterior regions. Taken together, results indicate that short-term horizontal position is able to inhibit a fronto-parietal pain network, particularly at the level of central prefrontal regions typically involved in cognitive, affective and motor aspects of pain processing.     

Effects of Sleep Loss and Circadian Rhythm on Executive Inhibitory Control in the Stroop and Simon Tasks

This study assessed the influence of sleep loss and circadian rhythm on executive inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to inhibit conflicting response tendencies due to irrelevant information). Twelve ordinarily diurnally active, healthy young male participants performed the Stroop and the Simon task every 3?h in a 40-h constant routine protocol that comprised constant wakefulness under controlled behavioral and environmental conditions. In both tasks, overall performance showed clear circadian rhythm and sleep-loss effects. However, both Stroop and Simon interference remained unchanged across the 40?h of wakefulness, suggesting that neither cumulative sleep loss nor the circadian clock affects executive inhibitory control. The present findings challenge the widely held view that executive functions are especially vulnerable to the influence of sleep loss and circadian rhythm. (Author correspondence: daniel.bratzke@uni-tuebingen.de)     

The Disruptive Effects of Pain on Complex Cognitive Performance and Executive Control

Pain interferes and disrupts attention. What is less clear is how pain affects performance on complex tasks, and the strategies used to ensure optimal outcomes. The aim of the current study was to examine the effect of pain on higher-order executive control processes involved in managing complex tasks. Sixty-two adult volunteers (40 female) completed two computer-based tasks: a breakfast making task and a word generation puzzle. Both were complex, involving executive control functions, including goal-directed planning and switching. Half of those recruited performed the tasks under conditions of thermal heat pain, and half with no accompanying pain. Whilst pain did not affect central performance on either task, it did have indirect effects. For the breakfast task, pain resulted in a decreased ability to multitask, with performance decrements found on the secondary task. However, no effects of pain were found on the processes thought to underpin this task. For the word generation puzzle, pain did not affect task performance, but did alter subjective accounts of the processes used to complete the task; pain affected the perceived allocation of time to the task, as well as switching perceptions. Sex differences were also found. When studying higher-order cognitive processes, pain-related interference effects are varied, and may result in subtle or indirect changes in cognition.     

Re-Examination of Chinese Semantic Processing and Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Conventional ERPs and Reconstructed ERPs by Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE)

A number of studies have explored the time course of Chinese semantic and syntactic processing. However, whether syntactic processing occurs earlier than semantics during Chinese sentence reading is still under debate. To further explore this issue, an event-related potentials (ERPs) experiment was conducted on 21 native Chinese speakers who read individually-presented Chinese simple sentences (NP1+VP+NP2) word-by-word for comprehension and made semantic plausibility judgments. The transitivity of the verbs was manipulated to form three types of stimuli: congruent sentences (CON), sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following a transitive verb (semantic violation, SEM), and sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following an intransitive verb (combined semantic and syntactic violation, SEM+SYN). The ERPs evoked from the target NP2 were analyzed by using the Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE) method to reconstruct the ERP waveform blurred by trial-to-trial variability, as well as by using the conventional ERP method based on stimulus-locked averaging. The conventional ERP analysis showed that, compared with the critical words in CON, those in SEM and SEM+SYN elicited an N400–P600 biphasic pattern. The N400 effects in both violation conditions were of similar size and distribution, but the P600 in SEM+SYN was bigger than that in SEM. Compared with the conventional ERP analysis, RIDE analysis revealed a larger N400 effect and an earlier P600 effect (in the time window of 500–800 ms instead of 570–810ms). Overall, the combination of conventional ERP analysis and the RIDE method for compensating for trial-to-trial variability confirmed the non-significant difference between SEM and SEM+SYN in the earlier N400 time window. Converging with previous findings on other Chinese structures, the current study provides further precise evidence that syntactic processing in Chinese does not occur earlier than semantic processing.     

Distinguishing Neurocognitive Processes Reflected by P600 Effects: Evidence from ERPs and Neural Oscillations

Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as “That is rich”, either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500–900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis.     

Modulation of Brain Activity during a Stroop Inhibitory Task by the Kind of Cognitive Control Required

This study used a proportion congruency manipulation in the Stroop task in order to investigate, at the behavioral and brain substrate levels, the predictions derived from the Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) account of two distinct modes of cognitive control depending on the task context. Three experimental conditions were created that varied the proportion congruency: mostly incongruent (MI), mostly congruent (MC), and mostly neutral (MN) contexts. A reactive control strategy, which corresponds to transient interference resolution processes after conflict detection, was expected for the rare conflicting stimuli in the MC context, and a proactive strategy, characterized by a sustained task-relevant focus prior to the occurrence of conflict, was expected in the MI context. Results at the behavioral level supported the proactive/reactive distinction, with the replication of the classic proportion congruent effect (i.e., less interference and facilitation effects in the MI context). fMRI data only partially supported our predictions. Whereas reactive control for incongruent trials in the MC context engaged the expected fronto-parietal network including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex, proactive control in the MI context was not associated with any sustained lateral prefrontal cortex activations, contrary to our hypothesis. Surprisingly, incongruent trials in the MI context elicited transient activation in common with incongruent trials in the MC context, especially in DLPFC, superior parietal lobe, and insula. This lack of sustained activity in MI is discussed in reference to the possible involvement of item-specific rather than list-wide mechanisms of control in the implementation of a high task-relevant focus.     

Origin of the Mckean Complex:Evidence from Timberline

Abstract

The Fourth of July valley site (5BL 120), a singlecomponent hunting camp at timberline in the Colorado Front Range, was occupied approximately 6000 radiocarbon years ago. Projectile points from the occupation area are typologically intermediate between James Allen and McKean Lanceolate points, and between Pryor Stemmed and Duncan points. The age and timberline location of the site, together with the transitional nature of the projectile points, support Husted’s (1968) hypothesis that the McKean complex developed from Plano progenitors in high-mountain Altithermal refuge areas.     

认知负荷对色词Stroop干扰效应的影响

目的:依据负荷理论,认知负荷会导致选择性注意任务中干扰刺激干扰效应的增加.本研究目的在于检验两种类型的认知负荷对色词Stroop干扰效应的影响.方法:实验一通过比较色词Stroop任务与言语工作记忆任务同时进行的双任务区组(高负荷条件)与单任务区组(低负荷条件)来检验认知负荷对构成Stroop干扰效应的语义冲突及反应冲突产生的影响.实验二则通过比较色词Stroop任务与言语工作记忆任务相协调的双任务区组(高负荷条件)与单任务区组(低负荷条件)来操纵认知负荷.结果:实验一的结果显示工作记忆负荷变化对语义冲突及反应冲突均不产生影响.实验二发现虽然在反应时指标上认知负荷与一致性之间未产生显著交互作用,但在错误率指标上两者交互作用达到显著,说明在高认知负荷条件下反应冲突显著增加了.结论:认知负荷对选择性注意任务中干扰刺激干扰效应的影响取决于认知负荷类型及冲突所发生的水平.     

The Decision to Engage Cognitive Control Is Driven by Expected Reward-Value: Neural and Behavioral Evidence

Cognitive control is a fundamental skill reflecting the active use of task-rules to guide behavior and suppress inappropriate automatic responses. Prior work has traditionally used paradigms in which subjects are told when to engage cognitive control. Thus, surprisingly little is known about the factors that influence individuals'' initial decision of whether or not to act in a reflective, rule-based manner. To examine this, we took three classic cognitive control tasks (Stroop, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, Go/No-Go task) and created novel ‘free-choice’ versions in which human subjects were free to select an automatic, pre-potent action, or an action requiring rule-based cognitive control, and earned varying amounts of money based on their choices. Our findings demonstrated that subjects'' decision to engage cognitive control was driven by an explicit representation of monetary rewards expected to be obtained from rule-use. Subjects rarely engaged cognitive control when the expected outcome was of equal or lesser value as compared to the value of the automatic response, but frequently engaged cognitive control when it was expected to yield a larger monetary outcome. Additionally, we exploited fMRI-adaptation to show that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) represents associations between rules and expected reward outcomes. Together, these findings suggest that individuals are more likely to act in a reflective, rule-based manner when they expect that it will result in a desired outcome. Thus, choosing to exert cognitive control is not simply a matter of reason and willpower, but rather, conforms to standard mechanisms of value-based decision making. Finally, in contrast to current models of LPFC function, our results suggest that the LPFC plays a direct role in representing motivational incentives.     

视觉中文词汇识别的整体优先效应和词内核证原则:来自ERPs的证据

目的:以视觉的汉语真假双字词为材料,用词汇判断任务考察词汇加工过程与表征的关系.方法:记录了16名被试者的行为数据和ERPs数据.结果:①真词的反应时间显著短于假词.②真词和假词均诱发了明显的N1、P2、N2、P3、N400、P600成分.③假词的N2波幅显著大于真词;假词的P3波幅、潜伏期显著小于真词.④假词的N400波幅显著小于真词,假词减真词的差异波波幅表现出显著的半球效应,左半球大于右半球.⑤假词的P600潜伏期显著长于真词.结论:N2、P3成分分别反映了词汇认知加工早期对心理表征的匹配和评价、注意的分配;N400、P600成分分别反映了词汇认知加工晚期词素之间的语义冲突和词素之间语义、句法等关系的整合.研究结果证明了中文双字词识别的整体优先效应和词内核证原则,支持了词汇后加工的观点,为假词反应时长于真词提供了电生理证据.     

模拟飞行任务负荷对人体姿势控制的影响

目的:研究在机体不同站立姿势下,模拟飞行任务负荷对姿势控制能力的影响,并初步总结其变化规律。方法:从某航空院校学员中随机抽取30名,要求其持续进行4小时的模拟飞行任务负荷,并同时在0 h、1 h、2 h、3 h与4 h时,测试4种不同站立姿势下的静态立位平衡参数,比较不同姿势晃动的变化规律。结果:随着模拟飞行任务的持续,4种站立姿势下,被试的立位平衡能力发生了不同程度的变化,并呈现出一定的变化趋势。其中睁眼站立于脚垫上的姿势晃动程度变化最明显,并有重心前倾的趋势;另外,在暴露于飞行任务负荷下,机体视觉信息通道的关闭有可能激发视觉、前庭、本体与肌肉控制等系统对平衡维持能力的代偿性增强作用,而下肢本体感觉信息的阻碍又同时会损坏视觉、前庭、本体等系统对立位平衡能力的控制作用。结论:模拟飞行任务负荷下,机体的姿势晃动会呈现一定的变化规律,即身体可能会代偿性的向前倾斜,来维持身体的立位平衡状态。同时,视觉通道与下肢本体感觉通道对任务负荷条件下立位平衡功能的代偿能力发挥不同的作用。这种变化规律的初步阐述对我们下一步的立位平衡与飞行疲劳评估的研究打下一定的理论基础。     

Mismatch Responses in the Awake Rat: Evidence from Epidural Recordings of Auditory Cortical Fields

Detecting sudden environmental changes is crucial for the survival of humans and animals. In the human auditory system the mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), reflects the violation of predictable stimulus regularities, established by the previous auditory sequence. Given the considerable potentiality of the MMN for clinical applications, establishing valid animal models that allow for detailed investigation of its neurophysiological mechanisms is important. Rodent studies, so far almost exclusively under anesthesia, have not provided decisive evidence whether an MMN analogue exists in rats. This may be due to several factors, including the effect of anesthesia. We therefore used epidural recordings in awake black hooded rats, from two auditory cortical areas in both hemispheres, and with bandpass filtered noise stimuli that were optimized in frequency and duration for eliciting MMN in rats. Using a classical oddball paradigm with frequency deviants, we detected mismatch responses at all four electrodes in primary and secondary auditory cortex, with morphological and functional properties similar to those known in humans, i.e., large amplitude biphasic differences that increased in amplitude with decreasing deviant probability. These mismatch responses significantly diminished in a control condition that removed the predictive context while controlling for presentation rate of the deviants. While our present study does not allow for disambiguating precisely the relative contribution of adaptation and prediction error processing to the observed mismatch responses, it demonstrates that MMN-like potentials can be obtained in awake and unrestrained rats.     

Auditory ERPs to stimulus deviance in an awake chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes): towards hominid cognitive neurosciences

Background

For decades, the chimpanzee, phylogenetically closest to humans, has been analyzed intensively in comparative cognitive studies. Other than the accumulation of behavioral data, the neural basis for cognitive processing in the chimpanzee remains to be clarified. To increase our knowledge on the evolutionary and neural basis of human cognition, comparative neurophysiological studies exploring endogenous neural activities in the awake state are needed. However, to date, such studies have rarely been reported in non-human hominid species, due to the practical difficulties in conducting non-invasive measurements on awake individuals.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) of a fully awake chimpanzee, with reference to a well-documented component of human studies, namely mismatch negativity (MMN). In response to infrequent, deviant tones that were delivered in a uniform sound stream, a comparable ERP component could be detected as negative deflections in early latencies.

Conclusions/Significance

The present study reports the MMN-like component in a chimpanzee for the first time. In human studies, various ERP components, including MMN, are well-documented indicators of cognitive and neural processing. The results of the present study validate the use of non-invasive ERP measurements for studies on cognitive and neural processing in chimpanzees, and open the way for future studies comparing endogenous neural activities between humans and chimpanzees. This signifies an essential step in hominid cognitive neurosciences.